The dairy sector is not in crisis

The experts see a substantial improvement in dairy prices next year. Photo / file

At the risk of getting another serve from Andrew Little or Winston Peters, I fear I may have some bad news for them.

Bad news for them, good news for the rest of us.

Once again, the subject is dairy. And, once again, I find myself relying on the experts in the field.

The field this time is Rabobank - rural lending specialists.

Rabobank have been looking at the dairy sector - the sector Winston and Andrew insist is in crisis. The industry the head of Landcorp says is broken because the Fonterra model doesn't work.

So, what does Rabobank say?

They say:

• They see a substantial - their words, not mine - improvement in prices next year, and
• The long-term fundamentals of the dairy sector have not altered.

Fonterra says the same thing. Federated Farmers say the same thing.

The question I would put to the Misery Merchants chanting doom and despair would be how many experts do we need to line up that tell the exact opposite story before we can all collectively agree those preaching the end of the world are either wrong or doing it for cheap political gain, or both.

Which is not, once again I stress, to negate the difficulty some farmers are going to face in these next few months. But let us at least argue these things with a few facts as opposed to cheap headlines. Let us bring to the table the views of people who live and breathe this stuff - not dip their toe in for a political news cycle.

Speaking of banks, the same argument applies to the ASB Economic Report yesterday. Once again, the headline grabbers have looked to use the word recession. A recession is when we go backwards. ASB, once again experts who live and breathe this stuff, say 2% growth this year, 2.9% next year. That's not backwards, it's forwards. And it's more forwards than most countries on earth.

Once you have a bunch of facts like this in front of you, in not accepting you're either saying you know more than the experts or you simply don't want to know because it doesn't suit your agenda.

I have always thought it is important we play our part in these matters. The success of a country, like the success of a business or a team or a family or an individual, is based a lot around attitude.

I like to see the glass half full, and I have the facts to back that view. When faced with the facts, if you still want to see the glass half empty - you're the loser.