TE WHANGAI NEWSLETTER SPRING 2023

As another year bows out so too does another Te Whangai legend. Shona was the rock on which Bay stood for 65 years. She spent countless hours in the yards scrolling through records and recording data by hand for the many years before electronics and she would have lambing data sheets all over the living room, meticulously documenting everything that came in on the lambing books. Even at 86 she would still offer to drop everything and come and help if she was asked to (which of course she wasn't) and she never missed providing smoko and lunch at ram selling time for almost 45 years.

The West Coast can no longer hold the monopoly of having moss on their battens! I admit there have been times when I have given up measuring the rain we have had, and we've had buggar all relative to many others.

I know the Ohuka Valley, west of Wairoa has had 3.7 metres for the 12 months to 1 July 2023 and when the date is stretched back another 6 months to Jan 2022 that figure amounts to a whopping 5.5 metres!

While that might seem like a dream in the middle of a drought, we know the reality is very different. Words of sympathy for cyclone effected folk are important as moral support but the actual act of communities helping each other is and has been huge and incredibly Kiwi, especially in the face of very poor state assistance.

I was told by an army consultant that they were told not to help because it would take work away from local contractors!! You just can't make this stuff up!

As tough as it is, and Te Whangai has had a reasonable beating too, we are a resilient lot, the scars will heal, the fences will slowly be made good again and with each others support the battered communities will rise again.

With the challenges of a wet summer so also came opportunities and the arrival of Barbers Pole was another unwelcome burden but the upside has been the inevitable sorting of the wheat from the chaff amongst the undrenched lambs through January. Rest assured the ram lambs that were least tolerant to this challenge will not be passing those genes on!

It has become very fashionable for breeders to make claims about parasite resilience now that anthelmintic resistance seems to have resurfaced but I don't believe there is another operation that is a more genuine testing ground than Te Whangai when you consider the no drench at weaning policy, the very low cattle ratio, high stocking rate, altitude and soil fertility... it's no picnic for a sheep. A gratifying example of efficiency was seen in a line of little ewe lambs that weighed 27kg in early March, moved onto some good feed and mated at 38kg and scanned 89%.

UK Update

In May, I made a very quick trip to visit Matt and Pip Smith in the UK, where Te Whangai genetics are now well embedded, for a fielday they were having to present and discuss the results of the parasite resilience trial that the Moredun research institute had run on their farm.

Follow them on Facebook - Resilient Romneys UK. You will recognise the brand.

Of course it was pleasing although not surprising, that what they found was exactly what we already knew from 30 years of doing similar work... and although I am not at liberty to be specific, there were other romney sires used in the trial and the results were very gratifying from a Te Whangai perspective.

It is not a new concept in the UK to farm with a more NZ style of management and with the prospect of loosing their basic subsidy there seems to be more acceptance that they can actually change and remain profitable, but it will be a package and that includes easy care sheep bred for generations for survival outdoors and requiring fewer inputs.

While I thought foxes, badgers and the weather were the biggest problem I am assured that it is actually the public!!

With a truck load of ewe hoggets and 40-50 rams from Matt's now in France, it is gratifying to think Te Whangai genetics have already jumped into Europe and there is enquiry from Scandinavia for semen and embryos.

Got to be said

It is just not possible to avoid some commentary on wool as after all it is the worlds most unique natural fibre! and accepted by most critical thinkers as being vital for a successful sheep industry, never more so than when the well predicted downturn in meat prices arrives.

The wool situation is a disaster, I totally accept that, and having the North Island wool scour knocked out by Cyclone Gabrielle has made matters worse, but isn’t that the time to try even harder to look at how else it can be improved?

What has become clear is that well sorted good coloured lines are

making double that of poorer lines... sure double nothing is still nothing but it’s a sign. I think it’s a sign that finally the practise of blending crap wool into carpet yarn is waning. There are only 3-4 spinning mills in the world that are now the go to places for quality yarn, and they obviously want quality wool.

We need more good reasons to be positive

In times like these, two that jump right at me are the development and commercialisation of a new wool carpet tile and in a directly connected way there is increasing awareness of the latest methane science, which is fantastic news.

Wool carpet tiles are not an entirely new idea but in recent times there has not been one on the global market and now there may only be two brands, of which the Wools of NZ one is by far heavier weight (more wool) and way superior.

In my mind the big potential for a commercial tile is two fold, firstly as a floor covering in the commercial space where broadloom is not 'fit for purpose' thus without a tile there is no opportunity for wool, so that is a 'new use'.

Then there is the potential DIY market and internet sales, again a 'new use' logically that is a massive market and is direct to consumer which puts more margin into the product owner's pocket. The challenge is of course NZ must remain the product owner, unfortunately not a concept many farmers are prepared to invest in!

The tiles made a splash before they have even been officially launched, by being passed up for a US based plastic product to be used in hundreds of rural schools. The primary reason for the rejection would appear to be the difficulty of proving wool's environmental superiority to plastic!!

To top it off our dear National party leader's only comment was "well we have to get best value for tax payers".

Sorry buddy that does not cut it! What a wet and woke situation but it looks like schools are pushing back anyway and good for them.

A key part of ticking the 'sustainability' box is in the 'perceived' emissions profile for sheep...god help us!

Enter the methane good news

I make no apology for being political in my commentary here, the latest science (2019) clearly tells us that methane is so insignificant both by volume in the atmosphere and in the nature of it’s heat absorption, that ruminant animals most definitely should not be taxed for producing it... Fantastic news!!

Sheep and beef producers don’t have to drop production by 20% (as both government and our own Beef+Lamb have shown we would if this tax proposal were to go ahead) and NZ will be billions per year better off.

But wait... the government still insists on using 30 year old, already rebuked, science to calculate their nonsense tax! and our problem is that none of the ‘five in the hive’ (current parties in govt) are committing to anything different.

More good news - most of you already know this but feel you are alone... you are definitely not!

More good news – there are political parties that will kick this rubbish to touch so lets seek them out and support them.

The methane 'industry' is the biggest threat to sheep and beef farming ever.

On top of taxation comes measurement and mitigation. To even waste time describing this is painful enough but it must be said... what would this time and cost even be for when the science - which no one has proven to be wrong, shows that it is physically impossible for ruminant methane to be warming the atmosphere to a measurable degree, possibly .001C per year!

As for mitigation measures...the only mitigation thing we have for sheep is genetically lower emitting sheep and the NZ research results to date shows to be very uninspiring and is resulting in, quote "wool, live weight and fat deposition traits may be affected over time"!! Does that sound like a good use of your B+L levy?

Australian cattle research concludes "Feeding and breeding interventions that seek to reduce methane emissions may be undesirable".

We would be doing our clients a huge disservice if we were to follow this path and after all who would send their rams to the 'gas chamber'!

Who do we trust?? Jim Gibbs and Derek Moot from Lincoln University are two loyal and widely respected leaders in our real ag science world and they are saying NO to taxing methane, based on the science and the facts.

Planet savers?

It is very interesting if not somewhat perplexing that after all the years of vehemently opposing genetic modification, the Green (red) party are now supportive of it because it could be the answer to our perceived climate change problems! How is it that for decades, consumers have apparently not wanted our product if it was GM and yet now it's more than ok because we don't mind eating anything if it's going to save the planet?

Another 'planet saver' that arrived with much hype was fake meat and interestingly, as described by a Melbourne based biotechnology professor “It’s a fable driven by hope, not science, and when the investors finally realise this the market will collapse”, so lets hope it does.

Other thoughts

We will have ultrasound scanned all the ram hoggets by the middle of September with the objective of identifying animals with superior levels of internal fat and working with meat industry research to explore premium options from high Intra Muscular Fat.

These premiums are real and would be $1-2/kg right now I'm told. The pelt premiums of up to $16-17 are also real, for qualifying 'Regen' skins. Real premiums that are based on the free market, not 'fluffy' invisible concepts being imposed on us in the guise of consumer demand.

I know of an organic, Regen (his choice) dairy farmer who is still getting $9.10kgMS while conventional farmers will be borrowing again heavily just to stay on the treadmill and be made to accept (against their will) that the

market will only take their product if they adhere to a bunch of rules.

The high input high output model, always ends in tears when the prices goes down because the costs never do and it is a classic case of the evil of inflation, the insidious tax, which no government will properly address.

Note from James

It is coming up two years since my family and I moved to Te Whangai. The last two seasons have been far from the expectation of Te Whangai with what seems like endless rain and weather events.

Working alongside me on farm are Jimmy Downes and Tristin Peeti- Webber who deserve thanks for their hard work and dedication.

We are also looking for someone to join the team in a junior shepherd role, if this may be of interest to anyone out there.

This wet weather has been a challenge for both man and stock, as has the huge task of getting the whole recorded flock genotyped, not to mention some salmonella but we are as resilient as are our sheep!

This is an exciting time of year for us on the ground as the new crop of lambs are about to drop.

These lambs are what shape both the stud and influence the genetics that we put forward for sale to you, we look forward to seeing how these lambs progress.

I hope lambing is kind and all the best for the coming season.

Cheers, James Brennan

A parting thought

Rate of inflation since 1960

In 1960, what you could buy for $1 now costs $52.81, a lamb then was about $4.50 or 37 cents/kg, so today that should be $19/kg. In that time NZ has had 5200% inflation.

Consider this, 2000 years ago a high end toga, a pair of sandals and a belt could be purchased for 1 ounce of gold. Today that same high quality outfit would cost you the equivalent of 1 ounce of gold!! The value of gold as a currency has not changed!

The fact that our Fiat monetary system allows for the infinite creation of increasingly valueless money and therefore continuous inflation, means that until something changes dramatically then we are stuck with more of the same.

The interest bill on NZ govt debt is now $6 billion pa, the 4th highest item in the budget!

We have to vote in a complete change. If only we had a political movement that would own up to where inflation comes from (too much money in the economy) and how to stop it (live within our means and prohibit the endless creation of credit aka printing money) as well as cut regulation, taxes and all this methane nonsense. What about a flat tax? We need real change not just shuffling the deck chairs! If that movement existed would we have the courage to vote them in?? I certainly would.

Looking forward to that change and the prospect of good times ahead.

Hamish and Wynne, Kate, Archie, Patch and all the Te Whangai team.