Latest / Best of Business / Rowena Duncum: The Country host on local cheesemakers voicing concerns about presence of supermarket cheeses

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Rowena Duncum: The Country host on local cheesemakers voicing concerns about presence of supermarket cheeses · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed Be
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Six twenty four Rowena Duncan of the countries with me
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  Speaker 2: right now, Hey ro Hey, Heather.
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  Speaker 1: Now what's the problem with the local cheesemakers?
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  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. So basically there's some of the supermarket
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  Speaker 2: private land label, so their own brand cheeses are maybe
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  Speaker 2: increasing the competition for some of our small producers. So
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  Speaker 2: we're talking to brands like Pam's Value Will We're signed
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  Speaker 2: a macro competing on price. But they're also coming up
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  Speaker 2: with gourmet style options too, so things like why Mutter Cheeses.
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  Speaker 2: They're out of Gisbon. They've cut back on production of
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  Speaker 2: Bring Cammber, just saying hey, we're having too much competition
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  Speaker 2: in this space. So they're focusing now on the likes
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  Speaker 2: of their Halloumi, which has still got quite a bit
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  Speaker 2: of demand. White Stone cheese out of Omrou. They're shifting
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  Speaker 2: more towards food service, so that's your restaurants and Bowld quarters,
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  Speaker 2: just to reduce their reliance on the supermarkets, because it's
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  Speaker 2: not just the supermarkets of course, got that New Zealand
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  Speaker 2: EU Free Trade agreement, so cheap European specialty cheeses that
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  Speaker 2: are like highly automated, the subsidized, which our farmers are not,
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  Speaker 2: and they're really low cost and they are flooding the supermarket.
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  Speaker 2: So I'd seen, you know, one of my favorite cheeses
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  Speaker 2: from when I farmed overseas in Wales on the supermarket
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  Speaker 2: shelves here in New Zealand. I thought, delightful. I love
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  Speaker 2: that cheese. Now I'm actually seeing it from a different
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  Speaker 2: perspective and saying, hey, if it's having this bigger impact,
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  Speaker 2: probably not a good thing.
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  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of a heads up to buy
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  Speaker 2: local if you care. Now what's going on with the
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  Speaker 2: ballot blocks and Anzac Day. Yeah, so one of the
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  Speaker 2: main things for rural New Zealand, and we're looking at
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  Speaker 2: Anzac Day and the impact of the war obviously had
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  Speaker 2: a huge impact in rural New Zealand, as it did
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  Speaker 2: right around the country. But we lost a lot of
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  Speaker 2: our farmers going over seas and that's when the women
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  Speaker 2: came through like you and I Hea, this saved the day,
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  Speaker 2: started working the land. But when our soldiers came back
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  Speaker 2: from New Zealand, those who maybe didn't have farms to
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  Speaker 2: go back to. We had a ballot system. So it
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  Speaker 2: was part of the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Act of nineteen
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  Speaker 2: ninety five, and what it did was try and reintegrate
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  Speaker 2: returning soldiers into civilian life. So it had like a
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  Speaker 2: lottery style ballot. If you want a parcel of land,
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  Speaker 2: that was carved off some of these big stations. Some
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  Speaker 2: of it was mardy land that was kind of taken
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  Speaker 2: a bit under force as well. They actually handed out land.
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  Speaker 2: The issue was not everyone was a farmer. They didn't
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  Speaker 2: always know what to do with the land. And one
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  Speaker 2: of the most infamous ballot blocks is from the Mungapurua
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  Speaker 2: Valley up the Wanganui River. They basically looked at a map,
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  Speaker 2: drew some lines without having seen the land, said good
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  Speaker 2: luck to you, and that's how the bridge to know
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  Speaker 2: where came about. There was a swing bridge. They decided
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  Speaker 2: to build a concrete bridge and that was in about
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  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six. But by the end the valley soil
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  Speaker 2: was really less fertile and the last settlers walked off
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  Speaker 2: their farms in nineteen forty two, recognizing it was not
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  Speaker 2: farmable land. It was much better in native bush Roth,
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  Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate something to think about tomorrow.
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  Speaker 1: It's Rod Duncan spelling it on the Country for Jamie Mackay.
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  Speaker 1: For more from News Talk st B, listen live on
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