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NZ dairy advisor cautions Australian meat producers

Updated August 05, 2015 11:51:54

Livestock producers are being cautioned by the dairy industry to separate fact from fiction while red meat prices remain buoyant.

The global trade in dairy foods has delivered another sign of major over-supply.

The latest Global Dairy Trade auction overnight left the weighted dairy commodity index down 9.3 per cent; its ninth consecutive fall.

Dairy NZ advisor, John Roche, said there were lessons from the dairy industry's fall for other livestock sectors.

As a guest of the Tasmanian red meat industry, Dr Roche said when prices were good, New Zealand dairy farmers and industry participants should have been more sceptical of what they were told.

"Traditionally they were the darling of the world, they were the low-cost milk producer to be emulated by everybody," he said.

"With increasing milk price came an increase in expenditure that didn't return the value that the expenditure should.

"[They were] largely paying for purchased feed, and with purchased feed reducing pasture utilisation and therefore reducing the return on assets.

"As a farmer said to me a couple of weeks ago, 'if you pay someone more for something, they'll find a more expensive way to make it'."

Dr Roche said the major thing he wanted to get across was how to separate fact from fiction.

He said busy people like farmers needed to be discerning about what they were told or read.

"Not just read everything and believe glossy magazines," he said.

"With magazines and sales people ask three questions in particular: Where is the data to support what you are saying? Was it published? And if it was, can I have a copy of the paper and then where was the work under-taken?

"With rising prices they tend to get a little bit more lax with that manure-detector.

"They buy things that the don't necessarily should."

Topics: beef-cattle, cattle-feedlots, dairy-production, sheep-production, pasture, agricultural-prices, inveresk-7248

First posted August 05, 2015 11:47:16

Original author: Rosemary Grant

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