About 600 farmers attended a recent meeting in Feilding to hear producers’ concerns about the state of the meat industry and put forward a plan for change. The meeting voted to support the organisers in their quest for change.
Petersen says BLNZ has already helped the group by supplying data, used in their presentations.
However, calls for BLNZ to fund the campaign will probably not be heeded and the meat companieas don’t want BLNZ to get involved.
Petersen says some farmers have already put money up and that’s the way it should be. “There is certainly a lot of farmer frustration out there, but this campaign has to be grassroots farmer driven.”
Petersen says an important point often missed in the debate is that farmers do not own a majority share of the red meat processing and exporting sector. “While SFF and Alliance are large in sheep meat collectively, their market share is still only 52% and for beef collectively they only hold 39% of market share.”
An organiser of the Feilding meeting, Ohakune farmer John McCarthy, told the gathering that meat farming was not a worthwhile profession to be in at present because of the state of the industry.
“We’re here because we are sick of the roller coaster. There’s one good year in ten and we’re told it’s our fault. I am sick of being told by our farming leaders that we need to lift our game… it may have escaped their notice that we have already done that. This meeting is not about blame, it’s about finding a solution. If we don’t find a solution we may as well pack it in.”
But McCarthy warned that if this change movement was to be successful it needed to be taken slowly; past movements have failed because people had moved too quickly, he said.
Among those present at the meeting was Labour’s spokesperson on agriculture, Damien O’Connor. He described the turnout as ‘brilliant’ and says it showed North Island farmers were just as concerned as those in the South Island. He says a new model for the meat industry needs to be developed – one that connects with consumers.
“I think there has been too much year-to-year thinking by the cooperatives in particular. They need to work out where New Zealand grass fed protein will be in the world in 20 years and I don’t think they have thought about it.”
At the Feilding meeting Alliance chairman Owen Poole revealed that a group he referred to as the ‘big four’ was also working on a plan for change, which he claimed could be made public in about two months.
“It’s probably further advanced than this group, but not far enough advanced to talk about it in any detail.”
Meanwhile, Eoin Garden, chairman of SFF, told the meeting his company was committed to working with the new group and pointed out that any future strategy should be designed to “create greater wealth”.
McCarthy says he pleased with the outcome to date and the mandate for change, but the success of the change movement will be in the detail and in the outcome of two further meetings. But he has one other concern – apathy!
“If you are a farmer who’s been in the game for a while, and have very little debt then you can still stagger on from year to year and you haven’t got that impetus to change,” he warns.
