Single body planned for wool, meat levies

A single levy-collecting pastoral organisation, long called for by farmers, has moved a step closer.

SheepCo and Meat New Zealand have agreed to work together to establish a new organisation to collect and administer levies on wool, sheep meat, beef and goat meat.

Sheep farmers have been critical of the Wool Board's spending farmers' levies in the past.

Now the board is going out of existence, the newly created SheepCo is taking over its research funding.

But increasingly farmers have called for a single meat and wool pastoral organisation to collect and administer levies.

SheepCo chairman Mike Petersen and Meat New Zealand chairman Jeff Grant are committed to making a single organisation happen.

"The rationale for a single organisation is strong," Mr Grant said. "By and large we share a common constituency.

"Our farmers manage their farms as integrated businesses. That reality must be reflected in industry-good structures of the future."

The chairmen say a single body should be able to operate on 60 per cent of the cost of two organisations.

They say a single process of farmer consultation and business planning will lead to a farmer vote on the future of levies around the middle of next year.

Federated Farmers Meat and Fibre Producers' chairman Murray Taggart welcomed the announcement, but said the new organisation's activities and accountability to ratepayers were more important than the shape of the organisation.

- NZPA