The Government is expanding its voluntary bonding scheme for veterinarians. Agriculture Minister David Carter says the scheme will expand to cover all practices that deal with production animals. The scheme, launched last year, encourages new graduates to stay in an eligible practice by providing a taxable payment of $11,000 for every year, up to five years, that they are working in the practice. The scheme was originally aimed at practices in specific rural areas. Since then, 20 vets have been accepted into the scheme reports Rural News.

From this year, all practices that deal with production animals like dairy and beef cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry will be eligible, providing the vets receiving the funding spend most of their time working with these animals. Carter says the changes are the result of feedback from veterinarians and the NZ Vet Association.

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Agriculture minister David Carter will visit Mid Canterbury on Friday to see pioneering farmer-driven irrigation schemes using water more efficiently. Mr Carter will look at the Rangitata Diversion Race and its plans for water storage, and at the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation Scheme, which has piped part of its scheme to improve water use reports The Ashburton Guardian.  Five farmers at the top end of the scheme have also recently installed a water turbine that generates high and low pressure water to run spray guns and centre pivots.

 Ashburton Lyndhurst scheme chairman John van Polanen said the turbine was commissioned this week and would slash electricity and fuel costs for those farmers who no longer had to pump water to their irrigators.  The Mid Canterbury plains slope down from the foothills to the sea and the turbine generates water pressure through gravity and a five-metre drop.  Mr van Polanen said the five farmers were not only reducing energy use, but better using the water because it was piped and none lost through evaporation or leakage. The turbine structure cost $570,000 and the five farmers will pay for it over 15 years.

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Agriculture Minister David Carter has appointed an eight-member taskforce to help steer the future direction of the wool industry. “The role of this group will be to build a cohesive, sector-wide strategy to lift the returns for NZ wool. Everyone from growers and processors to brokers and exporters is looking for a common solution.

The taskforce will be chaired by Jeff Grant, former chairman of M&WNZ and the Meat Board. A report on progress by the taskforce is due with the Agriculture Minister by the end of the year and a second wool industry meeting will be convened in early 2010. (more…)

The future direction of the wool industry will be the focus of a meeting called by Agriculture Minister David Carter. Leading wool sector representatives will meet with the Minister in Wellington on 1 October to discuss concerns about the state of the industry reports Scoop.  Mr Carter said that the dumping of the wool levy in the recent Meat & Wool New Zealand referendum has left the sector in a vulnerable position.

“This meeting is not about re-litigating past differences. It is an opportunity for the invited representatives to work together constructively on the future role of their industry.  “The implications of not having a national industry-good body acting for them from April next year are serious and need to be urgently dealt with,” Mr Carter said.

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Latest Reserve Bank figures show agricultural debt continues to balloon at 14% a year and Agriculture Minister David Carter says he is concerned. Carter says it is ‘considerably driven by dairy’ but is not just an on-farm issue, with cooperatives and service companies also heavily borrowed reports The Rural News. ‘This rural indebtedness runs right across the service sector,’ he told a recent deer focus farm meeting.

Latest Reserve Bank figures show agriculture owed $46.6 billion at the end of July, up $523 million from June and $5.9b from July 2008. This is in contrast to household borrowing, which is more or less static, while business debt is falling. However agriculture’s 14.4% year on year increase is the lowest since January 2008 and Carter told Dairying News he believes that growth can be reined in.

Recent increases are largely due to overdraft extensions to get through this season, not new borrowing, he maintains. ‘I think you will see that rate of increase arrested. We have an improving dairy outlook and sheep and beef farmers have returned to profit.’

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New policy for the South Island high country will soon be released by the Government, and Agriculture Minister David Carter expects pastoral lessees to welcome it. In an interview yesterday with the Otago Daily Times, Mr Carter said the National Party had campaigned on a policy of affordable rents for Crown pastoral lease land. “Asked about last Friday’s land valuation tribunal ruling on rent-setting methodology, which found in favour of pastoral lessees, Mr Carter said it was a victory for farmers. High-country farmers had a role in managing the “difficult and fragile environment, in many cases better than some Wellington-based bureaucrat,” he said.

The tribunal found that rents set by Land Information New Zealand (Linz) should not include a charge for amenity values, a move which in the case of Minaret Station, on the shores of Lake Wanaka, would have seen its annual rent increase from $4900 to $105,600. Station owners Jonathan and Annabel Wallis said that was unaffordable and their new rent as determined by the tribunal would be $20,000. Mr Wallis, who was also the chairman of the lobby group the High Country Accord, said in a newsletter while the review meant his rent would increase 400%, it did not mean all lessees faced a similar rise, because some areas had a disproportionate shift in land value compared with others.

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If sheep and beef farmers had any doubt about the need for a workable traceability scheme in NZ a trio of speakers at a recent seminar might have changed their minds reports Rural News. First, Agriculture Minister David Carter warned the 200-plus delegates at the Lincoln Sheep and Beef seminar that Australia would take ‘every possible opportunity to use to its advantage’ its equivalent of NAIT. He also noted that the Waiheke Island foot and mouth hoax highlighted NZ didn’t know who owned what animals and where they were.

Later in the day Silver Fern Farms chief executive Keith Cooper chipped in on the need for a national system. ‘We could, overnight, have a policy imposed on us [by customers] which we are not ready to be compliant with,’ warned Cooper. He said whatever traceability scheme is implemented it needs to be industry-wide with no free-loaders. Other nations are implementing schemes just to gain access to markets NZ is already supplying. ‘This is about market it access… It’s got to be viewed as an investment, not a cost.’

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The farmer who spearheaded the failed bid to merge major meat processors doubts that a new Government initiative will lead to consolidation in the sector. John Gregan, who headed the now defunct Meat Industry Action Group (MIAG), believes there is no real willingness between meat cooperatives Alliance and Silver Fern Farms to work together. Gregan says pressure exerted by the Government on the meat sector is good but a mega meat company is still far away. ‘We take some heart from the fact the industry and the Government are now talking about what we have already raised,’ he told Rural News. ‘It’s certainly encouraging but the ill-feeling among the meat cooperatives is too high.’

The meat sector study, released by MAF last month, reveals stakeholders remain optimistic about the long-term future of the sector. However 87% of the respondents thought that the culture of the meat industry was a major constraint for the sector. Agriculture Minister David Carter agrees the meat sector needs to change for the good of all farmers. Addressing the Federated Farmers annual conference in Auckland last week, he said change in the meat sector would only be lasting if driven from within the sector. Carter, who met stakeholders after the release of the report, hopes that it will kick off a process where stakeholders work together for mutual benefit. However, he stops short of backing a mega merger of the meat processors.

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No farmer has the right to pollute but nor should environmental issues override the economic imperatives, Agriculture Minister David Carter said today. Speaking at the Fed Farmers national conference in Auckland, Carter said the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as proposed by the previous Labour government would not survive, providing the National-led government could secure sufficient votes in Parliament reports Stuff.”I cannot pre-empt the outcome of the Select Committee’s recommendations, but I predict we will end up with an ETS, but a far more balanced one.  The PM [John Key] has always said that environmental concerns cannot come ahead of the economy,” he said.

Carter said emissions trading legislation would be in alignment with Australia and agriculture will be included in Australia’s scheme. However, he said this was likely to come into effect only by 2015 at the earliest and farmers should not focus on if agriculture was included, but instead on the effect of “grand parenting”. Grand parenting is the allocation of emissions trading units to any particular sector at the initiation of an ETS that allows a sector to adapt over time to the full effects of the ETS.  Under current proposals, agriculture would initially get 90% of its total emissions output and would be removed at the rate of 8% per year.  Carter said this would have a devastating impact on the economy.

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The Government is to allow live sheep exports again but wants to be assured animal welfare guidelines are met first. Agriculture Minister David Carter said yesterday the Government intends ending the six-year moratorium on live sheep exports but will have to be assured the animals are properly treated on the trip to Saudi Arabia and when they get there reports The Southland Times. Mr Carter confirmed shipments would resume under those conditions, distressing the Green Party and animal rights activists.

South Canterbury Federated Farmers district president David Williams said the move to resume live sheep exports would give farmers another option. “The decision probably comes a bit late because the sheep market is buoyant. If it had been 12 months ago, then it may have been more of a help. It won’t do any harm provided they can meet animal welfare issues.”The export of sheep for slaughter overseas has been a long and controversial affair.

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