Farmers in mood to spend as farmgate prices rise
Don't be surprised if there is a bit more spending at the Central Districts Field Days this year.
The Labour Party has sent “blank invoices” to farmers around the country, says Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.
The invoices don’t have “any details about the price,” he says.
“There is something different about this invoice compared to an invoice a hard working farmer receives after buying feed, a new tractor or repairing his irrigation system.
“The farmers have received the bill but they don’t know how much it will cost them,” he told Dairy News.
Guy says the proposal to charge a royalty for irrigated water on farms is a ludicrous policy.
He is urging farming leaders to meet Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern over the next two weeks and seek more detail on the proposal.
“Labour must be upfront with the farming community rather than hiding until after the election.”
Guy says Labour is also proposing large setbacks for riparian planting on farms.
Dairy farmers have already planted 27,000km of fences along waterways, fencing off 97% of them.
Guy says pushing back riparian planting would result in loss of productive land and impose further costs like mechanical cleaning of waterways with diggers, which most farmers do once a year.
“Labour wants all the posts and wires ripped out and pushed back; is it one metre or four metres further out?”
He told Parliament that Labour’s proposed water policy sucks. “It is badly thought out, badly implemented and damages the most productive sector of our economy -- the primary industries.
“Labour has slammed the door shut on the primary sector. Damian O’Connor (Labour’s rural spokesman) got smashed to pieces… he got smashed by a caucus more excited by the urban vote than the rural vote.
Commodity prices and interest rates play a huge role in shaping farmer confidence, but these factors are beyond their control, says Federated Farmers dairy chair Richard McIntyre.
DairyNZ is supporting a proposed new learning model for apprenticeships and traineeships that would see training, education, and pastoral care delivered together to provide the best chance of success.
Two agritech companies have joined forces to help eliminate manual entry and save farmer time.
The recent squabble between the Cook Islands and NZ over their deal with China has added a new element of tension in the relationship between China and NZ.
The world is now amid potentially one of the most disruptive periods in world trade for a very long time.
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