>Ian, Were I able to get down there, you'd be faced with a farmer comitted to
>international cooperation, but legislatively 'stuffed' at every turn! You
>may remember attempts to get one of our AI bull's semen to you(he's now #10
>on the active AI sire list), and then Moldova.Their corn seed has no quality
>requirement, so they have 5 acres of good corn, then 2 acres of zero
>germination. I've got 3 US companies happy to supply our seed, BUT...! Same
>with semen. Ian, how do farmers break out of this negative, political
>control? Dick Conklin
No doubt my friend Ian will reply, but briefly in NZ we have many
farmer co-operatives - controlled by farmers, so they provide what
farmers want.
In Australia now the milk price to some farmers has crashed and their
farmers complain about the fact that retail prices of milk to
consumers have not dropped so the middleman creams profit at the
farmers expense. It happens here too, but not as much. Farmers here
are gradually losing control, for example a milk retail outlet was
bought by a commercial company, and large co-ops cease to be true
co-ops. Our largest has about 12,000 milk suppliers (>90% of NZ's)
and tries hard, but can't match the smaller companies - one with only
130 dairy farmer suppliers has had a higher payout for decades and
the gap is increasing.
>Ian, how do farmers break out of this negative, political
control?
Combine and start your own operations with your own processing and
outlets, but expect the big boys to undercut and try to break all
competition. The big one here did that to about a dozen dairy farmers
a decade ago. Each farmer lost more than US$200,000.
Vaughan Jones
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