OPINION: When Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, talks, I always suggest it’s worth a listen – particularly when he shares information that can help improve sustainability in the cattle sector.

What was once, and to a degree still is, the food bowl of the lower North Island has now almost become another suburb of Wellington - 100km away.

Farmgate dairy and beef prices are improving but lamb prices remain weak, according to the latest BNZ Rural Wrap.

Meat processor and exporter Silver Fern Farms Ltd has joined fellow South Island-based meat company Alliance Group in reporting a big loss for the past year.

Dairy

Stubbornly high farm input costs, a slow Chinese recovery and a flood of Australian lamb onto the global market are the main factors contributing to the tough times being faced by NZ's sheep farmers.

Federated Farmers Marlborough Province says it welcomes the announcement yesterday that current dry weather in the top of the South Island would be classified as a medium-scale adverse event.

Fertiliser use in New Zealand over the 18 months is about 25% down from what it consistently was for the previous decade or more, says Ravensdown chief operating officer Mike Whitty.

Alliance Group says following delayed livestock flows - due to ideal growing conditions in both the North Island and the southern South Island - sheep and beef processing numbers are starting to crank up in the move to autumn.

The Government is calling on the country's largest pastoral farmer, state-owned Pāmu (Landcorp), to lift its game.