March
17, 2018 - Dairy cattle in the Waihara
area.
Missionary Samuel Marsden introduced the
first dairy cows in the Bay of Islands in
1814. By the late 1980s/early 1990s
returns from dairy surpassed sheep farming
(although there are still far more
sheep than dairy cattle). Today dairy
is New Zealand's largest export earner.
accounting for more than one quarter of the
total value of annual exports.
Northland contributes a modest share of New
Zealand's dairy production. There are
over 1,000 herds in the region or about 9%
of the nationwide total.
Any discussion of dairy in New Zealand must
include Fonterra, "New Zealand's
biggest company and the
world's largest processor of dairy
products." Fonterra is a cooperative
of 10,500 farmers formed by a "mega-merger"
in 2001. Fonterra milk trucks are a
very familiar sight on the roads in
Northland, and the company has a large
processing plant north of Whangarei.
Another major player in the dairy market is
Goodman Fielder, the privately held
Australian company which supplies many
leading brands.
- According DairyNZ, as of Nov. 2017,
the Northland had 1,030 dairy herds
comprising 308,587 milking
cows spead out over 138,040
hectares of land or 6% of New Zealand's
total of 4.8 million milking cows, 9% of
the 11,748 dairy herds, and 8% of the
total of 1.7 million hectares of dairy
land.
- According to Stats NZ, in 2016 there
were 404,415 dairy cattle in
Northland out of 6.47 million
nationwide. By comparison there
were 358,823 beef cattle and 366,197
sheep in Norrhland, and 3.61
million beef cattle and 27.37 million
sheep nationally.
- According to a report by NZIER, in
2016 dairy accounted for 6.0% of
Northland regional GDP compared to 3.5
percent of national GDP.
- According to DCANZ, New Zealand
accounts for about 3% of total world
milk production putting it at number
eight in the world (+),
but it exports about 95% of its
production.
- Dairy is New Zealand's largest export
sector. According to Stats NZ,
dairy products accounted 26.1% of
the total value of annual exports for
the year ended Dec. 2017—NZ$14.0 billion
of NZ$53.7 billion.
|
| Beyond such variables
as weather, input costs and milk prices, the
industry faces a number of broader
challenges. In Dairy NZ's 2016-17
annual report, chairman Michael Spaans noted
that dairy was "at the centre of an election
debate about immigration, greenhouse gases,
water allocation and water quality."
Environmentalists have put a particular focus
on water quality, and while the industry and
governments signed a voluntary "Dairying and
Clean Streams Accord" in 2003 and a
"Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord" in 2014,
critcs say they have not done enough.
For example in a colorfully worded Nov. 2017
press release, Greenpeace New Zealand argued
that "the only thing that will save our
rivers...is fewer cows.” Also of note to
the industry, in 2017 the cattle disease
mycoplasma bovis was found in New Zealand's
herd for the first time, leading to a major
effort to stop the disease from
spreading. |
