Farmer Bruce Rowe and prime minister Christopher Luxon.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Agriculture Todd McClay heard at Mystery Creek how low farmer confidence has dropped last week.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addresses farmers at Mystery Creek, as Federated Farmers President Wayne Langford looks on.
The message came from Federated Farmers national president Wayne Langford at the Federated Farmers Restoring Farmer Confidence Tour.
The organisation had surveyed its 13,000 members across 24 regions for 12 years and Langford said confidence was the “worst it has ever been”.
High interest rates, inflation and compliance costs had hit farmers in the wallet.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re sheep, beef, arable or dairy. There’s a large number of farms that have been bumping some bills out month to month and a lot that have only just come right recently,” Langford said.
Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest company, raised the midpoint of the 2024-25 season forecast farmgate milk price in November to a record $9.50 a kilogram of milk solids, but it is only about $1 a kilogram of milk solids above breakeven for the average farmer.
Langford said the National-led government had “come through” on nine of a dozen action points the organisation had asked for. It is still waiting for a law change allowing young farmers to access their KiwiSaver, a rethink of the Emissions Trading Scheme Forestry Rules and building the farmer workforce through immigration reform.
Luxon, rural caucus in tow, told the meeting there was nothing more important to New Zealand than the rural sector.
“… about 13 per cent of our people work in this sector, about 350,000 people, you have 40 million people being fed all around the world because of what you do. You are 80 per cent of all our export earnings and, importantly, you generate $10,000 for every man, woman and child in this country.
“You were the sector that powered New Zealand out of Covid. You are the sector that powered New Zealand out of the Global Financial Crisis, and we need you to power us out of this recession that we’ve now had for three years thanks to the last lot,” Luxon said
Luxon said the sector needed better communications and to tell more good news stories to mainstream of New Zealand.
Farmers were complaining of spending a quarter to a third of their time on compliance, rather than farming, Luxon said, so the Government had spent its first year cutting the red tape that was “calcifying the sector and slowing it down.”
He said the last government “went to war on farmers”.
McClay told the crowd every time the Government found a rule that did not work it cut it.
Ōhaupō dairy farmer and Waikato Federated Farmers vice president Andrew Reymer said he was not surprised to hear farmer confidence was at rock bottom but “we will see it start to turn”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon
