Pace of change keeps getting quicker

Perhaps it’s my advancing age, but it seems as though the changes facing agriculture demand ever faster reactions and responses to stay ahead or even just to keep pace with a whole series of challenges: public expectation, government regulation, consumer tastes, changing climate patterns, and new technologies as well as the usual ones like finances, human resources and health pressures, both physical and mental.

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How much meat do we actually eat?

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” is a quotation which Mark Twain attributed to British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Over a three week period the Sunday Star Times is conducting ‘an investigation into how environmental concerns are putting the heat on meat.’ Although much of the first article in the series was balanced and fair in its commentary, the main conclusion was clearly wrong, based as it was on misleading statistics published by the OECD. These appear to show a dramatic drop in the amount of red meat, particularly lamb and mutton, New Zealanders are eating.