Articles tagged Dairying

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters doubled down on last week's New Zealand First party attacks on the performance and leadership of Fonterra, saying the country's largest business was costing the economy more than $2 billion from food safety and animal welfare scares.

Rod Oram has followed a trail of bad management decisions and poor governance to discover why Fonterra is staring down the barrel of a massive writedown on its investment in Beingmate. He raises questions about the role of Fonterra's auditor, PwC, and a stifled culture of debate on its board.

Beingmate, Fonterra's troubled investment in China, is blaming the co-op for its losses, according to a formal letter Beingmate has reportedly sent to Chinese financial regulators in response to their enquiries.

Rod Oram warns in this week's column that Fonterra shareholders should brace for more bad news about the cooperative's disastrous investment in Beingmate Baby and Child Food.

Rod Oram looks this week at Fonterra's apparently ground-shifting announcement about reducing its net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. He writes Fonterra's caveats mean the plan is not as impressive as it looks.

Rod Oram went under the covers of Fonterra's result this week to see if Theo Spierings deserved his $8.3 million salary. He finds New Zealand's biggest exporter has a long way to go to produce more value from its milk and its key Chinese investment is struggling.

Rod Oram takes a look in this week's column at the future of farming. He argues it's time for farmers to stop squandering their natural capital and avoid an environmental bankruptcy, in the same way farmers dug themselves out of financial bankruptcy in the late 1980s.

National Leader Bill English has claimed on the campaign trail that incomes have risen twice as fast as the rate of inflation in the last nine years. He also said exports are diversifying. Rod Oram has fact-checked both claims and finds English is mostly wrong on incomes and just plain wrong on exports.

With just three full days left until the election, Labour Leader Jacinda Ardern stayed on the trail to talk to younger voters in Wellington despite the death of her grandmother late on Monday evening.

The Government has watered down its plans to tighten rules for temporary work visas, but dairy farmers remain unhappy because 60 percent of their migrant workers will still have to leave after three years and can't bring their families with them, Bernard Hickey reports.