Move over ham, here comes lamb
It’s official, lamb will take centre stage on Kiwi Christmas tables this year.
Social media is helping our beef and lamb exporters win new fans.
Facebook is playing an increasingly important role in Beef + Lamb New Zealand's international marketing programmes, as more and more tech-savvy shoppers turn online for the scoop on consumer products.
In Germany, the UK, and now Taiwan too, social networking website Facebook is enabling communities of fans to come together and tell their friends about how much they love New Zealand beef and lamb.
Crucially, the site provides a forum for consumers to share information and inspiration, as well as seek it. Fans can post recipes and pictures of dishes that they've cooked, ask questions – and answer them.
"Word of mouth has always been the best form of advertising," says Craig Finch, B+LNZ general manager market development.
"Facebook is just a modern way of doing that, with a growing number of champions for New Zealand beef and lamb in our key export markets."
Beef + Lamb New Zealand has consumer websites in the UK, Germany, Korea and Japan, as well as one for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and jointly hosts another in the US.
"They're a valuable way of providing easily accessible product information that helps to boost people's preference for buying Kiwi," Finch says. "Adding Facebook to the mix only increases our reach even further."
New Zealand dairy farmers are set to be the first in the world to receive access to a new digital physical milk pricing tool that enables them to fix the price for their physical milk.
State farmer Pāmu is opening its farm gates this summer in an effort to give the rural sector the opportunity to see how large-scale, multi-system farming is delivering productivity and profitability across New Zealand.
A five-year study has found that the cost of reducing emissions without technology may be significant and unsustainable for Northland dairy farmers.
DairyNZ says Waikato farmers need certainty on Plan Change 1, but they say that certainty must be matched with practical, workable rules and a clear transition that doesn't get ahead of the new resource management system currently under review.
While the Government has moved quickly to make commercial hauliers' lot easier during the current fuel crisis, they appear to be stuck in the creep box when it comes to the agricultural industry.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.

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