By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agriculture editor
Former Prime Minister Mike Moore is haunted by the knowledge that 30 years ago the Dairy Board and Nestle were the same size.
Moore, who has a new role as senior counsellor on trade and global strategy for Dairy Board successor Fonterra, said the turnover of global
food giant Nestle was now greater than the entire New Zealand economy.
"What can we learn from that? We can do better," he said yesterday.
Moore, who stood down from a three-year term as World Trade Organisation director-general in August and was appointed a New Zealand special trade envoy the following month, will be devoting several weeks a year to Fonterra's interests for two years.
"It is New Zealand's biggest company. It is the world's single largest exporter of dairy products. They are responsible for a third of international dairy trade and therefore trade policy is critical to them, and to every New Zealander," said Moore in Auckland yesterday.
"No company, or country, would gain more by freeing trade than Fonterra or New Zealand."
He had already done some lobbying in the US on behalf of New Zealand and Fonterra and that would continue here at a US-NZ Business Council meeting this weekend, and among a visiting group of US politicians.
Moore said he would remain living in Geneva until July but then hoped to spend at least half the year in New Zealand with work for other multinational companies, Governments and universities periodically taking him around the world.
Fonterra chief executive Craig Norgate said Fonterra stood to benefit greatly from the strategic advice offered by Moore, drawing on his vast experience, expertise and contacts with leading figures in international trade.
Moore will release his latest book, World Without Walls, next month and hoped to finish another by the end of the year.
Some might describe the pace of change to global trade rules as glacial but Moore said: "It is melting."
For the first time, Europeans were beginning to decouple support for farmers from farm production.
