Dairy industry facing crisis

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Dairy industry facing crisis

3News NZ

By 3 News online staff

The international dairy industry is facing a crisis with extreme drought in the United States and price wars in Europe.

The volatile global scene could be a blessing for New Zealand's dairy industry, offering new opportunities.

“There’s a lot of volatility in the dairy international markets, and you’ve got the volatility in the weather as well and that has a big impact on supply. Here in New Zealand it wasn’t that long ago that we had our own drought […] all that impacts on the production side of the equation,” Federated Farmers’ Conor English told Firstline this morning.

“There’s a whole lot of political things going on at the moment, the exchange rate is bouncing around all over the place […] so there’s a lot of variables here and it’s very hard to predict where it’s going to go,” he says.

Two years ago a number of complaints were made about high dairy prices locally, leading to a Government inquiry into milk prices, but Mr English says prices are falling. “Maybe there should be an inquiry into why the price of milk’s gone down 8 percent in the last few months,” he says, “wasting taxpayers money on having inquiries doesn’t change the price.”

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Comments

23/08/2012 10:14:17 a.m.

Richard wrote:

Fonterra will be hoping the world doesn't find out about the 4000kg of pure 1080 poison being spread over our forests, streams and waterways. Only a fool and the naive will believe the poison doesn't make it into our food chain.

11/08/2012 4:10:53 p.m.

Aaron wrote:

@Mike forget free trade for dairy nonsense, we should be getting out of this ghastly business and cropping alternatives, ones that don't hinge on animal cruelty and exploitation.

16/07/2012 11:05:58 a.m.

Mike wrote:

On the other side the Greens always on about 'Fair Trade' for imported products - why dont they argue for Fair Trade for NZ dairy?

NZ produces the cheapest internationally traded milk products in the world. If take the 'Fair Trade' applied to imported coffee etc, we should ask to have NZ pay a premium for Fonterra milk, if only they spend some money on the international political group 'Fair Trade' that the Greens support. Oh wait, charity doesn't start at home with the greens who want to see everyone but NZ benefit from trade?

Instead of supporting 'Fair Trade' they could support World Trade, and be against protectionism like the EU's which blocks most outside trade.

Take Lamb production in the world, NZ totals around 4%, yet in internationally traded lamb, we are about 80% of the worlds since so much lamb trade is blocked. ie for every lamb NZ trades, another 20 are blocked by restraint of trade! This is why NZ still exports to the UK (going back to WWII dated agreement, ie pre EU), but the rest of the EU our lamb doesn't really have a chance to compete as its excluded. For such a huge market the size of the EU to block trade is unfair. Lets have some Fair Trade for everyone and stop all the protected markets!

16/07/2012 10:48:57 a.m.

don wrote:

well history has taught us that this is the way to do it, rather than try to buy into local Chinese production with the risks of corrupt practices such as the melamine incidents tainting our international reputation