COMPETITION
ANIMAL HEALTH
NEWS
Be in to win a new Yamaha AG125. PAGE 20
Velvet pills aid dog welfare.
Bacterial cattle disease spreads to North Canterbury. PAGE 21
PAGE 38
TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS SEPTEMBER 5, 2017: ISSUE 637
www.ruralnews.co.nz
Creaming China’s ultra-rich SUDESH KISSUN sudeshk@ruralnews.co.nz
WEALTHY CHINESE families’ appetite for fresh New Zealand milk is growing. Milk New Zealand, which owns 29 dairy farms including the ex-Crafar properties, has launched a new 1L product -- Theland Farm Fresh Milk. About 35,000 bottles of fresh milk
have already been shipped to China. Milk NZ managing director Terry Lee expects to ship about 20,000 bottles per month this year, rising to 80,000 bottles per month by the end of 2018. “Demand for fresh milk is growing in China, particularly for product grown and processed in NZ,” says Lee. The new product is marketed by
All smiles for now “Farmers never smile,” grins North Canterbury Federated Farmers president Lynda Murchison, as she contemplates an excellent lambing season – following three years of drought. The region has enjoyed a “lovely wet winter” followed by a “really nice August,” she says. Murchison and her husband run mainly Corriedale breeding ewes and trade lambs on a property at Waipara, in an area among the hardest hit by the East Coast drought. Lambing is not yet finished, but they scanned at 135%. Like most in the district, they had had to destock, and restocking was a long-term task. Replacement stock was expensive and competition was high. Murchison says there were also long-term effects of the drought on groundwater tables and spring-fed streams, and aquifers are still low. “When you hop down to Selwyn, those guys are still looking at water levels six or seven metres below average levels, but it has come up a long way from where it was,” she adds. “But in the immediate recovery it’s been a good winter and a nice mild early start to spring so there’s plenty of grass growth.” – RURAL NEWS GROUP
the world’s largest online retailer, Alibaba Group, through its ‘88members’- a VVIP channel for middle and upper class Chinese families. TheLand milk comes from Milk NZ’s Collins Road farm in Hamilton; it is processed by Green Valley Dairy and air-freighted by China Eastern Airline Cargo. The product has a 16-day shelf life. “Theland Fresh Milk is 100%
NZ made,” says Lee. “The milk is sourced from pasture-farmed free ranging cows (average of 2-3 cows/ ha). This product contains high natural protein and milk calcium.” This week TheLand milk and the trade deal between Milk NZ and Alibaba will be officially launched at the Collins Road Farm; a live-feed will be beamed into millions of homes TO PAGE 3
INEQUITABLE, NONSENSICAL “A BLUNT instrument that is unclear in its purpose.” That is how North Otago Irrigation Company (NOIC) chief executive Robyn Wells describes the Labour Party’s proposed water royalty or irrigation tax. “On the face of it, it’s inequitable and nonsensical to apply a royalty to water as if it’s a finite resource such as coal or gold,” said Wells. “We all know that when we take water and irrigate, some of it goes back into groundwater flows and some of it goes into growing of grasses and plants,” she told Rural News. “From those plants there’s evapo-transpiration, so it goes back into the atmosphere and it comes back into the cycle. That’s basic science – a water cycle.” Wells says if the purpose was to tax water take, then everybody should be taxed. “If the purpose was to tax pollution coming from the use of water, then the polluters should pay.” Wells pointed out that no-one now pays for water; they pay for the capital and operation of the infrastructure. “Even in Auckland, people are paying for the infrastructure -- the pipes and the operation of the pipes to bring the water to the door. We already charge our farmers for that at NOIC.” She says NOIC also spent substantially on environmental management and enhancement. Wells noted that the Waitaki River is a good quality river in an area where a lot of good environmental work is done. She says the farmers of North Otago would be paying a royalty which would probably have to go somewhere else in NZ. – Nigel Malthus