Never mind. Dividend paid today. Pity the DRP price is above current market by over 3c. But ongoing yield is good even so, hence not complaining.
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Never mind. Dividend paid today. Pity the DRP price is above current market by over 3c. But ongoing yield is good even so, hence not complaining.
I guess in every bit of news there are winners and losers.
Looking at NZ farmers - I've seen some hardworking farmers you describe, but I've seen as well farmers who don't care for the environment, who don't care for their animals and who clearly don't care for their domestic customers. I have seen farmers who subdivide and sell the farm (and this is how they really get rich) to live a lavish lifestyle in Golden Bay. I could give you names.
I do feel for hardworking people who care for their community. These are some of the farmers but clearly not all.
If you compare however the prices of agricultural products around the world, then you see that all NZ consumers get fleeced. Not just by farmers, but as well by farmers. We get the lower quality products for premium prices. On the other hand do they sell their premium products abroad - often cheaper than in NZ. Have not seen any other country where the farming community cares so little about the local population.
I do care about consumers. Hard working for their families and exploited by a bunch of greedy farmers and traders.
Good to get this off the chest ... and now we should probably talk again about HGH. Not that dependant on dairy prices (despite the funny correlation, but I think long term they will benefit from more realistic food prices in NZ. We all will.
Dairy farmers are so well off its not even funny. Dont cry for your farmer. Cry for the share milker. Dairy farmers are all multi millionaires
I used to be a Fonterra farmer, we put money into the community through schools and scholarships and the factory staff often seemed to have a better life and income than a lot of us did (I personally know staff who hate the company but will stay for life and brag about the pension scheme while enjoying their months of holidays). It is the one share I have NO regret about selling. Even the local product was often sold below international market and yet I still witnessed all the complaining about how much we were fleecing the public. It isn't easy being a farmer these days. Backbone of the nation when I was first starting out, wouldn't be in a hurry to tell anyone what I did towards the end.
I hope you made your fortune but doesn't sound like it
Well, yes and no. They normally don't get money from the government (though sometimes they do - e.g. disaster relief), but on the other hand we always seem to have governments (no matter which couleur) which tend to ignore many of the big polluters and which allow them (e.g. by ignoring science and by underfunding control measures) to keep polluting our country with substances which are (for good reasons) already banned in many other countries. Our farmers are subsidized ... just not with money, but they have instead the licence to destroy our health and our environment. They are as well subsidized by our government paying for and maintaining overseas the "green NZ" fairy tale.
Again - there are good and bad farmers (here and everywhere else), but I certainly don't see our farmers as a group disadvantaged to their competitors. No need to pity our farmers in NZ as a matter of course. If it would be harder for them to produce here than for others to produce there, they would have already moved on to greener pastures.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this had to be said. Maybe we need a separate thread to discuss the sorry state of our environment caused by all sorts of bad NZ farming practises and how some of our farmers have no reluctance at all to destroy common goods (like healthy air, soil and water) to maximise their personal profits.