The Mackenzie country dairy development is not necessarily going to supply milk products to Fonterra so Fonterra may not have any control over the developments.
NZ Dairy Ltd, the nearest factory, have a huge new processing plant down the Waitaki Valley in South Canterbury. I think this company is now almost totally Russian owned after they bought out the NZ shareholders.
Do they care about NZ's image which Fonterra clearly does or do NZ Dairies just want to produce milk products at the cheapest possible price??
I've now been advised that the Russian factory is located at Studholme and prior to it being opened in the last year, their milk was being trucked to Hokitika, presumably because the Fonterra factory at Clandeboyne (South Canterbury) would not process a rival's milk or maybe was operating to capacity.
In summary
*The drylands of the Mackenzie are being transformed to dairy lands by adding water. Natural drylands and their plants and animals are disappearing.
* These are not family dairy farms but large agribusiness conglomerates. I wonder who their banker is?
* Water is being taken from the Waitaki system to do this.
* The dairy farming requires huge use of nitrogen fertiliser (made from petrochemicals) to grow the crops to feed the cows.
* Runoff from the farms goes into the Waitaki system.
* A cow cubicle system undermines the image of "free range" outdoor cows eating natural grass that NZ has portrayed to world markets.
* The milk is then trucked from these new farms probably to the Russian owned factory.
*In that factory, huge quantities of coal are used to evaporate the milk to make milk powder. These dairy factories are one of the largest users of coal in NZ and collectively rank up there with the Huntley coal fired power station.
* Phenomenal amounts of the greenhouse gases CO2, methane and nitrous oxide are produced by this whole process at the very time we should be drastically reducing our production of these gases.
* No wonder this farming industry and the dairy factories sought and received an exemption from the ETS for their greenhouse gas production. The taxpayers instead are going to cover the costs of their emissions.
CAN SOMEONE TELL ME THE UPSIDE TO NEW ZEALAND (IF ANY) OF THIS COW CUBICLE PROCESS?
