The Chairmen and CEOs of farmer organisations from five of the world's major beef exporting nations, making up the Five Nations Beef Alliance, are meeting in Northland this week to consider how to make beef production more profitable.
M&WNZ Chair, Mike Petersen said NZ was hosting beef producers from Canada, the US, Mexico, Australia and NZ in the forum set up to progress trade policy and technical issues. "This is an opportunity M&WNZ takes every 18 months or so to deepen our relationships at the highest level with other beef producing nations. These relationships are very important in ensuring that we are able to work together on common issues as they arise in key markets.
"An important component of the conference is the farm tour which allows us to show, farmer to farmer, the farm systems we use in NZ to deliver high quality beef products to global markets." Mr Petersen said many of the challenges NZ farmers faced were similar to those encountered by the other nations.
"In the more formal part of the conference we'll be talking about how we can approach specific issues together. Challenges we all face include the growing dislocation between producers and urban consumers and the impact that this has on perceptions and expectations on production practices, including animal welfare and sustainability."We expect that this will also be a useful opportunity to understand different countries' approaches to climate change and whether there is an opportunity to forge a combined approach to ensuring that agriculture is treated appropriately in global climate change policy."
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