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He talked to about 100 stud and commercial farmers, as well as beef industry stalwarts, at a Beef Expo celebratory breakfast, in Feilding, last week reports The Manawatu Standard.Professor Goddard said EBVs work, but there are unknown factors.”We know how EBVs work. But the genes that contribute to them – we don’t know.”He said there were many genes that contribute to factors such as growth rate, meat yield, and fertility, for example, but only one for colour.As if that is not enough of a problem, when it comes to beef breeds, markers need to be relevant across many breeds.

“The problem is that we are measuring a marker, not the actual gene that causes the effect. The marker might be a good predictor for the gene in Hereford, but not in Angus.”Prof Goddard said that means markers have to be really close to the causative gene, that way they have more chance of working in other breeds.People buying bulls for commercial use don’t need to know about DNA at all, he said, rather they could just buy based on EBVs as they do now.”But for stud breeders, they have to decide whether it is worth getting DNA tests for their bulls or cows in order to get more accurate EBVs.”

Getting DNA tests could allow breeders to ascertain whether an animal is good far earlier than usual, Prof Goddard said.”If you want to select a bull whose daughters are fertile, for example, at the moment you have to do a progeny test on the bull and that takes years. Whereas the DNA test is available at birth, so if you had a good test for female fertility, you could select bulls for that when they were calves.”"At the moment, tests are about $200. Our calculations say if it was reasonably accurate, that would be worthwhile.”He was hopeful the cost would come down as the test becomes more common in the future.

From the Livestock Improvement Corporation’s (LIC) website, the dairy industry is using DNA results to come up with better dairy cows.

AHB chief executive William McCook said the prosecution showed the AHB would take action against farmers who fail to abide by livestock movement regulations. “It is clearly unacceptable that one man put his fellow farmers at risk for his own pecuniary gain. Selling cattle from a herd that is suspected or known to harbour bovine TB could have serious consequences for the national TB control programme. “We know a vast majority of the 73,000 cattle and deer farmers in New Zealand willingly comply with movement control restrictions and expect us to come down hard on those farmers who do not.

“This conviction sends a clear message to the farming community that the AHB will vigorously enforce the rules around the movement and sale of infected herds. “This complements the other methods we use to control the spread of TB such as monitoring compliance by checking animal identification and status declarations at sale yards and shows. “We also audit animal movements out of movement control areas, investigate overdue TB tests, act on complaints and, as with the Muir case, take action through the courts when necessary,” Mr McCook said.

“When it finished, there was a big sigh of relief of not being in the fish bowl and we were quite happy to not have any of that stuff happen for a little bit.” But with the benefit of time, he and wife Stacey realised they had got a “huge amount” out of the Meat & Wool New Zealand scheme, Mr Young said. “It improved our farming out of sight and was worth a lot of money to us.” Their profit more than doubled, he said.

The growth did not just come from a rise in lamb prices – returns were up in the third year even if the lamb price from the first year was used – but from a significant rethink on farm systems and diversifying where the farm income came from.

Many monitor farms had focused on lifting production levels to generate more income, but the Youngs wanted to lift the farm’s profitability by finding other ways of making money from their 460ha. Production was a factor in boosting profit, but a change in the mix of products and the way they farmed helping achieve the most benefits.

Better pasture management did bring production gains, and to a lesser extent a shift in breed from romney to grow bulk ewes, a romney-texel-poll dorset cross. This shift in breed was starting to pay dividends now but it was looking beyond his traditional land- use mix that made the biggest difference.

The lambing percentage did not lift dramatically, with salmonella brandenburg a problem last year, but average growth rates improved. Even though they were killing at the same time, average weights had lifted from 16-17.5kg to 17.5-18.5kg, Mr Young said. They had been understocked and were letting the spring and early-summer grass get too long and lose quality. By getting on top of that feed, they were able to produce better feed through the rest of the summer and that helped keep lamb growth rates up, he said.

A steak from a limousin-angus heifer raised by sisters Kathy Child and Yvonne Hill, of Whangarei, was judged the overall winner while an angus steak from Chef’s Choice, Whanganui, won the overall best of brand section for retail and wholesale butcheries. Angus also took out the first three places in the best of British breeds section. The four-day expo in Feilding is a shop window for many breeders who will be hoping to lure breeders and commercial farmers to their on- farm sales over the next two months reports The Dom Post.

Scottish cattle judges and angus breeders John and Marion Tilson chose a hereford as their champion bull of the sale, with an angus as reserve. The hereford, owned by Charles and Margaret Lee, of Leelands, Elsthorpe, was described as “a powerful bull with a lot of meat on it”, and later sold for $9000 to Bruce Robinson, of Kokonga Stud, Waikato.

When the angus bulls came up for sale the auction venue was filled to overflowing, reflecting the breed’s sudden lift in popularity since its steak of origin success in recent years and last year’s McDonald’s angus burger deal which has seen a premium paid for beef meeting the AngusPure contract conditions. The high point of the angus sale was a line of bulls from an evaluation trial, a group of young bulls gathered from throughout NZ and run together for 12 months while they were weighed, analysed and evaluated. One of the best of these, Turiroa Power, from Rick and Andrew Powdrell’s Turiroa Stud at Wairoa, fetched the sales’ top price of $26,000. The buyers were Colin Williams and Charlie Dowding of Kaharau Stud, Gisborne.

Auctioneer Bruce Orr, of PGG Wrightson, said the bull had good growth figures and was well- muscled, but what most excited bidders was what he described as its x-factor, an air of supreme self- confidence. Nine other angus bulls sold for five figures and the sale average for 34 bulls was $8425, well above last year’s $6650 average.

The expo’s other sales, of shorthorn, murray grey, simmental, south devon and charolais, were tame by comparison. The simmental sale was the most disappointing, with only seven of the 14 animals catalogued selling.

He said two hill country farmers he spoke to said there seemed to be a greater awareness of the erosion problem coming from the hills reports The Manawatu Standard. The sustainable land use initiative (SLUI) programme was developed around voluntary whole-farm plans which assess the farms’ physical, environmental and business resources in a structured way. They are funded by Horizons in partnership with the Government on a dollar-for-dollar deal, through MAF’s hill country erosion fund.

“The two farmers were enthusiastic supporters of the whole-farm plan approach and working with the council to develop planting programmes for the highly erodible country, ” Mr Carter said. He asked the farmers if there was more acceptance amongst the farming community for erosion protection. John Cousins, who farms at Pohangina, where the helicopter landed, said 10 per cent of the property was now planted. But he had not lost any production and carried the same number of stock as he had before the planting, he told the minister. Craig Mitchell, Horizon’s group manager of environmental management, said there are 245 whole farm plans, of which 203 are being implemented. These projects have translated into work on the ground, all aimed at reducing sediment yields from hill country into river systems and include more than 150 kilometres of fencing; 1325 hectares of forestry planted; 19,100 space planted poplar and willow poles; 700 hectares of riparian retirement.

The other 42 which had had farm plans done were on hold, as the farms were on the market or they had experienced a bad year, or other issues, Mr Mitchell said. “We’ve arbitrarily capped whole farm plans at 100 a year and we have no trouble getting that 100 a year because that is what can be managed by the people involved and funded by the community.” He said the idea is that by year 13 or 14, there will be 1500 whole farm plans done and they’ll be implemented.

The Nuffield scholar and M&WNZ director says in the EU supply chain funnel, the power lies with the big supermarkets. In the UK, the big four supermarket chains – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – have boosted their market shares and collectively hold about 75% of the market. Because of their power in the supply chains, these supermarkets are able to pressure suppliers to discount prices, resulting in lower returns for farmers.

This has led to other players, like processors, in the supply chain looking at consolidation. Parsons says a good example is the Brazilian beef processor JBS, which started as a small abattoir in Brazil’s Midwest. It has ballooned in size in recent years through a series of acquisitions in the US, Europe and Asia to become the world’s biggest beef exporter, processing an average of 35,000 head of cattle a day.In Australia, JBS already has an extensive presence on the eastern seaboard.

The operations of its Australian subsidiary Swift Australia, includes 10 meat processing plants and five feedlots. Parsons says JBS also has the advantage of sourcing beef products globally and concerns around foot and mouth disease in Brazil is not an issue for the company. “Who wouldn’t want such a company to come to NZ,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if JBS is not in NZ soon.” .Parsons says it all comes down to who controls the supply chain.

Normalised earnings figures – with exceptionals taken out to leave only meat industry activity – for the four largest meat companies over the past five years show combined earnings in 2008-09 were well below the five-year average even though turnover and assets employed increased.Average margin on sales was just 0.7%.“You can all see from these numbers a train crash is coming.”

In 2008-09, 19 companies and 36 plants killed 25.6m lambs. Average weekly kill is just 42% of potential capacity. The picture for beef, Anzco’s core business, is only marginally better: export processing plants fell from 36 to 32 with an increase in annual kill from 1.96m to 2.22m over the same time period. Average kill is 56% of capacity.“The train crash is coming because there’s too much capacity in regards to the livestock supply and the second thing is lack of profitability,” He told the monitor farm meeting only two players in the NZ meat industry have paid tax every year in the past decade “and they are Alliance and Anzco”. Harrison also highlighted market share statistics based on EU sheepmeat and US beef quota allocations.“There’s been a huge drop for Silver Fern Farms (SFF) and Alliance has now overtaken Silver Fern Farms as the largest sheepmeat company. Affco’s flat and Anzco is climbing. That tells you some story.” Beef trends are similar, with SFF having suffered “a huge loss of market share” to the US, though it remains the largest player at about 56,000 tonnes..

For all the talk of fragmentation, the NZ meat industry today is the most consolidated it has ever been in its 128 year history, with SFF, Alliance, Affco and Anzco handling 75% or more of both the sheep and beef kill. However, there is no point trying to create a Fonterra-type model, or even having that debate, because sheep and beef farmers have never backed collectivisation, he says. “In the end farmers will come back to choice.”

Companies were getting better returns than for beef, so for lamb to be so well placed in price suggested someone had done something right, Dr Woodford said. “I think they’ve got Europe pretty well sussed but always, of course, they could do a little better.” He told attendees at Meat & Wool NZ’s new Meat the Future field day last week that he expected New Zealand’s meat industry would need restructuring to survive, but did not believe that would lead to a Fonterra-like mega-company. It would probably lead to two large companies – one a co-operative, the other an investor-owner – and maybe some other smaller niche businesses, he said.

While currency exchange and recession concerns had created problems for the meat industry, Dr Woodford was optimistic about the global market for lamb and the opportunities for NZ farmers. Lamb production was static or declining in most developed and developing countries, which meant no-one was going to flood the market. That created opportunities but also challenges, he said. There were about 1 billion sheep in the world, but many were in countries such as Somalia or Nigeria, which would never have an impact on where New Zealand sold its product.

Sheep numbers have been declining in New Zealand for about 25 years – about 35 million compared with 70 million in the 1980s. Australian numbers peaked at 150 million about 20 years ago, but that had dropped to about 75 million, while Argentina’s numbers were down from 24 million to about 12 million. Uruguay had 9 million, down from 24 million, while China had shed 15 million to about 135 million. Many of those countries’ stocks would never recover because of extensive land degradation, such as on the Mongolian grass plains, he said.

The lamb market in the United States was more complex but sheep numbers were down from 50 million sheep 60 years ago, to about 7 million. Most young and middle-aged Americans had probably never eaten lamb, he said.

Mr Proctor said he had seen too many shot and savaged livestock over the past few years on the property, off SH5, as illegal hunters target private farms and blocks for their shooting expeditions. “I’ve had poachers leave dogs on the farm overnight which have attacked sheep within a short period of time. I’ve had up to 20 ewes at once killed, and if you’ve ever seen a sheep still alive with half its face peeled off you wouldn’t think twice about shooting these kinds of dogs.”.

“Shooting dogs seems to be the only way to get through to these people. While it seems harsh to punish something that doesn’t know any better, it seems to be the only way to get the message through.”Mr Proctor was responding to a story in Hawke’s Bay Today last Thursday about illegal hunters and poachers hitting properties off the Taihape and Puketitiri Roads.

“We are in the same situation – we are getting poached on a regular basis.”Over the past five years he and neighbours had seen farm deer and cattle shot – most of it taking place during the winter. “I’ve had fences cut and stripped back to allow farm deer into the wild. I’ve had gates smashed open and padlocks cut and shot to gain access through my farm. Padlocks at $100 a pop and fencing at $20 per metre. Cattle around $600-700 dollars each and hinds around $500 each … it doesn’t take long to add up to a costly amount of damage. Then there’s the time it takes to repair as well as patrolling at night till 3am to find these mongrels. It just seems to go on and on.”

Police were out stopping and checking hunters and their vehicles on Waitara Rd last Saturday. “They are being pro-active,” Mr Procter said.