Should Kiwis pay the high price for NZ dairy that overseas buyers will?
New Zealanders are paying high prices for milk, butter and cheese because of what people are willing to pay offshore, Fonterra’s boss says – but is that fair?
Good to see topics TDB have been pushing finally getting picked up by the bored staff of other newsrooms. You can either read the argument here first or wait for the news researchers for stories to discover it on TDB and then write about it later.
It’s not just butter, it’s all our bounty and kai that we produce here.
Our meat, our seafood, our fruit, our vegetables.
Here’s what Free market defenders of high priced butter always miss about NZ.
Why should we be forced to pay the same price as the Chinese Middle Class can afford?
We created a monopoly in the form of Fonterra to maximise price negotiations on the global market, but the flipside of that is that me as a consumer in NZ, for a product made in NZ, I’m competing with 500 million middle class Chinese who want this product, and the Chinese Middle Class is forecast to grow to 787 million!
NZ only has a population of 5million, we can never compete for price against 500million+ middle class Chinese.
On top of that, this butter is created by a cow which takes water, pollutes water and generates climate warming emissions.
So this product, that I’ve already paid an environmental price in manufacturing it, also costs me an arm and a leg price wise. because I’m competing with 500million middle class Chinese.
Why are we paying a price that is imposed upon us by a middle class market that is many times larger than our total population?
Why can’t we eat the harvest of our own nation?
We have warped our own market dynamics and clamped down on competition that artificially inflates the domestic price while producing. product with an enormous climate impact.
This free market dynamic is in effect throughout our food system with the best produce going to the richest in a global market.
Our first priority should be that kai is provided to Kiwis first and prices that are domestic and THEN the rest can go to the international market.
Our harvest should be shared amongst NZers first.
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New world on Tuesday ,Mince $24 a kilo .Hell mince is made from the shitty off cuts and other scraps and floor sweepings and we have to pay the same price as fillet steak .
It’s AUD$19 per kilo any cut direct from the farm. Woolworth and New World know they’re doomed.
Shitty offcuts and other scraps and floor sweepings…really? You are spouting bullshit.
whats it made from then sherlock .My brother in law was a butcher for 40 years .
I run a multi million dollar food operation and the issues run far deeper than anyone realizes, the US has been stripping the markets in NZ and Australia of beef and lamb for several months this combined with low kill rates is creating shortages and massive price rises. Two months ago I could buy ribeye wholesale at $31.50 a kg and its now $38.88, suppliers are struggling to supply meat. Its so messed up its cheaper to buy pork belly and fries imported from Europe because NZ manufactured goods are up to 50% more expensive so its a global problem. Watties i avoid as much as possible especially canned goods as they are more expensive and the drained weight is far less, look for cheaper brands and do comparisons between the drained weights and price. NZ suppliers do occasionally do a bulk dump on the markets usually when over stocked for example frozen chicken nibbles at $1.66 per kg in 12kg cartons where i purchased 1.2 tonnes, the trick for the average guy is to find out the outlet selling them and its usually smaller locally owned places, and share them amongst family.
E$ye fillet and T-Bone steaks were affordable 12 months ago, now they are priced out of the market for ordinary kiwis, add butter and cheese in the mix and they have become the “sorted” staples. This government must go!
I stick with veges . It’s so easy to grow your own and they are delicious. Bread is also simple to make for 20% of the supermarket price.
The government own own over 100 huge farms ( Landcorp- now called Pamu)- many of them dairy. Maybe they could use the produce from these farms to subsidise our milk a d cheese and buttere and mince.
I forgot fish. They are easy to catch. I have a small kayak and never buy fish as I catch enough for our large whanau.
It is rare to go out and not catch anything. I use kahawai for bait and there is no size limit on them but you can only take 20 per day. Kahawai are beautiful smoked or mixed with mashed potatoes and chopped veg. Snapper are everywhere but you are only allowed 7 per day and they must be more than 30cm long.
While the income distribution within NZ is very unfair the argument is that if we want high wages we need to pay high prices. The other part that involves tax, affordable housing and income support has been forgotten about so that those at the top get all the income while others argue about the cost of butter as it diverts attention from the real problems that need fixing.
What I cannot understand is how our exports carry the cost of transport across oceans.
Local produce is the cost of a truck ride to the supermarket.
Yet the mantra of “Free Trade’ is our supermarket prices are decided by prices of exports?
So we have to put up with polluted water ways, nitrates in the water table, nothing done about methane, in fact pollute all you like and we get to pay what everyone does? How about get f’d you groundswell wankers.
This is a marketised society, the “our” that Martyn keeps referring to in the OP does not exist. Price is set by demand, not my any notion of a communal or national “our”.
The pollution and problems intensive dairy farming causes are “ours” so they can do something about it
The unconcern of Fonterror with the plight of NZ consumers is merely a subconscious appeal to be taxed thoroughly.
“We don’t care about the labour that processes our wealth, they subvocalise, we have to be forced to pay them at all.”
What it is, take away the shame, that is engineered to manipulate our then and now political, not past the post first.
In Denmark, when faced with the same issue the agriculture sector asked the government to invoke a law which reserved 10% of production for local consumption. This was done as the farmers felt it was unfair that locals should pay more when export prices were making local produce unaffordable. Bit of a different outlook from producers here.
Yes our producers seem to have a lot of total wankers in their ranks. Groinswell has plenty
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