Jamie Mackay: The Country host on the golden run that's set to continue for NZ beef pricing

Following a surge in the second half of 2024, the golden run for New Zealand farmgate beef pricing has continued in the early part of 2025. 

Returns are also expected to stay strong throughout the rest of the year- as US demand for Kiwi beef is expected to stay elevated.

The Country's Jamie Mackay explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jamie McKay is with us. Jamie is hosted The Country
of course here on Newstalk MB and we were talking
yesterday about a whole bunch of stuff to do with Fonterra.
So we'll get into this now. Jamie's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi, Jamie, Good evening, Ryan.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now Fonterra is just going from strength to strength. We
had a bit on this on the show yesterday, but
you put it in perspective for us, how well are
they doing well?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
They're doing very well, and I think the farmers are
going to do pretty well this year as well. I
guess it's more good news for dairy farmers. On top
of what you discussed yesterday about that full year earnings
guidance being lifted to fifty five to seventy five cents
per share. Remembering this is on top of a ten
dollars fore cast milk price, they're going to effectively have

(00:43):
a dividend by my calculation, any anyhow of anywhere between
thirty three and sixty cents. If it gets to sixty cents,
it'll be the best dividend than Fonterra's history. The previous
best was fifty five cents, and the season just being
twenty three, twenty four, and to put that ten dollar
milk price ryan into some sort of historic perspective, the

(01:06):
previous best was nine dollars thirty in the twenty one
twenty two season, but it's generally considered that the eight
dollars forty payout way back in twenty thirteen fourteen, more
than a decade ago, is the best inflation adjusted milk
price in Fonterra's history. And just having a look at
that share price earlier this afternoon, it was trading at

(01:28):
four dollars eighty six. The Fonterra co Op farmer share price,
this is the one that the farmers trade amongst themselves.
It was languishing at just over two dollars in November
twenty twenty three, so it's more than doubled in the
past year, and you would have to say Fonterra farmers
had got to be pretty happy with the direction Miles
Hurrell and Peter McBride are driving the cooperative.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Absolutely, and not just dairy of course, beef as well.
We had a good second half last year and actually
a good start to twenty twenty five as well for
farmgate beef pricing.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, despite Donald Trump beef prices Ryan, are at a
record highs and they look like maintaining that tat Trump
and his tariff's aside, certainly through this season. And I
was talking to Jen Corchran out of Rabobank. They've just
released their Q one beef quarterly report. She's saying that

(02:23):
it's going to take three or four years to rebuild
that US herd after all the issues they've had over
there with drought and all that sort of stuff. So
the prospect for beef for beef farmers in this country
is pretty strong for the next three to four seasons.
Despite that global beef production is contracting a wee bit.
And also here in New Zealand, we're expecting our beef

(02:45):
production to be down around five to six percent from
year on year quarter one twenty twenty four, and that's
partly because of the fallout of fewer beef carts being
read a couple of years ago when the prices weren't
too flashed. So I can tell you Ryan, there'll be
lots of beefcarts red I would imagine in New Zealand

(03:06):
this season because they're going to be worth gold.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
And just finding you've got some receipts from the biggest
carbon emitters in the world. How do our cows burping rank?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I think our cow's burping aren't even a problem.
I mean I have said all along, or argued all along, Ryan,
that our farmers are carbon neutral, if not carbon positive.
We're not counting everything on farm that sequesters carbon. Yes,
we count the vegetation, the trees. We're not counting the
grass or the soil. We won't go down that track today.

(03:37):
But I came across an interesting fact that half of
the world's climate heating carbon emissions come from the fossil
fuels produced by just thirty six companies. Those thirty six
major fossil fuel companies were responsible for more than twenty
billion tons of CO two emissions in twenty twenty three.

(04:00):
Listen to this one. If Saudi Aramco was a country,
the big fossil fuel company, if it was a country,
it would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world,
after China, the US, and India. While if Exon Mobile
was responsible was a country, it would be responsible for
about the same emissions as Germany, the world's ninth biggest polluter.

(04:24):
So I've said all along, Rhine and no one's changing
my mind. Methane emitting ruminants aren't the problem. It's man
and woman burning fossil fuels.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Jamie, thank you for that. Jamie mckaie hosted the Country.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
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