Milk price certainty
Westland Milk has reaffirmed its commitment to pay farmer suppliers 10c above Fonterra farm gate milk price for the following two seasons.
Chinese dairy giant Yili says it will respect all contractual obligations to pay current and former milk suppliers of Westland Milk.
The company, which bought Westland on August 1, says it knows former milk suppliers are owed money for having surrendered shares.
Yili Group chief executive Jianqiu Zhang told Rural News that Yili is “a very responsible company”.
“We will always strictly follow the contract,” he said.
Zhang pointed out that when the global milk price plummeted in 2014, it still paid its Oceania Dairy Ltd suppliers the contract fixed price.
“We did not drop a cent. In the second year a lot of new suppliers signed up because we won their respect and admiration,” he said.
The farmer group’s spokesman, Pete Williams, said that at the end of the 2018 milking season he ceased supplying Westland and went to Fonterra, surrendering his shares at their nominal price of $1.50/kgMS.
A vet is calling for all animals to be vaccinated against a new strain of leptospirosis (lepto) discovered on New Zealand dairy farms in recent years.
Two major red meat sector projects are getting up to a combined $1.7 million in funding from the New Zealand Meat Board (NZMB).
Angus Barr and Tara Dwyer of The Wandle, Lone Star Farms in Strath Taieri have been named the Regional Supreme Winners at the Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards in Dunedin.
OPINION: The distress that the politicians and bureaucrats are causing to the people of Wairoa and the wider Tairāwhiti is unforgivable.
Dairy
Rural banker Rabobank is partnering with Food Rescue Kitchen on a new TV series which airs this weekend that aims to shine a light on the real and growing issues of food waste, food poverty and social isolation in New Zealand.