2013 in review: the good, bad and ugly!

dogAnother year has passed, yet another busy one for the agribusiness sector. Rural News’ editorial team reviews the 2013 year and its highs and lows…
Bad
‘KICK EM in the guts Trev’ award: AgResearch for the way it handled its relocation strategy. Another crop of good scientists gets dumped on and New Zealand loses again. While the CRI may have a point with its relocation strategy, it seems to many that the company is more interested in paying dividends to the Government than serving farmers’ needs.
‘Missing in action’ award: John Wilson, Fonterra chairman. Happy to front new milk in schools programmes, but he went into hiding when the proverbial hit the fan at Fonterra during the botulism botch-up.
Biggest loser of the year: Gary Romano, after he walked (voluntarily or not) the plank following Fonterra’s botulism saga. Second biggest: New Zealand – or was it the biggest?
Biggest botch-up of the year and the people’s choice: Fonterra for botulism botch-up or was it notulism? Inept in every way, from the first sign of trouble to the appalling communication of the crisis at all levels of the organisation.
Second biggest botch-up: MPI for not changing the old MAF paperwork for meat exports to China. Meat sat on wharves for weeks and exporters lost money while authorities haggled over an acronym. A ‘high performing department’? Yeah right! Not high and not performing. Oh, and what’s in our PKE? A sheep’s foot, a deer’s hoof or a fish?
Worst PR effort in the rural sector: MPI by a country mile. They never failed to underperform. The struggling government department even spent $250,000 on buying-in spin doctors from outside, to no avail! Can anything be ‘Dunne’ about this?
Fonterra is at least trying to change its ways, but still has a fair way to go.
Good
Biggest turnaround: the kiwifruit industry, from survival to revival in the face of Psa destruction.
Best score: Dairy Women’s Network again for attracting DeLaval NZ’s managing director Zelda de Villiers as its new chief executive.
Grace under fire: Nutricia ANZ managing director Corine Tap, facing hysterical mums and massive product recall; but none of it was her fault.
Leading the way: Miraka for notching up a deal with the Chinese this year, while Fonterra was busy apologising to them for its numerous cock-ups.
Top lobbiest: HortNZ who got more dogs, more X ray machines, better biosecurity. Also ran a great conference and vastly improved its relationships with central government.
Runner-up: MIE for trying hard to get reforms in the meat industry. Harder than herding cats.
Politician of the year: Amy Adams for driving the RMA and water reforms and putting regional government on notice for some sub-optimal performance. A very smart politician.
Trying hard award: Nathan Guy for doing his best – despite taking advice from a department (MPI) that has been restructured so many times that too many good people have gone.
Runner-up: Damien O’Connor who did his best despite belonging to a party more interested in the rights of gays than the primary export sector. Right guy, wrong party.
Farming leader: hard to go past Bruce Wills who has turned Feds from a feral, grumpy lobby group to one respected nationwide especially on environmental issues.
Agribusiness person of the year: Kingi Smiler continues to impress by his leadership in Maori agribusiness. Others to watch are Gerard Hickey of Firstlight Foods and Dion Tuuta of PKW.
Ag event of the year: hard to beat the Ahuwhenua Awards for the top Maori farmer. Attracting 850 people to an amazing gala dinner is pretty impressive.
Young person: Lincoln University undergraduate Brigitte Ravera for her brilliant endorsement of the opportunities agriculture offers young people, spoken during a bus tour organised for teachers and careers advisors. The other young people on the bus were equally impressive.
Best PR in rural sector: Feds, if you base it on the number of media releases and their willingness to front people. DairyNZ, Rural Women NZ and Massey University are also very much up there.
Best communication of science: Massey and Lincoln universities and DairyNZ. Always willing to help the media and farmers and innovative in the way they communicate. MPI take note!
Ugly
Knockers of the year: Fish and Game and Massey University’s Mike Joy who seem to forget that moaning in the media doesn’t earn export dollars, nor does it help our export sector.
Greatest hysteria: anti-PKE groups using some media to foulmouth the key supplement feed in the dairy sector. MPI reacts by agreeing on greater screening of PKE.
Idiots of the year: the small minority of dairy farmers who continued to pollute waterways and failed to respect the environment, so tainting New Zealand’s image. It’s time Fonterra and other dairy companies made them walk the plank (a la Gary Romano).
Greatest challenges for 2014: getting unity in the meat industry, making MPI a high performing government department, stopping Mike Joy and his green mob from badmouthing farming, encouraging young people to make a career in agribusiness, and getting Fonterra’s John Wilson to front the bad as well as the good news .
A bouquet: to the big majority of farmers who have met their environmental obligations.
If only
Dr Mike Joy would say one good thing about dairying farming.
Nathan Guy would stop referring to MPI as being a “high performing government department” until it is.
Fish and Game would accept they are not environmentalists; they’re there only to kill and catch fish.
Fonterra would fire some ‘feral’ dairy farmers.
The CRI’s would do some serious ‘technology transfer’ and have regular interactive sessions with farmers.
The meat industry would unite and farmers would fully support that.
Someone would take a real leadership role in the primary sector.
MPI would stop referring to Maori as “having potential”. Maori are already performing well and, yes, they have potential, but so do many non-Maori farmers.

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