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Episode three
Having already trekked to the wilds of Peru and Afghanistan to experience how foreign farmers handle their flocks, Kate Humble uses this third, and blessedly final episode to learn about three contrasting styles of modern sheep rearing in Australia.
This hour-long, sometimes dragging doc is a smidge more interesting than the other two, because she focuses on large-scale outfits (the first farm she visits is the ‘size of Kent’) which offer real insight into where our food comes from, who is responsible for it and what kind of environmental, social and economic struggles the farmers face.
Out in the western bush, we watch an airborne Humble get excited by the process of herding tens of thousands of sheep by plane; while in a farm south-east of Adelaide, she’s privy to the alarmingly fast ejaculation of a ram whose semen is being collected – ‘Suddenly all the men in my life are feeling really good about themselves,’ she exclaims. It’s just this sort of vivacious wittering that stops you counting sheep.