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Speaker 1: Jamie McKay's your host of the country. Good evening, Jamie, Jamie.

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Speaker 2: You've got you there, Yes, you've got that. You got me.

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Speaker 1: I've got you there, loud and clear. Good to have

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Speaker 1: you on the show. And we've got some good news

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Speaker 1: tonight about strong wool and the prices it's getting.

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Speaker 2: Well, everything's relative, of course, tryan but yeah, look we've

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Speaker 2: crept up from the lower lasts of all time in

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Speaker 2: real terms in COVID, when some farmers were only getting

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Speaker 2: believed or not just over a dollar a kilogram for

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Speaker 2: their strong cross brint fleece. Well we're up to the

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Speaker 2: four dollar mark. Now. That is a clean price obviously, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's a clean price, which are quite surely but less crazier.

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Speaker 2: One get too complicated on that one, but I just

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Speaker 2: thought i'd put it into some historic perspective. It's all

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Speaker 2: very well you to have wool at four dollars. Personally myself, Ryan,

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Speaker 2: I think it needs to be ten dollars or more

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Speaker 2: for sheep farmers to make a buck out of it.

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Speaker 2: And I'll just take you back in time to the

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Speaker 2: core and War in the early fifties when wool was

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Speaker 2: a pound a pound and using I've heard various extrapolations

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Speaker 2: and calculations on this one, but that might equate to

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Speaker 2: something like fifty dollars per kilogram in today's money. So

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Speaker 2: at four dollars we're well off the pace. Even when

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Speaker 2: I was a hard up young far for Ryan in

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Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties, sharing all my own sheep, we used

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Speaker 2: to get five or six dollars a kilogram for wool,

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Speaker 2: and that would probably I don't hope, factor out to

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Speaker 2: something like maybe twenty dollars a kilo in today's money.

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Speaker 2: So yep, the markets come off absolute lows, but it's

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Speaker 2: still a long way to go. And one of the

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Speaker 2: big things in sheep farming at the moment Ryan is

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Speaker 2: people who are getting rid off sheep that grow wool.

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Speaker 2: They're getting into self shedding sheep, sheep that shed their

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Speaker 2: own wool, or even worse, ones that don't grow any

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Speaker 2: wool to start with. So the wool industry is far

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Speaker 2: from being out of the woods. The good use for

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Speaker 2: sheep farmers is Ryan. The lamb has really recovered this year,

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Speaker 2: up about twenty five or thirty percent on where it

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Speaker 2: was this time a year ago, and the farmers need

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Speaker 2: it too.

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Speaker 1: Interesting about the sheep that don't have any wall because

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Speaker 1: that you often hear farmers talk about. You know, it

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Speaker 1: costs you more to share it off then you get

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Speaker 1: paid for it, So you can understand I suppose why

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Speaker 1: they do that now.

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Speaker 2: A lot of sorry, a lot of animal health reasons

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Speaker 2: for doing it as well. If they're not growing any water,

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Speaker 2: you don't have to dip them, you don't have to dag,

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Speaker 2: and you don't have to crutch them. You don't even

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Speaker 2: have to dock them or tail them. So there's just

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Speaker 2: there's just a lot easier animal to run and you're

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Speaker 2: just running sheep purely for meat.

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Speaker 1: Which and the meat is the thing that's paying right,

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Speaker 1: So there you go. Now, vegetables, you've got to have

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Speaker 1: some veggies with your lamb. So there's a problem though

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Speaker 1: potentially without locally grown vegetable supply. According to an industry leader.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, John Murphy from Vegetables New Zealand said the current

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Speaker 2: system was broken and local growers were being put out

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Speaker 2: of business. And we all know the story about growing

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Speaker 2: houses and places like Pucacoe instead of vegetables. Some of

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Speaker 2: our best soils now have houses on them. And John

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Speaker 2: Murphy's quite rightly, saying growers are being strangled by regional

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Speaker 2: decisions that take too long, make no sense, and ultimately

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Speaker 2: drive them out of business. He said vegetable growing needed

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Speaker 2: to become a permitted activity in the current round of

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Speaker 2: resource management reforms and places like Horo Fenua, there's a

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Speaker 2: real threat of growers being told they can no longer

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Speaker 2: grow veges. It's madness if you ask me. We should

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Speaker 2: be growing more and more of them. But the cavalry

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Speaker 2: is on the horizon in the form of Associate Minister

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Speaker 2: of Agriculture Nicola Grigg. She's the minister responsible for horticulture

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Speaker 2: and she says she's relentlessly focused on supporting the sector's success.

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Speaker 2: Griggs said this included considering policy amendments, including proposals relating

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Speaker 2: to fresh water, water storage and vegetables growing. And I

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Speaker 2: say good luck to the vegetable growers, Ryan, because anyone

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Speaker 2: who's grown a veggie garden at home knows how tough

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Speaker 2: it is let alone on a commercial scale.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and Timidoo, Jamie. The old Alliance Smithfield plant site

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Speaker 1: is coming up for sale.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And I don't know how well you know, Timaroo, Ryan,

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Speaker 2: but it's quite a nice site actually thirty two hectares.

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Speaker 2: It's an industrial site at the moment, it's zoned industrial.

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Speaker 2: It's the old Smithfield plant that had been there for

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Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty nine years. The Alliance Group shut

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Speaker 2: it down. The wist talk of it becoming a housing development.

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Speaker 2: Certainly in a good spot with good views. Interestingly, I

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Speaker 2: found this was interesting. The land also was home to

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Speaker 2: the Smithfield Coastal Observation Bunker, which was built in nineteen

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Speaker 2: forty two. I'm assumed that was to check it in

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Speaker 2: case the Japanese were coming to get us. It's got

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Speaker 2: a heritage to New Zealand category listing. The closure of

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Speaker 2: Smithfield is estimated to have cost Timaru up to fifty

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Speaker 2: million a year in wages alone in the local economy.

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Speaker 2: And here's another interesting stat for your ion to finish

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Speaker 2: our chat tonight. The Timarou Council said in November the

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Speaker 2: closure of the meat works would cause a one point

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Speaker 2: seven to six million dollar drop in water revenue as

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Speaker 2: the plant used about ten percent of Timaru's total water supply.

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Speaker 1: Goodness me, Jamie, some great numbers in there. Thank you

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Speaker 1: for that. Jamie McKay hosted the country with US just

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Speaker 1: gone twenty six minutes after sex. For more from Heather Duplessy,

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Speaker 1: Allen Drave, Listen live to news talks it'd be from

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Speaker 1: four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio