Latest / Best of Business / Jamie Mackay: The Country host on the shortage of lambs for spring 2024

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Jamie Mackay: The Country host on the shortage of lambs for spring 2024 · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news Talks. There'd be
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: The Rural Report on hither do for see allan drive.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Jamie McKay from the country. Hello, how are you mate?
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I have to push a button hold on. I thought
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: you were on WhatsApp. No, of course not, you're on
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: a phone. Hello Jamie.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Hello, Andrew, Take two?
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Take two? How was the Emerson's Golf opened at the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Otago Golf Club last week?
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  Speaker 3: It was wonderful, thank you. Wonderful but a controversy with
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: the winning team. But other than that a great day.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: We win all Did you win again?
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  Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, no. Golf and I will golf
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  Speaker 3: and winning and myself are kind of mutually exclusive. Andrew.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well good well, look, come and play golf
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: in the other island from time to time and then
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: you'll find out. Now the big story is Fonterra ten
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: dollar milk price despite a thirty percent drop in profit,
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  Speaker 2: but the farm gate's good.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, look, and I heard most of your interview.
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  Speaker 3: You check with Andrew Murray, the CFO or the new CFO. Look,
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  Speaker 3: I no surprise that the profits down away that when
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  Speaker 3: the milk price goes up, the ingredients are more expensive.
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  Speaker 3: But look, this is a cooperative, it's owned by the farmers.
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  Speaker 3: The most important number, by the length of the straight
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  Speaker 3: is the milk price. Ten dollars. It's a new record.
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  Speaker 3: I've never been in double digits before Eclipse is the
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  Speaker 3: previous record of nine dollars thirty in the twenty one
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  Speaker 3: twenty two season. But to be honest, and before everyone
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  Speaker 3: thinks the dairy farmers are going to get rich and
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  Speaker 3: that's fleece them or do whatever, in real terms, probably
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  Speaker 3: the best payout and it was would be twenty thirteen
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  Speaker 3: fourteen eight dollars forty. That's a decade ago. Since then
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  Speaker 3: we've had horrendous on farm inflation. So ten dollars, make
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  Speaker 3: no mistake about it as a great number. And if
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  Speaker 3: you're not making money at ten dollars, Andrew, you shouldn't
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  Speaker 3: be milking cow.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, exactly. And I have to say I've been
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: getting a bit depressed about things because of the price.
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  Speaker 2: It was tracking down, and then you heard that the
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  Speaker 2: Chinese economy was tracking down. I thought, none of us
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: is good. But as it turns out, they didn't actually
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  Speaker 2: maintain their domestic production and so we had to step
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: in to help them out. So that is good and
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  Speaker 2: so everything is good in the end. That's a good thing.
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  Speaker 3: Mah yeah, absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: Now what's a bad thing is we've had fewer lambs
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  Speaker 2: this spring. How come?
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  Speaker 3: Oh gee, well, where do I start trees?
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  Speaker 2: Pine?
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  Speaker 3: Trees in the weather might be one reason. So Beef
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  Speaker 3: and Lamb New Zealand have just put out their estimates
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  Speaker 3: and this is a forecast only at this stage for
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  Speaker 3: the lambing of twenty twenty four, and they're saying we
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  Speaker 3: were expecting a decrease in the number of lambs tailed
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  Speaker 3: or dock, depending on which islands you're in, by one
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  Speaker 3: point one million head or five or five point two percent,
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  Speaker 3: which is a substantial drop really, bringing the total lamb
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  Speaker 3: crop to an estimated nineteen point two million. Now, you've
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  Speaker 3: got to remember Andrew in the early nineteen eighties when
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Muldoon was running rife with us with his subsidies, and
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  Speaker 3: that we had seventeen million sheep in the country. Nowadays
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  Speaker 3: we only have about twenty three to twenty four million,
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  Speaker 3: and our lamb crop is nineteen point two million. A
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  Speaker 3: number of lambs available for export is even worse. It's
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  Speaker 3: down six point five percent for the whole season. But
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  Speaker 3: the good news is supply and demand less lambs, more demand. Effectively,
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  Speaker 3: early season farm gate prices for sheep meat have been
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  Speaker 3: quite a bit higher than last year. They're sitting on
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  Speaker 3: about eight bucks at the moment, which is good, could
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  Speaker 3: be better. They really need ten dollars and of course
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  Speaker 3: cattle prices remain strong there record as well. So look
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  Speaker 3: all in all, Andrew farmers heading into Christmas apart from
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: the weather, and you can't do anything about that would
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  Speaker 3: have to be reasonably happy.
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  Speaker 2: Good stuff. Jay McKay for the Country, Thecountry, dot co,
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  Speaker 2: dot MZ.
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