Beef and Lamb NZ, wants to use the farm, and half a dozen like it, for its demonstration farm programme. Richard Wakelin, general manager of the organisation’s farm section, said the new programme would sit alongside the existing monitor farm programme. Mr Wakelin said he hoped the new programme would be in place by October 1 after the Beef & Lamb NZboard had decided what should be included reports Stuff. The board would be asking “what are the key big hits that we need to strategy look at?”.

Mr Wakelin said he didn’t want to wait until October 1 if there were options worth immediately exploring. “If there was something already running and could be brought to the board sooner we need to be looking at that,” he said. Dr Gavin Sheath, AgResearch’s commercial team leader for agriculture and the environment at the Ruakura campus in Hamilton, told a dozen farmers attending a rare field day at Whatawhata in November that the laboratory-equipped station was under-utilised.

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A rural think tank is looking at ways to increase the profitability of beef weaners.The group of eight farmers, chaired by former Environment Waikato chairman Jenni Vernon and funded by Beef and Lamb NZ  benchmarking their farms in a bid to lift weaner profits by 5%.

Waingaro farmer Baden Broughton said the initiative would get farmers off farm and sharing informartion with each other. ”Farmers are usually left to their own devices but we are going to get a lot of information.” Mr Boughton, who farms 300 cattle and 1100 ewes, thought the $550 he was selling weaners for, at the moment, was a good price and he wanted the think tank to explore profitability in other less performing areas of the farm reports The Waikato Times.

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Sheep and beef sector leaders are being urged to put away the knives, dump their pessimistic and negative attitudes and work together for the good of the industry. M&WNZ chairman Mike Petersen, who yesterday announced the organisation’s name change to Beef and Lamb NZ, seven months after sheep farmers voted to dump the $6.3 million wool levy, vented his frustration at the organisation’s AGM, held at the Waitomo Cultural and Arts Centre in Te Kuiti.

Mr Petersen said short term negative thinking was stifling the sector’s opportunities reports The Waikato Times. “I am not expecting everyone to become a cheerleader for the sector. However, it is time that industry leaders and leaders within the wider farming community put away the knives and fought for this sector more than they are doing now,” he said.

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