NZ meat industry loses $1.5b annually to non-tariff barriers
Wouldn't it be great if the meat industry could get its hands on the $1.5 billion dollars it's missing out on because of non-tariff trade barriers (NTBs)?
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.
Meat co-operative, Alliance has met with a group of farmer shareholders, who oppose the sale of a controlling stake in the co-op to Irish company Dawn Meats.
Rollovers of quad bikes or ATVs towing calf milk trailers have typically prompted a Safety Alert from Safer Farms, the industry-led organisation dedicated to fostering a safer farming culture across New Zealand.
The Government has announced it has invested $8 million in lower methane dairy genetics research.
A group of Kiwi farmers are urging Alliance farmer-shareholders to vote against a deal that would see the red meat co-operative sell approximately $270 million in shares to Ireland's Dawn Meats.
In a few hundred words it's impossible to adequately describe the outstanding contribution that James Brendan Bolger made to New Zealand since he first entered politics in 1972.
Dawn Meats is set to increase its proposed investment in Alliance Group by up to $25 million following stronger than forecast year-end results by Alliance.
OPINION: Voting is underway for Fonterra’s divestment proposal, with shareholders deciding whether or not sell its consumer brands business.
OPINION: Politicians and Wellington bureaucrats should take a leaf out of the book of Canterbury District Police Commander Superintendent Tony Hill.