Is there an air of helplessness pervading through the sheep and beef industry? If we judge interest in issues of this sector by responses in this blog, maybe farmers are without hope that profits will return.
Lots of responses to dairying, ETS and environmental issues, but silence on the future of beef and lamb.
The statistics do not make good reading with Beef + Lamb NZ predicting a $34,000 profit this year, before tax and debt repayments, in effect another loss.
Radical changes are needed to return to sheep and beef farms to profitability, as only so much of the country can milk cows.
Janette Walker and Jon Morgan are doing their bit to fire up ideas for a solution to a major problem in agriculture.
Have sheep and beef farmers given up all hope that their fractured industry can be mended? Are they battered down by the negativity, the self- interested greed, the back-biting and blinkered short-sightedness? Beef + Lamb NZ is working on a strategy document that it intends to air by year's end - maybe they are waiting for that. But in chatting to farmers at several events recently, I have got the feeling that while the anger is still strong, a sense of exasperated helplessness has taken over.
Janette Walker, an outspoken sheep and beef farmer at Pongaroa, in northern Wairarapa, sums it up when she says farmers are sceptical about the difference they can make. They have retreated behind the farm gate and "got used to being peasants, just eking out a living". She quotes figures gathered by Taupo farmer Mike Barton, who is analysing sheep and beef farming income over the past 25 years. In 1984-85, gross revenue for the average sheep and beef farm was $132,000, compared with 2007-08 when it was $340,000. So, clearly, income has improved a lot.
But so have costs. In 1984-85, after costs and before tax, the sheep and beef farmer had a surplus of $70.60 a hectare. By 2007-08, that had fallen to just $13. Here is another figure, from Beef + Lamb: the average sheep and beef farm income, after costs, this year is likely to be $34,000. Take tax and mortgage payments from that, and many will be in the red - again.
Ms Walker conducted a loose survey earlier this year - she advertised in a farming weekly asking farmers to respond to a questionnaire, and 20 per cent said they had never been in profit. One of the statistics that surprised her was that 44 per cent said they were forced to work off the farm to prop up their business.
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