MANAGEMENT Calm animals easier to handle, produce more. PAGE 26
MACHNERY Chinese tractor manufacturer debuts in NZ. PAGE 34
RURALNEWS
NEWS Beekeepers buzzing after formation of Apiculture NZ.
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TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS
JULY 5, 2016: ISSUE 610
www.ruralnews.co.nz
No need to panic PETER BURKE peterb@ruralnews.co.nz
NEW ZEALAND exporters need not panic about Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, says Trade Minister Todd McClay, once a senior bureaucrat in the EU. McClay told Rural News it will take Britain as long as 10 years to finally break away. The last country to leave the EU, Greenland, a very small country, took three years to exit. Britain’s huge economy prevents a quick exit, McClay says. And he can’t see any great economic problems arising in the short-medium term. “We are talking about many, many years and that is positive for NZ, because we will have time to engage
with all the important parties and negotiate the best outcome. “I don’t think access for our sheepmeat and dairy products will be significantly affected… because a lot of those quotas are bound under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. We will need to sit down and talk this through…. We have a lot of friends in the EU and a very strong relationship
RED AND BLACK Different regions of NZ have their various surpluses of produce that help feed livestock. Mostly it’s hay or silage, but not in the carrot growing capital – Ohakune – where reject carrots abound when grass is hardly growing. These cattle beasts, near Ohakune, were seen recently happily munching on the big reds. It was a common sight: orange ribbons of carrots laid out in paddocks, giving cattle and sheep a change of diet. No doubt their night vision is improving. Interesting to see red and black in Chiefs territory.
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with the UK.” McClay has already sought and received commitments from the UK and EU that no decisions related to NZ trade with either entity will be taken without us being involved. He hopes to start talking to EU and UK trade ministers at the G20 meeting in China soon, to discover what issues he needs to be aware of.
McClay says NZ has for two years been working with the EU on proposals to negotiate a free trade agreement; the talks could begin next year and NZ wants them finished “within a couple of years – maybe by the end of 2019,” McClay told Rural News. “Brexit will [not] slow that process significantly. I will [tell] the EU TO PAGE 4
BEING A GOOD GLOBAL CITIZEN PAM TIPA pamelat@ruralnews.co.nz
MANY SCENARIOS could play out in the Brexit and EU situation, says Beef + Lamb NZ chairman James Parsons. “We are watching,” he says. “It is a case of how to be good responsible international citizens. “We need to try to make the best out of this and assist all parties to transition out of it while ensuring NZ’s interests are well looked after.” A focus is what the EU does and how it treats the UK. Many variables apply in the politics overlaying that, including the UK leadership and whether the EU wants to make an example of the UK, Parsons says. “Staying close to what is going on with all our counterparts in UK and Europe is important; so is working through all the issues in terms of trade between the EU and the UK and all the various trade deals.” The list is huge. “We are focusing on [exactly] where NZ’s trade access arrangements with the EU sit, and ensuring we are as high on the list as possible while being realistic about the things they have to work through.” There’s a possible silver lining: if the EU is closed to UK sheepmeat or they have too high tariffs, there may be an under-supply to the continent.
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