‘I don’t want to be farming here by myself’ – Richard Walker :
On Tuesday, Dani Darke has a ram sale, a board subcommittee meeting and a pony club meeting. Her neighbour up the valley, Natasha Cave, has an online business seminar in the morning and sheep crutching in the afternoon. On Sunday, Cave and her husband Alan crutched 800 ewes and lambs. Tuesday will be less, though still in the hundreds.
On Monday, both women attended their kids’ school athletics morning, Darke helped her husband on the farm and took her daughter to tutoring.
It’s a busy life. It’s a good life. And it’s a life the two Aria women fear is at risk. Pine trees are starting to arrive in the picturesque King Country, and they’re likely to keep coming. That does nothing for local communities. The plantations are company owned, and the workers are bussed in from who knows where.
Natasha Cave was driven to write an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern almost a year ago after another King Country farm was sold to trees. . .
Emissions research a black hole – Steven Cranston:
A giant black hole is emerging within the wider agricultural industry. It has been there for some time but has mostly flown under the radar.
To date, it has sucked in over $200 million of industry and government money into its vortex, but – as is the case with black holes – nothing has come out. Most of that funding will be lost forever and if the agricultural industry does not start providing more critical oversight of emissions research spending, many hundreds of millions more will disappear into oblivion.
The consensus now is that solutions to ruminant methane emissions will not be market-ready any time soon; certainly not in time to help offset the Government’s proposed tax on farm emissions due to roll out in 2025. This has only prompted the black hole to expand. The Minister for Agriculture has recently announced another $338.7 million over the next four years to disappear, and the National Party is right behind them with big plans to drive further R&D investment.
The researchers behind these technologies have made bold claims about their potential: Bovaer has been shown to reduce emissions by 30% in Europe and AgResearch has identified a 12% variance between low and high methane breeding lines. . .
Zespri lowers fruit returns forecast, downgrades FY23 corporate profit outlook – Andrea Fox:
Higher-than-estimated kiwifruit quality issue costs and ongoing challenges have squeezed some of the juice out of global marketer Zespri’s earnings and profit forecasts for this season.
Chairman Bruce Cameron has told the company’s 2800 New Zealand growers in a forecast update that tray returns for the best-seller SunGold kiwifruit and its organic counterpart are now below the June orchard gate return guidance.
The forecast range of corporate net profit after tax for the financial year ending March 31 was now $225 million to $235m, including grower licence income.
Corporate profit after tax in 2021-2022 was $361.5m. . .
Time to celebrate Kiwi farmers – Todd Muller:
National Party acting spokesman for agriculture, Todd Muller, reflects on a difficult year for New Zealand farmers and reckons it’s time to celebrate our food and fibre sector.
This has been a bloody tough year for farmers.
While our export prices have been solid, the costs imposed on the home front have been shocking.
Continually growing farm inputs costs such as fuel, feed, labour and fertiliser are squeezing margins and causing immeasurable stress. . .
New chapter for Fonterra as parliament passes DIRA amending Bill but a fresh climate challenge looms – Point of Order :
NZ dairy giant Fonterra expects to have its new capital structure in place by March after Parliament gave a final reading this week to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill. It had the support of Labour, National, and Act, with the Greens and Te Pati Maori voting against it, as they did during the first two readings.
It marks a new chapter for the big co-op at a time when the industry has been hit by soaring inflation-driven farm costs and the Ardern government’s move to tax farm methane emissions.
Fonterra as a key element of the dairy industry has made significant progress with its turnaround 2030 business strategy; and the proposed capital restructure is designed to ensure its many processing sites remain full in flatlining, and predicted to decline, national milk production.
The restructure needed Parliament’s approval because Fonterra was created by enabling legislation in 2001, and because a feature of it, delinking the farmer share market and the unit market, could have faced legal challenges. . .
The blessing of harvest completed – Terry Wanzek :
Abraham Lincoln issued America’s first Thanksgiving proclamation in a time of violence. The year was 1863, and the president found it appropriate to give thanks even though America was torn by “a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity.”
War was on my mind earlier this month, as I harvested corn on our family farm in North Dakota. It occurred to me that I’m fortunate to farm in peace.
We take so many things for granted—but as Thanksgiving approaches, we should count our blessings and express our thanks.
Let’s start with this simple fact of peace. I could offer that farmers wage war every day, as we battle the elements. A few years ago, a wet fall turned our fields to mud and made it nearly impossible to run our combines. We had to let a lot of corn stand through the winter and complete our job the following February and March. It felt like a war of attrition. . .
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Homepaddock 