The Motutapu Farm managing director leases just over 1500 hectares on Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf from the Department of Conservation and earlier this year hosted Remuera New World owner Adrian Barkla and the store’s chief butcher there to see its grass-fed farming methods.
Then an initial shipment of 500 two-year-old prime Angus steers was sent to Wilson Hellaby for processing.
The resulting branded primal cuts flew off the supermarket shelves, prompting plans to repeat the exercise soon. There had also been inquiries from other supermarkets, which, Braddock said, as a relatively small producer he would struggle to fill.
“I want to walk the walk and we have had a really good response,” he said.
“It does work. There is a pull from the consumer to know the provenance of their food.”
Not only were shoppers paying a premium for their beef, they could also contribute to the Motutapu Island Restoration Trust, which had planted more than 500,000 natives raised in its own nursery and was controlling weeds.
“We want people coming into the store and asking for that beef,” he said.
“It’s no different to buying a bottle of wine and wanting to know how and where it was made. We run a food business, not a farm business because there’s not much of a future in selling commodities.”
So, now, on behalf of his agricultural investment advisory business, Awanui Consultants, he was going to China to see if the same connection between farmer, processor and consumer could be made to create premiums for chilled sub-primal cuts from New Zealand.
That meat, which made up two-thirds of the cattle beast, was favoured by the Chinese who liked to cook beef dishes for longer than Kiwi diners.
“We have to get to the Chinese housewife to buy NZ beef mince because it’s healthy and good for her child or children,” he said.
“We can tell that story and get those premiums. There is the opportunity there. We just haven’t connected all the dots together.”
Already he’s made contact with one public Chinese company with a good distribution system throughout the country, which could result in new supply arrangements for beef farmers here.
“All of these things take time,” he said.
But already a video of cattle being farmed on Motutapu Island was on WeChat, a popular Chinese social media platform with nearly a billion users.
Braddock hoped that introduction to NZ grassland farming might get an even wider audience on national television in China.
He believed NZ beef had never been farmed as prime beef because the concentration was on supplying the hamburger trade in the United States with manufacturing beef.
“Hamburger patties have no traceability and no value-add,” he said.
There were issues for the dairy industry with bobby calf slaughtering that made it sensible to diversify.
“And I don’t see the dairy herd growing at the same rate as it has in the past so what is going to happen to dairy grazing land?,” he asked.
“We’ve had this disconnect between farmer, processor and consumer.”
That was something he had been involved in putting right through Ngai Tahu Farming, of which he was a director.
It had sent prime beef cuts processed by Anzco to Blue Apron, the US equivalent of My Food Bag, for over a year, along with CostCo, the world’s largest retailer of choice and prime beef.
“There’s a raft of other companies interested,” he said.
“Farmers are not paid enough for their excellent products.”
Lamb was already fetching well over $6 a kilogram and Fonterra had lifted its forecast for the new season to $6.50/kg milksolids.
“There’s no reason beef can’t be well over $6/kg too. Then why can’t we all aspire to $7?”
