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Article published in New Zealand Geographic magazine:

In April 2000, New Zealand honeybees received a death threat in the form of the varroa mite, an insect parasite which, if left uncontrolled, is capable of destroying hives and wiping out bees from entire regions.

Full story here. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/plight-of-the-humble-bee/

 

Articles written for Hayes Knights’ Beyond The Numbers in-house magazine:

https://issuu.com/hayesknight/docs/beyond_the_numbers_issue_13_published_by_hayes_kni/4

https://issuu.com/hayesknight/docs/beyond_the_numbers_issue_13_published_by_hayes_kni/10

https://issuu.com/hayesknight/docs/hayes_knight_btn_issue_12_issuu/12

https://issuu.com/hayesknight/docs/beyond_the_numbers_2017_issuu/4

https://issuu.com/hayesknight/docs/beyond_the_numbers_2017_issuu/8

Editorial written for Rural News, March 24 2020

Amidst the corona virus upheaval, one thing is certain – agriculture will see the economy through.

The world still needs to eat and trade channels remain open. The bedrock of New Zealand’s economy is still agriculture and our main export is of course food.

Farms and orchards will carry on, and with our biggest market China turning a corner with its COVID-19 situation, demand for our produce will remain strong.

In fact, even when the outbreak was peaking in China, prices didn’t suffer as much as expected. In particular, dairy prices held firm. Forward demand for meat is also strong, buoyed by the impact of China’s swine fever outbreak. The fundamentals of food supply and demand remain strong and while there’s a case for reducing our dependence on Asian markets, we’ll be glad of our trade relationship with China over the coming months.

To get us through, farmers will need our support. They’ll need good, trustworthy information. They’ll need the usual inputs from the service and supply parts of the industry. They’ll need some breathing space from political moves that might restrict their ability to operate efficiently.

And they’ll need to know we’ve all got their backs and are grateful for their, often unheralded, contribution during these unprecedented times.

It is reassuring to know farming will get through in relatively good shape. Other parts of the economy will not be so lucky: Travel bans will be devastating for businesses and workers in tourism and the Government’s business support package will be crucial. Job losses, however, are already happening in that industry.

Agriculture is a huge job generator and the Government should be looking to help redundant workers from the tourism industry into the seasonal and permanent jobs in the primary sector. With restrictions on immigration, demand for labour will be high.

There are still some roadblocks in farmers’ way. Dry conditions remain a problem in many areas. More government assistance will help tide over the hardest hit until the rain returns. Banks need to do their bit and loosen their lending restrictions, and the Government needs to change its tone towards farmers. They’re going to need them more than ever.

Photo by Matthis Volquardsen on Pexels.com

*Editorial written for Rural News

The unexpected departure of A2 Milk’s CEO recently was an unpleasant but timely reminder of the destruction of value often seen between the farmgate and the end market.

Jayne Hrdlicka, apparently unaware that working for a global dairy business would involve international travel, resigned suddenly citing “excessive travel commitments”. She was in the job a mere 18 months, long enough to receive a huge share allocation as part of her salary package. She sold a big chunk of those shares, in two lots, making $4.3m and $2.1m respectively.

The news of her resignation rocked the markets, wiping more than a billion dollars off A2’s market value.

There’s no suggestion of illegality here, but a huge question for A2’s board about whether its own decision making on the big calls like appointing the CEO is adding value for shareholders. In this case the answer appears to be ‘no’.

The same questions were of course levelled at Fonterra’s board this year and they also came up a long way short. You can’t argue that a $605 million loss on the back of billions of litres of farmers’ hard work isn’t a huge fail. Theo Spierings, the CEO that presided over the company in the years leading up to this result, was paid $43m during his seven year reign.

That’s the real shame here. All that blood, sweat and tears spent by farmers to produce a high quality raw product for the world and the businesses charged with taking that product to market, despite massive salaries and head office costs, failing to turn a profit.

It’s a wake-up call for all primary producers. Whatever vehicle they use to get their valuable produce to market, don’t take it for granted that the processing and marketing parts of the chain are being smart or efficient or adding any value whatsoever. Make sure. Read the company reports, attend the meetings. Ask questions. Don’t fall for the spin.

To use the colloquial, ‘keep the bastards honest’.

There’s too much at stake in 2020 and beyond to allow such largesse and waste to go unchallenged.

By Adam Fricker

Like a small-scale model of the challenges New Zealand agriculture faces being so far from its main markets, farmers on the Chatham Islands are far enough from the mainland to make shipping inputs in and livestock out a marginal exercise. An Australian coined the phrase ‘the tyranny of distance’ but it certainly applies here.

Rural News took the 2.5 hour flight on Air Chathams’ Convair 580, a graceful 1960’s turbo prop. We came courtesy of Holden who were celebrating their 65^th anniversary with an SUV adventure on Chatham Island, the main island in a scattered group of 25 islands. It’s not a cheap flight, so most of the non-human freight, including livestock, goes by ship.

To ship livestock the 860km due west to the South Island, the Chatham Islands Shipping Company charges $22.90 per lamb or ewe, $53.81 per ram and 52c/kg for live cattle. On top of that, farmers sometimes have underdone stock finished on the mainland before it goes to the works, cutting more out of the already slender margin.

Locals say things like “you farm for the lifestyle, not the money” and while that’s probably true out here, no-one farms to go broke, so targeting better lamb prices, say on the shoulders of the season, is not just smart it’s necessary.

Your options are limited farming low-lying islands way out in the roaring forties, blasted by salt-laden winds that rust out your gear and stunt tree growth. It’s a long, long way to the nearest Farmlands or Wrighties store. A travel story in a 2016 copy of the Manawatu Standard recounts a yarn by an old Chathams local about how his dad once sent him “down to the boat” for more fencing staples. He came back two years later with a box of staples. Poetic licence or not, you get the point, it’s isolated.

The land is not very fertile and shipping fertiliser in to boost production is unlikely to pay off.  They no longer have an abattoir on the island – the last meatworks closed in 1994 – so live export is the only option.

Agriculture is listed as the biggest employer on the island, but this includes fishing and forestry. Statistics NZ figures show that in 2016 farming (including forestry) earned $4.77m for the island, while fishing earned $18.56m.

The sea is the big obstacle for farming and the big opportunity for fishing, easily the main economic activity on the island. It accounts for 40% of the jobs on the islands, farming accounts for 14%, transportation 9% and tourism 8%. Incidentally, the second biggest job creator is government and public services at 20%, but don’t be misled by that figure – the Chathams have fewer unemployed and more self-employed than the mainland average. You make your own way.

This place is famous for blue cod, paua and crayfish. As luck would have it, we arrived on the very day crayfish season opened and enjoyed all these delights of the sea, served with a big helping of Chatham Island hospitality at the Chatham Hotel and again at the splendid Admiral Lodge – both owned by members of the Croon family.

Many of the crayfish hauled up during the season will be live exported straight into Asian restaurants. The blue cod is filleted and frozen then sent to the mainland, or gutted, chilled and sent direct to export markets in Australia. The island has its own seafood processing facilities.

Owners of fishing quota risk their lives to earn a quid, but have seen some good times over the years, perhaps contributing to the interesting statistic of highest Harley Davidson ownership per capita in New Zealand. (That’s still only about 26 motorbikes, and where you’d ride them is questionable).

Back on land, there are 48 farms, 20 of which are described in the book Chatham Islands, First to See the Sun as “relatively intensively farmed”. Eight are extensive grazing properties and the rest are small holdings. While the book says 45,000ha of land is farmed, only 20,000ha is described as “improved pasture”. Soil fertility is a limiting factor: only 18% of the soils are classed as moderate fertility and only 0.3% as high fertility.

Like the mainland, sheep numbers have declined in recent years on the Chathams, falling from 103,600 in 1994 to 59,600 in 2016. Cattle numbers have been relatively constant at about 10,000 head (not counting the wild cattle).

Some have said farming output here has not reached its potential, and the farms being actively farmed do stand in stark contrast to the ‘less intensively farmed’ properties where dense gorse and feral emu flourish. The idea of a more intensively-farmed Eden once again crashes into the tyranny of distance. The shipping rate for a bulk commodity (stored indoors) is $241 per ton. That blows the cost of a ton of superphosphate out from about $320 on the mainland to $561 landed on the Chathams.

Everything costs more here: electricity is twice the mainland average cost per kWh. Many generate their own power with diesel generators. Petrol prices and diesel prices are respectively 1.6 times and 1.25 times the NZ average. And a box of fencing staples takes two years to arrive.

It is likely a low intensity farming model will persist, which seems to suit the rhythm of the islands just fine. – first published in Rural News