Cow cockies front ads to counter industry's bad rap

Television and print advertisements highlighting dairy farming started running at the weekend as farmers pay $1.4 million to foster a "feel-good" factor for their industry.

The advertisements feature farmers from Whangarei, Thames, Huntly, Tirau, Whakatane, Taranaki, Foxton, Carterton and Canterbury promoting the industry.

It is the second phase of a campaign begun in July 2003, when the industry-good organisation Dairy Insight spent 5 per cent of its $39 million worth of farmer levies on sponsorships and promotion of the sector - including more than $1 million on its "Let's Talk Dairying" campaign.

That TV campaign called for city dwellers and people from all walks of life to join the sector and take up a life in the country.

Funded from milk levies equivalent to $10 per cow or about $2600 per farm, it was partly designed to avert a critical shortage of skilled labour as farmers retire or leave the industry.

At the time, Dairy Insight chief executive Peter Bodeker said the campaign had produced positive results.

"People from the city, people who own coffee shops, people who are plumbers and electricians, people who have worked in banks ... are ringing up farmers and ringing up Federated Farmers asking about the dairy industry.

"I think that's all we wanted to do. If we get a small percentage of them coming in, I think it will be worthwhile."

Mr Bodeker said recent research commissioned from ACNielsen showed that New Zealanders were positive about dairying, with 70 per cent of those people surveyed being "favourable to the industry".

"However, nearly 50 per cent of people surveyed said they knew nothing or next to nothing about the day-to-day business of running a dairy farm," he said.

The next stage would show dairy farmers from around the country who were innovative business people contributing to the national economy.

"Dairy farmers are rightly proud of the dynamic industry they belong to and we want people to know about it," he said.

Television advertisements are featuring on TVOne, TV2, TV3 and Prime TV, and print advertising will start on March 19 in all major daily newspapers.

The "Let's Talk Dairying" campaign followed dairy farmer calls for better promotion of dairying, as well as the need to highlight positive aspects and inform the public about the role of the industry.

When the first campaign was framed, the industry was racked by a strongly critical campaign by environmental lobbyists concerned about the effects of intensive farming on the nation's waterways.

This season, farmers are battling perceptions arising from the November report of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Morgan Williams, Growing For Good, which said intensive farming practices such as increasing fertiliser use were spoiling New Zealand's water and soil.

The report called for a total redesign of New Zealand farming systems because rapid expansion in farmers' use of nitrogen fertilisers, increased stocking rates and increased irrigation are threatening New Zealand's soils and freshwater.

It highlighted increasing risks to people from water contamination caused by dairying.

But Dairy Farmers of New Zealand chairman Kevin Wooding has said his sector's farmers have been re-designing their systems for 100 years and did not need to "hold hands in a room and talk about a utopia of what farms will look like in the future".

- NZPA