Scales declares strong first half performance
Scales Corporation has today reported its results for the first half of the 2025 financial year, revealing what it says are outstanding results from its horticulture and logistics divisions.
Only eight months ago, Federated Farmers and NZ's special agriculture trade envoy, Mike Petersen, said the TPPA was going to be gold standard or bust, NZ First leader Winston Peters says.
"So why is it in recent weeks we are seeing subsidised American milk powder being kicked in our faces? And what are the other so-called farming leaders doing about it?," he asked at the Agcarm conference in Auckland today.
In the 1980s and 1990s our farmers went cold turkey yet discovered there was Life after Subsidies, he said. Agricultural subsidies are the farming equivalent of crack cocaine.
"If there was ever a cause for us to galvanise the developing world behind us, it is subsidies. Yet our silence on this at the UN Security Council is deafening," he said.
"In Britain, their National Farmers' Union admitted that European subsidies are worth £175 to £200 per hectare, or about $31,000 to $36,000 every year for the average British farm.
"What does the TPPA do about the US$110bn worth of subsidies paid each year to American, Canadian, Mexican and Japanese farmers? Nothing. What will the more farcical European Union FTA do about €50bn in European subsidies? There's not a mutter, not a murmur, not a syllable, not a sound. Nothing."
This is why we are underwhelmed by Mr Key's claim, first that benefits would be $5b per annum by 2025, now drastically trimmed back by his officials to $2.7B by 2030.
Peters claimed if the TPP is ever "fully implemented" then total tariff and duty reductions will, with a fair wind someday amount to $608m.
While tariff reductions are good per se, they become 30 pieces of silver if the $260bn in competitor annual farm subsidies are made untouchable in the process, he said.
Phoebe Scherer, a technical manager from the Bay of Plenty, has won the 2025 Young Grower of the Year national title.
The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand (FCANZ) celebrated the best of the best at the 2025 Fencing Industry Awards, providing the opportunity to honour both rising talent and industry stalwarts.
Award-winning boutique cheese company, Cranky Goat Ltd has gone into voluntary liquidation.
As an independent review of the National Pest Management Plan for TB finds the goal of complete eradication by 2055 is still valide, feedback is being sought on how to finish the job.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand has launched an AI-powered digital assistant to help farmers using the B+LNZ Knowledge Hub to create tailored answers and resources for their farming businesses.
A tiny organism from the arid mountains of mainland Greece is facilitating a new way of growing healthier animals on farms across New Zealand.
OPINION: Westland Milk may have won the contract to supply butter to Costco NZ but Open Country Dairy is having…
OPINION: The Gene Technology Bill has divided the farming community with strong arguments on both the pros and cons of…