Winston Peters: Have we been caught napping by Americans?

Winston Peters.

While dairy farmers are cheered by a milk price forecast that's above break even, Fonterra's recent record profit is bittersweet.

Some dairy farmers, at the behest of banks will have sold down their shares under Trading Among Farmers, so will miss the extra 50 to 60 cents per share.

Then there are the sharemilkers and contract milkers who'll never see a cent of this dividend.

Not that it didn't stop one big-city know-it-all journalist from looking at the forecast before asking why Britain's Tescos can sell milk for 79 cents a litre.

The simple answer is we can, except our supermarkets won't, because milk to them is like an ATM machine.

Meanwhile the Government rakes in 15per cent of milk's retail price through GST. Above all, we suggest that the journalist look at the mess these milk wars have made of the UK and Australian dairy industries.

In this respect Fonterra is good because it's a bulwark against the supermarket practices used on market gardeners.

Yet Fonterra has failed to deliver the value-add farmers were promised. To be fair, the Government's confused research system hasn't exactly helped, but we've been caught seriously napping.

American researchers at Purdue University have extended the shelf-life of fresh liquid milk to almost two months.

This could be to milk what refrigeration was to meat in the 19th century.

Yet why has Purdue and not Massey developed this revolutionary "add-on to pasteurisation"?

It is that good a taste panel could find no differences between extended milk and conventional milk.

So have the Americans got the drop on us given fresh milk will reach distant locations with a commercial shelf-life?

Fonterra does a good job turning high-quality New Zealand milk into commercial cheeses but powder is a problem. In taking the water out of milk, someone has to put it back in and that's increasingly an issue around the world.

We also have to ask why the Japanese brand Meiji dominates Thailand's fresh milk market.

How has Fonterra CEO Theo Spierring's old company, FrieslandCampina, come to dominate Malaysia's retail dairy industry through its Dutch Lady brand?

This tech developed in the United States, if deployed here, could put fresh Northland, Waikato and Southland milk and dairy products on to supermarket shelves all around Asia-Pacific.

But are we value-adding or 'value-outing?' Fonterra quit Britain in 2009 after licensing its Anchor Brand to European dairy giant Arla. In light of Brexit, that looks short-sighted when Britain's dairy market is worth $6billion.

So we need joined-up thinking because extended shelf life milk bottled in New Zealand will make Fonterra the Apple of food.

Those American scientists ought to be on the first plane down here because they're the immigrants we need as opposed to National's hordes of those who need us.

To make this happen, we need to start with the biggest science investment this country has ever seen. That's how you turn New Zealand's problems into opportunities.

- Winston Peters is the leader of New Zealand First and MP for Northland