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.

Superphosphate is still the go-to product for New Zealand farmers looking for spring growth, says Mike White, Ravensdown’s head of product and service development.

According to the most recent Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey, farmer confidence has inched higher, reaching its second highest reading in the last decade.

OPINION: After a few lean years, dairy, sheep and beef operations are enjoying fat returns on milk and red meat, while also seeing low interest rates bring down finance costs across the board.