Fonterra drops big lie & invests in sunset industry self mutilation
I have been arguing for some time that the NZ Dairy industry is a sunset industry the millisecond a synthetic calcium casing is found.
We have been led to believe that we are some fancy Dairy producer when the reality is we are a basic bitch exporter of basic bitch milk powder that is used as ingredient filler for the heavily manufactured food industry, 75% of our export is milk powder and the millisecond those big manufacturing industries can remove the cost of growing the cow to make the milk, our economy will risk an enormous implosion.
The NZ Dairy Industry Flashpoint is approaching…
Scientists have found a new way to make a substitute for cow’s milk that could have a radical effect on the dairy industry.
It’s called precision fermentation – creating cow protein in the lab – and could replace dairy ingredients, which make up a significant proportion of New Zealand’s export market.
“Precision fermentation of dairy proteins which creates a very easy pathway for creating proteins without using dairy cows,” University of Otago Professor Hugh Campbell explained.
“If this area takes off, it improves New Zealand’s economic prospects because a whole lot of things happen that are high value, but it does shrink our livestock footprint on the land.”
Food technologist Anna Benny has worked in food science for decades and has found herself living on a dairy farm in South Otago, so she has a unique perspective on the future of the dairy industry.
“My concerns are we are right in the firing line if this technology can take off,” she said.
Benny said New Zealand was vulnerable because three-quarters of our dairy exports could be replaced.
“The types of products that precision fermentation will produce are ingredients and powders. The types of products that we specialise in.”
…the Daily Powder Industry has managed to get environmental rules sidelined and water pollution limits eroded as they take on huge debt from the Banks to afford dairy intensification when that industry is a sunset industry.
Why on earth would the heavy manufactured food industry who peddle salt, sugar and fat laden food give a shit that the filler ingredient is organic when they want only profit maximisation?
We have built all economic support into a product that had a technological limit.
Cows will soon be Taxis in an uber world.
There is zero recognition of this risk because kiwis have been conned into believing that NZ Milk and Butter is the clever product we are exporting when the milk powder reality is far more demeaning.
So what does Fonterra do?
Why they destroy the brand future and settle to go all in on the sunset part of their industry – business-to-business milk powder exportation…
Fonterra considers selling global consumer business including Anchor, Mainland, Kāpiti brands
Dairy cooperative Fonterra is looking to sell all or part of its global consumer business as it shifts its focus to becoming a global business-to-business provider of dairy nutrition products.
Fonterra’s consumer business brands included Anchor, Mainland, Kāpiti,Anlene, Anmum, Fernleaf, Western Star, Perfect Italiano and others.
Those brands used about 15% of the co-op’s total milk solids and represented about 19% of its underlying profit in the first half of this financial year.
Fonterra chief executive Miles Hurrell said the co-op could increase its value to farmers as a business-to-business dairy nutrition provider.
…this basic bitch level export plan is even reaching to the cows themselves with the push for live exports to undermine our own meat processing industry FFS…
‘Essentially cruel’: Greens urge Govt to reconsider live animal exports
The Green Party and animal welfare activists are urging the Government to reconsider its move to repeal a ban on live exports in the wake of images showing animals living in their own filth on “purpose-built” ships.
…so we will produce raw timber, raw milk powder and just the cows themselves!
There is no development of product or value adding, just basic production of raw goods.
The Biggest Lie in NZ Politics is that NZ Dairy is the cleanest and greenest in the world when the reality is that it’s a cherry picked nonsense that leaves out pollution so NZ Dairy can get to the numbers to pretend to be clean and green.
Russel Norman’s take down of this Dairy propaganda on The AM Show recently was just ruthless…
“NZ is the biggest seller of a simple commodity called dried milk powder, the cheapest of the cheap, and if you look at what is happening in food production around the world they are looking for more environmentally sound food products.
They are looking for higher value products.
We’ve gone down the pathway of the lowest quality commodity you can produce in the world.
NZ is mid range in terms of its environmental cost per kilogram of milk solids, there is nothing special about it, and we do feed a small number of people compared to the billions on the planet and the economics is very clear that you can be just as profitable if you pull back on the stock rate, pull back on the amount of fertiliser and actually produce a higher product.
Organics is in fact doing incredibly well globally, so why don’t we become a producer of dairy rather than the producer of the cheapest commodity on the planet which results in us trashing our water ways and being big climate producers, that’s a better pathway isn’t it?
…he’s so right!
We always ignore that the 40million number is based on us selling milk powder as a base line ingredient filler for the manufactured food industry. The PR spin pretends it’s wholesome NZ cheese and milk and meat those 40million are eating when the truth is the vast majority of what we export is basic bitch milk powder used as a filler ingredient!
The Climate Crisis was some event we feared at the end of the century, what we are seeing is an unleashing of heat events well beyond what we feared.
There is just no plan to adapt to this new reality when it should be the driving force to begin immediate and radical adaptation for what is coming.
We have no comprehension of what is coming and we are simply not prepared for the age of consequences.
Watching National, ACT and Corporate Farmers use their economic and political muscle to avoid responsibility for what comes next can only be resolved by civil unrest and a campaign of civil disobedience against those interests.
Just consider how the Corporate Farming Lobby have managed to avoid any tax on their pollution since mid 2004!
They have pushed and pushed and pushed it off for 20 years!
National have already promised ANOTHER 5 year extension which will mean the agricultural industry have managed to stop any tax on their pollution for quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Claiming that NZs emissions mean nothing in comparison to China and India isn’t a justification to do nothing, it’s an acknowledgement that radical adaptation is the only move left because those Goliath economies have already doomed us to a dangerous climate change future!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
It’s laughable when people say that they won’t consume products “grown in a lab” when the technology used now to extract proteins from milk is anything but natural.
You could say that Bread, Beer, Yoghurt, Cheese, etc are all “grown in a lab” as they all use biological processes to create the end product yet because we are used to them from thousands of years of use the connection is not made.
The household kitchen is, in essence, a food processing laboratory.
I worked in the dairy industry for 40 of years.
For the last 20 of those we were hammered with the adding value mantra and spent much of my time working on developing products and processes that were designed to put more money into farmers pockets.
I don’t think that aim was ever achieved and has obviously now been abandoned.
A couple of comments;
You’ve criticised the farming industry for cherry picking data, and yet you’ve only selected FAO data that excludes pre-farmgate emissions. Do you seriously think that emissions associated with producing animal feed in the US dairy industry shouldn’t be included in their footprint?
Fonterra’s annual results are all published. You seem to be confused because their dairy ingredients seems to be their most highly profitable way to sell milk. Their consumer business requires 26% of Fonterra’s capital base and generates 7% of their underlying return. These brands are not profitable compared to their B2B business.
Your belief that the industry is sunset is childlike. Dairy is the globes most highest value agricultural trade-able commodity. It’s not going anywhere, and quoting failed micro biologist who are trying to find to fund their hobbies shows your ignorance of the actual market realities.
The way Fonterra calculates the milk price means that comparing profit between different business units is a waste of time.
The milk price calculation is notional and based on he assumption Fonterra is an efficient producer of commodities, which of course is patent nonsense.
So the milk price is overstated and this means that the cost of milk to the consumer business is overstated and so profits are understated.
The milk pay out has always been subsidised by the value added dividend and this is the way Fonterra wants it, as otherwise the pay out is uncompetitive and they lose suppliers to the competition.
And so NZ loses the ability to add value so Fonterra can protect its inefficiencies against competition.
Do you not know about horticulture? They are paying obscene amounts just for the licence to grow gold kiwifruit so your idea that Dairy is the highest value traded commodity can only be because you are ignorant of the market realities.
Well put .As a Greenie the farmers are enemy number one on this sight and all those associated are damned as well.Books were going to be replaced by Kindle but it never happened. Farmers and cows will be here long after we are gone .
Fonterra makes no money on those brands in overseas markets, they break even at best or make sizeable losses depending on the brand and the market.
And of course this has to be offset by price gouging in the NZ market where everyone knows we are being hammered for a sliver of cheese or dollop of yogurt.
So Fonterra are just bailing before the ComCom comes a knocking at their door.
It’s got to be a questionable strategic decision in a time where anyone in a deep trading relationship with China is vulnerable to manipulation.
Ask the Aussies.
And there are issues with social license over the creation of the Fonterra monopoly (Labour) which seems to now be sidestepping any putting back of quality let alone low cost product to the citizens of the country that allowed it.
This is short term thinking that leaves the countries export income less diversified and more exposed.
It will also increase anti farmer sentiment.
This is the reason National have not got a plan to charge farmers for pollution .All the farms will be abandoned and nature will swallow them up and regenerate back to how the land was before the white men stole it and fucked it up .
I remember when Roger Douglas promised us a high skill high wage economy. I remember when he and other neoliberals promised that we would be adding value to the stuff that we export. For fuck’s sake we are still exporting pretty much unaltered commodities. We’ll be price takers for the foreseeable future if we keep doing this. There will always be a market for cows milk, but I suspect it will become more of a luxury item for people who want “natural” products. That means we gotta do something other than turn it into powder and send it overseas.
In the 1960s the NZ milk industry was going to solve global hunger with the new wonder product, the milk biscuit. It turned out that they simply gave the world’s poorest severe diarrhea.