Milk processors match or exceed Fonterra’s record $10/kgMS opening forecast for 2025-26 season
Milk processors are either matching or beating Fonterra's record $10/kgMS opening forecast milk price as the 2025-26 season gets underway.
Taupo-based Maori dairy company Miraka took the top honours at this year’s Biosecurity Awards.
The company scooped both the industry award and the supreme award in the competition for its Te Ara Miraka programme, which boosted biosecurity awareness and culture change with its farmer suppliers.
Close to 200 people attended the awards ceremony held in Parliament’s banquet hall and hosted by the Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor.
The awards are designed to recognise organisations, volunteers, businesses, iwi, hapū and tamariki around the country who are contributing to biosecurity. In the case of Miraka it was Te Ara Miraka, their excellence programme which incentivises farmers by way of an increase in their annual milk pay-out to improve a whole range of practices on their farms. These include environmental, milk quality, food safety, animal welfare, health and safety and biosecurity.
Both the industry award and the supreme award recognised the fact that Miraka identified that biosecurity was missing from the programme and set about working with external parties to develop a special training course. Each farmer was trained in biosecurity risk assessment, risk mitigation and how to create and implement a biosecurity plan within their business.
It was a special night for Miraka milk supply manager, Grant Jackson who is responsible for the Te Ara Miraka programme.
He says the programme has been operating for about five years and says they are starting to see some significant behavioural changes back on farm, which benefits the individual businesses, the industry and the community.
Jackson says like any project of this nature there are always the early adopters and they bring along the others over time.
Holstein Friesian excellence was front and centre at the 2025 Holstein Friesian NZ (HFNZ) Awards, held recently in Invercargill.
The work Fonterra has done with Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd, LIC and Ravensdown to save farmers time through better data connections has been recognised with a national award.
This past week has seen another round of negotiations between India and New Zealand to produce a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries.
Cautiously optimistic is how DairyNZ's regional manager for the lower North Island, Mark Laurence describes the mood of farmers in his patch.
The Infrastructure Commission has endorsed a plan by Chorus to expand fibre broadband to 95% of New Zealand much to the delight of rural women.
Questions are being raised about just how good the state of the dairy industry is - especially given that the average farmgate payout for the coming season is set to exceed $10/kgMS.
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