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Jamie Mackay: The Country host on livestock numbers dropping over the past 10 years · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk ZEDB. Follow
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  Speaker 1: this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio with.
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  Speaker 2: Me right now as Jamie McKay, host of the Country.
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  Speaker 2: Hey Jamie, gooda eva, what are we picking for the
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  Speaker 2: GDT this evening?
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  Speaker 3: While I've gone to my go to guy, Mike McIntyre,
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  Speaker 3: jard another two to three percent. This is a really
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  Speaker 3: good result to how with Trump's tariffs it doesn't seem
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  Speaker 3: to be stopping the rampant dairy market. Admittedly, we're very
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  Speaker 3: near the end of our season. This is the penultimate
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  Speaker 3: GDT auction. The season will end, of course on May
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  Speaker 3: thirty one, So he's picking two to three percent. That
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  Speaker 3: follows two rises in April after we drop or a
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  Speaker 3: bit of a slump, slight slump in March. The interesting
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  Speaker 3: thing is if the spot rate was set on today's prices,
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  Speaker 3: we'd be getting eleven dollars per kilogram of milk solids,
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  Speaker 3: and that's with a apparently with a dollar, which is
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  Speaker 3: just nudging sixty US cents. So that's great. Of course,
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  Speaker 3: it won't be that because it evens out over the
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  Speaker 3: whole season. But happy days, as I say, for the
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  Speaker 3: dairy industry.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, that twenty one percent drop in the number of
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  Speaker 2: sheep over the last ten years. Is that worry you?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does because you need critical mass in the industry,
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  Speaker 3: and the sheep meat industry walls. Look, and I get
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  Speaker 3: a bit of stick on my show for being pessimistic
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  Speaker 3: about wall, but I am really worried about the prospects
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  Speaker 3: for strong cross bread wall. But the prospects for lamb
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  Speaker 3: especially are really good. It's a niche product, it's a
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  Speaker 3: really good product. There's a shortage of it. But the
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  Speaker 3: trouble is, you know, in the nineteen eighties heither we
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  Speaker 3: had seventy million sheep. We're down to twenty three million sheep.
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  Speaker 3: Now we're just producing less and less, even though the
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  Speaker 3: production be head's gone up significantly significantly in those forty
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  Speaker 3: odd years. So look, the worry is that we haven't
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  Speaker 3: got enough critical mass to keep our processing plants open
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  Speaker 3: or certainly open and efficient. So, you know, down down
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  Speaker 3: to twenty three point six million sheep. I know these
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  Speaker 3: numbers have been bandied about, but they're worth repeating. Dairy
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  Speaker 3: cattle so much for the dairy boom. We're down thirteen
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  Speaker 3: percent since the dairy boom nearly a million down to
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  Speaker 3: five point eight. But them, it'll be interesting to see
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  Speaker 3: whether that stays there if the government gets back into
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  Speaker 3: or allows dairy conversions. The interesting one is beef cattle
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  Speaker 3: have done the best, very good returns for beef at
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  Speaker 3: the moment. Those numbers are pretty similar to what they
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  Speaker 3: were a decade ago. And if you're a deer farmer,
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  Speaker 3: chances are here that you've only got three quarters of
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  Speaker 3: the stock you used to have because they're down twenty
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  Speaker 3: six percent.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks very much, Jammie, go well at the moment.
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  Speaker 3: Mate.
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  Speaker 2: That's Jamie McKay, host of the Country.
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