Jeanette Maxwell likes Doug Avery's advice: nothing good has been ever been invented by negative people. They do not innovate, create or inspire

By Jeanette Maxwell*

After Fieldays one of our staff bumped into Marlborough’s legendary Doug Avery.

Doug was in Hamilton as the immediate past Landcorp Communicator of the Year, the 2014 title being deservedly taken out by our own Bruce Wills.

Doug’s resolute positivity is his most outstanding trait.

That and a good sense of humour because his farm was heading for disaster until he discovered Lucerne and, if you excuse the farming pun, that saved his bacon.

Doug, like our Bruce, is a passionate and proud sheep farmer. 

Last year though, Doug’s farm was a only a few kilometres from the epicentre of the Seddon earthquakes.

As such it was badly knocked about and I can sympathise on that score because finally, some four years on from the 2010 Darfield earthquake, the builders are moving in as we move out. 

Doug told our staff member that nothing good has been ever been invented by negative people.

The negative do not innovate, create or inspire. Sure they may be able to rally some people some of the time but that doesn’t last.

Doug also said you shouldn’t run from problems.  Sage advice. 

We all know meat and fibre has been through the blackberry and we may look at dairy as being ‘lucky usurpers’ but we forget our industry is an $8 bln export one.

As a point of comparison, tourism may earn $9.8 bln but we Kiwis don’t import much in the way of food but we do love to travel abroad.  With the high kiwi dollar that’s either a downside or upside depending on your point of view.        

As I prepare to step down next month as Meat & Fibre chair, Doug Avery’s advice rings true to me. Avoid people who moan unless they offer a solution.

Sheep to me are the perfect livestock and we’ve tended to see it as a dual use animal farmed for its meat and fibre. What would you say if sheep became a tri-use animal by adding dairy to its bow?

While the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation puts the global share of sheep milk at just 1.4 percent, in terms of who we export to or are seeking to develop relationships with, the potential becomes a huge one. 

In South East Asia, sheep milk accounts for 3.9 percent of milk production, in China it is 4.2 percent while in North Africa and the Middle East, it hits 7.5 percent.  In Iran, the International Dairy Federation puts sheep milk as number two behind cattle.  Dairy sheep play a significantly larger role in these markets than dairy goats.

I suspect that will surprise quite a few people.  It surprised me.

I am not suggesting we trade in our cows because milk quantity has a quality all of its own.  Then again, quality generates a financial quantity all of its own too.  Sheep milk contains much higher milksolids than cow milk and with a similar taste, commands a premium with consumers because it is easier to digest. 

Last year, the United States imported about half of the world’s sheep cheese, some 34,000 tonne, yet that country only has just over 5,000 milking sheep.  It has been estimated it would take 600,000 sheep just to meet local demand and highlights the tightrope we’re walking between supply and demand.  There’s little surplus milk for export, be it sheep, goat or cattle.

This American potential highlights Federated Farmers bottom line on the Trans Pacific Partnership. 

Nothing less than the full elimination of agricultural tariffs in the TPP will be acceptable to us.  We’ve been bitten before by promises so New Zealand has only one shot to make the TPP worth it and that’s at the get-go.  Failure is not an option because the right TPP will open up Asian markets building on the free trade beachheads we have in the Middle East.

Earlier this year greater commercial interest in sheep milk saw the International Standards Organisation extend ISO to the measurement of sheep’s milk protein, as well as goats.

Locally, Landcorp is eying the potential of dairy sheep and when you put that together with the sheep genome’s mapping and a potential TPP, suddenly, you can see the sun. 

More so with Southland’s vertically integrated Blue River processes sheep milk into cheese, ice cream and milk powder with that last product overwhelmingly exported.  2004 Ahuwhenua BNZ Maori Excellence in Farming finalist, Waituhi Kuratau, is milking sheep with its Matatoki Farm brand. 

Given environmental factors here, dairy sheep could play an important role in our primary future as sheep evolve into a tri-use animal with dairy.  This would greatly aid the rejuvenation of our industry and potentially put New Zealand back on the sheep’s back.

With meat slowly getting its act together, a grower led wool levy in the offing I can say my glass of sheep milk is half-full.

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 Jeanette Maxwell is Federated Farmers Meat & Fibre chairperson.