Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal on the first day of New Zealand’s Fieldays 2016 event, Andrew Hoggard, the dairy chairman of Federated Farmers of New Zealand (the IFA equivalent), his members accept that there is “very little” that he can do to improve price.

“Dairy farmers are not coming to me specifically about the price of milk.

"People will talk about how tight things are but they are not coming to me for solutions... Most New Zealand farmers accept that the market is the market and that unless I can blow up some storage facilities in Europe or get China buying more or get (Russia president) Vladimir Putin to take more product then there is nothing can really change on price,” Hoggard said.

“I have not had one single farmer saying that we have not done enough on that,” Hoggard said before adding that he does not “see the point of protests” by European and, specifcially, French farmers.

Local government concerns

Aside from milk price, Hoggard said the majority of farmers are more preoccupied with government policies such as environmental constraints as well as access to the labour market.

Hoggard said that local governments are bringing policies such as “nitrogen caps” on farmers which have the potential to limit output but he said that these changes have been “coming for 20 years” and are neccessary to sustain farming.

Similarly to Ireland, access to labour is proving to be difficult for many of his members with a resurgent construction sector enticing people away from farms and on to building sites.

“Skilled labour is a concern, no doubt about that,” Hoggard said.

“With the rebuilding of Christchurch (following the earthquake of 2011) we are finding it difficult to get good people to work on farms. If you can swing a hammer on a building site then you can swing a set of cups (milking machine clusters) so we are facing that challenge too,” Hoggard added.

Hoggard's farm

Hoggard runs a 530 cow herd north of thetown of Feilding on New Zealand's north island. He farms a total of 320ha which includes a grazing platform of 220ha and 40ha of bush. He said the major challenge for farming in his region has been how dry the conditions have been.

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