Red meat industry hails new migrant visa rules as win for jobs and exports
New Zealand's red meat processing and exporting sector has welcomed the government's announcement of new work visas.
Some orchardists in Hawkes Bay are so short of people to pick their fruit that they are resorting to ‘poaching’ workers from the meat companies.
Rural News has been told that meat workers in the region are being offered more money than they getting at processing plants to pick fruit, with reports of high absenteeism at some meat processing plants as a result.
Meat Industry Association chief executive Sirma Karapeeva says a sustained labour shortage has been an ongoing issue for the meat industry for a number of years. However, she says this time round it’s a little bit different because other sectors are also experiencing similar shortages – particularly in the Hawkes Bay.
Karapeeva says her office has been told about the horticultural industry trying to attract workers from the meat sector to pick fruit.
“It’s just another complexity in the whole mix of what Covid is throwing at us,” she told Rural News. “The borders are closed and we can’t find extra workers, despite the idea that there are many New Zealanders who don’t have work due to Covid. We just can’t seem to attract them in the regions and into the industry.”
Karapeeva says while much has been made of the issue in Hawkes Bay, she wouldn’t be surprised if other regions were experiencing similar pressure.
“I know that there are whole bunch of people, who for example, who are trying to find halal workers and are struggling to get them.”
She says another complication is that during the summer break there were a number of university students who took up temporary roles in the processing industry. However, they have now gone back to university and left another gap in the labour force which that has compounded the problem.
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.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.