Ruralco Instore Days supporting local farmers
This year’s Ruralco Instore Days is centred on staying local and local connections, as part of the co-operative’s ongoing commitment to supporting Mid Canterbury farmers.
Former parliament Speaker David Carter has lost his bid for a directorship of the South Island rural service company Ruralco.
At the cooperative’s annual meeting last week, shareholders re-elected sitting directors Jessie Chan-Dorman and Tony Coltman.
Both retired by rotation and offered themselves for re-election. Carter was the third candidate.
Chan-Dorman says she is humbled to be part of the Ruralco team. She echoed a shareholder’s call that the co-op was one team working together for its farmers.
And she acknowledged the challenges and opportunities ahead for farming, saying Ruralco will support farmers as they make the transition.
Coltman, who joined the board in 2016, says he was honoured to be re-elected.
“It was great to see such high participation rates and to see the seats contested. This is a healthy position for the board.”
Coltman says he is acutely aware of the need to keep the business and its people in a strong position and help it to evolve in a competitive market.
Shareholders voted online for directors for the first time and chairman Alistair Body said the voting went well.
“Most of the votes were cast prior to the AGM and in spite of this we still had a good attendance and participation at the meeting.” Shareholder participation rates were five times higher than last year.
At the meeting Body congratulated the board and management on their enabling the cooperative to remain competitive. He said Ruralco’s management and board agree on the business model and its future.
The co-op had “positive financial results and many accolades to its name despite a difficult trading year, with the weather effecting irrigation and grain trading, and uncertainty and farmers’ conservativism affecting their spending.”
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.
OPINION: Should cows in NZ be microchipped?
OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…