Is a Milk Co-op a better option?
Independent Contributor
Once again the world has gone completely mad…..the Australian processors lift their opening prices…..as the Global Dairy Trade auctions are falling….go figure. Yes that’s right many processors have lifted fifty cents to a dollar at the same time as the last three GDT auctions fall, the last by 4%. But with domestic consumption circa 70% and no serious farmer owned co-op to compete with, the harsh reality is we have a pack of price setting supermarkets and international owned companies, meaning the price is almost solely reliant on processor competition.
I have a 700-cow farm in NZ and almost left Fonterra this year for Open Country Dairy, a NZ privately owned company….but then I watch processors here justify screwing Aussie farmers to wherever the competition dictates. If it wasn’t for such a serious drought in Victoria/SA they may not have competed at all. Like last year when they all opened at a pretty lazy $8/kgMS.
I was sick of Fonterra’s catering to whatever some methane/cow hating activist told them to do. We even have a Swiss mob encouraging us to produce low methane milk, what a load of bulldust! The measurement is designed by some shiny ass consultant who has never milked a cow or picked up a calf, and doesn’t understand the enormous variables involved. Notwithstanding the fact that we are feeding the world efficiently already.
But I stayed with Fonterra, at the end of the day I know that I am getting paid my full share of the milk profit.
Although it’s tough to understand the logic of sacrificing yourself to a green agenda, when Fonterra spend millions pulling out efficient coal boilers to put in wood chip boilers or electric (that cost a fortune to set up and a fortune to run), all while our main export markets install more coal power plants….and even dumber, NZ is importing low grade Indonesian coal to supply our grid!!!
For once is actually good to see some parity in the Trans-tasman milk price, NZ$10 similar to AU$9.20…..although our average production costs are $1/kgMS less…..and the All Blacks are better…..careful Chris the sheep jokes will come…..No problem got the ‘Underarm Incident’ up my sleeve….