Woolly thinking

July 25, 2017

IT’S NO secret that current wool prices are awful, but the outlook for the fibre has been terrible for many years. For some types of wool, more has been put in storage than has sold in the last nine months, mainly due to lack of demand from China. According to reports, current wool exports to […]

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Sailing away

July 25, 2017

TO USE the latest America’s Cup parlance, the New Zealand primary sector is ‘up on its foils’ at present. According to the latest Rabobank survey, farmer confidence and spending intentions jumped to record levels in the second quarter of this year, buoyed by improved commodity prices.

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Front-foot it

July 25, 2017

AS THE curtain comes down on another successful Fieldays, NZ’s farming sector has experienced something uncommon nowadays – a raft of positive media coverage. Positive descriptors such as innovators, economic powerhouse, world-leading food producers, celebrating farming and emerging leaders – to name but a few – were interspersed among the myriad of media stories covering […]

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Will the naysayers ever stop?

July 25, 2017

THE RECENT release of the progress report on the last three years of the Sustainable Dairying Water Accord has sparked all the naysayers of the dairy industry into another series of spiteful attacks on farmers. Granted, the report does highlight things that haven’t yet been achieved, but to be fair it doesn’t attempt to make […]

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Trade a priority

July 25, 2017

TRADE AND New Zealand’s position on it has been high on the agenda recently. In mid-March the Government announced a refresh of the country’s trade agenda to increase our exporters’ competitiveness — the primary sector is a key player — in an increasingly challenging global trading environment.

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Country of origin labelling a cool idea

July 25, 2017

MANDATORY LABELLING of fruits and vegetables is back on the public agenda. A recent joint survey, by Horticulture NZ and Consumer NZ, shows 70% of consumers want to know where their fruit and veges come from. Only 9% of those surveyed did not support mandatory country-of-origin labelling (CoOL). Coinciding with the survey results is the […]

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We’re all in this together

July 25, 2017

THE DEBATE about New Zealand’s water quality has become too simplistic, with far too much finger pointing and blame in mostly farming’s direction. It is clear that our water quality is bad enough to require action and, in some instances, it is getting worse. Action is needed. Too often critics claim nothing is happening, everything […]

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Lacklustre conversation

February 24, 2016

  FONTERRA’S NEW discussion booklet on revamping its governance is titled ‘Let’s have the Conversation’. But the lacklustre 20-page document will struggle to stimulate farmers, already in favour of a radical change in the board size. After being stunned in November by 54% shareholder support for a leaner board, the co-op’s board and Shareholders Council […]

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Obama nails it!

January 26, 2016

News that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is to be signed in New Zealand early next month, will no doubt fire up outrage, ridiculous claims and pontifications from the usual array of serial protestors, desperate politicians and other economic Luddites. These people seem to throw out all sorts of fantastical claims about the evils of […]

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Farming is never SAFE

January 5, 2016

‘GROSSLY IRRESPONSIBLE’ is how New Zealand’s special agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen has – rightly – described animal rights group SAFE’s placement of an anti-NZ dairy farming advertisement in a British newspaper. As Peterson says, the group has deliberately gone to the UK market and misleadingly said that the actions of these few, rogue dairy […]

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