A Study on the Development Factors and Current Status of New Zealand Animal Industry

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Based on the liberalization policy since 1984, the New Zealand government has removed agricultural subsidies, and farmers have to survive under severe conditions of decreasing income. The characteristics of agricultural management in the latter half of 1980s have been the change of composition rates of animals and saving of farm expenditures.Due to the stagnant export of dairy products, the Dairy Board regulated milk production for the first time. Beef cattle increased filling the decrease of sheep. Deer farming has been developing widely. As farms have been running all-season grazing on grasslands, there has been no need to change the form of paddocks. The easiest way to save farm expenditures has been decreasing of quantity of fertiliser, which makes growth of grass as well as the capacity of animals less naturally, but this has been an inevitable way especially-for sheep farms. In some areas farmers have changed part of their farms into Kiwifruit orchards, but they are now suffering … More from overproduction and fall of prices. According to our tracing survey of farms which were investigated in 1985 and 1988, there are many cases of changes like selling out of farms, reducing of farm size, changing animal species, expanding and integrating of farm management, etc., due to their individual conditions. Genarally speaking, New Zealand agriculture has passed through the worst situation at the beginning of 1990s.Among dairy factories, integration and rationalization have been promoted in a large scale, while as for freezing works, some were closed down and some others were newly established.As the New Zealand agriculture and its related industries have hitherto achieved a very advanced management and technology, they are expecting t6 win in the international competition in the Uruguay Round system.In the third survey, our study team got a lot of additional information and materials to the former two surveys ; on the policy and actions of the government, boards and political association of farmers ; on the latest results of research in universities and research institutes ; and on land use, natural disasters, distribution of animals, etc. by general observations. Less