The Country 10/10/24: Derek Daniell talks to Jamie Mackay

We ask one of New Zealand’s leading sheep breeders if the industry has a future. Are farmers climate change heroes rather than villains? And why should farmers support “Growing Future Farmers”?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's one of New Zealand's leading sheep and tennis player breeders.
I might come back to the tennis, but Derek Daniel,
you run the y Rary stud You spent generations breeding
good sheep. You're now breeding sheep that don't grow wool.
Is there a future A for wool and B for
sheep farming.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, a very good question, Jamie the second wall. I've
got some bets on this deconstruction process, taking wool to
have a powder from which it can be used for
all sorts of things, for extant example, as a pigment
carrier in these giant textile mills that make clothes and

(00:40):
terrier furnishings that could use the entire New Zealand clip.
And the margin for that conversion is really is huge,
full of terms. And at the quarter of that conversion
came back to the farm gate price of wool. Then
we're back in business with wool. But I have to

(01:01):
say that at Wairi, we've had three years of importing
embryos and semen from what we call nudies in the
UK and we have had excellent reports from clients have
used these sheep out there across New Zealand and there
is a wave of people starting to invest in sheep

(01:24):
that don't grow will And then your second question was
about where is the sheep industry headed. There's a range
of scenarios out there. Will the China premium of about
forty dollars a lamb return? The China premium came for
those parts of the carcass that didn't get good value elsewhere, flaps, briskets, pizzles,

(01:49):
all that kind of thing. So that's up in the air.
And the relativity to beef now, I've just heard of
a Angus premium Angus pure selling for more than eight
dollars a kilo steers up here on the North Island
this week, so can we match beef Otherwise a substitution

(02:12):
of beef to sheep. The subsidy for carbon is attracting
land use into trees. There's a whole lot of them
downside to sheep production at the moment, lower fertilizer used, etc.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
You reckon, Farmers aren't getting a fair crack of the
whip when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, especially the
fact that pasture sequestration is not being countered at the moment.
If it was, I mean, let's chuck soil in there
as well. My argument would be certainly that most extensive
sheep and beef farmers, even with the vegetation they've got

(02:47):
on their farms now, would be carbon neutral or positive.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, that's exactly right. Why was it not counted in
the Paris Accord? It is ridiculous. It's like single entry
accounting instead of plementary accounting. And it's simply framed us
as guilty for our reminant emissions and that should not
be the case. And for New Zealand, if you took

(03:11):
away this supposed forty eight percent the figure keeps being
trotted out of the missions by a remnant, then New
Zealand's entire greenhouse gas emissions would disappear by fifty percent.
So what's not to like about that?

Speaker 1 (03:30):
You mentioned the carbon subsidy around forestry, but forestry in
itself's going through very tough times at the moment. And
we look at sheep, We look at sheep on extents
of hilly or high country. Is there a future there
or are we going to plant the whole lot in trees?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Well that's the way the incentives are right at the moment.
My home farm at Werriya is almost surrounded by freshly
planted trees now, and yeah, how do you compete? It's
been a gold rush, and yeah, there's no end in

(04:07):
sight right at the moment.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
This is all rather glum, if you don't mind me
saying so, Derek Daniels. The good news in this conversation.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, I can see the supply of export lambs out
of New Zealand will probably be down two million on
last year, given a million pure us and storm losses
and draft effected scanning right up the east coast of
both islands, so that should help supply demand. Although Australia

(04:37):
is really rocketing along with lamb exports, far greater than
they used to have, so I think there will be
some rebalancing and the what do you call it, The
estimates of lamb price for this year, next year, the

(04:58):
year after shower continual lift right to nine dollars something
per kilo, So that is encouraging and we'll keep us going.
I mean, farmers have had battle through periods of low
prices and everything against them in the past. Starting the
eighty eighties, a lot of farmers went broke and so on,

(05:21):
So I think those of us who are keen on farming,
will carry on battling and we will be rewarded in
the future.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well hang in there, all right, just a quick plug
you want to give for growing future Farmers. What's this
is all about? What is this all about? I've got
like thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Okay. This was a cadet scheme growing Future Farmers, and
it's run by three or four Dynamic ladies. They have
got one hundred and thirty one cadets who would like
a job. This year is coming year twenty twenty five
and they've only got eighty positions so far. So it's
a fast growing sort of good people coming into the industry.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Hey, Derek Daniel, thank you very much for your time
today on the country. And if you're out there and
you've got a job for someone young and agriculture wanting
to end this wonderful industry, just go and google growing
Future Farmers and get one of those young people onto
your farm.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
See you, Derek, cheers. Jeremie, thank you.