Jamie Mackay: The Country host on livestock numbers dropping over the past 10 years

New figures from Stats NZ show livestock numbers have dropped substantially over the past decade.

The total number of sheep dropped by 21 percent and the total number of dairy cattle also fell by 13 percent over a 10-year period.

The Country's Jamie Mackay unpacks what could be causing these drops.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
With me right now? Is Jamie McKay, host of the Country. Hey, Jamie,
good I eva, what are we picking for the GDT
this evening.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, I've gone to my go to guy, Mike McIntyre.
Jard another two to three percent. This is a really
good result to hew with Trump's tariffs, it doesn't seem
to be stopping the rampant dairy market. Admittedly, we're very
near the end of our season. This is the penultimate
GDT auction. The season will end, of course on May
thirty one. So he's picking two to three percent. That

(00:29):
follows two rises in April after we drop or a
bit of a slump, slight slump in March. The interesting
thing is if the spot rate was set on today's price,
is we'd they getting eleven dollars per kilogram of milk
solids And that's with a apparently with a dollar which
is just nudging sixty US cents. So that's great. Of course,
it won't be that because it evens out over the

(00:49):
whole season. But happy days, as I say, for the
dairy industry.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Hey, that twenty one percent drop in the number of
sheep over the last ten years, is that worry you?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah? Because you need critical mass in the industry, and
the sheep meat industry walls. Look, and I get a
bit of stick on my show for being pessimistic about wall,
but I am really worried about the prospects for strong
cross bred wall. But the prospects for lamb especially are
really good. It's a niche product, it's a really good product.
There's a shortage of it. But the trouble is, you know,

(01:20):
in the nineteen eighties heither we had seventy million sheep.
We're down to twenty three million sheep. Now we're just
producing less and less, even though the production be head's
gone up significantly significantly in those forty odd years. So look,
the worry is that we haven't got enough critical mass
to keep our processing plants open or certainly open and efficient. So,

(01:42):
you know, down down to twenty three point six million sheep.
I know these numbers have been bandied about, but they're
worth repeating. Dairy cattle so much for the dairy boom.
We're down thirteen percent since the dairy boom, nearly a million,
down to five point eight million. It'll be interesting to
see whether that stays there. The government gets back into
or allows dairy conversions. The interesting one is beef cattle

(02:05):
have done the best, very good returns for beef at
the moment. Those numbers are pretty similar to what they
were a decade ago. And if you're a deer farmer,
chances are, Heather, you've only got three quarters of the
stock you used to have because they're down twenty six percent.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Hey, thanks very much, Jamie, go well at the moment. Mate,
that's Jamie McKay, host of the Country.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
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