Fonterra lifts forecast milk price mid-point, advance rate
Fonterra has bumped up its forecast farmgate milk price for the season on the back of rising commodity prices and a strong balance sheet.
NONE OF the proposed changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act will reduce the retail price of milk, say farmers.
Federated Farmers Dairy chairperson Willy Leferink says not one of the changes proposed to the DIRA by the Government will make milk any cheaper in the supermarkets.
He says some supermarkets are selling 2 litre milk at $3.
"At that price, it is identical to what Cole's has been selling milk for in Australia, once you take out our GST and exchange rate differences.
"What concerns me is that people seem to think farmers get all of the value from retail milk sales. I can tell you our share in a one litre carton of retail milk is around 360 millilitres.
"If someone's skimming the cream I'd suggest looking harder at the wholesale and retail ends. How come one supermarket can sell two litres of milk for $3 but another sells an identical bottle for $3.72?
"That's where the margins are, instead of the farmer who produce the milk in the first place."
Leferink wants more competition among supermarkets and processors.
"Precious few of the processors who take this milk, bottle it and then put it onto the shelves of supermarkets or dairies. Too few of these processors get milk from the farmgate and compete locally as they do internationally. We really need to know why," he says.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
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