A meeting in Gore recently attracted 1000 farmers who called for greater unity and major changes to the industry’s running. Many farmers are dissatisfied especially with the ‘competitive’ relationship between the two big meat processing cooperatives.
An organiser of the Feilding meeting, former Meat board director John McCarthy, says there is massive support for change in the meat industry. The meeting’s theme will be ‘No change, no future’.
“We will be sending a message to the companies, our farming representative bodies, politicians and others that the farming sector is no longer prepared to put up with having our livelihoods ruined by a dysfunctional industry and the financial shenanigans of the meat companies.
“We want an industry that delivers profit and a future to all the participants. The current model is well and truly broken and we need a new one. Logic would suggest we need a ‘NZ Inc’ approach to our meat exports.”
McCarthy says the individual companies, each with a number of brands, competing in the global marketplace, have consistently failed to deliver sustainable returns. Farmers will be looking to achieve a mandate for real change from the meeting. “We may also seek to obtain and use a portion of the PGP funds to focus on the market end of the chain.”
The meeting organisers’ target audience is farmers who don’t normally attend such events. “Our message is simple: to effect some meaningful changes we need to demonstrate the serious level of farmer concern. A large turnout will do that. So if this is the only meeting that you attend in your life, we need you to be there; large, small, this is our chance to say, enough is enough. If we limp on the way we are going we have only ourselves to blame.”
The meeting will be held after the usual Friday sale. It will be well advertised.
