INSIGHT
UPFRONT SUPPORT
Tangible benefits from RMPP The Red Meat Profit Partnership expires in March, 2021. Phil Edmonds seeks views on what it has achieved.
A
s attention shifts to how the new Labour Government might help fund the farming sector to adopt ever more rigorous environmental standards, a former model of support for industry transformation is coming to an end with the Red Meat Profit Partnership PGP due to expire in March, 2021. A comprehensive evaluation of the RMPP programme has been completed to better understand its overall impact, and whether the initial lofty goals of driving transformational change within the sector have been achieved. The numbers suggest the government’s investment has been worth it, but the focus is now on whether the successful initiatives will be sustained by the industry. The RMPP was established in 2013, with a financial commitment of $64 million drawn from the government and industry partners, to attempt a transformational shift in productivity and profitability in New Zealand’s sheep and beef sector. A 2011 Red Meat Sector Strategy had identified a clear opportunity existed to raise the level of profitability by adopting initiatives already proving successful on top-performing farms, and the RMPP attempted to make the strategy recommendations work. At April 2020, RMPP had invested a total of $50.4 million of the initial committed fund. Of this, $38.1m (76%) has been directed towards various external and internal projects to assist farmers with practical ideas and tools to improve onfarm profitability. The remaining $12.3m has been spent on functions associated with managing the programme. 14
The two most significant investments have been establishing the Action Network extension programme ($14.4m spent) and delivering training programmes ($11.8m). A raft of smaller initiatives have also benefited from investment as part of the RMPP, including the nProve user interface (Livestock Improvement), the Electronic Animal Status Declaration (eASD) and the New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme (FAP) but, over the course of the programme to date, the efforts to lift onfarm profitability have been focused on the Action Network. At a high level the evaluation undertaken by independent consulting firm Scarlatti and published in September clearly suggests it has all been worth it. The combined RMPP investment to 2020 was found to have delivered benefits of $845m – a ratio of about 17:1. Confidence that the programme would deliver what it promised hasn’t always existed. In 2017 the then Minister for Primary Industries and PGP champion Nathan Guy effectively pleaded with underperforming sheep and beef farmers to do better at taking up opportunities available to improve onfarm productivity. Soon after, an analysis by the ANZ, one of the RMPP partners, found sector growth had lagged well below the level needed to reach the aspirational target of being a $14 billion industry by 2025. The ANZ study noted that shifting farmers’ focus to a business mindset was difficult given the varied motivations (in some cases skewed towards lifestyle) among sheep and beef farmers for being involved in the industry. There were also doubters as to whether
Farms participating in the extension groups will on average increase profitability by $24 per hectare, or $17,712 per farm, each year.
the government should be involved at all. Then in opposition, Damien O’Connor repeatedly argued that the PGP concept was generally a case of taxpayers funding ‘business-as-usual’. The criticism did fade when a review of the PGP system, called for by O’Connor when he became the Minister for Agriculture, found the government was getting good value from its contributions. This has subsequently been borne out in the Scarlatti evaluation. Why has the return on investment only started to appear in recent years? Scarlatti director and author of the RMPP evaluation Adam Barker suggests the overall success has been assisted by the Action Network extension and adoption work programme. RMPP chair Malcolm Bailey says when the programme was launched there was a sense that work on
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | November 2020
