DAIRY
Traditional spring weather is now returned with strong winds common, and variable pasture growth rates highlighting the importance of regular monitoring. Freshly cropped silage paddocks are now being seen and mowers are busy keeping pasture quality in control.
Dairy NZ advisers are advocating weighing young replacement stock to ensure targets are being met and early action with supplements will address animals falling behind. Dairy commodity prices eased in the latest auction but values are still at strong levels unlikely to change projected payout returns. Milk flows are at record levels and some plants are having problems coping with peak volumes.
Dairy effluent breaches continue to haunt this sector with the recent largest ever fine imposed for a deliberate discharge into a stream, and it was reported half the Resource Management Acts’s prosecutions were because of this issue. The exposure of a butter milk lake in the foothills of the Waikato is unwanted publicity for Fonterra as it endeavours to repair its image after recent negative publicity.
The Shanghai Pengxin group and two existing shareholders have made a take over offer for Synlait Farms 4000 hectares of irrigated land, and re-ignites the overseas farm ownership debate especially in a buoyant rural real estate market.
Latest REINZ figures show a greater number of sales at an increasing price for the month of September, with the nations average price levels now over $34000/ha for dairy farms but properties in Waikato, Taranaki and Otago nearly a third dearer. Analysts suggest prices and demand are lagging behind the positive projected payout news,but caution in the borrowing market and a will by the Reserve Bank to see the dairy sectors debt reduced significantly, is a more important direction than debt fueled expansion at this stage.
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