Jamie Mackay: The Country host on the shortage of lambs for spring 2024

New reports show there's been a significant decrease in lambs for spring 2024, compared with this time last year.

The B+LNZ 2024 Lamb Crop Report indicated 1.1 million fewer lambs were tailed/docked compared to 2023, bringing the total lamb crop to an estimated 19.2 million.

 The Country's Jamie Mackay explains what this means for the market.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Rural Report on hither do for see Allen Drive.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Jamie McKay from the country. Hello, how are you mate?
Oh I have to push a button. Hold on. I
thought you were on WhatsApp. No, of course not, you're
on a phone. Hello Jamie.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello Andrew, Take two.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Take two? How was the Emerson's golf opened at the
Ottago Golf Club last week?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
It was wonderful, thank you. Wonderful but a controversy with
the winning team, but other than that a great day.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Did you win again?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
No, no, no, no, no golf and I will golf
and winning and the South are kind of mutually exclusive. Andrew.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, okay, well good, well, look, come and play golf
in the other island from time to time and then
you'll find out. Now, the big story is Fonterra ten
dollar milk price despite a thirty percent drop in profit,
but the farm gate's good.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah. Look, and I heard most of your interview or
you chat with Andrew Murray the CFO or the new CFO. Look,
I'm no surprise that the profits down away that when
the milk price goes up, the ingredients are more expensive.
But look, this is a cooperative. It's owned by the farmers.
The most important number by the length of the straight
is the milk price. Ten dollars. It's a new record.

(01:11):
I've never been in double digits before Eclipse is the
previous record of nine dollars thirty in the twenty one
twenty two season. But to be honest, and before everyone
thinks the dairy farmers are going to get rich and
that's fleece them or do whatever, in real terms, probably
the best payout and it was, would be twenty thirteen
fourteen eight dollars forty. That's a decade ago. Since then

(01:32):
we've had horrendous on farm inflation. So ten dollars, make
no mistake about it. There's a great number. And if
you're not making money at ten dollars, Andrew, you shouldn't
be milking cow.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Okay, yeah, exactly. And I have to say I've been
getting a bit depressed about things because of the price.
It was tracking down, and then you heard that the
Chinese economy was tracking down. I thought none of us
is good. But as it turns out, they didn't actually
maintain their domestic production and so we had to step
in to help them out. So that is good, and
so everything is good in the end. That's a good thing, now, yeah, absolutely.

(02:05):
Now what's a bad thing is we've had fewer lambs
this spring. How come?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Oh gee, well, where do I start trees? Pine trees
in the weather might be one reason. So Beef and
Lamb New Zealand have just put out their estimates and
this is a forecast only at this stage for the
lambing of twenty twenty four and they're saying we were
expecting a decrease in the number of lambs tailed or docks,

(02:30):
depending on which island you're in, by one point one
million head or or five point two percent, which is
a substantial drop really, bringing the total lamb crop to
an estimated nineteen point two million. Now, you've got to
remember Andrew in the early nineteen eighties when Muldoon was
running rife with us with his subsidies, and that we
had seventeen million sheep in this country. Nowadays we only

(02:53):
have about twenty three to twenty four million. Our lamb
crop is nineteen point two million. A number of lambs
available for export is even worse. It's down six point
five percent for the whole season. But the good news
is supply and demand. Less lambs, more demand effectively. Early

(03:14):
season farm gate prices for sheep meat have been quite
a bit higher than last year. They're sitting on about
eight bucks at the moment, which is good, could be better.
They really need ten dollars, and of course cattle prices
remain strong there record as well. So look all in all,
Andrew farmers heading into Christmas apart from the weather, and
you can't do anything about that would have to be

(03:35):
reasonably happy.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Good stuff. Joey McKay for the Country, The Country dot
co dot MZ.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
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