Posts Tagged ‘dairy’

No Right Turn: Ending dairy in Canterbury

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, September 3rd, 2019 - 146 comments

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn writes: “Environment Canterbury has finally proposed nitrogen limits to stop dairy farmers from poisoning Christchurch’s water supply”

NZ Tech

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, October 21st, 2016 - 45 comments

The top 200 tech “exporters” are now turning over NZD 9.4 billion. This year revenue increased by more that NZD 1 billion. Which is pretty phenomenal bearing in mind the sluggish world economy. It meant that they grew an additional 3000 odd highly paid jobs in just those top companies. Even this intellectually bereft government isn’t proving to be too much of a hindrance to tech business.

Key is on top of the dairy crisis

Written By: - Date published: 3:28 pm, March 15th, 2016 - 107 comments

Or not.

Safe As Milk

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, March 14th, 2016 - 110 comments

Labour is calling for an urgent summit of the dairy industry players to avoid the looming bankruptcy of one in ten farmers. National’s response? Crisis, what crisis?

Is RBNZ ignoring deflation bogey?

Written By: - Date published: 6:52 am, January 29th, 2016 - 71 comments

Is Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler so concerned about the bogey of Auckland’s housing bubble that he is underestimating an equally nasty bogey – deflation? Deflation will certainly cure the problem of the property bubble, but that cure will be at a terrible cost.

In face of share market meltdown, Govt’s options limited

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 26th, 2015 - 55 comments

John Key says New Zealand has options in the face of a share market meltdown and is not like Greece (well that’s a relief). Simon Louisson asks how real are John Key’s options? Thanks to this Government’s profligate past spending, including irresponsible tax cuts, our options have narrowed drastically.

Milk and media moron Mike

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, August 19th, 2015 - 59 comments

Media moron Mike Hosking blathering on about how self-interested “experts” are always right. He calls these “Facts”. I don’t think that he would know what a fact is if he tripped over a spreadsheet. Meanwhile announcing a reduction in supply has produced the expected increase in prices in the GlobalDairyTrade auction last night.

Shut up and take your medicine

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, July 31st, 2015 - 26 comments

As commentators and dairy industry insiders warn of TPP disaster, the Nats’ message to we the people is shut up and take our medicine – oh and by the way the price just went up.

We’re going to sign a rubbish deal

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, July 30th, 2015 - 106 comments

We’re not making progress on dairy in the TPP negotiations, but the smart money reckons we’re going to sign anyway.

Update: Read what a real journalist has to say on the current state of negotiations.

Bill English’s groundhog decades

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, July 6th, 2015 - 45 comments

Bill English is a strange denizen of National’s Wellington groundhog set. He keeps repeating the wet dreams that have been tried three times now and come up as failures each time. On Q&A yesterday he played with some silly numbers about dairy, ignoring the damage that it and National’s obsessive focus on the past has done on the resilience of our  export economy.

All our eggs in the dairy basket

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, May 28th, 2015 - 157 comments

This government has been artificiality buoyed by a diary boom, now the bust leaves us highly exposed.

NRT: Climate change: Good news on agriculture

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, April 28th, 2015 - 18 comments

New Zealand’s policy on climate change has been one of inaction. A key plank in this is our emissions profile. Roughly 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. We couldn’t do anything about them. Instead farmers increase emissions and turn our lakes and streams into toxic sewers. But AgResearch scientists now have a solution for the emissions.

Police announcement – 1080 threat

Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, March 10th, 2015 - 155 comments

3 News is advertising a special announcement of “national significance” at 3:45. Will update post…

It’s a 1080 threat to the dairy industry – that has been known since last November. Look – over there!

Written in a deep summer haze

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, January 5th, 2015 - 94 comments

I was astonished by an anonymous NZ Herald editorial on New Years day – “NZ economy is in a good place and thriving”. Obviously an inferior intellect was slow cooked in the warm holiday weather. It turned to mush and regurgitated one of Bill English’s wet dreams. Dairy prices are unlikely to rebound any time soon.

Losing money

Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, December 2nd, 2014 - 26 comments

exports trading partners 2012

The economic news is depressing for NZ at present. After riding a dairy commodity boom for the last few years, the payout for farmers looks like it will drop from a high of $8.50/kg last season to $4.85/kg this coming season. Meanwhile National has neglected our most sustainable resource – people. So expect a busted economy for the next few years.

Greens: Falling milk prices highlight danger of National’s economic strategy

Written By: - Date published: 7:11 pm, August 6th, 2014 - 39 comments

This press release from the Greens pretty well sums up the situation that National have left the economy in. Once you remove the rebuild effects from the Christchurch earthquakes, our increasingly undiversified economy is looking in pretty poor shape for the decade ahead.

Dairy drops further

Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, July 30th, 2014 - 35 comments

As expected, Fonterra has dropped the milk solid payout from $7 per kilogram to $6. New Zealand needs a different economic approach for a long term sustainable future that doesn’t rely on strip mining soil and water or other resources. National have been consistently mismanaging the NZ economy in putting far too much emphasis on resource extraction and the systematic degradation of our ability to earn our own way in the world. Time to get rid of National’s lack of imagination and long-term planning from the direction of our economy.

Dairy prices keep dropping

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, July 2nd, 2014 - 90 comments

Dairy prices have resumed their slide, falling 4.9 per cent at the latest GlobalDairyTrade auction overnight. The drop was the ninth fall out of the last 10 auctions. It looks to me like the boom is over. Looking at the rise in production for whole milk powder in China, and increased exports from other countries, I think that it will continue to decline. In the meantime National have been allowing our other export industries to stagnate.

Dairy prices still going down

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, May 8th, 2014 - 51 comments

Yesterday the global dairy trade auction was held. Prices are still going down as they have since Feburary. The rate of decrease was less than previous drops. Only 1.1% rather than the colossal drop on April 1st. Also yesterday Graeme Wheeler, the governor of the Reserve Bank did a speech about dairy which has provided some useful reading this morning.

What use is oil extraction here?

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, March 20th, 2014 - 26 comments

One of the more irritating traits of National politicians is their bone-headed and short-term obsession about being rentiers selling raw and lightly processed raw materials offshore. Sure it is great in the short-term for the seller of the rights to those raw materials, but it does little to nothing for the other 4+ million people […]

Creaming it?

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, May 18th, 2011 - 129 comments

The dairy industry produced 16 billion litres of milk in 08/09. The 17,000 dairy farmers got an average half million payout. So how come they only paid $26 million in tax in total? Are we meant to believe that the average dairy farm makes a million litres of milk for $5,000 profit? Rubbish. They’re creaming it.

Nats’ economic plan: more oil, more cows

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, November 8th, 2010 - 70 comments

We’ve been critical of this do nothing government’s economic record, but now I/S at No Right Turn has received documents that lay out the Nats’ economic plan. They rejected the notion of government, business, and workers pulling together to create a better economy and went with: 1) find lots of oil 2) lots of GM cows.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, April 8th, 2010 - 24 comments

Recently, and for good reason, New Zealanders and the media have objected to companies using palm oil due the deforestation caused by the palm oil industry. For New Zealand to take such a stance, when our diary industry has a similarly devastating impact on the environment, is hypocritical. We need to clean up our own act if we’re going to criticise others.

A farmers’ coup in Canterbury

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, March 31st, 2010 - 38 comments

National’s mates in the dairy industry were annoyed that the elected councillors in Enviornment Canterbury wouldn’t let them have all the water they want. So National has sacked the councillors and suspended local democracy for four years. The diary farmers will pay along with everyone else for their short-termist ‘science be damned’ attitude. But not before they’ve caused long-term damage.

Corporate bully-boys step it up a level

Written By: - Date published: 6:14 am, September 18th, 2009 - 16 comments

The Open Country Cheese dispute is underway. Workers are striking against the bosses’ attempts to casualise their hours and reduce their conditions. They are not striking for huge pay increases, despite the lies of Open Country. Open Country Cheese, part-owned by the notorious Talleys and tied to various National MPs via the Dairy Investment Fund […]

Kiwi Scott Dixon wins Indy 500

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 pm, May 26th, 2008 - 5 comments

Astronomical world dairy prices are to see the traditional champagne replaced with milk on motor race winners’ podiums around the globe next year. What started as a tradition in the Indy 500 back in 1936 will next year be extended to Formula One, the World Rally Champs and NASCAR. Super-heated liquid cheese was trialed briefly […]