OPINION: Nearly half of New Zealand's four million dairy calves are processed early, representing not just a missed $1.2 billion opportunity, but a reputational risk for our export-driven agricultural sector.

The new majority owner of meat company Alliance has no plans to close any processing plants. Instead, Dawn Meats plans to extract more value from Alliance's existing footprint.

With nearly two million underutilised dairy calves born annually and the beef price outlook strong, New Zealand’s opportunity to build a scalable dairy-beef system is now.

OPINION: For close to eight years now, I have found myself talking about methane quite a lot.

The second event in the Silver Fern Farms ‘Pasture to Plate Roadshow’ landed in Feilding last week, headed by chair and King Country farmer, Anna Nelson, and chief executive Dan Boulton.

A group of Kiwi farmers are urging Alliance farmer-shareholders to vote against a deal that would see the red meat co-operative sell approximately $270 million in shares to Ireland's Dawn Meats.

Farmers are welcoming the Government’s revised science-based biogenic methane targets for 2050.

The future of the Alliance Group is “pretty dark” if the proposed Dawn Meats deal does not go through, says board chair Mark Wynne.

The dairy sector is in a relatively stable position, with strong milk price payout forecasts continuing to offset ongoing high farm costs, according to DairyNZ.

With production volumes contracting in most major beef-producing regions, global cattle prices have continued to rise across recent months.