McRae Wins Southern South Island B+LNZ Director Vote
Matt McRae, a farmer from Mokoreta in Southland who runs a sheep, beef and dairy support business alongside a sheep stud, has been elected to the Beef +Lamb NZ Board as a farmer director.
OPINION: Your canine crusader was impressed to see that Beef + Lamb levypayers gave their farmer organisation a strong message at last month's annual meeting when they rejected the board's move for a big jump in director fees.
Farmers were so enraged by the move that they not only rejected the fee hike, but also voted out one director and just re-elected the other incumbent by a very slim margin.
However, despite all of this, BLNZ chair Andrew Morrison still had the chutzpah to say that the board "stood by its decision" to propose the big increase in director fees.
This old mate wonders if Morrison's off-farm life as a company director - as he is also a director of fertiliser co-op Ballance - and the $175,000-plus he pulls in annual remuneration between BLNZ and Ballance alone is putting him out-of-touch with the economic realities that farmers are currently facing?
Fonterra has reduced its forecast 2026/27 Farmgate Milk Price.
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.

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