2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship. Apply by 17 August 2025. Read More...

Apply for 2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship by 17 August 2025. More details...

kellogg 2016

An opportunity to grow peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) commercially in Northland.

Executive summary

The Peanut (Arachis hypogaea), also commonly called ground nut is a summer growing legume that has been identified as a potential cash crop for Northland Farmers.

Peanuts have been grown in New Zealand in the 1980’s but the enormous labour needs at harvest have prevented large scale production. With the availability of modern machinery large scale peanut production is now achievable. The Far North District Council and Northland INC have identified the Mid North as a possible site for a peanut processing factory. This study looks at peanut production from a world perspective right through to the opportunities for New Zealand and Northland farmers.

The data from this study shows that a peanut industry could be a viable option for Northland farmers through growing and marketing a premium product that would attract a premium price.

Reuben Carter

Understanding the perspective of New Zealand sheep and beef farmers: Effects on the market orientation and farm performance in the red meat industry

Executive summary

With debate surrounding the structure and strategy of the New Zealand red meat industry, the time is right to explore constructs around the market orientation and performance of New Zealand sheep and beef farmers. Market orientation was determined by studying customer orientation, competitor orientation and inter-functional coordination. These factors were considered alongside cooperative membership, level of education attained and ownership of sheep through the marketing channel.

Results indicate that there are some very moderate differences between cooperative and non-cooperative members, though there was no statistical difference between various levels of education attained and ownership of sheep through the marketing channel using principal components analysis, MANOVA and discriminant function analysis.

Redundancy analysis was used to analyse the variability in market orientation in relation to ten variables being price, production, quality, relationships, planning, innovation, learning entrepreneurship, trust and commitment. Planning, performance and relationships were the most powerful variables. The theoretical framework and model was applied to a usable sample of 131 sheep and beef farmers from all regions of New Zealand and is a study which is a preliminary step to gain insights for more in-depth empirical research in the near future.

Ange McFetridge, MacFetridge