Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: Smaller milk companies should have more say in the farmgate milk price

Transcript

Andrew Dickens: Smaller milk companies should have more say in the farmgate milk price · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: So on Saturday I went to my local Rugby Cubs game.
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  Speaker 1: It was North Shaw versus Northcote, the Pride versus the Coat,
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  Speaker 1: and it was a game that Shaw comfortably won. We're
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  Speaker 1: on fire at the moment. And there I met the
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  Speaker 1: president of the club, a feller by the name of
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  Speaker 1: Lourie McGrain, who, as it happens, as a fan of
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  Speaker 1: this station, and as it also happens, is the chair
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  Speaker 1: of New Zealand's second largest dairy company, Open Country, And
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  Speaker 1: he told me he'd been down at field Days all week.
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  Speaker 1: We chatted about rural stuff from Rugby, and of course
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  Speaker 1: I was a nosey, razy radio guy, wasn't I. So
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  Speaker 1: I googled Laurie when I got home and discovered, yes,
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  Speaker 1: he had been making a bit of a noise at
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  Speaker 1: the Field Days. He'd been talking about the review of
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  Speaker 1: the Act that regulates our milk industry. The Act gives
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  Speaker 1: the responsibility of calculating the farm gate milk price to Fonterra,
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  Speaker 1: because when it was set up it was the biggest
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  Speaker 1: player by far, it was virtually a monopoly. Now these days,
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  Speaker 1: Fonterra controls just seventy eight percent. To avoid the national
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  Speaker 1: milk and so he and others would like other milk
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  Speaker 1: companies to have more say in setting the farm gate price.
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  Speaker 1: And he argued at field Day that the market isn't
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  Speaker 1: truly competitive and without clear open pricing rules, smaller processes
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  Speaker 1: can't compete on an equal footing with the monster that
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  Speaker 1: is Fonterra. And I have to say I agree. You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's a funny thing about business philosophy. More competition does
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  Speaker 1: create better scenarios, but at the same time, monopolies they
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  Speaker 1: can be bloated, yet in certain cases create efficiencies. Fonterra
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  Speaker 1: was a monopoly. It created an efficiency. But now with
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  Speaker 1: the rise of the independent milk companies, maybe it's time
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  Speaker 1: to open it up to more competition. Maybe it's time
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  Speaker 1: to let them have more say to sharpen up Fonterra.
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  Speaker 1: But the big thing is to give more choice to
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  Speaker 1: farmers for more fam Earlily Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: live to News Talks at b from five am weekdays,
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  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.