Spending nine days in the north island of New Zealand was a great holiday. I always endeavour to assess how other areas – in this case New Zealand – are faring in livestock prices, when away.
However, I have to say that information coming from the rural press was very limited, and gave very little indication that would give a Australian farmer much information at all.
The ACCC has recently released a number of guidelines for improving the collection, collation and reporting of prime and over the hooks grading and prices. All of this comes from that one fat cattle sale held at Wodonga’s, Barnawartha market back in February 2105 where buyers have been accused of “boycotting” the market.
Outcomes from the ACCC enquiry were all around transparency in the livestock industry. Well, from what I gleaned from the NZFarmer, a Fairfax publication, producers are given very little information.
I discovered, through further investigation, that most of the livestock in NZ are purchased by sales direct to the processor.
Therefore, my only guide to prices was the back page of the NZFarmer, issued October 24 this year. This had a graph on ‘Meat Schedules’ that included Beef (300kg Prime) North Island, $5.20, Beef (300kg Prime) South Island $5.50, Lamb (17kg) North $6.00, and South Island $5.70, and Venison, North and South $8.70 and $8.80, respectively.
This was followed by a graph of ‘Store Pricing’ that had 2yr Steer, again for the North and South Island at $3.00 and $2.95. 1yr Steer for the North and South $3.10 & $3.25 and Lamb (32kg) $2.65, which was for both islands.
Next was ‘International meat prices’: Beef (US imported 95CL) $6.04 and Lamb (Export value) $8.35. The back page article also covered Dairy commodities and Wool – also one liners.
I don’t know about you, but from my perspective, this information is totally lacking. Then I guess it does come from across the ditch.
While I was there I copped flack about the Australian rugby team, and more importantly the coach, but if NZ farmers can only rely on this small and poor information, then maybe we should send our ACCC representatives across to NZ to stir the possum.
Next to these graphs are four paragraphs, one each for Beef slaughter, Beef international, Sheep and Dairy. No wonder NZ farmers come here to Australia to farm.
As a market analyst, and former market reporter for MLA, I find this lack of information disturbing. We in Australia, spend many hours covering prime and store markets, giving factual information, even if the ACCC don’t think so, to give producer, and others in the industry, pages and pages of factual information.
Why, to make sure that producers are very aware of market trends, competition, and to give a good picture of the present, and future trends. Not being privy to the reasons behind NZ agricultural reports, does lead to limited conversation. One can only assume that the severe lack of competitive prime markets, only leads to short and uninformative reports. There are not even any decent weight categories in the reports. One would think that NZ producers only sell livestock at the range given. But we all know that doesn’t happen. I must say that most of NZ is looking pretty good.
*More on New Zealand next week.
