'Certainty' around mycoplasma bovis eradication expedites progress

Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O'Connor

Good progress is being made on the programme to try to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis, Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O'Connor says.

Two weeks ago, the Government and industry decided to forge ahead with phased eradication, at a cost of $886 million, rather than adopt management of the disease.

In an update on Friday, Mr O'Connor said the ``benefit of certainty'' had been seen. He had attended meetings around the country where the ``overwhelming majority'' of farmers supported the eradication objective, while accepting it was a big challenge.

Phased eradication was in its early stages and it was expected to uncover more suspicious or infected properties over coming months.

Moving to phased eradication had allowed MPI to work with industry partners to bring more resources into the response to directly support farmers, he said.

The big push had been bringing in people with practical farming experience to work with farmers under regulatory control. In total, 250 people were working on the response.

In ASB's latest Farmshed Economics report, senior rural economist Nathan Penny said farmers could begin to turn their attention to how they adapted.

In the dairy sector, the disease was causing uncertainty and cost. The industry share of the response equated to about 15c/kgMS and, potentially, that was "just for starters''.

"While short-term on-farm costs are likely to be manageable, potential long-term changes to farm systems could be more material,'' Mr Penny said.

"In particular, moves towards self-contained farms could change the dairy farm cost dynamics for many.''

Positively, the dairy price outlook was very strong. The new season had started with "a hiss and a roar'' with Fonterra's opening season forecast of $7.

The potential impact of M. bovis on the beef sector seemed to have been "a little lost in all the headlines'', yet a significant share of the restricted places had beef cattle.

The impact was likely to be largest for farmers heavily reliant on animal movements, such as beef traders. Some of those farms might need to make rapid changes to their trading model.

The impact of the disease on beef prices was expected to be small over the next year, Mr Penny said.