Dairy farmers might feel, on balance, that $6-$6.30/kg milksolids is not a bad outcome from a week of introspection on milk production, price, environment and Mycoplasma bovis disease.
Only in Southland, where rain has reached Biblical proportions, will milk production not be setting season-to-date records.
Fonterra has consulted the weather gurus and thinks 3% seasonal increase will result. The current industry rate is 6%, Fonterra’s own collection is up 5% and its South Island supply is up 7.5%.
Number crunchers believe Fonterra is being unduly pessimistic about milk flow and optimistic about price.
Now into the second half of the season the direction of travel is set and the outcome is in sight, albeit a little blurred.
With climate change sirens wailing in Poland and Paris our dairying environmental leaders took heart from conferencing in Wellington and from the targets achieved around riparian retirement.
Taranaki’s water quality improvements are a credit to all landowners who fenced and planted and to the communities that encouraged and helped.
Consent compliance inspections by regional councils have also trended positively.
Farmers cam also take some heart that most New Zealanders don’t form their opinions from billboards written by Greenpeace and Peta or from Fish and Game fulminations about intensive dairying.
DairyNZ ended up with the M bovis bill for industry biosecurity response while Beef + Lamb NZ contributes small change.
The Ministry for Primary Industries claims the war is being won, that the number of properties under regulatory control is falling and bulk milk testing is proceeding well with low numbers of new infections.
Summer has begun begun positively, except in Southland, and perhaps it is time for urban New Zealanders to ponder why their beaches are polluted and pay for remediation.
Hugh Stringleman
