Matt Iremonger is General Manager and an equity partner in a sheep, beef and dairy business on Banks Peninsula and the Canterbury Plains. He grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Murchison, took a commerce degree with honours at Lincoln University, and spent a short spell at the New Zealand Wool Board before deciding against office work.

He and his wife Katy came home from an OE in 2003 with nothing and talked PGG Finance into financing the lease of a 500ha sheep and beef farm in North Canterbury. Five tight years taught them how to run a business, and that land prices were rising faster than they could save. An equity partnership followed and, when they were looking for the next step, their bank manager put them in front of the Thomas family, who they joined in 2017.

The research question came from home. When the business bought its dairy farms, Katy and their daughters Alice and Abby asked what could be done with the bobby calves instead of slaughter at a few days old. He applied to Nuffield intending to answer it on farm, through an integrated dairy and beef system, with the possibility of utilising composting feed barns. The Value Chain Innovation Programme tour in November 2022, seven days on a bus with Lincoln University’s Hamish Gow, changed the question. If nobody at the far end was paying properly for the meat, no farm system would save the calf.

Matt’s Nuffield report, What’s the beef? Opportunities for beef on dairy in New Zealand, was published in February 2024. About 1.8 million non-replacement calves are slaughtered each year, and his case is that this continues while the calf is a cost to minimise rather than a product with a customer. He recommends grain finishing for Asian markets, closer coordination between dairy farms, rearers and finishers, and beef grading.