The vast majority of Kiwis know that dairy prices are led by international prices. Fonterra says so. Fed Farmers say so.
But old King Canute John Key says black is white.
The Herald is now reporting comment that makes him look silly. Progress.
The vast majority of Kiwis know that dairy prices are led by international prices. Fonterra says so. Fed Farmers say so.
But old King Canute John Key says black is white.
The Herald is now reporting comment that makes him look silly. Progress.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 7:43 am and is filed under agriculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
And some here wonder why you guys keep pointing out his misleading and dishonest comments in spite of his poll ratings? It’s because those poll ratings are also based on his misleading and lying to the public. If you add them up, and someone ought to, they would number pretty high.
I would say the prices ‘ for the farmers’ are set by international prices but the final retail price only uses that as a starting point.
It looks to me that Key knows he can have it both ways, as usual, because he knows he can rely on the media forgetting what they wrote yesterday to get away with it. Interesting that they seem to have no problem remembering what Goff might have done or said 25 years ago?
John Key plays King John, and attracts calls for Robin Hood taxes.
The price that milk gets on-sold for is set by international prices, but the price that retailers charge is set by domestic factors.
So genius, what happens when the retailers costs increase? Prices go up. It will cost the supermarkets more to sell the products, and hence the cost to the consumer will increase.
Not very smart are you trev?
Amazing, I’m surpised the Herald ran that story about dishonest john, especially when you look at the sheer blinkered stupidity of its editorial today.
Wasn’t ETS revenue meant to be used to plant trees in order to reduce levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The proposal to transfer $800 million from the agricultural sector to provide R&D funding in the manufacturing sector has undermined my confidence in the whole emissions trading concept. It looks as if ETS revenue can be used as a simple source of Government revenue to broaden the tax base. Have I got it wrong, Trevor? Please help me understand how to view the $800 million transfer.
@Graham – unfortunately this is what i thought would happen. The ETS turns into a gigantic slush fund for the government.
moderators: changing my name as there are too many Andrew’s on this site.
Andrew: Why would ensuring the agricultural sector pays for its own ETS costs have any effect on the retailers costs? It will affect the producer’s costs, but their selling price is set by the market.
Graham: You are completely wrong. The point of the ETS is to provide a market-based mechanism to push polluters towards reducing their carbon emissions. Such a mechanism does not work if the polluters are subsidised by the taxpayers instead of having to pay their own costs, as is the case for agriculture at the moment.
Hitting producers/manufactruers in their pockets is sometimes the fastest way to innovation.
wtl: i’m more talking about the raising of the min wage to $15 affecting the price of milk. Paying into the ETS will increase costs for farmers for the same income, reducing the money that would then be spent in rural NZ, so will hurt the economy that way.
So overall, Labour’s latest policies will increase the price of milk, but not much via an ETS i guess.
Andrew it is you thats not too smart!. The CO2 charges are borne by the farmers, and probably related to the number of cows. As they keep telling us the prices are set by international rates, whether the price of CO2 or electricity increases they have to live with it.
The supermarkets are all ready paying through electricity and petrol/diesel charges.
“…. a market-based mechanism to push polluters towards reducing their carbon emissions”
wtl: Given that it has taken many millions of years of evolution to establish the metabolic processes used by mammals, what steps do you suggest should be taken by the farming sector to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions from farm animals other than to move to lower stock numbers as proposed by Jeanette Fitzsimons?
Graham there are compensatory factors. In otherwords if someone chooses to work within a HIGH polluter industry then part of the money they earn from doing that goes toward, or is offset by industry/production output which negates those gases. However, farmers have to pay for that offsetting as a cost of choosing to run a polluting business.
They don’t have to keep farming if this doesn’t work for them or they don’t like it, they can change career. That;’s what other SME’s have to do when goalposts move on them.
Tracey: If sheep and dairy farmers are driven out of business in NZ our standard of living will plummet. Is this really what you want? Remember the old platitude that farming is the backbone of the economy – well it’s still true I’m afraid!
Graham: If you think that the methane is produced by the mammal’s metabolic processes, you have no idea what you are talking about. In that vein, it’s not as if humans have changed the managed to change the yield of any crop plants at all, is it? This was shaped by millions of years of evolution, so it must be fixed in stone. The amount of milk production by cows must also be the same as it was millions of years ago. As well as the amount and type of wool produced by sheep.
Graham, that is a chicken little argument.
Farmers have to adapt and most have them have with the assistance of a stick in the form of Regional Councils. Before that too many of them thought it was ok for their animals to pollute our waterways. Left to their own devices they have not proven (like many large industries in NZ) to be responsible self managers, but good focusers on their bottomline.
I suggest you speak with some of the farmers I do, who have regenerated forest on their land, who have embraced new technologies who understand that while they may be the “backbone” of our economy it doesn’t give them carte blanche to stuff up the environment or anything else for that matter.
Like all industries there are those prepared to innovate, embrace new technology and who understand that times have changed n farming. There are those who are not.
Cost only determines price if it effects all producers, when costs only impacts on some producers it reduces their profits.
The impact of the ETS measure proposed by Labour will reduce farmer profits, but not cause a price increase – as the price (as we have been told repeatedly) is set by the international market.
The farmers have tried to influence the gullible public to imagine that their decline in profit is going to cause an increase in consumer prices – the only impact on price is that for farmland (reduced profits lower land values).
Reduced farmland value means less foreign debt.
Sure lower profits to farmers could mean less investment – but that still depends more on access to finance (quality investment that delivers economic return profit
should not be diminished – some nice to haves could be deferred).
No it won’t or, if we were more intelligent, it wouldn’t as we’d already be producing higher value products. Unfortunately, this government keeps going after the low value stuff.
Yes. I actually do want our streams, rivers and lakes cleaned up and brought back into pristine condition.
wtl seems to think that dairy cows are producing the quantity of milk as millions of years ago.
Hello !
Breeding alone has vastly increased the volume per cow in the last 40 years.
Its like wheat or corn or rice, what we use now in industrial style farming bears no relation to what early farmers used 5000 years ago.
LOL. I was being sarcastic in response to Graham when he said “Given that it has taken many millions of years of evolution to establish the metabolic processes used by mammals, what steps do you suggest should be taken by the farming sector to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions from farm animals other than to move to lower stock numbers”. i.e. it is ludicrous to suggest that nothing can be done to alter methane emissions from agriculture simply because something ‘evolved over millions of years’.
Gotcha wtl.
@Ehoa – the comments from the readers certainly didn’t sympathise with the editorial, far more discontent with NACT and far more agreeing that a change of government is necessary, complete with a focus on innovation.