Back in clover?

By then, it predicts, earnings from dairy products will be just over $18 billion, but the growth will be incremental and is predicated on WMP prices holding up and gains from new, value-add products.

MPI says infant formula has huge potential for NZ: its contribution in export dollars is expected to double.

MPI’s Jarred Mair notes that all the NZ dairy companies are playing a role in the value-add quest.

However, the outlook for meat and wool is far from rosy: exports are expected to fall by 9.8% to $8.3 billion in 2017 and to remain around that level for the next four years.

Beef revenue for 2017 is forecast to fall 14.7% to $2.6b, due mainly to fewer dairy cull cows going through the works.

The picture for lamb is equally glum: revenue is expected to be down by 6.7% for 2017 due to falling sheep numbers. Wool revenue is even worse, predicted to fall by 28% in the coming 12 months.

However it’s not all gloom and doom for lamb, Mair says, thanks to Iran now coming back into the market and Silver Fern Farms, for example, promoting consumer packs in the UK market.

NZ lamb is well recognised there as a premium product and with new, high-end consumer products coming on line its future is still bright.

Forestry is a rising star: revenue is up 6.4% due to a 9.8% rise last season. But these spikes in growth will lessen over the next five years. By then forestry is forecast to be earning $6.2b annually.

And horticulture is on track to reach $5b in earnings in 2017 and to hit $6.3b in 2021. Wine, pip fruit, avocados and especially kiwifruit are leading the charge.

“There is sustained growth in the kiwifruit sector, and in the pipfruit sector two million trees have gone into the ground in the last few years,” Mair says.

“Right across the horticultural sector there are very strong signals and it is starting to show its productive capability.”