Rural roundup: Sex sorting; tough for PGGW; Fonterra wants to share

Here are a selection of current stories from agridata.co.nz Sex sorting technology could reap millions A potential breakthrough in livestock semen sex sorting may add hundreds of millions of dollars to NZ's dairy exports, reports Stuff. Androgenix, a new company based at Auckland University's Institute of Biotechnology, has been developing for almost three years a cost-effective process for sexing semen. Co-founder and part-time chief executive Brent Ogilvie said he's hoping to confirm Androgenix's technology works this year. If successful, Androgenix will be able to offer semen sex-sorting technology to livestock insemination companies that is relatively low cost but with high fertilisation rates two problems that have plagued others attempting to control the sex of livestock born. Read the rest of this entry » Tough start expected for PGGW Flagging farmer confidence last year will likely lead to a muted interim half-year result for PGG Wrightson on Thursday. The rural property market has taken a hit over the last 12 months with sales dropping coupled with an increase in mortgagee sales. Also last year, the Reserve Bank warned lenders about providing too much debt to the farming sector and many of the rural banks tightened their lending criteria over the last six months as a result, reports The NBR. This was partly because banks are more exposed with farming debt and because of an international push for banks to hold more capital and be less leveraged. In short, it became more expensive for farm lending. Read the rest of this entry » Fonterra encourages others into web selling Fonterra wants other large dairy companies to join its website auction for milk powder reports The Manawatu Standard. The co-operative is now selling about 20 per cent of the milk powder it produces on globalDairyTrade, but it wants to expand the web-selling mechanism. The trade manager of globalDairyTrade, Paul Grave, said web sales were a tool to manage global uncertainty over dairy prices. "In forward sales, someone wins and someone loses. If a customer loses, they are not happy and Fonterra doesn't want an unhappy customer. If Fonterra loses, our shareholders aren't happy." The price of milk powder used to change by a few hundred United States dollars a month, but now it can be US$600, Mr Grave said. "We can't live with those fluctuations." Read the rest of this entry » For up-to-date schedule and saleyard prices, see - Bulls - Steers - Lamb - Wool - Dairy cows - Stags