They say when farmers do well New Zealand does well and there's good news for those who are working the land with a new Fed Farmers survey showing the majority of farmers are making a profit.
Fed Farmers says it comes after some hard years of rising costs and red tape that was holding back the sector.
Fedorated Farmers President Wayne Langford is with us. Hey Wayne.
Good to see you.
Hey what's the story you get any updates on or concerns from farmers about what's going on in the Middle East?
I mean, you know, that's a major export market for both our dairy and our red meat.
So as the rest of the world is watching, we're watching it too.
That is a concern and both for what we're selling but also what we're bringing in in terms of fertilizing fuel and that sort of thing.
So we're just as concerned as anyone else as you could imagine.
Yeah, it's one of those things where you don't know until, you know, it depends how long the thing goes on for, right?
And we've seen them be short and we've seen them be long and in the most recently they've been short and it's kind of a blip and then it's over.
So hopefully it's one of those.
I mean, fingers crossed and I think that's why we sort of the GT jump up a bit yesterday.
That's country is looking at the food security and saying, hey, how do we get a bit of the bank here because we may need it later on.
Well, while we get a price rise yesterday, it may also switch around the other way pretty quickly and so around everyone's just a bit uncertain.
Yeah, why the saw that auction, why was the supply tighter?
Oh, it's just managing the supply, managing the market a little bit from from that point of view.
So that standard, it goes up and down and that's how they manage it.
So they're like pull back.
They can do different times.
Depending, you know, typically we have a massive food flow during the spring when all our cows are making the most milk.
That's when we'll pump a lot more out there.
This time of year, we start to run back a little bit because we're not producing as much.
Yeah.
Wayne, let's talk about some of the great news that we're getting.
I spoke to Tom McCley this morning about the export numbers for December four last year.
Sorry, meat was up past 20%.
You know, dairy's up, tourism art exports looking good.
But for you guys, it's a, it must be a kind of a good feeling, although is there a little bit of, you know,
when you back pocket a little bit of worry as well?
I mean, we're no different to anyone else.
We know that when the market goes up, it can also come down.
But we are celebrating the good times at the moment.
This is a really good time for agriculture in New Zealand.
Now on top of that, we've got an extremely good season where we're a pasture-based country,
which means when it rains over the summer, we grow a lot of grass.
And that makes a lot of meat and a lot of milk, and that's good for the country.
So it does a good result all around.
But when you're sitting at the top of the market or what may be,
the top of the market, you're always cautious around what might come around the corner.
