Fonterra finally guts the added value lie – is it enough to still fool Kiwis social license?

Fonterra brands roadshow ‘bittersweet’ for those who champion a move away from commodities

The government has announced a series of initiatives which it sees as likely to lift New Zealand’s game on economic growth, including the so-called Fast Track legislation which overrides environmental and other safeguards; plans to loosen investment restrictions under the Overseas Investment Office (OIO); enhancing the investor visa category; encouraging digital nomads; opening up housing and build-to-rent for overseas investors; the recent infrastructure summit; changing procurement rules; and free trade negotiations with India.

A surprising omission is the absence of a strategy for added value to services and products associated with existing industries, particularly in the primary sector. Yet, right on cue – by happy coincidence – Fonterra is starting a series of roadshows with investors promoting the sale of its consumer brand business under the name Mainland Group, accounting in value for about 20% of the company’s total sales.

Fonteera gets to pollute the country, steal and filthy our water, create climate change gases and sell to us a product at global prices because it has the social contract to do that.

The social contract is built upon the lie that we sell our cheese and milk to the world when the truth is we create basic bitch milk powder for the heavily manufactured food industry as an ingredient.

We lie to ourselves using our brands to pretend we are making dairy products when the reality is no value added basic bitch milk powder.

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 find new way to make cow’s milk substitute, could have radical effect on New Zealand’s dairy industry

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 Dairy 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 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!

 

 

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