Frustrated sheep farmers Don and Kaye Register have organised a public meeting in Tapawera which Minister of Agriculture David Carter will attend on February 3. Don Register and his wife, Kaye sweated away dagging and cleaning up their sheep on their farm, Homebush, at Tui near Tapawera. Then the sheep were shorn but when the wool cheque came, Don got a bit angry reports Stuff. "I thought, `Oh, hell, it's hardly paid for the shearer'," he says. He was still steaming when a note came in the mail saying their MP, Chris Auchinvole, would be at the Motueka A&P Show. "I said, `We'll go to the show as well and catch up with him', and I told him exactly what I thought and I wanted him to take a message to David Carter. "So he said straight away, `Why don't I bring David Carter to see you?"' That's what he will do on February 3 at the Tapawera Hotel, where the Registers have organised a public meeting for farmers to put their views and hear from the minister. The message to the minister will be blunt. "We ain't happy with the situation for meat and wool," says Don. "It's shocking." As they struggle to survive on low returns for their wool and falling prices for meat, he and Kaye question how long they can keep going, and the industry's future. Don believes it is going backwards. Kaye says: "When we first came here 20 years ago, our wool was like a matted carpet, and yet it was worth $5 a kilogram. Now it is beautiful wool and it is worth $2.50 a kg. That's half what it was, but inflation has gone up goodness knows how many times in those 20 years." The couple have just over 1000 stock units on their 156-hectare farm, with 500 ewes and 600 lambs, plus 40 beef cows and their calves. Last year, they thought they were on the up, along with meat prices. "We got optimistic that this was the recovery that sheep farming needed. It was suddenly looking healthy after 20 years of heading down." Their top price for lambs last year was $129 a head and they averaged $99. However, that has now changed, with prices about $70 and the schedule falling. That's half what Federated Farmers has been aiming for with its T150 campaign target of $150 for a lamb's meat and wool.
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