Aug 15, 2024
Executive Committee Report
As farmers we are faced with constant change and challenges throughout the season, one of the main challenges for us lately has been the rising farm input costs. My father had a saying that when times were tough “every dollar was a prisoner”, over the last 4 years with on farm inflation close to 50% every dollar we have is not only a prisoner, but it seems to be serving a life sentence at the same time. The improving Venison prices, Spring contracts from $10.35 to $10.85 are giving farmers more confidence to invest and plan long term. On the recent NZDFA Next Generation event, we were informed that prices for Venison are moving upwards with predictions for the next two seasons moving closer towards $11 and $12 respectively. Forward contracts are now moving to a longer time period with some customers looking up to two years in advance, all positive news with respect to Venison market stabilisation.
One more important piece of information that we gained from Venison processors is the challenge they have faced with the number of larger animals coming through and the extra time this takes. They have increased by around 280% (12,000 to 34,000) over the past 5 years with the bottle neck time being around Jan to March once farmers have taken regrowth off mature stags. A simple solution is to cull early once the first cut has been taken and even then, there might still be challenges of getting stags away.
Information is key and every day we seem to be bombarded with new ways to receive the latest news. Last month I was reading the DINZ e- news and there was an MPI report that was around 150 pages long with the most important pages for deer farmers being pages 52, 70 and 71.
Please take the time when you are having a cup of tea or coffee as they provide a future outlook on where our industry is heading. It pays to keep an eye on industry updates as we move closer towards our Velvet season starting as any announcement about velvet will be communicated via DINZ and will most likely come via email.
Lots of things happening on the farm this month, but something I wasn’t expecting was my wife to be the victim of a “ram raid”. Her 4-year-old pet twin ram became jealous of the attention his brother was receiving and knocked my wife over hitting her from behind. He was spared the butchers knife on appeal, but it just goes to show we must be vigilant at all times.
Justin Stevens
Marlborough
