Milk prices may have stabilised and will rebound next season, beef prices will hold and horticulture, particularly kiwifruit, could be the star performer this year.

The prospects for 2015 would be a lot better if there was some rain falling, says Federated Farmers president William Rolleston.

Dairy farmers should beef up balance sheets to cope with global milk price volatility, says the head of herd improvement company CRV.

Two Southdown rams shared the honours at Canterbury A&P Association’s elite ram & ewe sale last November, both making $14,000.

SHEEP AND BEEF farmers should ride the wave of the upward cycle in commodity trade by ensuring they reinvest and build more buffer into their businesses, says Beef + Lamb NZ chairman James Parsons.

SILVER FERN Farms’ board candidate Fiona Hancox says if farmers can’t fund the cooperative’s call for capital, then it at least needs to ensure a “New Zealand Inc approach rather than foreign ownership”.

IT'S BEEN a big year for agriculture with the rise and fall – and still falling – of dairying prices. And for the first time in many years, sheep and beef farmers are feeling good – or is it that they know dairy aren’t in such a happy frame of mind? We take a look back on the year to see what was good, what was bad and what was downright ugly…

HIGHER SHEEP and beef prices seem set to buffer the drop in export earnings from dairying, according to the latest economic update from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).

TOTAL AGRICULTURAL export earnings for 2014-15 will be down 9.5%, warns the Ministry of Primary Industries.

IT’S AN exciting time for Irish and European dairy farmers. Having been constrained by European milk quotas since 1984, the shackles will finally be removed on April 1, 2015.