Government appoints three new directors to Pāmu board
The Government has appointed three new members to the board of state farmer Landcorp Farming Ltd, trading as Pāmu.
State farmer Landcorp says it is working on creating a deer milk industry.
The SOE is talking to global customers and trialling products in markets for consumer feedback.
Landcorp general manager dairy operations Mark Julian told Dairy News it’s early days. “It’s [not] like the sheep milk industry which has products in the market,” he says.
The deer milk project is mostly R&D and looking at selective milk powder and skin care products for the global market.
Speaking earlier at the Pioneer Rural Professionals Conference in Taupo, Julian floated two possible futures for Landcorp: either a production-led future or a market-led future.
Landcorp is not looking at wholesale changes to its business model; it recently adapted Pamu as its brand name.
Julian says Pamu “works to establish products and partnerships to give our business the best chance of succeeding moving forward”.
He noted that Landcorp was keen to move from a pasture farming company to a food and farming company.
“Our core business will always be farming; our traditional sales will drive our revenue for the immediate future but brand business will provide us the consumer insights that hopefully take the risk out of our core business of farming.”
Julian says the sheep milk joint venture Spring Sheep, in Taupo, has been a winner: two years since its inception Spring Sheep has won awards for food and innovation.
“It’s a huge boost to our belief that differentiation and unique offerings are areas to target.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change would be “a really dumb move”.
The University of Waikato has broken ground on its new medical school building.
Undoubtedly the doyen of rural culture, always with a wry smile, our favourite ginger ninja, Te Radar, in conjunction with his wife Ruth Spencer, has recently released an enchanting, yet educational read centred around rural New Zealand in one hundred objects.
Farmers are being urged to keep on top of measures to control Cysticerus ovis - or sheep measles - following a spike in infection rates.
For more than 50 years, Waireka Research Station at New Plymouth has been a hub for globally important trials of fungicides, insecticides and herbicides, carried out on 16ha of orderly flat plots hedged for protection against the strong winds that sweep in from New Zealand’s west coast.
There's a special sort of energy at the East Coast Farming Expo, especially when it comes to youth.
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