Neighbour fears worst

Photo / Herald on Sunday

A Waikato farmer says he is suspicious and distrustful of a reported foreign takeover of the debt-ridden Crafar farms.

The farmer has owned his 81ha dairy farm, which is a 10-minute drive from Hamilton's CBD, for six years.

His property on Collins Rd, Deanwell, neighbours a 400ha Crafar-owned farm - one of the family's 22 farms Hong Kong-based investor Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings is considering buying, with their stock, for an undisclosed sum.

The farmer said he was not against the idea of foreign investment "on a small scale". But the proposed buy-out of NZ's biggest privately owned dairy farming business was "very worrying".

"I'm not prejudiced or anything like that but I don't really trust the Chinese. I've certainly got my doubts about them and I think they can't be trusted to a certain degree," he said.

"There's a lot of money to be made in China by selling our products but they do things a lot differently to the rest of the world and they don't seem to be too concerned about what the rest of the world thinks."

The farmer said he could understand how the Crafar empire and the banks involved would want to settle its reported $200 million worth of debt but feared this could come at a cost to the local dairy industry long term.

"But we want to protect what we have got here. There's only so much land and they're not making any more. We have to think about the big picture, and further down the track is it going to be good for New Zealand? I don't think so, to be honest."