February 25, 2025 • 5 mins
It's a good start to the year for wool farmers, as prices leap up to a historic high.
Following a Covid-induced downturn, growth has returned to the sector - allowing farmers to do more than scrape by.
The Country's Jamie Mackay explains further.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk ZB Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Jamie McKay's a host of the Country. Good Evening, Jamie, Jamie.
You've got you there, Yes, you've got that.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
You got me.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I've got you there, loud and clear. Good to have
you on the show. And we've got some good news
tonight about strong wool and the prices it's getting.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, everything's relative, of course, tryan but yeah, look we've
crept up from the lower last of all time in
real terms in COVID, when some farmers were only getting
believed or not just over a dollar a kilogram for
their strong cross bread fleece. Well we're up to the
four dollar mark. Now that is a clean price obviously, Yeah,
(00:57):
that's a clean price, which are quite surely, but less crazier.
One get too complicated on that one, but I just
thought I'd put it into some historic perspective. It's all
very well, you're to have woole at four dollars. Personally, myself, Ryan,
I think it needs to be ten dollars or more
for sheep farmers to make a buck out of it.
And I'll just take you back in time to the
Corean War in the early fifties when wool was a
(01:19):
pound a pound and using I've heard various extrapolations and
calculations on this one, but that might equate to something
like fifty dollars per kilogram in today's money. So at
four dollars we're well off the pace. Even when I
was a hard up young father Ryan in the nineteen eighties,
sharing all my own sheep, we used to get five
(01:40):
or six dollars a kilogram for wool, and that would
probably I don't hope, factor out to something like maybe
twenty dollars a kilo in today's money. So yep, the
markets come off absolute lows, but it's still a long
way to go. And one of the big things in
sheep farming at the moment Ryan is people who are
getting rid off sheep that grow wool. They're getting into
(02:02):
self shedding sheep sheep that shed their own wool, or
even worse, ones that don't grow any wool to so
the wool industry is far from being out of the woods.
The good use for sheep farmers is Ryan. The lamb
has really recovered this year. It's up about twenty five
or thirty percent on where it was this time a
year ago. And the farmers need it too.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Interesting about the sheep that don't have any wool, because
that you often hear farmers talk about. You know, it
costs you more to share it off then you get
paid for it. So you can understand I suppose why
they do that now.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
A lot of sorry, a lot of animal health reasons
for doing it as well. If they're not growing any water,
you don't have to dip them, you don't have to dag,
and you don't have to crutch them. You don't even
have to dock them or tail them. So there's just
they're just a lot easier animal to run and you're
just running sheep purely for meat.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Which and the meat is the thing that's paying right,
So there you go. Now, vegetables, you've got to have
some vegies with your lamb. So there's a problem though
potentially without locally grown vegetable supply. According to an industry.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah John Murphy from Vegetables New Zealand said the current
system was broken and local growers were being put out
of business. And we all know the story about growing
houses and places like pucacoe instead of vegetables. Some of
our best soils now have houses on them. And John
Murphy's quite rightly saying growers are being strangled by regional
(03:30):
decisions that take too long, make no sense, and ultimately
drive them out of business. He said vegetable growing needed
to become a permitted activity in the current round of
resource management reforms and places like Horo Fenua, there's a
real threat of growers being told they can no longer
grow veges. It's madness if you ask me. We should
(03:52):
be growing more and more of them, but the cavalry
is on the horizon and the form of Associate Minister
of Agriculture Nicola Grigg. She's the minister responsible for horticulture
and she says she's relentlessly focused on supporting the sector's success.
Griggs this included considering policy amendments, including proposals relating to freshwater,
(04:14):
water storage and vegetable growing. And I say good luck
to the vegetable growers, Ryan, because anyone who's grown a
veggie garden at home knows how tough it is let
alone on a commercial scale.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Absolutely and Timidoo Jamie the Old Alliance Smithfield Plant site
is coming up for sale.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, and I don't know how well you know Samaru, Ryan,
but it's quite a nice site actually thirty two hectares.
It's an industrial site at the moment. It's zoned industrial.
It's the old Smithfield plant that have been there for
one hundred and thirty nine years. The Alliance Group shut
it down. The wist talk of it becoming a housing development.
Certainly in a good spot with good views. Interestingly, I
(04:54):
found this was interesting. The land also was home to
the Smithfield Coastal Observation Bunker, which was built in nineteen
forty two. I'm assumed that was to check it in
case the Japanese were coming to get us. It's got
a hereage to New Zealand category listening. The closure of
Smithfield is estimated to have cost Timaru up to fifty
(05:17):
million a year in wages alone in the local economy.
And here's another interesting stat for Orion to finish our
chat tonight. The Timaru Council said in November that the
closure of the meat works would cause a one point
seven to six million dollar drop in water revenue, as
the plant used about ten percent of Timaru's total water supply.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Goodness me, Jamie, some great numbers in there. Thank you
for that. Jamie McKay hosted the Country with Us just
gone twenty six minutes after six.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
For more from News talks'b listen live on air or online,
and keep our shows with you wherever you go with
our podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk ZB Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Jamie McKay's a host of the Country. Good Evening, Jamie, Jamie.
You've got you there, Yes, you've got that.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
You got me.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I've got you there, loud and clear. Good to have
you on the show. And we've got some good news
tonight about strong wool and the prices it's getting.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, everything's relative, of course, tryan but yeah, look we've
crept up from the lower last of all time in
real terms in COVID, when some farmers were only getting
believed or not just over a dollar a kilogram for
their strong cross bread fleece. Well we're up to the
four dollar mark. Now that is a clean price obviously, Yeah,
(00:57):
that's a clean price, which are quite surely, but less crazier.
One get too complicated on that one, but I just
thought I'd put it into some historic perspective. It's all
very well, you're to have woole at four dollars. Personally, myself, Ryan,
I think it needs to be ten dollars or more
for sheep farmers to make a buck out of it.
And I'll just take you back in time to the
Corean War in the early fifties when wool was a
(01:19):
pound a pound and using I've heard various extrapolations and
calculations on this one, but that might equate to something
like fifty dollars per kilogram in today's money. So at
four dollars we're well off the pace. Even when I
was a hard up young father Ryan in the nineteen eighties,
sharing all my own sheep, we used to get five
(01:40):
or six dollars a kilogram for wool, and that would
probably I don't hope, factor out to something like maybe
twenty dollars a kilo in today's money. So yep, the
markets come off absolute lows, but it's still a long
way to go. And one of the big things in
sheep farming at the moment Ryan is people who are
getting rid off sheep that grow wool. They're getting into
(02:02):
self shedding sheep sheep that shed their own wool, or
even worse, ones that don't grow any wool to so
the wool industry is far from being out of the woods.
The good use for sheep farmers is Ryan. The lamb
has really recovered this year. It's up about twenty five
or thirty percent on where it was this time a
year ago. And the farmers need it too.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Interesting about the sheep that don't have any wool, because
that you often hear farmers talk about. You know, it
costs you more to share it off then you get
paid for it. So you can understand I suppose why
they do that now.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
A lot of sorry, a lot of animal health reasons
for doing it as well. If they're not growing any water,
you don't have to dip them, you don't have to dag,
and you don't have to crutch them. You don't even
have to dock them or tail them. So there's just
they're just a lot easier animal to run and you're
just running sheep purely for meat.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Which and the meat is the thing that's paying right,
So there you go. Now, vegetables, you've got to have
some vegies with your lamb. So there's a problem though
potentially without locally grown vegetable supply. According to an industry.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah John Murphy from Vegetables New Zealand said the current
system was broken and local growers were being put out
of business. And we all know the story about growing
houses and places like pucacoe instead of vegetables. Some of
our best soils now have houses on them. And John
Murphy's quite rightly saying growers are being strangled by regional
(03:30):
decisions that take too long, make no sense, and ultimately
drive them out of business. He said vegetable growing needed
to become a permitted activity in the current round of
resource management reforms and places like Horo Fenua, there's a
real threat of growers being told they can no longer
grow veges. It's madness if you ask me. We should
(03:52):
be growing more and more of them, but the cavalry
is on the horizon and the form of Associate Minister
of Agriculture Nicola Grigg. She's the minister responsible for horticulture
and she says she's relentlessly focused on supporting the sector's success.
Griggs this included considering policy amendments, including proposals relating to freshwater,
(04:14):
water storage and vegetable growing. And I say good luck
to the vegetable growers, Ryan, because anyone who's grown a
veggie garden at home knows how tough it is let
alone on a commercial scale.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Absolutely and Timidoo Jamie the Old Alliance Smithfield Plant site
is coming up for sale.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, and I don't know how well you know Samaru, Ryan,
but it's quite a nice site actually thirty two hectares.
It's an industrial site at the moment. It's zoned industrial.
It's the old Smithfield plant that have been there for
one hundred and thirty nine years. The Alliance Group shut
it down. The wist talk of it becoming a housing development.
Certainly in a good spot with good views. Interestingly, I
(04:54):
found this was interesting. The land also was home to
the Smithfield Coastal Observation Bunker, which was built in nineteen
forty two. I'm assumed that was to check it in
case the Japanese were coming to get us. It's got
a hereage to New Zealand category listening. The closure of
Smithfield is estimated to have cost Timaru up to fifty
(05:17):
million a year in wages alone in the local economy.
And here's another interesting stat for Orion to finish our
chat tonight. The Timaru Council said in November that the
closure of the meat works would cause a one point
seven to six million dollar drop in water revenue, as
the plant used about ten percent of Timaru's total water supply.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Goodness me, Jamie, some great numbers in there. Thank you
for that. Jamie McKay hosted the Country with Us just
gone twenty six minutes after six.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
For more from News talks'b listen live on air or online,
and keep our shows with you wherever you go with
our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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