Lamb bucks commodity price falls

M&WNZ says despite falling commodity prices worldwide, lamb is bucking the trend of falling prices for NZ agriculture exports. MIA chairman Bill Falconer says reported sales returns from its member companies from lamb are well up on those 12 months ago."This is illustrated by data which shows earnings for lamb cuts to the EU are up 30% on the same time last year, and racks and forequarters into Asia and the US are up 28%. "This is significant and even with uncertain times given the global financial crisis, we remain cautiously positive going forward," Falconer said. M&WNZ chairman, Mike Petersen says farmgate prices for lamb, currently up 25-40% year on year, was a positive trend for the industry. "We may see softer consumer demand given the economic downturn, but that is likely to be offset by the tightened supply of lamb globally," Peterson said. Falconer said while beef export prices to into North America had come off their 2008 peaks, current returns are still 25_30 percent ahead of 12 months ago.The position for both lamb and beef is somewhat better than that shown for a number of the other agricultural commodities where the ANZ price index figures showed a considerable decline in earnings for the month of December," Falconer added.