Rabobank Best of The Country: March 2, 2024

This week on the Best of The Country, Jamie Mackay caught up with former Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Damien O’Connor.

The week's top interviews were:

Derek Daniell:

Is sheep farming buggered? We put the hard question to a man who has spent his lifetime breeding high-performance sheep.

Damien O’Connor - Part 1:

We asked the former Minister of Agriculture and Trade if he was going to do a Stuart Nash and drop a few historical truth bombs about the former Labour Government. And as the world’s trade ministers headed to a WTO meeting in Abu Dhabi, we asked if the call for an immediate capping of agricultural subsidies was a pure pipedream.

Damien O’Connor - Part 2:

We talked about the eye-watering numbers around agricultural subsidies ($817 billion paid annually), plus, we went back in time to the 80s when a young Damien O’Connor entered the Young Farmer of the Year Contest and made it through to the Tasman regional final on two occasions.

Mark de Lautour:

We found the chief executive of Open Country Dairy in the Netherlands, after having attended ‘Gulf Food’ in Dubai - the largest food show in the world. We looked at the real trade opportunities in the Middle East and some of the challenges we were facing in the UK and Europe.

Christopher Luxon:

The Prime Minister pondered the OCR, tax rates for Trusts, Todd McClay in Abu Dhabi for the WTO meeting, freeing up trade with India, Stuart Nash as a Nat, ending Neil Wagner’s career and the plight of Premier House.

Listen below: