Are debt-hungry farmers the authors of their own misfortune? Federated Farmers director and Dairy Industry Group chairman Andrew Hoggard answers your questions on NBR Radio and on demand on MyNBR Radio.
Federated Farmers director and Dairy Industry Group chairman Andrew Hoggard is next up in the AMA chair.
Click the NBR Radio box to hear Andrew Patterson putting your questions from are debt-hungry farmers the authors of their own misfortune to a proposed no-confidence vote in Fonterra's board and whether Fed Farmers is too cosy with the government to be an effective advocate.
On Winston Peters accusatin Fed Farms is too close to the government, Mr Hoggard said, "I’m no government lacky or stooge. I’ve just given them an earful about the TPP the other week." (And it doesn't seem like the Fed Farms exec is a huge fan of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, at least as it currently stands in negotiations. "We need greater market access around the world, more trade deals that are actually about trade rather than keep on protectionism under a different name," he said earlier in his AMA).
Mr Hoggard added, "I’ve heard Winston Peters talk before about Federated Farmers people just being ‘Queen Street Farmers’. I can assure him I am very much a real farmer, and if he ever wants to spend a week out on the farm seeing what a real farmer does, then he’s welcome to come out because I could do with all the help I could get at this time of the year."
Mexican stand-off
The Fed Farmers exec — who holds an economics degree from Massey — was also a staunch defender of the Global Dairy Trade auction system.
"It really does clearly identify what the supply and demand equation is. It really does finid that equilibrium for us — much as we hate where it is at the moment, he said.
"It is a good platform. It probably needs to be explained a hell of a lot better and Fonterra have really let themselves down in not properly."
It is the reality of the market place, he said.
"We can try and intervene but that will just come back and bite us later
"If we were to hold back product [and Fonterra has announced a pullback] the buyers out there would know and as happened in the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s they’ll hold off buying and it’ll be a Mexican standoff. And as I’m told was usually the Dairy Board or later on Fonterra that would usually cave and have to sell off that product really cheap.
"Fonterra was playing this game where it was effectively subsidising higher prices for the rest of the world’s farmers and accepting poor returns for its own farmers."
See previous installments of Ask Me Anything by clicking the AMA tab on our menu bar, or bookmarking www.nbr.co.nz/ask-me-anything.
