Beef prices climb as supply contracts in key markets
With production volumes contracting in most major beef-producing regions, global cattle prices have continued to rise across recent months.
What made agricultural countries successful will not win the next era, says the chairman of Rabobank's managing board.
New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands have all gone through an amazing agricultural revolution, bringing them to the forefront of productivity and to their role in the global food supply, says Weibe Draijer, the Netherlands based chairman of Rabobank’s managing board.
But what got them there will not win the next era, Draijer told Rural News at the Farm2Form Summit in Sydney yesterday.
“You should with confidence shift to the next game of more sustainable processes,” he says.
“You have the ticket, you have the structural asset of greatly useable arable land with high intrinsic value in New Zealand, a huge share of the global arable surface in Australia and lot of ideas in the Netherlands - use it to also win the next era.”
He says he encounters apparent resistance in all three countries, but thinks it is apparent resistance — a natural response to change from outside from a successful group of entrepreneurs.
“However you can already see at least in the Netherlands, the forefront is moving to rapid pace to grab it (the opportunity) - the challenge is to get the other 80% to latch onto it and then you are there.”
“It is not a wholesale resistance of change, it is a spectrum.”
It is understandable from what they have gone through - they have been so successful, they have got their pride, and they have done well, he says. Now they have to do something else and it is a natural response.
Rabobank hopes to be a helpful thought partner, provocateur if need be. “Saying we have confidence that you won the last round, how about stepping forward and also winning the next one - because you can.”
He says the majority of the changes are already “in the money” if you take a long term view.
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.
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