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Beef + Lamb NZ chairman James Parsons.
Marks & Spencer says it will no longer stock New Zealand lamb in its Scottish stores and will sell only locally produced lamb.
Beef + Lamb NZ chairman James Parsons, who was in Britain, France, Ireland and Belgium last week to assess what impact Brexit may have on NZ meat exports, was present for the Marks & Spencer announcement. He says Scottish farmers have pushed the supermarket for some time to support local produce.
“From our perspective it’s disappointing – not just from a parochial perspective either,” Parsons says. “In my view, this is actually bad for the lamb category because currently we have NZ lamb basically going up to the UK in their off season when they don’t produce product.”
He added that for the Scots to supply for 12 months of the year a lot of old-season lamb will have to be used to maintain year-round supply.
“I don’t think that’s a great experience for the consumers.”
Parsons says Marks & Spencer imported only small volumes from NZ – around 29,000 lambs annually.
“To put it in context, we’re talking about 10 or 12 NZ farms and of that, only about half of the carcase; they don’t use the whole carcase at Marks & Spencer stores.”
He believes other supermarkets will pick up the market share and business if consumers do not get what they want from Marks & Spencer.
Recent widespread autumn rain will have triggered the germination of subterranean clover seeds, and the resulting seedlings should be allowed to reach the 3–4 trifoliate leaf stage before grazing, says Beef+Lamb NZ.
A hub farm in each of Beef + Lamb NZ’s seven regions and more focus groups are being rolled out for the red meat sector this year.
The red meat sector is poised for a strong rebound this season, with export receipts forecast to top $10 billion and farm profitability to almost double.
Progeny testing at Pāmu’s Kepler farm in Southland as part of Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Informing New Zealand Beef programme is showing that the benefits of hybrid vigour could have a massive impact on the future of beef breeding.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) has reiterated calls for New Zealand to revise its methane targets after the Government's "disappointing" announcement of its revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
With nearly two million underutilised dairy calves born annually and the beef price outlook strong, New Zealand’s opportunity to build a scalable dairy-beef system is now.
Graduates of a newly-updated Agri-Women’s Development Trust (AWDT) course are taking more value than ever from the programme, with some even walking away calling themselves the “farm CFO”.
Meet the Need, a farmer-led charity, says food insecurity in New Zealand is dire, with one in four children now living in a household experiencing food insecurity, according to Ministry of Health data.
Applications have now opened for the 2026 Meat Industry Association scholarships.
Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) says it is backing aspiring dairy farmers through a new initiative designed to make the first step to farm ownership or sharemilking easier.
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