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May 2013
INSIDE ‘Tight Five’ to address issues Page 2
DOC and Fonterra a perfect marriage Page 8–9
Introducing new generations to the equestrian lifestyle
By Hugh de Lacy
A ‘Tight Five’ of industry experts is to be assembled by the Meat Industry Excellence Group (MIE) as big turnouts to farmer meetings round the country demand a restructuring of the loss-making industry. From the first meeting of more than 1000 farmers in Gore in March, producer demand for reform has swept up the country, with upwards of 500 attending each of the half-dozen meetings held at the time of writing. Meat-and-wool-farmer gatherings on such a nationwide scale haven’t been seen since the compulsory wool acquisition furore of the early 1970s. Tapanui, West Otago, sheep and cereal-crop farmer, Richard Young, is fronting the campaign as MIE chairman, and “The Tight Five will be the brains trust that will develop models we’ll take back to all the stakeholders,” he told Canterbury Farming.
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“We’ve got to come back with probably three or four models — who knows? — and then find the one that suits everybody best. “An important process with this Tight Five too is that all the stakeholders have got to have input, because if they do the adoption’s going to be a hell of a lot easier at the end of it.”
was much more widely based than earlier ones. “This time it seems everybody realises we can’t carry on doing what we’re doing. “The status quo’s no longer an option. “The companies are saying that too — not all of them, but everybody’s on the same page,” Young said. For reform to take place it was vital that farmers buy in to the process since they were the biggest stakeholders through their farm businesses and their co-operative ownership of around twothirds of the processing and marketing sector. MIE has otherwise set the goal of getting 80% buy-in of the off-farm sector to the development of a model that will “get this red meat sector functioning the way it should be, profitable and sustainable for all.”
No names had yet been put forward for the Tight Five because MIE was still seeking the buy-in of farmers.
Young said at present all the meat companies “are doing a lot of good stuff, and they’ve got a lot of good people as well, so it’s using those skills that are already in the industry, putting them together to stop the duplication between companies in marketing and innovation.”
Young said the current drive for reform of the meat industry
The model chosen would not necessarily require the
amalgamation of the two big co-operatives, Silver Fern Farms and Alliance Meats. “The co-ops believe that amalgamating in isolation (to other industry developments) would cost them business, and I tend to think that if you just amalgamate the co-ops all you’re doing is rearranging the deck-chairs. “Perhaps we need to address the direction of the ship,” Young said. The need for farmers to drive reforms arose because the industry body, Beef and Lamb NZ (BLNZ), wasn’t empowered to do that job. BLNZ was a key player in the Government’s $65 million Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) plan, which aims to build on the findings of the 2010 Red Meat Sector Strategy document by reducing beyond-the-farmgate gaps in technology transfer, and by improving co-ordination between organisations and individuals working for farmers. The Red Meat Strategy didn’t cover industry structure because it was outside the parameters of the PGP. “But we believe that there are huge gains to be had on
Richard Young is assembling a team of top industry experts to spearhead a new meat industry excellence initiative
the procurement side and the marketing side, but at the end of the day it’s all got to be marketdriven,” Young said. The MIE wanted its restructuring initiative to be inclusive, and in the short term the organisation was aiming to get a wider geographical and representational spread among farmers. Funding would be a later consideration, and “Every stakeholder — if they want a
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better industry, they’ve got to invest in it. “We’re funding ourselves at the moment just with farmers’ support. “At the end of the day every stakeholder within this industry and every industry-good body have got a part to play, because to get the best results we’re going to have to employ some pretty top-line people, and they don’t come cheap,” Young said.