Saturday, March 30, 2024

Knowledge key to survival

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It is almost too late to be able to help some of the more than 500 dairy farmers and sharemilkers who attended recent meetings organised by the Rural Support Trust, DairyNZ and Federated Farmers.
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“There was a small group who were in quite some trouble,” AgFirst chairman James Allen said.

But genuine and immediate help was available at the end of the meeting so they could make a start on resolving their particular problems.

Allen spoke at six What Are My Options? meetings in Gore, Ashburton, Palmerston North, Hawera, Whangarei and Cambridge. 

He was accompanied by Federated Farmers sharemilkers employers’ section chairman Tony Wilding at some of the meetings where the breakdown of attendees was about one-third farmers, one-third 50:50 sharemilkers and one-third variable-order sharemilkers.

Three key areas where changes could be made to business management strategies to help farmers and sharemilkers go forward were communication and negotiation, the people side of the business and business management options.

“One key message was the importance of having a shared business plan so there was transparency in accounts amongst partners in a business,” he said.

“It’s not that common.”

Sharing allowed all parties to make the best of a tough situation because they could see where the other party was coming from. 

And when negotiation was needed over changes to the farm business it could be easily seen how that would affect the other party, especially when looking for a win:win situation.

“There’s a lot of talk about changing the amount of feed bought in but that shouldn’t be an emotive discussion,” Allen said.

There was the opportunity to bring a third party into the discussions such as a neighbouring farmer, a rural professional or someone recommended by the local Rural Support Trust. 

While the process should have already occurred, ad hoc decisions had been made on some farms that had resulted in people leaving the industry.

“That’s not widespread,” he said.

“But while we do have some really good behaviour in the industry we see some that’s not.”

Now it was a case of focusing on good communication and planning for the season ahead.

“Everyone is concerned about a third bad season,” he said.

“The payout is what you can’t control but the focus should be on what you can.”

Some farmers attending the meetings had put their emphasis firmly on good business management and were looking again at the amount of pasture they harvested.

“They’ve got their platemeter out again and are looking at things more analytically,” he said.

“By using less supplements they’ve found there’s still money on the table even in a season like this.”

It was also important to keep positive even when it seemed there was bad news every day.

An evaluation was likely early in the new season that would look at whether a further seminar series was needed to check on progress.

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