Outrage won't pay the bills
OPINION: Across rural conversations, we're heading the same tune: crisis.
OPINION: The Hound reckons the argument run by the ‘agribusiness elite’ that the market will punish our exports if we don’t fall into line with spurious targets like the Paris Accord doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Our biggest red meat market recently did a backflip on tariffs, chiefly because America needs cheaper food, and New Zealand has it.
The tariffs, part of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, were introduced in April at 10%, then raised to 15% in August.
Then in November, Trump announced that the tariffs on products representing around 25% of our exports to the US and worth about NZ$2.2 billion annually, would be removed, effective immediately.
Other nations are no different: the UK, for instance, can’t feed itself and imports nearly 40% of its food.
China imports 35%, Japan 60% and Saudi Arabia 80%. The world is too hungry to care about our methane targets!
Strengthening the voice of vegetable growers on "big ticket items" will be the immediate focus of newly formed New Zealand Vegetable Council (NZVeg), says inaugural chair Alison Stewart.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the red meat sector is doing an excellent job promoting our pasture-fed system around the globe.
The European Union ramped up its presence at this year's Fieldays.
Moves are underway to create a single organisation to represent the country's beekeepers.
Against all the odds, the primary sector has turned in a stellar performance with export returns for 2026 hitting $64.3 billion - up 6% on the previous year.
Farmers and growers are powering the economy with export revenue at record highs.

OPINION: Well-known and politically very neutral RNZ DJ John Campbell may be having politically neutral kittens about the news that…
OPINION: This one will upset the identity-politics obsessed snowflakes in Wellington.