Toby Williams: Federated Farmers Meat and Wool Chair on the decline in livestock numbers

A tough winter ahead for meat processing plants as livestock numbers continue to decline.  

Latest figures from Stats NZ show a 21% drop in sheep numbers over the past 10 years – a total decline of 6.2 million sheep since 2014.  

The number of dairy cattle also fell 13% over the same period.  

Federated Farmers Meat and Wool Chair Toby Williams told Ryan Bridge keeping livestock processing plants open, profitable, and running efficiently is a significant challenge.  

He says big plants are struggling to get numbers of livestock through, with close to million less lambs to process this year than last. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two figures from Stats ins that our livestock numbers are
falling twenty one percent drop in sheep over the past decade.
That's down to twenty three point six million. Dairy cattle
numbers dropped thirteen percent, while beef cattle held steady. Toby
Williams Meat and wheelchair at fed Farmers with me this morning, Toby,
good morning, morning, right, how are you pretty good?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Now, the reason really what this is about is there's
less grassland for the animals on to farm on.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Right, Yeah, it's all about land use change. And we've
seen with forestry of sheep and beef and then dairy
you've gone to horticulture and housing.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I saw that kiwi fruit was up thirty two percent
increase in land used for kiwi fruit. So we are
switching in some ways that that's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, it is. And then people should be free to
choose what land you best suits the land have got,
whether it's horticulture, whether it's you know, dairy farming or
sheven beef or forestry for that matter. Our big concerns
really lie around the reduction of sheep has been driven
not so much because forest is a better land use.
In some cases it is, but as the carbon market

(01:06):
that's really driving that forward, because you get much more
returned from the carbon the eaty s tracket than you
do from she's beef.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Is there a number twenty three point six million sheep
in New Zealand right now in a twenty one percent
drop over the past decade. Is there a number below
which the industry starts to sort of cave in on itself.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, I think we're almost already there. We've seen the
challenges of the Alliance are having in terms of profitability
and be able to keep plants open and clothes missile
plant in Tomoru. So we're starting to see that really
tipped now as we need some capacity there in our
processes to be able to make sure that in droughts
we're can actually process and at peak times we can

(01:48):
process all the animals. How we still need our plans
to be efficient and you know, running at a capacity
and those big plants now because are really struggling to
get the numbers of sheeps through and this winter is
going to be a real tough one for all of
our processes. We're looking at being close to a million
lamps less to process this year. Than what we had
last year.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
The hard thing is you can't. It's very difficult to
unfart with forestry, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, it is. And you know the government's made sort
of the right moves to try to put some limits
on it if there's announcements, but there's still loopholes there
that are enabling people to convert their better quality land
into pine trees. But ultimately what we need to see, Ryan,
is a change to the ETU settings the better balance
our emissions as well as our productive of food, because

(02:37):
we aren't seeing a demand for extra timber and thirty
years time as much as the Green Party had the
announced the Gavna they're going to build nice did you
know what?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Don't even talk about it, Toby, because it's just such
fanciful nonsense. Appreciate your time, ho yes or no? Quick
yesse or no from your Toby. And it's a hard one.
Should we pull out of Paris?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well that's a really hard one recently. Yeah, I think
you know we should be uh yeah, possibly all right, Yeah,
appreciate more information.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Ryan, Appreciate your time, Toby. Toby Williams meet and wilchair
fed farmers with us this morning bright and early six
after sorry, sixteen minutes after five Now News Talks here'b.
I've always thought, you know, as a country we produce, yes,
we have the higher methane emissions blah blah blah blah blah,
but we feed something like forty million people. We're a
country of five million that feeds forty million. Surely that's

(03:28):
going to count for something.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
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