Outrage won't pay the bills
OPINION: Across rural conversations, we're heading the same tune: crisis.
OPINION: The Hound reckons the argument run by the ‘agribusiness elite’ that the market will punish our exports if we don’t fall into line with spurious targets like the Paris Accord doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Our biggest red meat market recently did a backflip on tariffs, chiefly because America needs cheaper food, and New Zealand has it.
The tariffs, part of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, were introduced in April at 10%, then raised to 15% in August.
Then in November, Trump announced that the tariffs on products representing around 25% of our exports to the US and worth about NZ$2.2 billion annually, would be removed, effective immediately.
Other nations are no different: the UK, for instance, can’t feed itself and imports nearly 40% of its food.
China imports 35%, Japan 60% and Saudi Arabia 80%. The world is too hungry to care about our methane targets!
The closure of the McCain processing plant and the recent announcement of 300 job losses at Wattie’s underscore the mounting pressure facing New Zealand’s manufacturing sector, Buy NZ Made says.
Specialist agriculture lender Oxbury has entered the New Zealand market, offering livestock finance to farmers.
New research suggests Aotearoa New Zealand farmers are broadly matching phosphorus fertiliser use to the needs of their soils, helping maintain relatively stable nutrient levels across the country’s agricultural land.
Helensville farmers, Donald and Kirsten Watson of Moreland Pastoral, have been named the Auckland Regional Supreme Winners at the Ballance Farm Environment Awards.
Marc and Megan Lalich were named 2026 Share Farmers of the Year at last night's Canterbury/North Otago Dairy Industry Awards.
William John Poole, a third year Agribusiness student at Massey University, has been awarded the Dr Warren Parker and Pāmu Scholarship.

OPINION: If you ask this old mutt, the choice at the next election isn't shaping up as a contest of…
OPINION: A mate of yours says we're long overdue for a reckoning on what value farmers really get for the…