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.
Labour spokesman on primary industries, Damien O’Connor says while the dairy developments at Taupo are impressive it’s important the Crown is not exposed to major debt such as that of Solid Energy.
However O’Connor says he’s impressed with Landcorp’s focus on low cost production systems.
He says the dairy industry in general at present is lacking an overall strategic direction and individuals are making potentially risky decisions.
“There are some players in the industry who are intensifying their systems while others are more cautions and probably winding back their production,” he says.
“That leads to the question of processing capacity in terms of the wider industry and I don’t think anyone would want to see the dairy end up with a meat industry situation where we have excess capacity.”
He notes a number of foreign investors are becoming involved in the dairy processing industry to vertically integrate their systems.
There is real risk of over-capacity becoming a reality in the dairy sector, he says. While some commentators are encouraging farmers to increase production, farmers who don’t focus on profit will go broke and additional production alone doesn’t develop a better outcome.
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.
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