Rowena Duncum: The Country host ahead of the first GDT auction since the tariffs were announced

All eyes will be on tonight's Global Dairy Trade Auction to see if the tariffs will leave an impact on dairy prices.

It's been two weeks since President Donald Trump imposed a set of tariffs impacting multiple countries - and financial markets have been sent into turmoil.

The Country's Rowena Duncum explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So with me now is Rowena Duncan of the country.

(00:01):
He wrote, Hey, ever, now, what's brought these dairy greenhouse
gas emissions down?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah, it's an interesting one. So we had the report
released this afternoon from the New Zealand Greenhouse Gas Inventory
showing that methane emissions from agriculture now three point seven
percent below twenty seventeen levels, and it's really down to
a drop in cow numbers. For dairy in particular, it's
down three point seven percent. On the plus side, though

(00:28):
average milk production per cow rows by one point eight percent,
but beef and land New Zealand have obviously been pretty
badly hit in the red meat sector and they're saying,
you know, this is going to continue to reduce in
the next few years due to land change. Cheer Kate
Ackland says the report should be a good news story
that are emissions are down, but actually when you look
into it further, the primary driver has obviously been the

(00:51):
conversion of productive sheep and beef farms into forestry for
carb and offsetting, and she says, like, wow, the industry
might be heading towards the current twenty thirty it's for
the wrong reasons. And the reductions are being achieved by
a reduction in stock numbers, and that's just allowing fossil
fuel limitters to continue emitting by kind of saying that

(01:11):
it's okay to offset your carbon emissions. So if you
look at some of the facts here, we're losing a
lot of heat. Dares to when whole sheep and bee
farms were sold for conversion into forestry, particularly for carbon farming.
And I'm going to be chatting to the Prime Minister
on the Country tomorrow and Jamie's absence and actually just saying,
you know, Todd McLay came out on the fourth of

(01:33):
December last year saying that was something the government were
going to look into. But when is this legislation going
to come into effect that prohibits wholesale conversions from farmland
into forestry because farmers are still getting pretty upset, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
And there's a fair amount of it's still going on.
We've got the global dairy trade auction since the tariff's
announcement is the first one.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
What do we expecting, Yes, yeah, so the market's calling
for about a three percent increase and whole milk powder
maybe flat for skim milk powder and hopefully increase and
hydrous milk fat. We're at the back end of the season,
you know, there's very little New Zealand product available. People
are looking at starting to dry their cows off. Their
lactation curve is decreasing, so that should kind of support

(02:16):
the pricing. So if that plays out, good result and
it'll set us up nicely for the new season on
June first.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Brilliant stuff. Row thanks very much, look after your something,
good luck with it. Tomorrow it's Roe Duncan of the Country.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
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Speaker 1 (02:30):
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