Dairy chairman Willy Leferink, who instigated the discussion, said he was concerned that farmers might not appreciate how much work the federation did on their behalf and might be confused about who did what.
The federation depended on its voluntary membership for funds while all dairy farmers who produce milk supplied to a dairy company pay a levy to DairyNZ of 3.6c/ kg milksolids produced. DairyNZ also received money through government funding but didn’t go out to bat for farmers on a raft of issues, such as local body rates, Leferink said.
“I have no problem with DairyNZ provided they operate in a space where they can get value for the farmer,” he said.
“But when they take the limelight away from the federation farmers can rightly question whether they are getting value from us. Beef + Lamb doesn’t have the same potential to do this as DairyNZ.”
The federation lobbies for dairy farmers on environmental matters where it was active politically, if not more, than DairyNZ, he said. And DairyNZ couldn’t grumble to the Government about some matters because that was where a portion of its funding came from.
“There is a bit of concern that DairyNZ is pushing itself in the policy space. Having said that, we are working very well together on a lot of avenues and I’m personally reasonably comfortable where I am with them. But it’s something we’ve got to watch.
“We don’t have enough people to go around – not enough scientists [and other experts] to do all the work on the environment.”
Feilding dairy farmer Andrew Hoggard has family reasons for seeing things from two perspectives as he’s one of Federated Farmers’ Dairy vice-chairmen while his sister, Kimberly Crewther, is DairyNZ’s general manager for policy and advocacy.
He believes the stronger the industry policy voice the better. Issues which involve the federation often resulted in one team sitting on one side of a table and non-government organisations and officials on the other.
“And usually there are many more people on their side than our side,” he said.
“So I don’t think we are in a position where we can have too many people saying the same thing. I think there is room for everyone to be involved.
“But it does mean all three organisations constantly need to be making sure they are complementary to each other. You don’t want the exact same job being done by three different people three times on these issues.”
This called for good lines of communication, knowing who is doing what and knowing how they are doing it. All three organisations at some time probably had been guilty of taking too much credit for work done by others, Hoggard said.
“But by and large for 95% of the time everything works well and we are doing the best we can for farmers.”
He gave credit to DairyNZ specialists for enhancing his understanding of the science around water-quality issues and Dr Rick Pridmore, DairyNZ’s strategy and investment leader for sustainability, had done a huge amount of economic analytical work critical in helping get a better outcome from Horizons’ One Plan.
“Everyone had a part to play,” Hoggard said.
“It was a team success.”
Vaughan Beazer, Federated Farmers’ North Canterbury Dairy chairman, said DairyNZ science and advocacy had been hugely helpful in dealing with Environment Canterbury on planning issues.
“DairyNZ helps to collate and quantify how [the council’s] decisions are going to impact on people and they are able to individually assess impacts on farms,” he said
“They are very helpful in working together as a team with the Primary Growth Partnership, too.
“We do have our separate areas but we can work very well together, and by sitting around a table together with the likes of Fish and Game we can start to get things going and get pragmatic solutions.”
At those meetings, he emphasised, “we don’t beat others’ egos up and what you initially thought about an issue may not be what you finish up thinking”.
