Dairying Farming in New Zealand

Dairy farming in New Zealand is primarily an export industry based almost entirely on the use of perennial ryegrass and while clover. A low cost dairy farming system has been developed and it is this system which enables the New Zealand dairy farmer to survive on returns from the international marketplace. Milk marketing in New Zealand is controlled by a single producer organisation, the New Zealand Dairy Board, which also provides breeding services lo some 14 700 dairy farmers. The industry aims to maximise the net income of dairy farmers. Emphasis is on efficient production and is often measured on a per hn basis. Whole-farm profitability rather than that of individual cattle has become the dairy farmer's goal. The diversity found in our industry is the same as in any society. Among our dairy farmers are the "intellectual giants" and "ignorant clods", workers and wasters, philosophers and fools. There are cheerful types and "miseries", successes and failures. Yet above all this is ihe common co-operative character, inherited, nurtured and fashioned over generations, which has created the structure we casually and simply refer to as - the dairy industry of New Zealand.