The Country 28/05/25: Dr Jacqueline Rowarth talks to Jamie Mackay

One of our leading primary sector academics on the dairy industry and the Budget.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
She is one of our leading scientific minds, a primary
sector academic. Her name is doctor Jaqueline Roller. Fortnightly she
writes a wonderful column for our website for the Country
dot co dot nzid Jacqueline, I've just spoken to Bruce
Thorold from Dairy n Z and I love some of
the stats he dragged up, like forty years ago, if
you had more than three hundred dairy cows in your herd,

(00:22):
you could go to the Large Herds Conference. Isn't that wonderful?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And it's still forty years ago we still had more
cows in our average herd than the UK has today.
A remarkable New Zealand is just remarkable in terms of
it's dairy well.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I remember visiting Ireland where the cows, the dairy cows
are the size of a house in two thousand and three,
and the average herd site in Ireland, and this is
only twenty or so years ago, was only forty or fifty.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, and that's still pretty much the same in the EU.
So in the EU they absolutely survive on subsidies. Fifty
five was about the average for France, for instance. There
are some big herds where they actually do more what
we would recognize as through dairy focus, but diversification is

(01:14):
the norm for most of the areas in the northern hemisphere,
in the European Union and the UK. And remember the
Irish with their size of a house. That was before
the quota came off. But then when the quota did
come off, then they were allowed to build up their supply.
They said, yes, we're going to do that. They hadn't

(01:36):
planned in advance.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
How was the Dairy and z Farmers forum yesterday at Claudland's.
I know cam Begary was there. Who spun your wheels?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Jequilleen, Oh, if that's a good thing. Vangelis Titarists made
it very clear he's the trade affairs guru that the
environment and animal welfare is absolutely key in all the
negotiations that are going around. There are lots of data
talked about and fundamentally in the eighty five percent of

(02:07):
any of the new of the discussions that are going
on focus on environment, with another five to six maybe
ten percent on animal welfare. And one of the issues
with animal welfare is that there are a whole lot
of codes in Europe and the UK that simply didn't
apply to new Zealand, like hows cows for half of
the year or even the rose veal where they're inside.

(02:29):
We just don't do it. And they go, you haven't
got any regulations and we say, oh, that's because we
don't do it. So some misunderstandings going on. But Vangelist,
in fact, all the economists pipe people were saying, this
is a great time to be in dairy and Mark's
story from Dairy and z he's the head of the
economics area. He was showing the net present value really

(02:53):
is terrific for dairy and I'm sorry about shoot and
beef forestry us.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Finish on the column you've written for us. It's on
the budget. You write agriculture needs protection and investment. Has
the government gone some of the way with the investment
for instance with the investment boost text policy.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, that applies to all businesses and sometimes people forget
that agriculture is a business. So yes, that is good.
We also talked about the big money that's under a
new pool now, but it didn't new money, and there
was no money being talked about for R and D
for research and development through what will be the public

(03:39):
research organizations until they get new names everybody yesterday at
the Farmer's Forum was talking about the importance of new
technologies and that's what the ASB Lincoln University report is about.
How do we get the new technologies? How can the
banks help fund the new technologies that we'll take us

(04:00):
into the future. But yes, it's a great time to
be in dairy and the budget was certainly part of
the foundation. And what all of us like in agriculture
is that the ministers go on saying it's a really
important sector, the primary sector, and dairy is driving the
New Zealand ship doctor Jackwell and Rowe.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
If you can read all about it or read what
Jacquelin has to say on our website at Thecountry dot
co dot in zed Jaquelin. In two weeks time we'll
be chatting live at the Field Days see

Speaker 2 (04:28):
You then, looking forward to it where the Marino