Co-ops - better together than apart
OPINION: On their second date, my mother, then 17, told my father that she was a socialist. His response was that he was a conservative, so that would mean that their children would be liberals!
The chair of a new committee set up to review the handling of Mycoplasma bovis outbreak says it isn’t a witch-hunt.
Massey University academic Nicola Shadbolt says the review is about learning from the past and helping us to be stronger for the future.
She says it’s about finding out what happened and seeing what might need to be put in place if there a biosecurity outbreak of this nature in the future.
Shadbolt, a professor of farm and agribusiness, served as a Fonterra director for nine years and is currently chair of Plant and Food Research.
Other members are Dr Roger Paskin who until recently was the chief veterinary officer for the Department of Primary Industries and Regions, South Australia where he had technical oversight of all animal disease control, surveillance, traceability and health certification programs, Caroline Saunders, who is professor of trade and environmental economics at Lincoln University and Tony Cleland a well-known South Island dairy farmer and company director who is also chairman of the rural insurance company FMG.
The review committee was appointed by the M. bovis programme partners, MPI, DairyNZ and Beef+Lamb NZ.
DairyNZ chair Jim van der Poel says it was best practice to carry out a review of an eradication programme of this scale and was also a commitment made to farmers at the start of the programme. He says eradicating M. bovis is hard work but with the whole sector working together, we have made really good progress.
“It’s important we capture what we’ve learned and utilise it for anything we might face in the future,” he says.
Beef+Lamb NZ chair Andrew Morrison says his organisation supported the review. He says there’s been a lot of good work by farmers and people involved and we have worked hard to make improvements.
“We have a philosophy of continuous improvement and this review is the next step in our journey,” he says.
Shadbolt says the committee has a list of key people they want to talk to but are also keen to hear from anyone who has information which could aid her team. She details on how they will engage with the wider farming community are still being worked through.
“Generally we want to talk to a broad suite of people,” she says.
The review is expected to be completed about the middle of the year.
Rural trader PGG Wrightson has revised its operating earnings guidance, saying trading conditions have deteriorated since the last market update in February.
It's been a bumper season for maize and other supplements in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Leading farmers from around New Zealand connected to share environmental stories and inspiration and build relationships at the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) national forum in Wellington last month.
AgriZeroNZ, a joint venture fast-tracking emissions reduction tools for farmers, is pouring $5 million in a biotech company to develop a low emissions farm pasture with increased productivity gains.
Fonterra is teaming up with wealth app provider Sharesies to make it easier for its farmer shareholders to trade co-op shares among themselves.
Te Awamutu dairy farmers Doug, Penny, Josh and Bayley Storey have planted more than 25,000 native trees on the family farm, adding to a generations-old native forest.
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