Tradable slaughter rights idea useful but may not be the answer

The Tradable Slaughter Rights concept, raised by me several weeks ago and promoted last week by Mike Petersen, was first proposed by Pappas, Carter, Evans and Koop in 1985. But its purpose was specifically to solve the problem of an industry that consisted of a lot of weak competitors with little innovation or variation in killing charges. The report identified excess costs between farmgate and shipside of $100 million or 8%.

Fixed price contracts not the answer

When farmers want certainty of income and livestock prices aren’t very good, thoughts often turn to fixed price contracts. But they have never really taken off because I suspect neither farmers nor meat exporters are very keen on them, although Silver Fern Farms continues to offer its Backbone contracts with reasonable uptake.

My experience of Parekura Horomia

You may well ask what this has to do with either business or agriculture and the answer is nothing very much! But I would like to mark the death of Parekura Horomia with some personal comments which are based purely on my experience and contact with him before he became an MP.

Meat Industry Excellence Group’s campaign warms up

The MIE organised farmer meeting in Feilding on Friday was attended by about 700 farmers which one speaker from the floor compared unfavourably with 2000 at the Drought Shout. However there is obviously an increasing level of support for substantial change to the meat industry’s operating method which results in volatile market returns.

Lies, damned lies and statistics or historical facts about sheepmeat

A brief comparison of sheepmeat and milk solids prices since 1991 throws up some interesting facts. These give the lie to the belief that the dairy industry is consistently more profitable than the sheep sector.

Cracks appear between farmer groups

It hasn’t taken long for the cracks to appear in the ‘united farmers for change’ movement started by the Meat Industry Excellence group which held its first meeting in Gore a couple of weeks ago with a resoundingly successful response.

ANZCo’s published result confirms anticipated loss – but could have been worse

ANZCO’s financial result to the end of September 2012 was posted on the Companies’ Office website on Friday in compliance with the statutory requirement for private companies. ANZCO reported losses of $25.6 pre-tax and $19.2 million after tax. We now have the details for the big three meat companies which publish their results and, as anticipated, none makes pleasant reading – total pre-tax losses of $140.4 million and post-tax $102.2 million.

Farmers need to agree what they want

The recent meeting in Gore, organised by the Meat Industry Excellence Committee and attended by about 1000 farmers, gave an overwhelming mandate for change to the present condition of the meat industry.

Possible meat industry solution proposed nearly 30 years ago

In 1985 the Meat Industry Council commissioned a report from consultancy firm, Pappas Carter Evans & Koop, entitled Cost Competitiveness in Export Meat Processing which proposed a solution to the problems of the industry. Unfortunately, in view of the history of the industry since then, the recommendations were never implemented.

Red meat farmers call for industry consolidation

Not for the first time, sheep and beef farmers have called for a single processing and marketing company representing 80% of the red meat industry.