Cuddling cows
OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its cows and instead charge visitors to cuddle them.
It increased its self-sufficiency in milk production by 11 million metric tons/year from 2018 to 2023, or effectively as much as Australia’s current annual production.
China’s annual domestic production is now in the order of 40 billion litres of milk.
The country’s WMP imports plunged from an average of 820,000 metric tons in 2021 to a mere 430,000 metric tons in 2023.
More than half of that drop was at NZ’s expense – the downside to being the biggest supplier of WMP to China.
Aussie and Kiwi farmers once got good money for Friesian heifers to the China live export market but it certainly helped boost growth of their domestic supply.
