Wool gets shorn from farming body

Sheep farmers voted to stop paying a wool and goat levy. Photo / Amos Chapple

Farming industry body Meat and Wool New Zealand is to get a new name following a sheep farmers' vote last year to stop paying the wool levy.

From April 16, wool growers will cease to pay the levy on their fleece which has funded R&D and marketing efforts in their sector for decades.

That means Meat and Wool no longer needs the "wool" in its name.

Chairman Mike Petersen said it hoped to unveil a new name at its annual general meeting in Te Kuiti on March 24. He could confirm that it would not be Meat New Zealand, the organisation's old name.

"It sounds more like a dating agency to me," he joked.

The body did not want to spend a lot of money on the process, and the new title would be "something that makes sense, that's simple and not costly to implement".

In a referendum last August, farmers voted to continue paying levies for sheepmeat and beef activities, but to discontinue their wool and goat meat payments.

As a result Meat and Wool New Zealand has had to make $6.3 million in budget cuts.

The decision was bad news for the fragmented wool industry, which is suffering from historically low wool prices.

Last week Meat and Wool and Federated Farmers announced they were joining forces to support wool industry rescue efforts. The collaboration follows last month's recommendations by the Wool Industry Taskforce, set up by Agriculture Minister David Carter.

The taskforce called for unity in the sector and the minister is to appoint an independent expert to work on forming a single industry body.

Federated Farmers meat and fibre chairman Bruce Wills said the taskforce release was "strategic plan number five" in the last 40 years, four of which had ended up sitting on shelves.

Petersen said Meat and Wool still collected a wealth of wool production information that may as well be used.

"We do a whole lot of work around sheep and beef farm profit forecasting, and of course we have to include wool in that because that's part of the income."