Dairy

I have conducted many interviews over the last few months throughout the bobby calf supply chain, these have been conducted in person and via “Teams” meetings over the internet. Some of the interviews have been recorded, and others who wanted to remain anonymous I only took notes. Once I had conducted all my interviews I broke down the information into common themes to ascertain what current value these calves currently contribute to our economy and was their life a life worth living? Did that life add value?

I explored the ways that we can get dairy farming women into New Zealand boardrooms to see better outcomes for our businesses and economy. This is not about men versus women or disregarding the importance of experience, it is about what we need to do to be closing the gender gap on boards, having diversity of thought around the boardroom and avoiding ‘group think’. It is about the individual having the confidence to bring their true self to the table and express their views.

The aim is to understand the current plant breeding technologies and compare them to the controversial genetic technologies which have recently become available to New Zealand, such as genomic selection, marker-assisted selection, genetic modification, and gene editing.

As demand begins to exceed supply access to water, or a lack thereof, will likely lead to increased social and political instability and tensions between neighbouring countries – particularly when there is a shared water resource involved. Although New Zealand is unlikely to face some of the more extreme challenges that will arise globally, we will still have our own unique issues to overcome as a country. Already we are beginning to feel the impacts of a changing climate with more extreme weather patterns. In 2020 much of the country experienced what many described as the worst drought on record. The issue is, this drought was not the only catastrophic drought in living memory – in fact, it wasn’t even the only catastrophic drought to hit New Zealand in the past decade. Only seven years earlier we had experienced similar scenes across much of the country.

There are ongoing and increasingly growing challenges for sustainability, environmental limits, and pressure for greater efficiencies. Emergent and developing trends in plant-based proteins are creating movements and shifts in consumer demand and food production. Health and nutrition are influencing consumer demand more than ever. Throughout this study, a greater understanding was sought in the global positioning of alternative proteins and within the New Zealand context. This was then used to identify the considerations required to evaluate the importance of alternative proteins to the Agri-industry in New Zealand.

Corporate social responsibility (C.S.R.) is maturing rapidly in modern times as a way for companies to reflect the values of its customers, employees and investors. Dairy is facing rising compliance as expectations of consumers and the public grow. Society is putting more emphasis on the impact of their food purchasing decisions resulting in rapid change for Aotearoa dairy farmers. Dairy farming in Aotearoa is a unique business in that it is non-competitive at the supplier level. Farmers are not competing with their neighbour or any dairy farm, as they are all collected by a processor.

This Kellogg project explores how ‘ready’ we are as a sector to capture the potential value of diverse dairy enterprises across different parts of the value chain, everything from farmer or grower to consumer. There is also building pressure and urgency around finding pathways to capture opportunities such as: adding more value to non-replacement dairy calves, positioning our New Zealand Food and Fibre products away from commodities and towards products with genuine market differentiation as well as understanding the role plant based proteins will play in New Zealand’s food future.

With increased protein demand from the agriculture sector, ever increasing compliance costs and high land prices, adding more operational layers and diversity to an existing system is an option to some businesses. This business plan focuses on integrating pasture raised egg production into an organic dairy farm but has relevance to any farming system. The … Read more

This research and affiliated report asks the question: Can New Zealand Dairy farmers re-gain control of their narrative from inside the farm gate? The dairy industry is New Zealand’s largest good exports sector, contributing 20% of total exports while bringing in $17.1 billion dollars into the New Zealand economy (NZIER, 2018). As dairy has grown … Read more