Mastering the Trifecta: Sheep, Beef and Dairy Management with Matt Iremonger

Join us this week and find out how Matt Iremonger manages multiple dairy, sheep and beef operations across 6,500 hectares in Canterbury, New Zealand. Matt shares the challenges and opportunities in such a diverse farming enterprise, as well as his recent experience as a Nuffield Scholar looking at the integration of beef production from the dairy industry to create a high-value premium product.


When Matt’s parents sold the farm he grew up on, Matt needed to find another way into property ownership. After a stint at the New Zealand Wool Board and some time overseas, Matt returned to New Zealand to lease a farm. Matt and his wife then went into an equity partnership on a larger farm, which they grew for 10 years. More recently they have joined forces with the Thomas family, managing their farming business and purchasing farms in partnership with them. 


Matt and his wife Katy run dairy, sheep, and beef farming systems that operate across 6,500 hectares in the Ellesmere district in Canterbury. “We think of ourselves as a pastoral business,” explains Matt. “That pastoralism extends to a number of products which include lamb, beef and dairy. Dairy is no different to pastoral sheep and beef, it's just a different harvesting system.”


Their stock consists of 1,550 dairy cows (plus replacement heifers); 12,000 mixed-age ewes and 3,000 hoggets (producing 22,000 lambs a year); and 1,200 beef cows (from which they finish the majority of the calves). 


Running such a diverse business prompted Matt to apply for a Nuffield scholarship in 2023. Matt saw an opportunity in the industry for better utilisation of surplus calves from the dairy side of the operation. Matt spent five months travelling and researching the challenges and opportunities in New Zealand, comparing it with practices in the United States and the European Union, and came across some surprising revelations. 
Mark and Matt also discuss the breeding principles that apply across these enterprises and how they select their bulls. 

Matt has valuable insights into managing diverse farming operations for optimal productivity and sustainability, capitalising on opportunities. From navigating partnerships to strategic breeding principles, this week's episode has it all. 

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome Matt Eyemonger to Hedgehaven. Hi Mark, how are you? Yeah, good mate. Thanks very much for your time today, looking forward to having a bit of a chat. You're now the general manager there at Wills and Farms and it'd be just good to start off with a little lead-up of your career and sort of how you ended up where you are now.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Sure Well, it's not particularly exciting, but the really brief summary is look, I grew up on a farm near Murchison, south of Nelson. My parents sold that farm. I went to in the sort of the late 1980s and I went on to high school in Christchurch Always wanted to go back farming. My parents decided to do other things and I always wanted to go back farming. Ended up going through school in Christchurch, went through Lincoln University thinking that I'd potentially get a job that could help me pave a way into farming.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Ended up working for the New Zealand War Board briefly and decided at the time of change in the late 1990s, early 2000, that wasn't for me Went overseas for a few years, came back with my now wife, leased the farm in North Canterbury, did that for about five years, subsequently going into an equity partnership on a larger farm which we grew, brought some additional blocks and did that for about 10 years. After that we decided to do something different and we ended up joining with the Thomas family Brent and Belinda Thomas and managing their business and purchasing a couple of farms in partnership. They were a couple of sheep and beef farms in North Canterbury. We subsequently sold those and now have a couple of dairy farms in partnership and manage, alongside the Thomases, their wider farming interests as well.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Yeah, righto, excellent, yeah, so the business now has beef, sheep and dairy components.

Speaker 2: 2:04

I guess maybe give us a bit of a rundown of those different systems and how they integrate and, I guess, where they don't Sure Well, I mean we think of ourselves as a pastoral business and that pastoralism extends to a number of products which include lamb, beef and dairy. So dairy is just no different to pastoral sheep and beef, it's is just. It's no different to partial sheep and beef, it's just a different harvesting system. So, yeah, so we have about 1,550 dairy cows we're looking to grow that for the 25, 26 season to 2,300 dairy cows. We operate, obviously, on about 6,500 hectares in total across the properties, and so with the dairy comes the dairy support.

Speaker 2: 2:48

So two age groups of dairy heifers, plus providing some supplementary feed into the dairy farms and wintering of the dairy cows. We also have 12,000 mixed-age ewes and 3,000 hoggets, 3,500 hoggets that go to the ram, thousand mixed age ewes and three thousand hoggets, three and a half thousand hoggets that go to the ram. We're producing about 20 to 22 000 lambs a year, of which the majority are finished, and we do sell some store and especially in a difficult year like we have now, and we have around 1200 beef cows which are angus beef cows, we do use some Hereford and Charolais as a terminal cross into those beef cows and we generally finish all our beef stock. Although some are sold, a small amount sold into the five-star beef feedlot and we do also buy in beef cattle to trade from time to time as well, All right.

Speaker 1: 3:39

so how many staff across all those businesses? Sounds like it might be the odd one.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Yeah, so yep, 22 staff generally in total. Now that varies a little bit seasonally. We quite enjoy having other people come and join us on farm, so we often last season we had a couple of Welsh and an English, a young English guy, a couple of Welsh girls come and work for us and we've had a range of other people as well. So we enjoy those connections.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Yeah, excellent. So yeah, 2023 was an opportunity in Nuffield and you're looking into beef on dairy in New Zealand and having that time to investigate those opportunities. So, really, what's your sort of current thinking on the potential of a better design and utilisation of the surplus calves and the dairy industry?

Speaker 2: 4:28

sorry, Well, I guess the start of that process was the fact that we had a dairy business and we had a beef business and we felt that there was an opportunity with the surplus calves out of the dairy industry for a better utilisation. So we'd been looking at that for two or three years and ended up being encouraged by a couple of people to apply for an Uffield scholarship because they felt that that was a good topic for a scholarship. We'd been doing a little bit of work around different breeds to go into dairy care and different systems and ways of finishing. So we'd been looking at that for a while and so it was a fantastic, an amazing opportunity and I was very lucky to have that opportunity to spend last year travelling and meeting people and learning a lot about and I was very lucky to have that opportunity to spend last year travelling and meeting people and learning a lot about just agriculture in general, but specifically what opportunities there might be for beef from dairy.

Speaker 2: 5:35

And I mean the summary of that. You know obviously spent five months travelling and meeting people and the summary of that really was in essence, it's not necessarily a dairy beef story. It's actually a beef story initially and some of the challenges that we have in that value chain. Ultimately, the New Zealand beef product is highly discounted globally and not highly thought of, and there's a number of reasons for that. And actually, before we even look at the dairy beef component, we actually need to look at the beef sector and how we manage that going forward.

Speaker 1: 6:10

So maybe run us through what those reasons for discounting are.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Sure, Well, grass-fed I mean grass-fed is not a popular meat globally, so it's a very small market. So that's the first thing. Second thing is you know, so it's a very small market, so that's the first thing. Second thing is, you know, really it's a story of consistency and consistency of supply of product and performance. So those three components, and that is partly driven by our pastoral system.

Speaker 2: 6:38

One of our big advantages in New Zealand is our pastoral system. It is our biggest advantage. We're very unique, you know, in terms of our latitude on the globe, our environment even though we've got, you know, drought in parts of the country now and have floods, we actually have compared to the rest of the world, we actually have a relatively good rainfall, a reliable rainfall and a temperate climate, even though there's variations. So our pastoral systems are our significant advantage. However, they also create a big challenge because it's not a consistent supply of animals into the processing chains, into the value chain. So if there's a flood, if there's a drought, if, if farmers decide they want to put more weight on they withhold stock, all of those things contribute to an inconsistent supply into the value chain and therefore a very inconsistent supply into the market. Also, across that our pastoral system doesn't lend itself to a consistent product, so we have an inconsistent product. Sometimes we produce some excellent beef, but we also produce some very poor beef and that's why we see effectively the bull grinding beef being the same value as our prime, because it's very hard to just distinguish between what's good and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 7:55

We don't have any grading system for beef. In New Zealand we have some, you know, silver Fern and Alliance and some others have started and have do a little bit of grading, but it's not a consistent grading appraisal system across the whole industry, likes of the US and Australia especially, and so therefore we have a very inconsistent performance of the product and generally, being grass-fed, it's a leaner product, less marbling and therefore significantly less performance as an eating product. That being said, we do still produce some very good beef. It's just inconsistent. So you can imagine in the market a customer whether that be a wholesaler and distributor or a customer and therefore the consumer very, very hard for them to run a program with our product when they have inconsistent supply. They don't know whether they're getting it this week, next week or a whole lot the following week.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Inconsistent quality of the product and also in terms of the cutting room. We don't produce a lot of cuts out of the beef plants and then the performance is variable, so it's an inconsistent performance, some very good and some very awful. So so the customer? Therefore, because of all those things, they discount us against the competition. So we're discounted generally against brazilian beef, which I would say is is an inferior product to ours. However, they're very consistent in their ability to supply it. So therefore, certainly in Asian markets it's often bought at a high price than ours.

Speaker 1: 9:36

And that's often quite confronting to hear for Kiwis to be told that their product is discounted. I remember going to on the lamb front, going to the US and seeing sort of what we think is premium New Zealand lamb getting discounted against local produce and that was more of a sort of a, I guess, a desire to buy a Californian made almost. But yeah, it was always confronting to think they were sending an amazing product out and sometimes we're not. The IMF story is an interesting one. I'd be intrigued to see where, what your focus when you're buying bulls for those anglers. Do you sort of like grass-fed we're never going to marble as much as something coming out of a feedlot out of Australia? Do you sort of throw the towel in or do you keep trying to get some IMF in there?

Speaker 2: 10:19

No, look, imf for us is definitely, you know, a focus. Obviously, you know, one of the challenges that we have is that we are purchasing bulls from a genetics point of view. In New Zealand we're largely purchasing bulls to produce a cow herd because there is no reward in the market for us at the processor for performance of the beef product. You know we're not incentivized to select for carcass traits generally. So we are.

Speaker 2: 10:51

You know, pretty much all the New Zealand beef industry is focused around maternal performance, because we're asking a beef cow to live in a challenging and imperfect environment and perform at a high level and she does an amazing job and some of the genetics we have in this country are absolutely outstanding. However, because of the lack of market signals and incentives financially to reward us for performance of the actual animal, we don't tend to select for that. However, within that, there are some examples of better performance and better eating, quality genetic selections and IMF is a big driver of that, of course to lead directly to marbling and that is the number one trait in terms of performance, amongst many others. And so, yes, we are selecting for that and we want to have a higher IMF in our herd, but there is an inability to actually access that because it's not readily available yeah, for sure, we might just go on a bit of a tangent.

Speaker 1: 11:58

And just, it is bull buying seasons. I'll be just intrigued about the traits that sort of list on your when you're on your shopping list looking for bulls. What's the? What are you chasing?

Speaker 2: 12:07

so we work with, uh, we work with uh uh, somebody that gives us advice uh, on that, joe scott from targeted breeding uh, and we, across both our dairy uh, beef and sheep genetics, we set parameters around the EBVs that we're looking for in our herd or flock and then we work toward those and actually look through the catalogues and select bulls that meet our requirements and then we, as long as they meet those requirements, then we select purely at that point on phenotype.

Speaker 2: 12:42

So once we know it's met all those parameters, then do we like the look of the bull and do we think it fits with our type. So that's how we approach it In terms of the areas that we're looking for from the beast perspective, we're looking for moderate and modest EBVs across the maternal traits, so nothing extreme at all. We're looking for a moderate cow with moderate milk. We're looking for moderate birth and both calving each trait. And then we're looking for a reasonably consistent growth pattern and ideally we would have moderate mature weight with high growth. That's the ideal, not easy to achieve. And then we're looking for positive fats and a strong IMF.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Sounds like a good ball. It's always a land of compromise to bring all those traits together, but yeah, it sounds like a good shopping list. If we get back on to the excess dairy calves, is there countries out there that have sort of got supply chains going that sort of we can follow?

Speaker 2: 13:49

almost nobody has a bobby calf system. Um, and that's one of the things that was quite um surprising is that nobody else in the world does what we do and in fact people were aghast and surprised and it's often a lot of people described it as our dirty little secret and it is a reputational risk for us. Certainly, there are no bobby calves, or very, very minuscule number in the United States. In fact, calves out of the dairy industry often fetch a premium, but from the feedlotters, out of a dairy herd rather than straight beef on beef, for the reason that they perform better in the feedlot and often have a high performance of eating quality as well. So there's a you know, in fact, a lot of the milk producers in the United States are making more from their beef component out of their dairy herd than they are out of the milk itself, which is interesting. So there's a real focus there on performance.

Speaker 2: 14:47

If you go to other parts of the world, certainly in the European Union there are regulations around minimum age that carbs as a byproduct of dairy can be slaughtered, that carbs as a byproduct of dairy can be slaughtered.

Speaker 2: 15:03

So they are all reared and some are slaughtered as a veal at a young age, but certainly a lot older than I think. A minimum of 60 days, but a lot go on. A significant proportion go on to a finished beef product. So and the same almost everywhere in the world. So we're very unique in that situation. Now I'm not suggesting for any moment that there is a silver bullet and all the calves out of the New Zealand dairy industry should or will be reared Fundamentally 2 million bobby calves a year. We're not all of a sudden going to be a viable beef opportunity, so there is always going to be a Bobby system within New Zealand. However, I think there is an opportunity for us to take a proportion and it may only be a small proportion of those 2 million calves and take through into a value chain that has a product that has a value.

Speaker 1: 16:27

So to make that shift, is there like a fundamental shift that needs to occur, like something as crazy as you can't have like jerseys are gone because you can't rear all those carbs with less value, or is it just incremental changes that we need to see across different sort of chains?

Speaker 2: 16:43

Look, I think you know, generally, from a reputational standpoint I don't you know so long as as an industry we're doing something and we're making efforts that are genuinely validated to make use of those calves that come through that stream as a by-product of that, I think that will satisfy our customers. That's just a personal view. I don't have any facts to back that up. But, like anything, if we do nothing that will be an issue. But if we're doing something genuinely, in a reasonable proportion, then I think that will be acceptable. So I don't see a reason why jerseys and jersey calves can't continue and I think that they have a good place and they're a really productive animal and I think as a byproduct of the milk, there will continue to be a bobby calf stream for a lot of them.

Speaker 2: 17:40

But for others and in other situations, I think using some advanced genetics and then looking at creating a value chain that supplies into a product line is an opportunity. And there are people doing that currently and doing that really successfully. The likes of the First Lights with their grass-fed Wagyu, those types of things New Zealand Wagyu are doing a program and there's a whole range of other things. Likes of Pearl Veal are doing a great job. So there's a number of people doing some really innovative and doing it successfully.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Yeah, and I just saw recently those trials going on at the moment, sort of killing down at lower carcass weights through the deer chain and stuff as a sort of different product.

Speaker 2: 18:21

Absolutely so. There's plenty of people and there's no one silver bullet and it's not going to be everything and it's not going to deal with all of the bobby cows, but I think there are people doing some great work and doing some good things and they've all got significant value to add.

Speaker 1: 18:36

What sort of role do you think technology will play? Like there's obviously, if we've got, we've had single sex ability to sex salmon so we can get female progeny out of our best dairy cows. And then things like the companies like Embryo which are working on kind of making it easier to bring embryos, so sort of like AI-ing a cow you can drop a high-quality beef embryo into, like a Jersey cow, for one or another example, and so will those sort of technologies do they have the the potential to shift things, or absolutely, and I think they already have and I think they will continue to do so, and I think that will move at an increasing rate of adoption.

Speaker 2: 19:17

And I think that adoption is driven by economics, so as the cost of those technologies reduces and becomes more viable for commercial of adoption. And I think that adoption is driven by economics, so as the cost of those technologies reduces and becomes more viable for commercial farmers to utilise them, the adoption will increase. And also, if we can get the beef industry particularly into a position where we're actually capturing more market value, we can have a lower cost of production and an increased income. And I think that's an opportunity and I think technology absolutely is fundamental to that. And I think there's technology both in genetics, but also, you know, how we connect and how we manage flow of livestock, how we financially transact livestock, how we connect with both the customer and the consumer, which are two different things, and so I think technology is going to be fundamental.

Speaker 2: 20:07

I think what we've seen in other parts of the world is breeding technologies have an exponential, I guess, performance increase, so where feed efficiency has gone from a ratio of 7 to 1, they're now achieving 4 to 1 and even more and that's you know. We're never going to compete with the improvement that chicken and pork has made in that space, but that is a fundamental increase in performance and that also underpins sustainability credentials. So if we're producing the same or more from less input, that speaks quite clearly to the sustainability story and that is driven by technology. So the more we have utilization of genetic technologies and other technologies, I think that will you know financially and sustainability will improve.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah, really good point. I've had the pleasure of being visited by lots of different Nuffield scholars over the years, and along may it continue. It's always good to get a few questions from people who are thinking outside the square. I often think that most of the people that come to see me have almost got exactly the same topic, and so I often think the topic's a good thing. Come to see me have almost got exactly the same topic, and so I often think the topic's a good thing to center your thoughts around. But it's the people you meet and the places you go where a lot of the learning is. What's been the highlights of that experience?

Speaker 2: 21:35

Totally agree at the start that the topic was the main focus, but in actual fact the topic is more a way to provide a pathway for those, I guess, interactions with others globally, and so otherwise you just sort of wander around, you know incoherently, you know randomly, trying to meet people. So it actually just gives you. You know, clearly there's a whole lot of specific learnings, but by and large it's actually a slightly secondary component that just provides a little bit of focus and a little bit of clarity to that pathway to engage with people. And so the highlights have been meeting people. I mean and this is not a question, I've been asked this question a lot. You know what's been the highlight and there really is not one, because there are highlights across every country I was able to visit, across every group of people I was able to meet for very different reasons. So some of the people in some of the companies that we met and countries we visited, you know there's a highlight in every situation. So there's not one, but I think the highlight is getting a greater.

Speaker 2: 22:49

You know, if you step back and take a helicopter view, the highlight really is understanding a little bit more about New Zealand, how naive we are at times in a good way about the world and also how small we are in comparison to the rest of the world, especially in terms of agriculture, where if New Zealand dropped off the map and sank into the ocean, no one would really notice from an agricultural point of view for quite some time. So you know, we think we're good and also we think we're better than we are. We're actually not as good as we think we are and we can. You know, we are very good at many things, but we can learn a lot from others as well, and we need to do that with a bit more humility at times. There's a lot more that we can learn that others are doing in a number of ways, and we can be beneficiaries of that if we engage with them.

Speaker 2: 23:46

I think, you know, as an industry, as an agricultural industry, we need to get out in the world a lot more and engage a lot more and collaborate a lot more. But I think you know, one of the highlights in saying all of that is that we do have. You know, new Zealand is simply an outstanding and amazing place. You know, we have a phenomenal environment, it's a great country and it has a huge opportunity, and especially in agriculture, and you know there's a real opportunity for us to take that forward if we work together.

Speaker 1: 24:13

Yeah, no, beautifully said, and I had the pleasure of travelling with some Kiwi farmers into the US a couple of of times and it is always very confronting to ask an average person walking down the street in california somewhere and they sort of don't even know where new zealand is a little I'm what a product was.

Speaker 1: 24:29

So, um, it's, yeah, it is. You're kind of easy to get lost in your own uh, your own bubble and drinking your own kool-aid and thinking that we've got everything sorted, when, yeah, just getting out there and seeing and hearing is massively important and eating a bit of humble pie as you go. But, yeah, you're 100% right. That's why me and Australian living in New Zealand, yeah, it's just a great place to live and a great place to bring up kids and a great place to produce stuff from pastures. So there's lots of positives, but we need to not get too carried away with that. Innovation is something that we're pretty hot on at NextGen, trying to think about what's coming and what's next. What are the things that you'd like to see in sheep and beef farming to allow the industry to sort of, I guess A recover from where we're currently at and B kind of drive a better future, rather than sort of maybe, I guess the ups and downs that we've seen.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Yeah, look, that's a pretty challenging question to answer simply because I don't think there is anything. I think it actually comes back a little bit to some of my comments in your last question around getting out and seeing what others are doing and learning from them. So sometimes you know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel If somebody else has done it. We can learn from them and replicate. I mean, r&d is replicate and duplicate, so we can learn from others and we can look at things that can apply in a specific New Zealand situation from elsewhere. They may not be exactly the same, but we can use it in. We need to be customer driven.

Speaker 2: 26:20

What we have tended to do for a long time in New Zealand and I think it's ingrained in our psyche as an industry and as a country is we race around and produce a lot of product and then we sell it to a processor and then we expect that processor whether we own that processor or it's independent we expect that processor to go out into the world and get a premium for it.

Speaker 2: 26:43

What we tend not to do is necessarily have strong engagement. We do this at times, but not always consistently well enough. Have really good engagement with the customer understand exactly what they want and then work backwards from the market and build our value chain systems around producing something that has been driven out of the market. And certainly I think that's you know. I certainly saw that very strongly within Beef, but I also think that applies to a number of other products as well. So I think having a greater alignment with the customer and then working in a customer driven value chain would allow us to innovate in the correct way to actually capture more value in the market and therefore financially be more viable down the value chain here.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Yeah, well put. Often, I guess one of the benefits of doing something like enough field and it was when I remember I just remember very clearly the days that when I started my phd I had sort of six months to really work out what I was going to do, and it's probably the favorite time of my career in terms of just thinking up new stuff the importance of getting out of your business in the day-to-day. I guess the the challenge is when you get back to the day-to-day you've got a family you've been away from and a staff that are wondering where the boss has been and all of a sudden you're sort of elbows in again. Have you been able to sort of find the time to think clearly through it?

Speaker 2: 28:14

No, look, that's no is the short answer. And look, that has been a challenge, you know. Look, an amazing opportunity to be able to spend that time overseas learning and meeting people and seeing really interesting things. But absolutely fantastic to be home as well. So really enjoying being home.

Speaker 2: 28:37

And actually, you know, not altogether that straightforward to reintegrate back into the business, because you know the guys do a fantastic, we've got a fantastic team and they do an amazing job and you know, in a lot of ways, they've probably done better without me than when I was here.

Speaker 2: 28:54

So, look, it's reintegrating into things but also making the most of the opportunities that the Nuffield experience has provided. So it's a delicate line between, you know, reintegrating back into the team and also not just walking away from that Nuffield experience, taking some of those learnings and some of those experiences forward and making sure that I contribute that you know, contribute back, that I contribute back and also utilize those you know for improvement in our business but potentially collaborate with others as well. So still finding my feet with a lot of that currently, yeah. But yeah, you know there's one of the you know one of the things you know you mentioned about. You know I wonder where the boss is and I've been away. That's also one of the opportunities that Nuffield provided is for me to actually step away and for those people to step up, and that's actually been rewarding as well to see a lot of those guys that we work with that are great people fundamentally improve through having that opportunity by me not being here.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Yeah, and I think that's. I reckon there's two common themes with Nuffield Scholars and that there's always one of them, that forced sort of systems and changes to how things were done that were actually positive to the business, because otherwise you're just kind of the same people do the same jobs and no one changes. Matt, that's been a really great chat. Yeah, one final question, which is possibly the hardest one, but what is the last thing you change your mind about?

Speaker 2: 30:26

Yeah, that's a confronting question and you know, I think there's a Winston Churchill quote that you know, he who doesn't change his mind won't ever change anything. Change his mind won't ever change anything and um, and I think that's that's quite, you know, quite a, I guess, emphatic sort of view on things, and I think that's one of the things that nuffield provides the opportunity to do is actually step out of the comfort zone and see things in a different way and step back and see the industry differently. So it actually probably helps, has helped me change and change more things and change more views. So, yeah, I think I'm much more open to change than what I potentially was previously, and that's why I encourage others to get out and travel as well, because that will open their eyes more, I think you know, uh, you know we change every day in little ways, but probably the most significant thing that I've changed, in my view, is most recently, is around the wool industry.

Speaker 2: 31:27

I've been a passionate, I guess, wool producer and, look, I studied wool at Lincoln University. I ended up working for the wool board and it was a big part of my life and I'm passionate about the product. However, nobody else in the world seems to be this passionate in terms of a customer base. And so, from a sheep performance point of view, we're at a crossroads in the sheep industry where we are a pure price taker. We're getting whatever it is per kilo for our meat product and the same for our wool product. Now, a big part of the financial constraint that we have in the sheep industry is our cost of production, and a lot of that cost is based around the wool component, of which we're earning nothing for, and we've held onto this belief that ultimately, something will change and we will get a greater income from wool.

Speaker 2: 32:22

We've been waiting for that for a very long time. You know, 20 years for myself, but I think the industry has been waiting for that for 30 years or more. And how long do we wait? And so we've made the decision to move away from wool and to look to. You know, try and understand what that might look like. You know, try and understand what that might look like.

Speaker 2: 32:42

You know and that's one of the things that Nuffield taught me is, a lot of people talk about sustainability and environmental concern, but there's really that green consumer is a very elusive individual. A lot of people say they want environmental and sustainability credentials, but ultimately they're not prepared to pay for it when it comes down to it, and we're going to be. I think it's a futile hope that they will recognize the extreme benefits that are provided by the wool product in so many ways, and I think, because we're at a financial crossroads in the sheep industry, we need to. We need, you know. We're at a point where we potentially need to rethink what we do around our breeding policies on sheep.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Yeah, and that'll be something that yours won't be the only boardroom or kitchen table that discussion's going on around and there's, yeah, lots of quite a few clients of ours in the North Island that are, yeah, obviously going down that path and it was, yeah. I always have to make sure I remind myself that when Dawson Bradford told me he was breeding a shedding sheep, I told him it was crazy and he's proved very much to be the right one in that discussion. But, yeah, I think, yeah, unfortunately it's. I guess I stand up fairly often and say you need to have good wool or none of it. It's been a long road to try and get value out of strong wool. Yeah, Matt, really appreciate your time today and your insights. It's great to have someone who's been out there and had some time to think and being able to bring it together in the way that you just did. Really appreciate that and, yeah, I'll let you get on to integrating back into that farming system. Thanks, Matt. Wonderful to chat, Excellent. Thanks, mate.