Jeanette Maxwell explains out why farmers should back the upcoming wool levy referendum

By Jeanette Maxwell*

While I am passionate about wool, the industry and its returns to growers has sometimes resembled a disaster movie.

Instead of an asteroid hurtling towards earth, like in the film Armageddon, it has been Du Pont’s synthetics.

Instead of Bruce Willis’ fictional heroics, when it comes to wool, the only heroes we can look to are ourselves and some influential allies.

Yet there are some significant movements entrain, which could just make wool more than the quiet $700 million export achiever it currently is.

At that level our wool exports are worth much more than our much-hyped motion picture industry.

It’s also an industry that has attracted star former AirNZ CEO, Rob Fyfe, who has joined Icebreaker as its new Chief Executive. We even have HRH Prince Charles on board providing leadership and mana to the Campaign for Wool.

They see great things for wool and so do we. 

Sheep and beef farmers may have heard about the Wool Producers Referendum, which is set to take place later in the year.

It will ask wool producers to fund a new industry good body that will be funded by a levy on each kilogram of wool, at the first point of sale.

Now we all know the old wool levy was put down in 2009. I don’t want to rehash the reasons why because I fully understand them.

Yet from the standpoint of 2014 much has changed.

While New Zealand’s trade policies have delivered for New Zealand agriculture, the China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement was in its infancy when the old levy was voted down in 2009.  China now accounts for half of our wool clip but the last tariff on wool won’t be lifted until 2019. 

With no industry good body we are exposed should an access issue arise.  There’s also no body pushing wool’s early inclusion in trade agreements coming forward.  The Trans Pacific Partnership is potentially massive for wool, as will be other agreements, but wool’s voice is missing.  This goes well beyond the agreement and tariff phase-out and into regulations that put natural wool behind the 8-ball.

An industry good body could ensure wool’s intrinsic values are recognised in construction codes here and abroad. 

I’ll be frank, we need passionate advocates for wool to help wool products navigate BRANZ processes.  Not just here, but where we export to.  When a major New Zealand retirement village operator specifies only nylon carpet for its village’s here in New Zealand, you know that there is something seriously amiss.

If wool growers back it, the proposed organisation will bear no resemblance to the producer boards of yesteryear.  The Wool Levy Group envisages the structure will be lean, efficient and agile.  It will have no more than a hand full of staff and most activities will be contracted out to those best qualified to undertake them.  This is not about building empires but building the worth of wool to those who grow it.

Another thing we can say, with hand on heart, is that the new organisation will not step into commerce.  That’s the marketers’ space after all. 

Instead, what we desperately need is to give wool a voice ensuring its sustainable and renewable qualities are verified and verifiable.

I am certain commercial companies will see the proposed levy as being an “enabler.”  It will help their businesses become more profitable and successful driving demand for the wool our farms grow. 

It makes a small investment by wool producers at the first point of sale a means to grow the quantity, quality and opportunity for companies to procure, process and sell. It will not compete with commercial companies but will complement them.

As the Wool Levy Group’s Sandra Faulkner puts it, the aspirational vision all wool growers should include: “Sustainably growth across the industry (vs contraction) increasing sheep numbers and wool prices.  Access to entirely new channels, sectors and markets, a thriving vibrant industry that attracts investment and talent and wool widely considered an aspirational purchase and not yesterday’s fibre.”

To me that is a pretty good mission statement. 

The Wool Levy Group is made up mostly of farmers with skin, or should I say, wool in the game. That includes me, Sandra Faulkner who chairs the group as well as Federated Farmers National President, Bruce Wills.  We’ve got breeders represented as well as the manufacturers and the marketers too.

If you grow wool then please think about the future and how we’ll grow wool as an industry.  To me, the levy proposition is a genuine chance to tell the story of wool from those who matter the most, we the growers.

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 Jeanette Maxwell is Federated Farmers Meat & Fibre chairperson.