The Price of Milk

Controversy over the price of milk continues to simmer.
True to form, the socialists in our nation continue their pretention to privilege, in this instance that because we're an agricultural nation, milk should be delivered to society at below market price, sweeping under the carpet of debate, the fact other more delectable food groups and consumer products have risen over time to a much greater extent, eg. bread, fuel, booze, smokes, and pretty much anything else.
Yesterday it was announced, as a result of the public enquiry into milk pricing, that the dairy farmers co-op, Fonterra, have made public their pricing mechanism, simply that its based on what could have been made if all the milk had been sold as milk powder on the international market.
Its supposed to be internet etiquette not to slag people and stick to the debate, so I'll refrain from saying what total dicks I think Green politician Sue Kedgely and that union bloke Ritchie are for stirring this scrum along and for still being on Russia's side.
From one side of their mouth they'll argue what really amounts to not being able to stand farmers co-op'ing themselves into a position where they can set prices, when in actual fact dairy producers, like all farmers, are still price takers not setters, of the international value of their produce, while expecting to be able to organise themselves to both screw the price of consumer products down, and still somewhere along the line, crank the cost of their own wages up.
Tom Scott joined the fray yesterday with a cartoon inferring Saudi commonfolk would be up in arms if they had to pay international price for fuel, and that the Saudi princes should find out how Fonterra do it to NZ with milk products.
But he's way off beam too, they probably are paying the international price, its just that governments round the world inflate the fuel price with add-on taxes so that Proles like him and Kedgeley get their grievances soothed, just like booze and ciggies are tax-added to death.
They need to go overseas a bit and see what the rest of the world's like, then come back, stay inside the Kiwi tent, and appreciate that the current NZ co-op generated dairy farmer good fortune cant eventually get anywhere else other than into the NZ economy where we all get to share in it.
Another irony is, those of Green ilk would slag dairy products as being bad for one's health, but now complain when the rise in cost of it might suppress consumption.
They also assume an entitlement in an industry they never had a hand in shaping, or were paid for if they did, and which the environmental lobby continues to condemn.

Time for a Tui ad...
Yeah right.

Farewell Old Friend

Khan with apprentice Woody

One of the things you look forward to starting out shepherding is building a team of dogs, little knowing the life cycle of a dog is no more than the family cat.
The time from when a dog "arrives" at a place he's working well, does everything you want, and knows it, is then something very precious, the appreciation is mutual and the relationship gets special.
The day they're no longer with you always arrives with a bit of sadness.
I got Khan as a fully broken 4yo from Duncan up the river a bit, and well trained he was too, never more than a cigarette paper from your heels, but always busting to get out and run.
His forte however, was backing..., through a gate, in the crush, up the woolshed ramp, and well into the shed.
He earned his place of rest in the lawn, the "Arlington" in view of the kitchen window, with his own rock headstone beside the other all-time bests, Blak, Judge, and Booze.
I'm reminded of an earlier passing, Joe, my first heading dog, had gotten so non-compus at 15 he had to be put down. I turned up at the house for morning smoko I suppose looking for some comfort, and my now ex missus asked what I was blubbing for, after all he was only a dog.
All I could respond was every morning for the last 15 years he was excited to see me, and that's more than I can say for the 5 you've been here.
Bit like that joke about who's man's best friend, your missus or your dog.
Shut them in the boot of the car for an hour, then see who's most pleased to see you.
Anyway Khan, farewell from all of us, and I hope there's a good spring, plenty of sheep to dream about chasing, cool vehicles to ride in, and a boss like me for you..., wherever dogs go.

A Week's a Long Time in....... the News

After slagging the Dompost over that disgracefully contrived "expose`" of farmer's unfair dodging of tax-paying, (which incidentally failed to give account to the fact substantial GST was generated and hauled in from the annual agricultural turnover, and that's as it should be in any shift in emphasis from direct to indirect taxation, plus...,
as with any business, farms would have been fully paid forward, and over-paid at that, with PAYE based on the previous normal year's result, so that beneficiary depicted on the front page echoing the "unfair" put in her mouth by the reporter, would have cruised through her year on a loan from the business community)...
Anyway, where was I....
I now find myself, hardly a week later, acknowledging DomPost for the way it depicted the wool industry in this weekend's "Your Weekend" liftout, in a lead article why wool lost its cool, and the international fight to get it back, worth a read, and pleasing to see the reporter got the basics right.
Jeremy Moon's comments and story were interesting, Icebreaker's up for near $160m of sales, and good on him for that.
I can verify personally his Merino wool product is fantastic.
I've had the heavier long-sleeve skivvy for a few years now, zip-up neck, thumb-holes for the odd extreme cold day pull-down, dosen't pong, only ever washed it a couple of times, great on the bike or up Ruapehu.
Just recently, as result of spotting a product release newsbit (in the Dompost!!), I bought one of those Apollo Beast T-shirts, and I'm rapt..., more subtly warming than the heavier one described above, and so light you hardly know its there.
They're not cheap at $90 a throw, but I've gone and ordered 2 more, I'm going to work in them on the farm, and I'm sure it will be a year round affair, knowing as I do now you cant beat natural fibres in any weather and any season.
Annual 14,000km motorcycle tours around USA from cold West Coast to mid-west desert and plains, convinced me real quick, synthetic garments are dead meat, they pong in 24 hours flat, soil faster, and dont wick moisture.
Life's full of circles, I'll be like, I remember as a kid, the old man working year round in his old black sleeveless jackie-how, only I'll be in the latest rendition of the national, sustainable, product.
Can't say I'm totally enamoured with the Council of NZ Wool Interests, but they're just about the only show in town currently, and I have to say their promotion efforts are worthy.
I hope my enthusiastic belief and support in/of our own wool product is a help. Too often you'll see wool producers getting round in synthetic jackets and cloaks.
I've always had a Swan-Dri jacket all my farming career, actually only two ever, never had to wash them, wore them till they fell off.
Now I've got a Bushmate, made by that outfit up Auckland way, http://www.welovewool.co.nz/
Moon's comment that Merino can't handle the whole market gamut, and that maybe breeders should look at a dual purpose sheep growing a fine enough fleece to handle socks and jackets has a heap of merit.
I went into the local Farmlands one day a few years ago and the manager was in a state of amazement, a busload of Canadian tourists had just emptied the whole rack of Swannie jackets, probably wasnt the only town they'd done such a raid in.
And, as I've mentioned in previous posts here and on-the-road blog, I'll never wear synthetic socks again, currently all cotton, but maybe one day soon, high-tech shrink-proof wool.

NAIT Deferred

I'm in a sweat over the whole NAIT issue, however noble the vision is.
For the life of me, I cant see what the difference between a visual bar-coded tag and an EID one is, in the realm of traceability.
I guess it does give the X-box generation who will eventually take over running the show a button pushing continuation into their careers, but I dont think an electronically based system is wise.
Anybody who's been without power after natural disaster like a flood or earthquake for any length of time will be able to attest to what life in a power outage is like, electronic toys totally useless.
And we're contemplating basing a whole industry on it?

One of the major irks I suffer with the tagging requirements is tag loss.
At least 30% of my beef cows have lost one or both their tags by CFA time, probably more like half of them.
Right now I've got a 5 year old bull that needs moving on, lost one tag, which means, under ASD rules, I have to go through the inconvenience of sourcing a replacement tag, not to mention actually getting it into the ear of a 1500kg animal who's not going to be all that enamoured about the job.
Re-tagging after loss of one tag needs to be seriously looked at, I mean, what exactly is the point of a backup tag?

So OK, one might say EID's going to make life easier, if you've got a tag-reader.
Tag readers dont replace missing tags for you.
I've started using EID's and already, some of my 2010 born calves have lost their backup number tags, which ushers in a new problem.
To find out who the missing animal is, have you ever tried reading the number on an EID tag without glasses, or a reader?

Too many of our policy inventors havent walked the necessary mile in their victims shoes.

More Industry Navel Gazing

Dont know whether the KPMG got commissioned by anybody important to us farmers, or whether its just another group of headbangers sounding important, but its report released yesterday has some interesting comments, compiled from interviews with "more than 80 agribusiness leaders".
They say a national agribusiness strategy is needed so industry wants and vision can determine long term decisions.....
Uh huh...
The key recommendations contained therein open up worthwhile issues for discussion:
> Introduce a bio-security levy on passenger and product arrivals, they say for researching incursion threat
   - but I'd say, better spent on expanded border policing
> Tax incentives to allow young farmers to invest in farming businesses
   - disagree, incentives are a distortion to rational money flow
> Skills incentive program to attract qualified people into the rural orbit
    - disagree, its that incentive word again, and I think they're including in this one targeted student loans
       I'd sooner student loans implement a system where they actually got paid back
> Charge farmers for water taken for irrigation
    - fair enough, but what about where farmers have paid to build their own scheme?
> Greater degree of integration on carbon strategy
    - dump the lot
> Industry task-force to establish needs of international markets on sustainability so that a production code can be set up
    - arent we already there?
> Greater meat company control over stock ownership to better manage plant throughput
    - that's easy, they can put their money where their mouth is and buy it, some companies already do,
      or the other way round, why didnt they suggest more farmer ownership of meat companies
> Greater collaboration along the value chain on meat, wool, wine and dairy
    - well, dairy's been there for some time, wool, we gave it a decent shot, meat, coming along, so's wine
> Explore organic market opportunities
    - great, except polls say few seem to want to pay the extra, in the face of cheaper conventional stuff

and I've left the doozey for last...
> Minimum stockmanship standards to be met before a farmer is (get this), licensed to own animals...

So how will this work?
Another layer of bureaucracy adding cost and decreasing profit, and with a further prospective role to play if/when NAIT gets properly rolling too. You can bet your balls some boffin will dream up a national births, deaths and marriages register for farm animals, if it isnt already in the pipeline, (and I bet it is), so that will have to have a qualified professional to oversee farmers returns, and comment on every death over and above "normal", (and who's going to say what's normal).

This whole suggestion of permitting me to do my business on an asset bought and paid for with my own family's blood, sweat, and tears, is just a bad joke.
Another example of the non-farm community extracting tribute by way of witch-doctor mongering.
Like with the possibility of farmers having to be licensed to own and run quads, the people charged with qualifying us, will probably know less about the subject than we do.
I havent been visited by the OSH Quad Squad yet, but how many of them coming to tell me how to suck eggs will have run a farm motorcycle (without serious accident) since 1966, how many of them will own and run 5 motorcycles, quads and ATV's (and pay the ridiculous registration fees on each), how many of them will have held a full motorcycle road license since 1970, how many of them will have ridden 20,000km in the states in USA where helmet-wearing isnt in the law and not seen any negative impact on statistics, let alone on a farm for 45 years.
How many of them will even have been born before then?
Of course, they'll come up with accident statistics, but they'll probably skim over the fact that over 40% of fatalities on quads are smart arses from towns who think their country cousin's machinery is mainly for demonstrating their thoughtless toy-thrashing prowess on.

The constant higher moral ground barrage on farming isnt helping it's future.

Lamb in North America

Mate in US sent me this cutting headed, "Low supply, high demand fire up lamb prices".
According to Glen Fisher, immediate Past President of the American Sheep Industry Assn, its almost a perfect storm, US demand is up, imports are down, and prices have soared.
Last year's May delivery price was $1.39/lb, this year its around $2.20.
Last year 156 million lbs of lamb was slaughtered, about 30% of it purchased around Easter, and Christmas.
The price is so high there's a bit of market resistance, retailers to the ethnic market (Hispanic, Middle Easterners, Africans), are saying theyre refusing to retail at $7/pound.
Thats not a bad mark-up!
Others are saying the demand is still strong even at that price.

The article says US has about 5.5 million sheep, with Texas and California leading the nation. Roughly 35% of lamb traded is imported.
About 1/3 of sales are through non-traditional markets, smaller processing plants, farmers markets, direct sales off farms, and local butcher shops, and this market is growing surprisingly quickly.
The larger 2/3 goes through commercial plants and supermarkets, and they appear to be worrying the higher prices and low supply might cause loss of market share. The director of producer relations for one of the nations larger lamb processors is quoted as saying there needs to be more product in front of the consumer so if theyre thinking about it they can easily find it, and that there has to be a happy medium where everyone can make money and the consumer can still find it.
Read into that what you will.

The article goes on to mention huge drought assisted drops in the Australian sheep population, and the dairy challenged NZ numbers as contributing to the lowered supply, plus drought in Texas, but activity has picked up in Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio.
There's also been increased interest in sourcing local product, and Super Wal-Mart has decided to sell only local lamb for the next 2 years.

The tighter supply of wool stocks is also noted, pushing wool prices to a 20 year high, amid near-record prices for cotton, and for oil-based synthetics.

Fisher says the sheep association plans to increase sheep numbers by adding 2 ewes per operation, or 2 ewes per 100, by 2014. They also plan to increase average birth rates to 2 lambs per ewe, and to raise the slaughter rate by 2%.
This program should result in 315,000 more lambs, and 2 million lbs more wool, worth an estimated $71m lamb and $3m wool receipts respectively.

Fisher runs 3100 sheep on his Sonora, near Houston, Texas, operation.

Consider all the above in the context of imports being dearer, and therefore put under pressure, by the US Treasury's keeping the USD devalued by printing more dollars, to maintain a currency parity with China.

Frankly, I wish the US sheep producer all the best.

More Dom Puke

The editor's lead article "Time to pluck the rural geese a little harder", had another go yesterday, further displaying his ignorance.
Now us farmers are multi-million dollar businesses sponging off their fellow citizens, he says.
Hello??
Wage earners forever fail to appreciate they dont pay their tax, their employers do. Like every business, I've got an archive of cheque butts plainly showing monthly employee PAYE deductions drawn on my business account.
We pay for their Kiwi-Saver as well.
Further backs up my statement of yesterday, the self-serving urban animal is only too eager to turn and bite the hand that feeds it, in the name of this mercenarily adaptable term "fairness".
Then he goes on to say, if profitability is really that bad, why dont we get out and do something else.
That's an allegation I've had thrown at me before by someone with a plus $100,000 taxpayer funded salary to defend.
That other idiot from the Greens alleges farmers deliberately purchase farms then claim the interest as deductible expense so they can live a high life, then cash up, to carry on the bourgeois existence.
In all my time I've never seen any farmer do that.
I've seen plenty stepping stone their way into bigger and better properties though, ordinary battlers starting out with little on the road to better.
It would be a shame to see this ruined by the "fairness" brigade getting their way with property and capital taxing.
We persist in this game for the challenge to go out every day in the hope of doing our task better, and beneath it all, failure isnt an option.
Almost an irony to appear the same day, and one that I hope wont be missed by Dompost readers, was Jon Morgan's column on the East Coast Regions Ballance Farm Environment Award winners for this year, Steve and Jane Wyn-Harris.
The ethic and philosphy Steve's applied to his work, his farm, his austerity and judgement, are all we other runners in the race that is farming aspire to, but not achieve quite as well as he has.
Thankyou for that Steve, and Jon Morgan, for once again doing the rural community such good service in bringing this part of the awards process out so well.

The Dompost editor is a dick, capital letters.