THERE IS widespread anger and dis belief among farming leaders over the actions of MPI and MfE within the He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) partnership. Both ministries were touted by the Government as being ‘partners’, along with iwi and a number of farm
It sounds bizarre, but in fact it’s delicious – an ice-cream made from cauliflower. It drew hundreds of people to the Massey University site at Fieldays to sample this unique dessert. The product comes in three flavours, strawberry, chocolate, and mint and looks and tastes like ordinary ice-cream. It’s the creation of Taranaki entrepreneur, Jenni Matheson who started off 20-years-ago just making delicious dairy alternatives for her children and their friends is about to be launched nationwide on the menu of the Hell Pizza chain.
– See more page 5
ing organisations in HWEN, which had been involved in working on a joint counter proposal to put to government to deal with agricultural emissions and avoid them going into the ETS.
However, Rural News has discov ered that with about a month before HWEN’s proposal was due to go to the Government in May, the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Min
istry for Primary Industries (MPI) sud denly announced that they would not be signing it because they were, in their words, “conflicted”.
This last minute walkout by the two ministries came as a complete surprise to the other members of the partnership who say they were led to believe the two ministries were ‘genu ine partners’ like themselves. However,
it seems they weren’t. Rural News has been told the other HWEN partners felt they had been misled.
“We acted in good faith all along, while it seems the Government did not.”
On the HWEN website, the logos of MPI and MfE are still there as part ners, but a question mark hangs over their real role. Were they just spies for
government ministers, advisors to the group or just a bit of political fluff to dress the deal up as something it never was or would turn out to be?
When the partnership was launched at Parliament in October 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the agreement as “a world first” and said, “it’s great to see primary sector lead ers sharing the same aspirations as the Government”.
Climate Change Minister James Shaw added, “the agreement reached reflects a level of consensus never been reached in NZ before” (Rural News 5-11-19).
Such words gave the appearance that HWEN was a genuine partnership between industry, iwi and government. But in the end, was it?
Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard told Rural News he can’t understand the justification MPI and MfE used in refusing to sign off on the submission that HWEN lodged in May – where they claimed they had to provide ‘independent’ advice to min isters.
“We should have been told that back in 2019. It should have been abundantly clear throughout this process to every one that MPI and MfE wouldn’t be signing it,” he says.
“Quite frankly, I would argue if we knew that at the start, the May proposal would have been quite different.”
Hoggard says it was poor pro cess and it should have been made abundantly clear from the start that
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NEWS 1-16
THE MĀORI Trustee says the Govern ment response to the HWEN proposal on dealing with agricultural gasses will disproportionally disadvantage Māori landowners and doesn’t provide a solu tion for this inequity.
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Dr Charlotte Severne is the chief executive of Te Tumu Paeroa, which administers as trustee 88,000 hect ares of Māori freehold land on behalf of approximately 100,000 individual owners. She does not speak for other holders of whenua Māori, iwi, hapū or individuals, who lodged submissions of their own.
Severne says she has grave concerns about the Government’s “pricing of agricultural emissions” proposal and its likely impact on Māori landowners.
In her lengthy submission, Severne says while she recognises the need to reduce emissions, the proposed pric ing system will disproportionately dis advantage Māori and she doesn’t think it is equitable.
Her submission points out the dif ferences between Māori freehold and general land. Severne says the imple mentation of the present proposal will disadvantage the lands she adminis ters, which are predominantly small,
fragmented and individually uneco nomic Māori holdings, often on mar ginal lands.
She adds that the large economic Māori whenua-based entities in her portfolio would also be dispropor tionately affected by increased com pliance costs.
Severne’s submission expresses concern about the impact the proposal will have on rural communities, where Māori are often over represented.
“The proposal seems designed from a western point of view and doesn’t recognise the cultural value that Māori
place on land, in addition to eco nomic value,” she explains. “There is also concern that the measures seem more directed at large, economically strong farming operations, not those over-represented in the classes of land where whenua Māori is located.”
Severne says she also does not support the Government’s approach to recognising carbon sequestra tion, saying the reduction in catego ries of vegetation being recognised will disproportionately affect whenua Māori and whenua Māori landowners because of the exclusion of vegetation
MEANWHILE, IN ITS submission to the Government, Beef+Lamb NZ has rejected the Government’s proposed agricultural emissions pricing system.
B+LNZ has called for essen tial changes to ensure the resulting system does not disproportionately impact sheep and beef farmers.
Chair Andrew Morrison says the Government’s own modelling rein forces the need for changes. He says this modelling shows that sheep and beef farmers will bear the brunt of the proposals.
“Their proposal has caused concern and anger in rural commu nities up and down the country,” he says. “The Government must address key questions around equity and fair ness before proceeding with emis sions pricing.”
they currently have on their properties. While Severne’s submission opposes much of the proposed policy, she does support the proposal to work with Treaty partners to understand ways to reduce the administrative burden of agricultural emissions pric ing on whenua Māori agribusinesses.
FROM PAGE 1
both MPI and MfE were there in an advisory role, not as partners.
“There is a big difference to being an advisor as opposed to being a part ner.”
Hoggard says, when the process started back in October 2019, the Prime Minister was talking up HWEN
as an “historic government, iwi and industry partnership”. However, he says there was hint of government backtracking on this early this year, when they described it as an “historic iwi/industry agreement”.
“The word government was left out,” Hoggard says
This lack of clarity or deceit about
the real role of MPI and MfE is seen by many as a betrayal of good faith and vindicates comments by Fed erated Farmers, Groundswell and others that the Government can’t be trusted.
Throughout the process of prepar ing the May submission, Beef+Lamb NZ and DairyNZ were careful not to
pick a fight with the Government –despite scepticism from many farmer groups to the contrary.
However, when the Government came back with its recent counter proposal, the narrative changed and both organisations have openly hit out as saying the counter proposal is ‘not fit for purpose’.
BEING ABLE to pay a return to farmer shareholders for the first time in four years is down to a team effort, says Farmlands chief executive Tanya Houghton.
The co-operative recently announced a $17.1m net profit before tax and rebates – 34% up on the previous year – in its 2022 annual result. That will allow it to return an $11.9m gross ($8.6m after tax) shareholder distribution, the first return to shareholders in four years, and almost double the gross distribution of $6.2m provided in 2018.
Houghton, who has been in the job 15 months, says the result was due to a combination of factors, not just around income.
“We are very mindful that as a buying group for New Zealand farmers our cost of operation needs to be reflective of the fact that we are a low-margin business,” she told Rural News.
“And there were opportunities for cost saving last year in terms of operational costs and we took those opportunities.”
Houghton adds that was not at the cost of the employees.
“We did streamline the executive team and took some senior
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She says Farmlands
consciously invested in its team, lifting base pay rates, and paying a combined
$950,000 bonus across all permanent team members.
“One of the things
we’ve done in the last 15 months is really come back to focus on our core reason for being – and our absolute core reason for being is to support New Zealand famers and support profitability on farm.”
while end-of-year profit distributions are an important way for Farmlands to support funds being reinvested in New Zealand agriculture, the monthly rebates provided through the Farmlands Card and in-store shareholder purchases are the most significant and regular way the rural supplies co-op delivers value.
In 2022, it returned $94.3m in monthly rebates during the year –an increase of $5m on the year before.
“We are working to ensure that Farmlands is consistently profitable and returning regular distributions to our shareholders from here on in,” she says.
But it was “fair to say” Farmlands hadn’t been doing as good a job as it could and the core objective now was to do better, she said.
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Meanwhile, Farmlands Chair Rob Hewett told the company’s recent AGM that it is returning to a position of financial strength at a time when New Zealand agriculture is faced with a lot of rapid disruption.
“We have a clear plan on how we will deliver greater value to our shareholders over the long-term. We are focused on our core role of providing critical inputs to New Zealand farmers and growers and embracing the growing new lifestyle customers connected to the land.”
Houghton says that
“As we continue to manage industry uncertainty, we do not expect straight line growth in distributions – there will be some bumps. As our business improvements start to have a positive impact over the next two to three years, we expect to see our profitability and shareholder returns increase.”
As a Kiwi recently returned from a number of senior roles in Australia, Houghton told Rural News she was excited to be involved in a business where she could make a difference to a sector and to “New Zealand Inc”.
She says the agricultural sector is “a bloody amazing place to have a career,”
“I’m just loving, being part of it.”
NEUR, Jenni Matheson is a vegan who loves using vegetables for breakfast, lunch, dinner and now dessert.
Her ice-cream made from cauliflower, drew hundreds of people to the Massey University site at Fieldays to sample this unique dessert. It comes in three flavours, straw berry, chocolate and mint and looks and tastes like ordinary ice-cream.
What started off 20-years-ago as just making delicious dairy alternatives for her chil dren and their friends is about to be launched nationwide on the menu of the Hell Pizza chain.
“When our family went vegan and there were no alternatives on the market, so I tried
making ice-cream out of different things like chickpeas, lentils, car rots, pumpkins and cau liflower,” she told Rural News. “As it turned out, cauliflower came out the best because it was creamier, had a subtle flavour and the colours were neutral.”
The breakthrough for Matheson came when she pitched her idea at a ‘start up’ weekend in Taranaki. The idea caught the imagination of Milli Kumar, who’d just com pleted a food tech degree at Massey University, and the pair decided to form a company. Then came
the task of scaling up the product and for this they enlisted the help of fourth year Massey stu dents to help them.
“The home-made for mulation that I made was only in small batches like one litre at a time, whereas we were look ing at producing 600
litres at a time,” Mathe son explains. “To do that the process changes and ingredients level changes and the equipment changes – so it’s taken us two years to get from a benchtop formula to what we have now.”
Sourcing cauliflow ers for ice-cream is also quite special. Matheson has a deal with a com pany called Perfectly Imperfect, which obtains the product from grow ers that the supermar kets won’t accept because they don’t meet their very strict specifications. She says there is nothing wrong with the cauliflow ers and they are sup porting growers and the environment.
“It’s been a fun, crazy wonderful journey and I am looking forward to the future and in the pro cess hopefully making a difference,” she says.
SOME EARLY rain on the opening day meant less of a crowd poured into the Mystery Creek site last week.
Fieldays chief executive Peter Nation claims it is proof of success of holding the event even though final numbers would not be known till after Saturday. However, Nation reckons having 1000 exhibitors on site is a good result. On Wednesday morning there were some heavy showers, but gumboots and umbrellas were the simple answer. And there were plenty of indoor sites to visit as well.
Nation told Rural News that organisers of similar events world-wide are facing challenges with supply chain disruptions forcing exhibitors to pull out or down size. “It’s hard if you don’t have product,” he says.
But Nation adds that there has been an excellent response from overseas visitors.
“One company flew in 200 delegates to the event and many others flew in smaller numbers.”
He’s hopeful that more freedoms around travel will see future numbers increase.
As for the somewhat controversial decision to stage the event at this time of the year, Nation claims that farmers are still coming along as are key exhibitors – such as Fonterra and DairyNZ. He says Fieldays is mindful that it’s a busy time of the year.
“But as one farmer put it to me – this is the secondbest date you could have chosen.”
and plan to fill that gap if it exists.”
A NEW report on climate change has found that agile farm management will be critical in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change.
Authored by Lin coln University’s Agri business and Economics Research Unit on behalf of Westpac, The Westpac NZ Agribusiness Climate Change Report –released last week – assesses the risks and opportuni ties presented by climate change, as well as the sector’s vulnerabilities and potential responses. It was produced as part of a wider body of work undertaken by Lincoln University for Westpac NZ looking at the impact of climate change on agri culture in New Zealand.
Westpac NZ Head of Agribusiness Tim Henshaw told Rural News the report and a series of factsheets were designed to provide Westpac customers, and the market in general, with impartial information about the way climate change may affect their location and type of production, and how they can respond.
The report finds there is already a range of existing management options available to assist farmers in strengthening the physical resilience of their farming systems and
meeting New Zealand’s 2030 agriculture climate targets, with only a few requiring an initial invest ment of capital.
But Henshaw points out that applying these options more widely will require uptake of best practice farm manage ment.
“This may require a significant uplift in skills and training to ensure a greater number of farm ers have sufficient exper tise to both reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.”
Henshaw says the report makes informa tion relevant to farmers and growers by exploring credible case studies.
“For example, it looks at the effect of drought on a dairy farmer in Can terbury, and the impact of warming winters on kiwifruit growers in the Bay of Plenty.”
He says the opti mal response to climate change will be different for every producer.
“There is no single off-the-shelf solution. I’d encourage primary pro ducers to think about
how the climate is chang ing in their part of the country, and what effect that will have on pro
HENSHAW SAYS Westpac can play a key role as a lender in helping farmers and growers prepare for a warmer future.
Earlier this year, the bank launched a pilot of its new Sustain able Agribusiness Loans with a small group of farming customers.
duction. They also need to consider what exper
Henshaw says the pilot has been trialled with three farmers and Westpac plans to make the loan available to its agri customers in 2023.
“The loan is the first of its kind to require a customer to meet all parts of the Sustainable Agriculture Finance
tise they have available to adapt their operations,
Henshaw says the report also explores the opportunities that may arise for producers that adapt quickly.
“Other commercial opportunities may arise if individual producers or the wider New Zealand industry take a leadership position on tackling tran sition risks like chang ing consumer preferences and trade challenges,” he adds.
“In another finding, the report also assesses the way de-stocking com bined with improved pro ductivity can help to both reduce emissions and maintain profitability.”
Lead author of the report, Lincoln Univer sity Professor Anita Wre ford, says adaptation will be crucial, but has its lim itations.
“There are very useful actions farmers should consider in the short and medium terms.
She says there is scope for further research into the enduring effective ness of adaptation prac tices under a changing climate.
Initiative guidance,” he told Rural News
“This guidance includes prac tices to reduce emissions, improve long-term resilience and deliver more sustainable outcomes in terms of water, waste, pollution and ecosys tems.”
“Because astute land management will be criti cal in responding to cli mate change, there is also a need to increase train ing of rural professionals to support farmers and growers.”
“There are very useful actions farmers should consider in the short and medium terms.
director Donna Smit says meeting sustainabil ity targets remains one of the biggest challenges facing New Zealand dairy farmers.
Smit, who stepped down at the co-op’s annual meeting last month after serving six years on the board, says the requirement for farm ers to stay ahead of the rest of the world is a pressure.
The Government has set into law a target for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Smit told Rural News that NZ dairy farmers had one of the lowest carbon foot prints in the world.
“Meeting the sustain ability aspirations of soci ety, despite being the
lowest carbon footprint farmers in the world is a challenge,” she says.
“Meeting the Govern ments Zero Carbon pro posal is concerning for farmers when the tech nology is still to catch up to the Government’s aspirations.
“It would be a shame to see our industry neg atively impacted in the pursuit to lead the world.”
She says the tight labour market is also proving a challenge for farmers.
“I believe as an indus try we are good employ ers; we offer good career prospects. However, I see the inability to source enough staff putting a lot of pressure on farm owners, sharemilkers and contract milkers,” Smit says.
“Personally, I do not
like how our migrant workers cannot have their immediate family live in NZ. To me this does not meet the values of a modern society and it’s putting NZ at a competi
tive disadvantage.”
Cost inflation and rising interest rates are also a challenge. How ever, she notes that the repayment of dairy debt over the past three years
has been “admirable”.
Smit says the same compliance paperwork required by several dif ferent organisations all in slightly different formats is a constant source of
SMIT, A chartered accountant by profession, says she will now spend more time with her family and continue number crunching for their farming interests.
With husband Corrie, Smit has dairy farms in Whaka tane and Oamaru. They also own kiwifruit orchards in Bay of Plenty.
Her message to Fonterra farmers is to stay engaged with the co-operative.
“Farmer directors who live on dairy farms, have their capital at risk and know the dairy industry from the ground up add real value to your co-operative,” she claims.
“Stay engaged with your co-operative: our collective strength helps to de risk your business and is the envy of the world.
Smit believes that milk is a wonderful nutrient dense super food and says: “we have only just begun to unlock its brilliant properties”.
frustration for farmers.
“Data must be stan dardised and digitised.”
Despite a list of chal lenges, Smit believes it’s a great time to be a food producer. “Being an essential industry during
Covid and being able to continue during lock down was necessary but an advantage to other industries.
She adds that Fonter ra’s innovation strategy is a lot to look forward to.
ANOTHER KICK in the guts for rural nurses.
That’s how Dr Fiona Bolden – chair of Hauora Taiwhenua, which rep resents rural GPs – is describing Health Minis ter Andrew Little’s deci sion not to offer pay
parity to nurses who work in general practice.
Bolden says on the one hand Little claims he is committed to pay parity with nurse in places such as aged care facilities, but she’s been advised that there is no plan to extend this to nurses who work in gen eral practice.
Bolden says this is a totally devastating deci sion, not only for prac tice nurses, but also for the whole general prac tice team and the com munities they serve. She says there is ample evi dence of the disparity between pay for nurses in general practice and pay for nurses who work for
DHBs.
“General practices, particularly in rural areas, are already struggling to meet the demands placed upon them. They were fundamental to the rollout of Covid vaccination programmes through out NZ, and a signifi cant factor in getting vaccinations to target
rates for rural and rural Māori populations,” she explains.
“Yet for some reason the Minister, who in promoting the health reforms, stated that there was to be a major shift in emphasis towards primary and commu nity care, has once again ignored those efforts,”
she says.
Bolden says that, while Little says it is time to start addressing the pay rates of those health workers who don’t work for Te Whatu Ora, he also says that for GP nurses there is no “real evidence of pay difference at this point”.
“This will do noth ing to address the contin ual drain of nurses from general practice to other more well paid and less demanding roles and to overseas jobs which are far more lucrative,” she adds.
Bolden says these hardworking, dedicated health professionals are
the backbone of health care in the community, and they need recogni tion by at least being paid equitably to their DHB counterparts. She adds that small rural general practices and communityfunded rural hospitals do not have the finan cial flexibility to be able to increase their wages to the DHB equivalent.
“With the Christmas holidays coming up, we are still expected to keep general practices open and provide 24/7 care,” Bolden says. “We hope that we can help the Min ister see how untenable this is without fair pay across the sector.”
It is also demanding an urgent review of the cumu lative financial and social impacts of the Govern ment’s environmental agenda on farmers and rural communities.
B+LNZ chief executive Sam McIvor says farmers are feeling overwhelmed by the tsunami of environ mental and other regulations that have been rushed through in the last few years.
“Many are mentally exhausted – there’s just been no understanding from the Government or appre ciation of the damage done by the scale and pace of change.”
McIvor says many of the rules in areas such as freshwater and climate change have been poorly thought through and the economic impacts of the changes are far more than what is needed to achieve the desired environmental outcomes.
“The NPS for Indigenous Biodiversity is another case in point. Leading biodiversity experts like Pro fessor David Norton agree with B+LNZ that the def inition of a Significant Natural Area is much broader than it needs to be and will tie up productive land in red tape and compliance and not achieve positive biodiversity outcomes.”
McIvor says the Government needs to stop and take stock of what it is trying to achieve and adjust its reform agenda to ensure the economy successfully recovers from COVID-19. “The Government needs to stop, listen to feedback and fundamentally change key policies before it’s too late.”
WOOL CARPET man ufacturer Bremworth says Covid-19 has helped accelerate a trend towards more natural fibres.
The company, which moved away from the use of synthetic materials two years ago and embraced the production of wool carpets, says research shows that consumers now favour wool carpet much more strongly than at any time in the past three years.
Speaking at Brem worth’s annual meet ing last week, board chair George Adams said the listed company now has the foundation needed to rebuild wool’s share of the flooring market and grow its business.
“While headwinds cre ated by Covid-19 have
constrained the macroeconomic operating envi ronment, they have also helped to accelerate trends towards more nat ural fibres,” says Adams.
“Price is no longer the dominant driver of pur chase decision, and a growing segment of con sumers are rethinking their use of plastics and their impact on the envi ronment,” he claims.
“In the short time since Bremworth began its transformation, the company has made sig nificant progress in repo sitioning the brand and bringing consumers along on our journey towards becoming New Zealand’s leading, natural fibre flooring producer.”
Total revenue for financial year 2022 reached $95.5 million compared to $111m the previous year. Non-wool carpet revenue accounted
for $19m of the reduction in revenue.
Woollen carpet and rugs revenue remained unchanged at $73m: NZ revenue rose $4.4m or 15%, while in Australia revenue was down $5m as the company moved away from high-volume com mercial business to focus on premium residen tial customers. Net profit for the year rose 29% to $2.2m.
Adams says Brem worth now has a clear growth strategy to grow the wool flooring market, grow its share of the market, expand its pres ence and use design-led innovation to remain competitive.
But Covid presented a challenging operating environment.
Over the past year, the pandemic added fur ther constraints to the
manufacturing sector and Bremworth’s supply chain, particularly transTasman shipping time frames, he says.
“We are now seeing capacity return to the logistics industry.
“These delays likely saw consumers switch to alternatives. Like other businesses, inflation ary pressures have mani fested within our labour, materials and freight
costs. Our approach to mitigating the impact of these cost pressures has been to insulate ourselves through the development of premium and design led products – where price is less important to the consumer than per formance and value. In addition, we took a laser focus on our distribution and administration costs and reduced them by $3m across Australasia.
“And globally, demand for wool and wool prices remain at historically low levels, which make for a more challenging operat ing environment for our wool buying division.”
Meanwhile, chief exec utive Greg Smith told the meeting that the wool carpet sector was wit nessing a global renais sance.
“While life con tinues to adapt to the Covid pandemic, we are
also witnessing a global renaissance, a return to nature and natural fibres, and a recognition of our individual impact on the environment,” says Smith.
“There is growing con sumer awareness that the environmental cost of plastic is too high.
“Bremworth is posi tioning itself as an advo cate at the forefront of long-term change,” Smith says.
“As part of this evo lution, we are develop ing products today that can be safely returned to the environment from which they came, and the results from the past year reassure us that our messages are resonat ing with consumers and the market is increasingly recognising the value that we offer.”
A CLAIM lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal has thwarted the plan to buy a large North Island sheep and beef farm to prevent it being planted in pine trees.
An organisation called Forever Farming NZ –headed by farming leader Mike Barham – was set up and seeking investors to buy the 5,000 hect are Mangaohane Station, just off the Napier-Taupo highway, which is up for sale by international tender.
The farm winters around 40,000 stock units on a sheep to cattle ratio of 2 to 1 and is esti mated to be worth in the vicinity of $45 million.
However, almost as quickly as the call went out for investors, the plan
had to be pulled. Barham blames the Information Memorandum prepared for the sale of the station, which did not include full disclosure of two impor tant issues.
It has been revealed that a claim on Mangao hane Station was lodged with the Waitangi Tribu nal in late 2019 by a local Māori Trust. The same trust also wants to reg ister an easement to for malise passage through the station to land it owns at the rear of the property, which is not accessible directly by road.
“To say I’m incredibly disappointed is an under statement, but we can’t proceed any further with our bid,” Barham told Rural News. “These two developments, particu larly the Waitangi Tribu nal claim, add too much
risk and uncertainty for a syndicate investment like we had planned. Sadly,
we’ll have to back away.”
Barham says he still cannot believe that the
tant disclosure in such a high profile interna tional tender. He says not knowing this at the start cost him and others both time and money.
He was confident For ever Farming NZ would have raised sufficient cash to buy Mangaohane Station. Barham says he’s been stunned by the level of support from people from cities and towns right across the coun try and from within the farming community.
“We’ve got commit ments for tens of millions of dollars from hundreds
of people who believed in what we were doing,” he added. “They will be gutted because they wanted to join with us in making a stand at Man gaohane to stop the slide of so much of our hill country into permanent forest for carbon.”
Barham has met with members of the trust and says they want Mangao hane Station to remain a livestock farming busi ness.
“I wish them well and hope they achieve the same outcome we wanted for Mangaohane.”
“To say I’m incredibly disappointed is an understatement, but we can’t proceed any further with our bid.”
FONTERRA’S SHARE and unit prices should get a boost from an orderly implementation of the co-operative’s new capi tal structure, says Jarden head of research Arie Dekker.
He believes uncer tainty associated with getting approval from the Government has impacted the share and unit prices.
Last month, Parlia ment approved legislation changing the Dairy Indus try Restructuring Act (DIRA), paving the way for Fonterra to launch the new capital structure. The Governments’ green light came a year after Fon terra shareholders had voted for the change.
The co-operative has signalled that it intends to implement it in March 2023.
The new capital struc ture reduces the number of shares farmers need to hold to join the company from one share per kgMS, to one share per 3 kgMS. It would also allow dif ferent types of farmers to
hold shares in the com pany and cap the size of the associated sharehold ers’ fund to 10% of all shares on issue.
Despite Fonterra’s objections, the Govern ment has also changed the composition of the milk price panel, which helps set the farmgate milk price. The panel will have an independent chair and face greater scrutiny from the Com merce Commission.
Fonterra’s share price has dropped from $5.15/ share in March last year to $2.59/share last week.
Units offered by Fon terra Shareholders Fund have followed a similar pattern. The unit price has dropped from $5.15 to $3.06.
“In our view, the
uncertainty associated with the implementa tion of capital struc ture changes has been an overhang on the Fonterra share and unit prices and we believe orderly imple
mentation should be a positive catalyst for Fon terra in 2023,” Dekker says.
He believes Fonterra’s investment case will be influenced by a broader
set of dynamics.
“We view Fonterra’s approach on the follow ing, somewhat related, issues as important as it progresses its 2030 strategy and moves into
the new capital struc ture environment where farmers have much more flexibility on ownership levels.” He also believes Fonterra will need to be disciplined on capital
investments.
Fonterra chairman Peter McBride says the passing of legislation pro vides farmer shareholders “the clarity they’ve been wanting”.
THE BREAST Cancer Foundation NZ (BCFNZ) has launched a new fun draising campaign which seeks to expand its early detection education pro gramme into more rural and isolated communi ties.
The charity is look ing to raise $600,000 to fund a new Pink Cara van, including the build and operating costs for the first two years, says chief executive Ah-Leen Rayner.
The caravan has been travelling the country since 2014 with breast nurses on board, edu cating women about the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, family risk and the importance of mammograms and self-
checking.
The current caravan, affectionately known as Pinkie, relies on volun teers to tow it around, restricting the timing and location of visits.
“This new vehicle will mean we’re no longer
reliant on volunteers to tow the old caravan, giving our nurses the abil ity to access more remote locations and be more flexible with the timing and frequency of their visits,” Rayner told Rural News
She says it is harder for women in rural com munities to attend breast screenings.
“They may have to travel long distances to get to a screening clinic or are reliant on visits from the mammogram bus that may not be at a convenient time,” Rayner explains.
“Covid has made things worse – the screening programme was
put on hold during lock downs, and women who had their mammograms cancelled may not have rescheduled their missed mammogram,” she says.
The BreastScreen Aotearoa Coverage Report, released in Sep tember 2022, revealed breast screens dropped by over 17,000 between October 2020 and Octo ber 2021.
Earlier this year, the BCFNZ reported that approximately 50,000 women across the coun try were overdue for their mammograms, partially due to disruption caused by Covid-19 lockdowns.
Rayner says the charity now estimates that figure
has dropped to 30,000 women.
“For the past year we’ve been campaign ing hard to make sure the Government acts quickly to clear the mammogram backlog and we’re being assured screening provid ers have extended their hours to put on extra clinics and enlisted the help of private clinics to catch up,” she says. “But there are still around 30,000 women who are overdue their mammo grams, which is why we’re doing all that we can to encourage more women to get back to screening.”
Rayner warns that a delayed diagnosis could reduce the chances of
surviving breast cancer.
“Screening mammo grams detect tumours when they are small and easily treatable, giving you a much higher chance of survival,” she adds.
In 2020 and 2021, the BCFNZ Pink Cara van travelled to more than 160 towns and sites across New Zealand. It allowed BCFNZ nurses to address the questions and concerns of more than 6,000 people and enrol an average of ten women per week on average with their local BreastScreen Aotearoa provider.
Donations towards the new Pink Campervan can be made at: www.breast cancerfoundation.org.nz
nearly 80 years, MSD have been developing sheep vaccines for New Zealand farmers. We have an extensive range of vaccines to help you improve flock performance. Vaccines that help protect against losses from Toxoplasma, Campylobacter, Salmonella, and that are proven to increase lamb numbers1,2,3. And we’ve developed them right here in New Zealand, specifically for our sheep and our conditions.
ONE OF the country’s leading commercial veg etable growers says there are a lot of positives hap pening in the sector and it needs to get these out to the public.
Chief executive of Gis borne-based Leaderbrand Richard Burke told Rural News that growers are a resilient bunch and need to focus on what they do well and on the positives in the industry. He says there is whole lot of really good changes happening in the commercial grow ing area – including how the sector does business and how it attracts people to work for it.
Burke says there are mas sive opportunities and the industry needs to embrace change.
“We can’t protest our way backwards,” he adds.
Burke’s comments come after a year in which his company –and most others in the sector – have faced big
adverse weather condi tions, which has seen many crops ruined, effec tively drowned by the floods and storms.
“La Nina started for us in February and to be fair it seems to have never let up.”
Burke says while the weather has improved, he’s not sure if the weather patterns will change in the coming months. He says the good news is the weather has got warmer, meaning the ground is drying out quicker.
“It has still been tricky trying to organise our planting programme to meet market demand in the next three to four months,” he adds. “Over all, it’s been a messy start to the growing cycle with some of the early crops struggling.”
With Christmas loom ing, Burke says there is a move by supermarkets to get salad products on the shelves. He says, at this time of the year, there is extra demand for salads.
tend to be later in Janu ary, once people get over the crazy shopping habits
they have at Christmas and get into that summer swing of BBQ’s and
salads and fresh corn and all that,” he explains. “For us, the period from mid-
IN RECENT times, there has been a lot of talk about the high cost of fruit and vegetables.
However, Burke says the philosophy of Leader brand is not to measure profitability on a daily basis.
“We are not in the game of growing some thing and saying it costs us ‘x’ to grow so we will add a margin on it,” he told Rural News
January to mid-February is the peak in the domes tic market sense.”
WITH THE salad season starting to peak, Leaderbrand is now able to take advantage of its new 10ha, $15 million glasshouse it is building. (See Hort October 2022).
Already, 3.5ha have been completed and it is now producing mainly rocket and baby leaf lettuces for the salad packs the company sells in supermarkets nationwide.
Burke says after some initial trials, which included plantings of some herbs as well as leafy greens, the completed 3.5ha section of the glass house is now producing commer cial crops. He says the early trials consisted of sensory and shelf life tests and they are happy with the results.
“At the moment, we are sticking
with the rocket and baby lettuce,” he told Rural News. “We have trialled spinach, but in the summer this grows well out-doors.
“However, we will plant this inside if the weather gets wet.”
Burke says work is well underway on completing the remaining 7ha of the glasshouse and the goal is to have that in production by next winter.
“Rather we are in the game of growing some thing and selling it based on the supply we have and the demand in the market at any given time in the year. We might be selling product for less than it cost to produce or more than it cost us to produce – we never know because we run on aver ages and efficiency.”
Burke says doing things at scale is a key way of driving efficiency and being competitive. He believes that by doing things at scale they are able to drive volume, reduce overheads and lower the cost of produc tion.
Toxoplasma and Campylobacter are widespread on New Zealand farms1. These diseases can cause abortion storms with losses up to 30%, or more, of lambs2,3 Preventing them takes two vaccines. Maiden ewes require 1 dose of Toxovax® and 2 doses of Campyvax ® 4 ahead of mating. Mixed age ewes require an annual booster of Campyvax4 prior to mating. Protect against abortion storms, and improve flock performance.
SUDESH KISSUN sudeshk@ruralnews.co.nz
NEW RESEARCH by Waikato-based consul tants suggests dairy farm ers don’t need blunt tools proposed in the Govern ment’s agricultural emis sions proposal to meet climate change targets.
Instead, Headlands Consulting claims its modelling shows better outcomes in terms of reductions in the carbon footprint of milk, green house gas (GHG) emis sions, nitrogen leaching, dairy cow numbers and land used, while main taining total milk pro duction and increasing on-farm profit.
Managing direc tor Warren Morritt says farmers can achieve all this while remaining within Fonterra’s pasturebased milk criteria.
This research shows that with systematic refinements and inclusion of a moderate amount of concentrate feeds to fewer, but better cows, the total amount of feed required per farm reduces dramatically. However, total milk production per farm is retained, increas ing feed conversion effi ciency.
Under the Govern
ment’s proposed GHG calculator, the main lever left available to farm ers is to reduce total milk production. Morritt says this completely ignores any potential gains to be made out of increas ing feed conversion effi ciency.
“Our modelling research clearly shows that the dairy sector can build a system that achieves and exceeds the 2030 climate change and greenhouse gas targets, while improving animal welfare and ensuring we don’t compromise on profitability and total pro duction,” he explains.
“It’s not often you find a silver bullet, but our modelling research
proves that with a com bination of systematic refinements that are currently within farm ers’ control, we can find answers that are good for the planet, the econ omy and every New Zea lander.”
Headlands Consult ing’s modelling research used the Waikato ‘aver age’ farm from DairyNZ statistics 2018-19 season as the basis for the com parison and modelled five scenarios against this ‘control farm’.
The scenario with the greatest environmental benefit shows that dairy farmers can continue to achieve the same total farm milk production levels, with a 36% reduc
tion in cow numbers per hectare, coupled with 8.5% of dairy-farm land being retired for alter native use, delivering a 22% increase in operat ing profit.
The reduction in total GHG emissions (15.6%) exceeds the Govern ment’s emissions reduc tion targets for 2030 (10%), while there is also a strong reduc tion in nitrogen leach ing (15.5%) in this system compared to the con trol scenario. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with growing and sourc ing off-farm supplement
was accounted for in the modelling.
Morritt says recent industry recommenda tions include scenarios where cows per hectare are reduced by 15% with limited option to uti lise supplemental feeds. When modelled, these recommendations did result in a reduction in total farm GHG emis sions (14.4%) and N leaching (9.7%) compared with the control farm.
However, there was also a severe reduction in milk production (11%) and profitability (7.4%), while having minimal
impact on the carbon footprint of the end prod ucts (3.9% improvement).
By comparison, Head lands’ optimised model ling showed a scenario which could achieve a similar total farm GHG reduction (15.6%) but with maintained milk production, and increased profitability by 22% com pared to the control farm – all the while reducing the carbon footprint of the end product by 15.7%.
Morritt says the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the dairy farm level, and per unit of product produced, is by
producing milk more effi ciently, and this requires increasing feed conver sion efficiency.
Supplementing the cow’s diet with concen trates is a critical tool to achieving this feed con version efficiency that enables each cow to con sume more feed and nutrients in total, chan nelling a much higher proportion of feed energy towards milk production, he says.
“This in turn allows a much lower number of cows per hectare while maintaining farm produc tion levels.”
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MEAT PROCESSOR and marketer Alliance Group has had a good year reporting a record profit of $117.2 million for the 2021-22 financial year.
The meat co-op says the result was based on a record turnover of $2.2 billion and it will pay an $11.3m dividend to farmer shareholders. It will also pay out an additional $10 million bonus share issue of one share per qualify ing stock unit.
Alliance Group chair Murray Taggart says it has been a positive year for the company.
“Our record operat ing profit reflects strong global demand for our products, a reward for our success in capturing greater value from our markets, the hard work and dedication of our people and our farmers’
passion for producing the world’s best beef, lamb and venison.”
Taggart concedes that Alliance had faced signifi cant volatility during the year – including from the ongoing impact of Covid19, global supply chain disruption, labour con straints and inflationary
pressures.
“However, our strat egy and investment pro gramme meant we were able to successfully navi gate the challenges.”
He says the meat co-op ended the year with a sound balance
sheet and reduced inven tory levels compared to 2020-21 year.
“We are mindful of the volatility in our global markets and the uncer tain economic outlook,” Taggart explains. “The profit distribution allows
us to return value to our shareholders, while at the same time continue to invest in the future of the company.”
Chief executive David Surveyor – who leaves the company next March – says the financial per
formance is the result of hard work and dedication from employees and sup port from loyal farmershareholders.
“Alliance Group con tinued to experience significant challenges around global logistics with poor vessel adher ence to shipping sched ules and high freight costs.”
He claims that sig nificant investment in improving the co-op’s operational performance also contributed posi tively to the record profit result.
“We have invested across our plant net work in recent years and this played a key role in significantly improving our performance. We’re already seeing gains from the new generation primal cutter and middles machine installed at our largest plant at Lorneville
near Invercargill and our product quality and yield have improved across the board.”
Surveyor concedes that the disruption caused by the Covid19 pandemic, rising farm input costs, a wave of regulatory reform, extreme dry conditions and flooding in parts of the country meant farm ers had faced difficult times.
“These events cer tainly tested the sector’s resilience and fortitude. However, it also showed the value of belonging to a co-operative. This year, we welcomed a record number of new share holders to Alliance Group as more farmers recog nised how the co-opera tive has their back during difficult times.”
Alliance’s annual meeting will be held in Timaru on December 15.
“Alliance Group continued to experience significant challenges around global logistics with poor vessel adherence to shipping schedules and high freight costs.”
says it has been a positive year for the meat company.
OF ALL the submissions that Rural News has seen from the primary sector on the Govern ment’s response to agricultural emissions proposal, none is so profound and damaging to Labour than that of the Māori Trustee and chief executive of Te Tumu Paeroa, Charlotte Severne.
It’s obvious to anyone with an atom of knowledge of the primary sector that the Government response would disproportion ally affect Māori farming. However, the pol iticians and officials, who it seems seldom get beyond the outer suburbs of Wellington, didn’t see this coming.
In her hard hitting submission, Severne starts off by saying she has “grave concerns about the Government emissions pricing policy and it will disproportionately disadvan tage Māori”. She rightly expresses her con cern about “the impact on rural communities where Māori are often over represented”. She is bang on and this has already been echoed by Federated Farmers and the Wairoa District Council.
The killer blow for the Government comes when Severne says:
“The proposal seems designed from a western point of view and doesn’t recog nise the cultural value that Māori place on land, in addition to economic value. There is also concern that the measures seem more directed at large, economically-strong farm ing operations, not those over-represented in the classes of land where Whenua Māori is located”.
So where does that leave Labour and the Greens who believe that they are the great friend and supporter of Māori? It seems in the case of He Waka Eke Noa, its environ mental ideologues have ditched Māori – and all farmers – in a quest for some puritanical emissions stance.
Which begs the question: where the hell is the supposed ‘all-powerful’ Māori caucus? We have not heard a peep out of them on this issue. Have they lost their vocal chords or are they happy to acquiesce to Jacinda, Damien and James?
Severne is to be congratulated for her hon esty and courage in speaking out and giving a voice to Māori and rural communities.
Labour’s Māori caucus and others in gov ernment should buy themselves a mirror as a Christmas present.
This old mutt hears that international meal delivery giant HelloFresh has been accused of using coconut milk obtained using ‘forced monkey labour’ in Thailand. An investigation by Peta revealed that the animals are chained, whipped, beaten and forced to spend long hours picking coconuts. Peta cites animal abuse at 57 coconut processing operations in nine provinces of Thailand. The organisation has called for a boycott of the meal-delivery service until it adopts ‘more ethical’ sourcing practices. HelloFresh operates in a number of countries around the world – including New Zealand. Last year, HelloFresh delivered almost 1 billion meals and reached 7.2 million active customers. However, in a statement to FMCG, the company claims it has received “written confirmation” from all its suppliers that they do not obtain coconut milk from slave monkeys.
A mate of the Hound’s reckons that ‘socialist strategies’ are alive and well within the ag industry.
According to your canine crusader’s source, members of the Beef + Lamb ‘Environmental Reference Group’ (ERG) – an offshoot of the BLNZ Farmer Council – have been asked to sign a ‘code of conduct’ (aka code of silence) in order to make sure that they don’t outwardly criticise or question BLNZ’s modus operandi. “This is a group that is supposed to be the eyes and ears of levypayers and feedback to the rest of us great unwashed farmers and to BLNZ!”, the informer claims. “Hence any farmers who have a backbone and were originally handpicked for this group are refusing to sign and walking away from the BLNZ Kremlin.” This will indeed be a worrying development, if it happens to be the case.
PRODUCTION: Dave Ferguson Ph 027 272 5372 davef@ruralnews.co.nz Becky Williams Ph 021 100 4381 beckyw@ruralnews.co.nz
Your old mate understands that MfE boffins have been beavering away for years dreaming up a scheme where all farmers and growers will have to do a Freshwater Farm Plan. The scheme is meant to start next year in Gisborne, Waikato and Southland. Trouble is, the regulations aren’t even known yet as to what will be required. Even worse, the boffins have recently said they’ll show the draft regulations to regional councils in December and then in late January to ‘targeted groups’ – including primary sector groups. So, it seems that farmers won’t even get much of a look or say on the next big imposition on them. Meanwhile, it’s also understood that as a result of all this new environmental legislation, MFE has taken on a lot more staff. In fact, around some places in the capital, the acronym MfE is said to stand for ‘More Feeking Egits’!
Want to share your opinion or gossip with the Hound? Send your emails to: hound@ruralnews.co.nz
The Hound notes that nominations are now open for two Beef+Lamb NZ director roles (eastern North Island and southern South Island). Eastern North Island director George Tatham is standing down, while southern South Island director elections, and current board chair, Andrew Morrison is offering himself up for re-election.
It will be interesting to note if all the fire and brimstone about the performance (or more correctly the lack of it) of BLNZ – especially in relation to ag emissions – will see any serious challenges put up to fight the status quo for the seats. One would have thought that the likes of Groundswell and the ‘Waka Adrift group’ who have been loudly agitating against HWEN etc, etc would put up some credible candidates to fight the election.
Nominations close at 5pm on 9 December – so challengers better get their skates on or maybe these agitators are just all talk and no action!
AUCKLAND
WAIKATO
Box 331100, Takapuna, Auckland 0740 Phone 09-307 0399
REPORTERS: Sudesh Kissun Ph 021 963 177 sudeshk@ruralnews.co.nz Peter Burke Ph 021 224 2184 peterb@ruralnews.co.nz
MACHINERY EDITOR: Mark Daniel Ph 021 906 723 markd@ruralnews.co.nz
Rural Contractors NZ chief executive Andrew Olsen reckons his members – and the wider farming community – might generally not need to fear the looming recession.
SINCE THE end of World War II, New Zealand has had nine recessions.
I’m not sure any of these previous ones have been engineered by the Reserve Bank – or at least no Governor has so proclaimed responsibility. However, whether shallow, technical or deep, recessions are a regular fact of life in our economic cycle.
And while they are usually accompanied by a lot of gloom (which can make matters worse), recessions are always laden with opportunity for some.
I’m picking the rural sector will, in general, come through next year’s recession better than many of their urban counterparts. The reason was illustrated on November 15 when the UN declared the population of planet Earth had reached 8 billion.
Everyone needs to eat. New Zealand produces enough food for fewer than half of 1% of the world’s people, most of which is exported. When recessions cause contractions in spending – as the drop in Black Friday sales may suggest is already happening –exported food generally remains largely exempt.
Yes, there can be some recessionary sharpening of prices and people may look for cheaper sources of protein but our food exports are already competitive; our farmers and contractors are innovative and we farm without subsidies unlike many other nations.
Besides, prices for dairy and other sectors have been at record highs because international demand is so strong.
The world continued eating through Covid downturns and grain shortages caused by the Ukraine invasion. A recession at home and abroad, if relatively
modest in size and duration as forecast, seems unlikely to crash export returns.
Assisting our farmers to date has been the drop in our currency, which makes our exports more attractive. That weaker Kiwi is adding to inflationary pressures and making the machinery, fuel and fertilisers that rural contractors and farmers use more expensive.
However, shipping costs are becoming more reasonable. I also think that our trading banks now weaning themselves off the sugar-hit of mortgage lending, might start re-connecting to clients like those who can spend as much as an Auckland mortgage on a new harvesting machine.
Recessions cause everyone to do a stock take and it will be a more challenging time for every New Zealander – urban and rural.
One consequence may be higher unemployment which some may see as a solution to rural labour shortages.
Sorry, but that’s not likely to work in most cases. Sure, during Covid we had a few airline and chopper pilots, among others, turn their hand to driving complex farm machinery for a while though they quickly returned to base when normalcy resumed.
Most Kiwis don’t have skills easily transferred to many rural jobs nor any wish to relocate and work the sometimes long hours required.
Meanwhile, our farmers are having to deal with a torrent of regulatory consultation and change which may well cause some to give up and seek an easier life, creating more labour demand.
That’s more than a shame when we have a world which wants all we can produce.
The challenge for my members is to decide what’s the right course for them. The old saying was that when tough times hit, farmers put away the cheque book. Really determined spending restraint doesn’t seem to add up when export prices are
high and an ever-growing world population needs to be fed. One thing recessions do cause is a decline in confidence.
Adrian Orr’s odd jive talking about engineering one is causing the jitters just now.
Recession or not though, rural New Zealand is likely going to be doing more than
surviving. • Declaration. Andrew Olsen wishes it known he is no economist but likes Rob Muldoon’s quote about how you could lay them end to end around the world and still not reach a conclusion.
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tables of our 23,000 farmers.
THIS HAS been a bloody tough year for farmers.
While our export prices have been solid, the costs imposed on the home front have been shocking. Continually growing farm inputs costs such as fuel, feed, labour and fertiliser are squeez ing margins and causing immeasurable stress.
This Government has lost control of the local economy and is reverting to type – Labour thinks there’s not an issue that can’t be solved without more taxpayer money and more regulations.
Farmers have borne the brunt – and you’ve had enough. There are very few bureaucrats and Government Ministers who have any idea of the internal family stress that sits around the kitchen
During Covid you were begrudgingly acknowledged by the Government for keeping the country afloat. Since then, what has been the thanks?
The Government devi ation from the indus try partnership proposed HWEN, winter grazing rules that are unwork able.
And more clipboard warriors wanting to find parts of your farm to classify as wetlands to further reduce your pro ductive base. But it’s the sheer scale of the regula tions, the pace of change and their lack of day-today practicality that is really impacting farmers.
I have had a number of farmer meetings since being given the National Party Acting Agriculture
spokesperson role, and the frustration and anger in the regions is palpable. Now that anger is flowing over the wider country as the looming recession starts to bite. We have to reset. We
have to be clear what we would do differently.
So, what would National prioritise?
- 1 - The regulations that have been poorly designed, with inade quate consultation, need
to change. We will bring a pragmatic and efficient lens to the areas farm ers have highlighted as unworkable.
- 2 - The Govern ment’s approach to pric ing agricultural emissions
needs to be binned. We have to find an answer to bring down methane levels, so let’s do that.
A modest levy to fund methane research, build a simple and standardised methane measurement model, while ensur ing additional on farm sequestration counts –let’s keep it simple and get on with it.
- 3 - Drive focus towards data interop erability and efficiency.
Farmers are getting increasingly frustrated with having to provide the same information into various platforms.
Farmers shouldn’t need to complete multiple compliance documents, assessed by multiple agencies and organisa tions.
- 4 - Ensure people are available to work in the primary sector. New Zea
land has to get the immi gration settings right and work harder towards building a sustainable and reliable local workforce for the future.
However, the biggest focus for me will be lead ership.
My whole life has been connected with agricul ture. It is a huge part of who I am. It genuinely impacts me when I see the struggles, both regu latory and mental, that our farmers are enduring.
We need to celebrate our food and fibre sector and engage with farmers on the basis of trust not enmity.
I wish you all an enjoyable Christmas and festive season. Thank you for all you do for our nation.
• Todd Muller is National’s acting agriculture spokesman
WHEN CRAIG Wiggins stepped into the health and wellbeing space, little did he know that a few short years later he would be travelling the length and breadth of the coun try and saving lives.
The 2021 Ravens down Agricultural Com municator of the Year has teamed up with the Carr Family Founda tion to make a difference to the rural sector. He’s heading to Wairoa for the 2023 East Coast Farming Expo in February for two full days of check-ups for anyone who wants one.
It is a collaborative effort between ‘Wiggy’ as he is affectionately known, The Carr Family Foundation and health professionals at the vari ous towns they visit. He’s quick to point out the statistics are not pretty when it comes to rural health.
“We rock up at events and tell them that we know one in four farmers need to see a doctor, and by the end of the day, we want to know exactly who that is.”
Depending on the area, that number could be one in three. Wiggins has had people come up to him and say his prompting saved their life.
“It is easy for people to put off going to the doctor, and some have told us it has been years since they stepped foot in an office.”
In general, Wiggins finds the conversations usually revolve around something a farmer has been a bit worried about, but they aren’t comfort able dealing with it.
But it’s not just the farmers he convinces to swing by the van either; he includes the ladies in the kitchen at stock sales, stock agents and pretty much anyone who is there.
Wiggins is a farmer himself, so he knows the pressures of the industry. He believes it is currently challenged by a disunity between leadership and grass roots.
For 35-plus years Wig gins has been a commen tator at all manner of rural outings, from rodeos to jet sprints, fencing competitions and more. He is a clerk of the course at a number of tracks down south, and a some
times radio host. He reck ons he’s connected from the top to the bottom of the industry.
But when Covid hit, Wiggins knew he had to find another way to con nect and he set up weekly Zoom meetings, which attracted everyone from farmers to politicians. By his own admission, “it led to some pretty amazing stuff”.
“Rural communities need to look after our selves,” he claims. “One of my biggest wants is to empower communities. Healthy and strong com munities mean healthy and strong people – it works both ways.”
Wiggins’ healthfocused idea started small, with a gym pro gramme in Ashburton to get local farmers fitter and healthier, and that is when the Carr family stepped in. Carrfields is a successful agri-business, with the Carr Family Foundation a 100% chari table trust.
“They wanted to give back to the communities they work in and devel oped the van for us to take around the country.”
Covid again inter rupted plans, but finally, in January this year, things got cracking. In the past six months they have covered the whole of the South Island and have now moved north, with slots planned in the Waikato, Masterton, Northland, Gisborne, the Manawatu and, of course, Wairoa.
“I used to commentate the rodeos in Wairoa and was always so well looked after, so I am really look ing forward to hopefully catching up with some of those old friends,” he says.
The checks include blood sugar and choles terol levels, blood pres sure and a general chat about wellness and mental health through a confidential personal assessment. People will receive a report card they can take to their own GP for further follow-up if required.
“My life is busy, but I am lucky I have a great wife and we make things work.”
As well as his work with the Carr Family Foundation and Whatever with Wiggy, he also drives
Agri Connect and the Lean on a Gate, Talk to a Mate movement.
The Carr Family Foun dation rural health and wellness initiative is just one exciting component of the East Coast Farm ing Expo which includes the latest in innovation, speakers, exhibits, prod ucts, services, and con nection for beef and
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GISBORNE FARMING couple Matt and Megan Humphreys have helped shape the development of a farmer wellbeing assess ment tool.
The Humphreys, who farm 420 hectares at Ngatapa, were part of a farmer focus group which provided insights that helped develop Farm Salus as part of the Hill Country Futures Partner ship Programme.
“It is great to see a holistic focus on support ing hill country farm ers with initiatives like the Hill Country Futures Partnership Programme,” says Matt.
Alongside scientific research, the programme includes a focus on tell ing the real stories about hill country farming –and the couple see that as a key factor.
“It is so important to build understanding about how hill country red meat is produced in New Zealand compared to the rest of the world,” says Megan.
“The industry needs to be better understood and future proofed. Objective research detailing how red meat is produced can feed into policy decision making and marketing, ensuring the media are told accurate information around hill country farm ing – and hopefully our products receive a pre mium to reflect the way it has been grown.”
The $8.1m programme is focused on future proofing the profitabil ity, sustainability and
HUMPHREYS family’s roots run deep in the region.
Matt is the fifth generation to farm Herefords and the fourth generation at their Wilencote stud; his ancestors started out at Strahallan Station in Gisborne.
Wilencote is New Zealand’s oldest Polled Hereford stud – and the family introduced the hornless Hereford breed to New Zealand in the 1920s.
Megan has an environmental consul tancy background, while Matt has wideranging experience in hill country farming.
Wilencote has 300 registered Here ford breeding cows, including heifers. Some trading lambs have recently been introduced into the system but the stud is
the key focus for the farm. The Humphreys sell around 30 bulls each year, many to local farmers. Their programme is focused on breeding bulls that have good struc ture, temperament, mobility and a certain ‘athleticism’, ensuring progeny have quality carcass traits.
“Our breeding philosophy is about small, steady and incremental improve ment – optimising and balancing traits within the herd,” Matt explains.
“We have been working away at imple menting a new stud recording system, rolling out DNA testing across the herd and have some ambitious environmental goals, including natural bush regeneration and wetland enhancement projects.”
wellbeing of New Zea land’s hill country farm ers, their farm systems, the environment and rural communities. It dif fers from most pastoralbased research, in that it considers the whole-farm system and, critically, the wider communities these systems exist within.
It incorporates tradi tional science research, farmer knowledge, social research and citizen sci ence and has a strong emphasis on forages and providing decision-mak ing tools to help farm ers select the best forage option for different land management units.
FarmSalus was devel oped with input from the focus group, and from an analysis of 170 face-toface interviews carried out by the Hill Country Futures social research team with almost 300 farmers, rural profession als, academics and indus try leaders throughout New Zealand.
Ange McFetridge, design and capability lead for B+LNZ, says members of the focus group played an important part in the development of Farm Salus.
“We wanted to inter view a group who were representative of people
living in hill country, to help us to future proof our work,” she explains.
“We put out a request to the farming commu nity and got the group together. We had a faceto-face meeting with them and got a whole lot of insights about their frustrations and their aspirations for the future for their farms.”
McFetridge says what’s good is that they have continued as a group and are very free and frank with one another.
“They all know about working through succes sion, and the environ ment, stewardship and business health are all very important for them.”
She and her team also held a second meeting with the focus group.
“We wanted to show them what we had done with their insights and to test some of the con ceptual work and deliv erables to gain their feedback on the util ity of that,” McFetridge explains. “It was impor tant for us to validate that we were on the right track and ensure hill country farmers had an active voice in what we were doing.”
“We put out a request to the farming community and got the group together.”
THE COSTS associated with shearing is leading to an increasing number of farmers looking at ways to reduce these costs and one is the self-shedding Wiltshire sheep breed.
Since 2020, Massey University researchers –headed by Professor Steve Morris – have been run ning a project aimed at
survival rate, which sur prises us, and that may be lamb vigour,” he told Rural News. “We also notice that they get up and move quicker than the Romney.”
Some initial trials have been done on meat yield and quality, but Morris says they have only killed small numbers of animals and when more stock are killed next autumn they will have a better idea on
a farmer with say 4,000 ewes and your woolshed is deteriorating, there is a question mark about whether it is economic to build a new one given the money they are getting for their wool.”
“If
building up a Wiltshire flock by crossing Romney ewes with a Wiltshire ram. The trial is being conducted at the universi ty’s Riverside Farm in the Wairarapa. Since the proj ect started, Massey has held regular field days to brief farmers on the prog ress of the trial.
Another field day was held recently to show the lambs from the third cross which are 7/8th pure bred Wiltshires. Around 50 attended the day, which consisted of pre sentations by Morris and other researchers on dif ferent aspects of the trial.
At the end of the pre sentation, those attend ing the field day were able to go to the covered yards adjacent to the woolshed where the seminar was being held and look at the new season’s lambs.
One of the key pur poses of the Massey
this aspect of the breed.
Farmer interest in the work being done by Massey is great with attendances at all the field days high. Morris believes this is driven by the low prices for wool and the high cost of shearing. He’s heard there is only one shearing gang operating in Northland and those running shear ing gangs are finding it hard to get new staff to join their gangs.
“If you’re a farmer with say 4,000 ewes and your woolshed is deteri orating, there is a ques tion mark about whether it is economic to build a new one given the money they are getting for their wool,” he explains. “The cost of labour and find ing it in rural areas is also a factor – especially if the tasks are dagging, dipping and shearing.”
Morris says in the
“What we have seen so far is that the lambs seem to have a slightly higher
Wiltshire flocks but are about a year behind the university.
you’re
OVER THE next several weeks, farmers will be weaning their lambs and probably drenching.
They will then carry
on with the same drench ing programmes that proved successful on their property in the past.
I believe that most farm ers will either have a reg ular pattern of drenching
every four, six or eight weeks, depending on the degree of worm challenge – which will vary greatly throughout the country.
Or they will only drench lambs when needed or at
convenient times when they are yarded.
Farmers have received advice from scientists, vets and Beef+Lamb NZ Wormwise personnel, who organise workshops
throughout the country.
Much of this advice varies greatly from drenching every four weeks to prevent worms from maturing, thus preventing them from reaching their egg shed ding stage; to leaving the best lambs undrenched to ensure the survival of worms that have no resistance to drench so they can mate with their most resistant mates, thus slowing down the progress towards drench resistance – the “refugia” concept. All this varying advice farmers would find confusing.
Since effective chemi cal drenches were devel oped 70 years ago, farmers have been able to control worm challenges, ensuring better growth rates and preventing most deaths. This was a great boon that provided greater profitability.
Since effective chemical drenches were developed 70 years ago, farmers have been able to control worm challenges, ensuring better growth rates and preventing most deaths. This was a great boon that provided greater profitability.
ness of each drench that has led to drench resis tance.
However, there are always negatives to all human discoveries: The boom in the plas tic industry, for exam ple. So too with chemical drenches.
Three adverse effects of chemical drenches come to mind that are seldom mentioned.
The drug companies state that their product will kill 99.9% of worms.
resistance, I found a fivefold difference in the average worm egg count of the progeny of 12 stud sires.
This assured me that progress could be made breeding for worm resis tance.
These efficient drenches ensured good growth rates and survival of the most worm-sus ceptible sheep, many of which would be selected in breeding flocks and collectively in our
more susceptible to worm challenges. Beef+Lamb NZ’s SIL people tracked this trend from 1990 to 2006 in a graph, which indicated about a 6% decline in worm resis tance over that period.
I have no information on this decline over the whole 70 year period but believe it would be con siderable. As the immune system is the only force that controls diseases and internal parasites, a con clusion can be drawn that the immune system has been bred to become less effective over the past 70 years through the use of chemical drenches.
The second nega tive impact of drench ing is related to the first. It involves the 0.01% of worms that survive drenching. Thus only 12 in 1,000 of surviv ing worms is never men tioned.
These resistant worms mate and some but not many with the principle of genetic vari ation will be more resis tant than their parent.
So, we have inadvertently set in motion the best imagined programme to breed super worms.
The third negative of drenching is that worms and challenges from dis ease are required to chal lenge the immune system to set it in motion so to speak.
Keeping lambs free of worms by frequent drenching will retard immune development.
The same applies to dis eases. Many years ago, when discussing this with Dr Jon Hickford of Lincoln, when his chil dren were small, he said he liked his children to
play in the dirt “at least twice weekly” – obviously to ensure the develop ment of a strong, lifelong immune system.
How does all this affect our thinking on drenching programmes?
I would suggest two different drenching pro grammes: one for the wether lambs and others destined for the works; and a different strategy for the ewe lambs from which “the keepers” are selected.
For the works lambs, drench when required to ensure maximum growth to ensure early departure. But remember the meatbred lambs are far more worm susceptible and are where Haemonchus is present.
It would pay to run them separately and keep them closely monitored, as even prime lambs can die very quickly.
For the ewe lambs, minimal drenching is rec ommended. In warmer areas, an early drench may be required to con trol tapeworm which can cause severe scouring and flystrike.
Otherwise, I would not advocate early drenching, even at weaning, because the worm challenge is low and the immune system can control it.
By not drenching the better lambs, the worms they carry will ensure immunity will continue to develop. By all means drench the tail end and sickly lambs, as they will benefit and grow.
I my area, worm levels will continue to increase through December into early January.
Monitoring worm levels is cheap and easy;
simply put a mob of lambs together in the corner of the paddock for five minutes.
You need to collect 10 to 15 dung samples. Thoroughly mix them, then take one sample, the equivalent of six dung marbles, then get your vet to send them off to be counted.
If the average is less than 1,000 I would only drench any that look lethargic or sickly. Mark any drenched lambs and
preferably run them sepa rately. When I adopted a no drench policy for my ram lambs, the average faecal egg count (FEC) would average 3,500 to 4,500 with a few over 20,000.
This high count is typ ical when Haemonchus – the Barbers Pole worm – is the dominant spe cies, because this worm sheds huge numbers of eggs every day – scien tists have estimated up to 10,000.
The build-up of the worm challenge will be later and slower in cooler and higher altitude regions.
From mid-January on, try only drenching those that show signs of para sitism and mark them. By mid-April the lambs should have immunity that is well-developed and the worm challenge will start to decline.
Where Haemonchus is the dominant species, more observation will
be needed and possibly the whole mob may need drenching. In select ing ewe replacements, take into consideration those that have fewer or no drenching. This would be a tiny step in the mile long direction towards worm resistance.
To sum up, worms and other diseases are nature’s way of build ing an effective immune system. By removing the worms by drenching, we will help the lambs but
interrupt immune devel opment.
So, drench ewe lambs as little as possible, espe cially early on. Good stockmen will know instinctively when lambs need a drench.
These are manage ment practices that can reduce worms and dis ease challenges and I hope to cover these issues in later articles.
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THE NEW JCB TM 420S telescopic wheeled loader boasts the most power ful engine in the category, an eight-speed power shift transmission with torque converter lock-up in all forward and reverse gears.
CLAAS Harvest Centre product manager – JCB, Steve Gorman, says telescopic wheeled loaders combine the power and articulated steering of wheeled load ers with the manoeu vrability and telescopic reach of a telehandler.
“TM telescopic load ers are highly regarded by farmers and agricul tural contractors for their versatility in restricted spaces,” he says. “Fitted with a wide range of attachments, they can perform tasks, including silage clamping, hay and straw stacking and load ing, lifting potato boxes, loading bulk seed and fer tiliser bags.”
The TM 420S is pow ered by an EU Stage V, 4.8-litre JCB 448 Diesel MAX engine with a max imum output of 173hp, 690Nm of torque and an impressive power-toweight ratio of around 17hp per tonne. Emis sions standards are kept in check via a clever sin gle-canister DPF/SCR system.
Already very effi cient with regards to fuel economy, this is further enhanced by the ‘auto stop’ feature that shuts down the engine after a pre-determined period at idling speed.
JCB’s new 50 km/h eight-speed Powershift transmission is based on its proven six-speed unit, with two extra for ward gears for smooth progression through the ratios and optimum trac tion in all conditions.
The 50 km/h travel speed allows rapid yard-to-field and farm-to-farm travel, alongside quieter oper ation and the choice of travelling at 40 km/h at lower engine revs for better fuel economy.
Torque converter lockup in every gear, includ ing the four reverse speeds, ensures optimum performance is ensured during repeated forward/ reverse work or road travel, especially when tackling hills or towing.
The transmission can also be operated manu ally using the joystick buttons or using auto matic power-shift from gears five to eight.
In auto mode, the transmission responds to light accelerator use by shifting up and down at steady engine speed for optimum fuel economy. More aggressive pedal use induces delayed up-shifts to exploit the full power and torque available at higher revs for maximum
acceleration and produc tivity.
Featuring a heavyduty chassis, 10-stud axles, 660mm diameter tyres, limited slip differ entials and disc brakes in both axles and an electric parking brake completes the package.
Maximum lift is 4.1 tonnes, combined with maximum reach of 5.45 metres, the system fea turing twin piston pumps, operating on-demand flow rate of up to 160
L/min. Meanwhile, the regenerative hydrau lic circuitry exploits the weight of the boom to reduce cycle times, while always under safe con trol. An in-cab pressure release button for front and rear services helps ensure quick and safe change-over of attach ments.
The new Command Plus cab features a onepiece windscreen that sweeps up and over the operator’s head, a rede
signed internal safety grille, larger rear threequarter windows, a rear-view camera and an optional roof wiper. These design details are said to offer 13% more forward visibility and 52% more overhead, making stacking and retrieving so much easier and safer.
A new ‘memory’ steering column can be pushed away to offer improved entry or exit, while the illuminated cab steps and delayed ‘lights off’ function ensure safe approach and exit at night.
An assignable ‘hot key’ button on the hydrau lic joystick can be used for several functions, including switching trans mission modes, torque lock-up selection, auxil iary valve control, radio and phone controls or as a master switch for the work lights.
Customers ordering the Pro Edition specifi cation will see the addi tion of Smoothride boom suspension, a transmis sion belly guard and a variable-speed reversing engine coolant fan. Other enhancements include a chromed exhaust stack, 360-degree LED cab-and boom-mounted lighting, twin flashing beacons, an in-cab storage box, tool box, grease gun and Blue tooth radio.
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CASE IH previewed its most powerful ever –the Puma, the 260 CVX Drive – at the recent 2022 SIMA event in Paris.
Said to provide the best in segment powerto-weight ratio, its pow erplant is a fuel-efficient FPT NEF six-cylinder engine rated at 260hp with a maximum, unboosted output of 280hp.
With Engine Power Man agement, this figure climbs to 302hp for PTO, hydraulic and transport applications.
Quieter and more efficient, the new CVX Drive continuously vari able transmission allows 50km/h to be achieved at just 1,550rpm for opti mum fuel economy.
Productivity is further enhanced by custom isable settings for the
CVXDrive continuously variable transmission and the patented Advanced Trailer Braking system which offers a more refined operating experi ence and lower owner ship costs.
Equipped with larger and stronger front and rear axles, the Puma CVXDrive 260 can be fitted with optional 710/70 R42 rear tyres increasing the footprint
by up to 18%. This maxi mises traction and car rying capacity, while minimising soil compac tion.
For customers requir ing high power output, but a lighter tractor, the 260 offers a rear lift capacity of 10,468kg and a hydraulic flow rate of up to 170l/min, both within the same compact dimensions as the current Puma.
A 460-litre fuel tank is 15% larger, giving up to three hours more work ing time before refilling. The tractor also includes an integrated stowage space for tools and other service items, with an integrated clean water tank to allow the opera tor to wash their hands.
The 750-hour service interval for the 260 CVX Drive is up to 50% longer than for some key com
petitors in this premium market segment. It has an improved hydraulic circuit, which has 30% fewer connections and is quieter. The tractor also comes with newly designed rear electrohydraulic remote valves, allowing coupling/uncou pling of the colour-coded hydraulic connectors with zero leakage.
A new cabin offers increased space, more
storage, and better vis ibility – with a maxi mum sound level inside the cab of just 66dB(A).
The semi-active hydropneumatic cab suspen sion isolates the operator from vehicle movements, which can be adjusted to suit individual prefer ences or changing terrain.
The optional Case IH Advanced Vehicle Sus pension (AVS) system takes this a stage further by integrating the semiactive cab suspension, rear hitch and front axle suspension for an even smoother ride.
The cab also features wider steps for easier, safer entry and exit as well as conveniently placed grab handles. A premium leather seat with active suspension is optional. At the heart of the operator’s work space, the ergonomic MultiController armrest
now incorporates more features, all of which are convenient to use and fully customisable.
Central to this new model is the Case IH AFS Connect system com prising the AFS Pro 1200 touch screen monitor, AFS Vision Pro operating system and AFS Vector Pro receiver. These allow the operator to configure tractor management and precision farming func tionality to their specific requirements.
Farm owners and managers can adminis ter and optimise farm, fleet, and management data from a desktop PC or mobile device, at any time. The tractor’s extended remote capa bilities include screen sharing, while also con trolling AFS AccuGuide™ auto guidance and AFS AccuTurn Pro automated headland management.
ESCORTED
2022/23 "
free travel for mature travellers’’
• FAR NORTH & BAY OF ISLANDS (4 spots available)
7 days, depart 17 September. A leisurely coach tour of the Far North including the new Hundertwasser Art Centre and day trip to Cape Reinga.
• EAST COAST & NAPIER (6 spots available)
8 days, depart 21 September A unique and exciting tour around the East Cape and return via the Northern Explorer train
• CHATHAM ISLANDS DISCOVERY
8 days, depart 20 October A special place for a safe and relaxing close to home all inclusive holiday.
• BEST OF THE SOUTH ISLAND 15 days, depart 22 November A spectacular trip around the many highlights of the South Island taking in the wonders of Tekapo, Twizel, Stewart Island day excursion, the Milford Sound and Queenstown. Overnight cruise on the Milford Sound
• NEW PLYMOUTH 'CHRISTMAS LIGHTS' 5 days, depart 23 December A Christmas get away featuring the magnificent light display at Pukekura Park along with some great sightseeing during the trip.
• WAIKIKI BEACH & HAWAII CRUISE 11 days, depart 25 May 2023 A 'Pride of America' cruise for 7 nights with a Waikiki highlights 3 day stop over including Pearl Harbor and Oahu round Island tour.
• TAHITI & SOCIETY ISLANDS CRUISE 10 days, depart 21 July 2023 Set sail on board Le Paul Gauguin for an unforgettable journey to discover idyllic sands and atolls. Tour includes flights to/from Papeete.
For full details
Phone 0800 11 60 60 www.travelwiseholidays.co.nz
