Federated Farmers hosted its annual Meat and Fibre council meeting in Wellington on November 21 and 22. It was attended by 38 members from around the country.
There was a range of topical speakers as well as a number of opportunities for some good robust discussion amongst the group.
Erica van Reenen of Beef and Lamb NZ (B+LNZ) ran a great workshop on the Land Environment Plan (LEP) Toolkit. This included an overview of what was involved in the three levels of LEPs and a series of great real life examples from around the country of actions that have been undertaken to prevent erosion and degradation of waterways amongst others.
In groups, the council had to implement an LEP on a model farm identifying the appropriate stock for different land classes, pest management strategies and how to cope with native bush and waterways. Dr Paul Le Miere followed this up with an overview of the process for managing freshwater from the National Objectives Framework.
James Parsons, the chairman-elect of B+LNZ, gave us an update on some of the key projects they are involved with. Some of these included Beef + Lamb Genetics, the Red Meat Profit Partnership, their role in the environmental space and future collaborations with Federated Farmers and the role of B+LNZ as providing information during the ongoing debates around meat industry structure.
Scott Champion, chief executive of Beef and Lamb NZ, Malcom Bailey, the independent chairman, and Duncan McKinnon, the project manager, gave us an overview of the Red Meat Profit Partnership programme. It consists of four key projects: understanding behaviour change, sector capability, systems and data integration and production and provenance.
Philippa Wright gave us an overview of the activities of Campaign for Wool.
With HRH The Prince of Wales as its patron, the Campaign for Wool was established to educate consumers about the properties and versatility of wool.
It is a global initiative currently active in 11 countries.
Some of its major recent events in New Zealand have included the NZ Wool expo in conjunction with PGG Wrightson and Massey University, Shear Brilliance at the Cloud and Shear Fashion at Golden Shears, with a number of future events in the pipeline.
There was significant, in-depth discussion about the future of the meat industry with a number of possible situations explored. This discussion was centered on the Federation's Meat Industry Options paper which will be released to members shortly.
The meeting was finished off with an interactive health and safety workshop run by the Federation's own Kara Lok. This included an overview of what constituted good health and safety and how to implement a health and safety plan. There was also a group exercise where they had to identify hazards, assess the risk they posed and determine how they can be controlled using the eliminate, isolate, minimise approach.
Overall, it was a great couple of days allowing delegates from around the country to discuss the current issues facing the meat and fibre industry and determine our pathway forward.