Silver Fern Farms roadshow highlights global demand
The second event in the Silver Fern Farms ‘Pasture to Plate Roadshow’ landed in Feilding last week, headed by chair and King Country farmer, Anna Nelson, and chief executive Dan Boulton.
Your old mate reckons former Silver Fern Farms sales manager Grant Howie has done a poacher-turned-gamekeeper conversion since he left the meat company to do business on his own account.
Howie in his former life was the chief salesman of red meat products on behalf of SFF. However, earlier this year the former meat man took over the The Craft Meat Company in Dunedin and has recently hit the supermarket shelves with a plant-based ‘No Meat Mince’’ with ingredients such as mushrooms, tomatoes, almonds, coconut oil and soy protein. Howie, a 30-year food industry veteran, said the rise of alternative proteins was arguably the biggest trend in Western food. This old mutt wonders what Howie’s ex-colleagues and former farmer suppliers at SFF think of his new venture.
New Zealand Young Farmers (NZYF) has launched a new initiative designed to make it easier for employers to support their young team members by covering their NZYF membership.
Sheep infant nutrition maker Blue River Dairy is hoping to use its success in China as a springboard into other markets in future.
Plentiful milk supplies from key producer countries are weighing down global dairy prices.
The recent windstorm that cut power to dairy farms across Southland for days has taught farmers one lesson – keep a generator handy on each farm.
The effects of the big windstorm of late October will be felt in lost production in coming weeks as repair crews work through the backlog of toppled irrigation pivots, says Culverden dairy farmer Fran Gunn.
With the current situation in the European farm machinery market being described as difficult at best, it’s perhaps no surprise that the upcoming AgriSIMA 2026 agricultural machinery exhibition, scheduled for February 2026 at Paris-Nord Villepinte, has been cancelled.

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