West Coast farm looks a picture on new packaging
Images of Graeme McNabb’s farm on the West Coast will soon be hitting supermarket shelves around the world.
Grass-fed meat out of New Zealand is the “caviar of the future”, says Stu Chapman, who stepped down this month as Elders NZ managing director after 21 years with the company.
Agriculture in NZ has a big future, says Chapman.
“We are a food bowl, there is no doubt,” he told Rural News. “We must protect our biosecurity; we need to protect our borders and the fact that we are seen as a supplier of quality food through different parts of the world.
“We need to make sure we hang onto that NZ Inc brand because we are not a low cost producer any more.
“There are a lot of countries around the world that can produce that same product cheaper than us but we have a reputation as delivering quality safe products.”
Chapman says he can’t remember the last time sheepmeat, beef meat and wool were well ahead of dairy, as they are now.
The red meat sector in NZ has bright prospects. “Grass-fed meat out of NZ is potentially the caviar of the future,” he says.
“So for me the sheep and cattle future looks extremely bright and exciting.”
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson says his party – NZ First - isn’t opposed to the “trade element” of a free trade deal with India.
The managing director of a company seeking to build a solar farm in Canterbury says receiving fast-track approval is a “really positive outcome”.
Retiring MP and dairy farmer Mark Cameron is blasting the Green Party for proposing to ban the use of synthetic fertiliser and cutting cow numbers.
A huge reduction in ACC claims from on-farm accidents over the last five years is due to thousands of small, practical decisions being made in sheds, yards, paddocks and around kitchen tables across the country, says Safer Farms ambassador Lindy Nelson.
Wayne and Ange Moxham of Horowhenua have just been named as Fonterra's top organic performer for milksolids. As well as providing organic milk to Fonterra, the couple also sell Udderly Organic milk to more than 100 outlets in the region and are embarking on another exciting venture producing organic gelato. Reporter Peter Burke went along to see their farming operation.
Certainty and a clear understanding of the needs of rural communities is a critical outcome in the series of government reforms that are taking place at present.

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