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Speaker 1: The Rural Report on Hither Duper see Allen Drive. Jamie

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Speaker 1: Kai's with us host of the Country, Jamie. Good evening,

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Speaker 1: Good evening, Ryan. So we've got a bit of drama

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Speaker 1: going on with Alliance. This is the meat processor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: in fact, it's the world's biggest sheep meat process. So

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Speaker 1: you might remember Dawn meets. This Irish meat company has

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Speaker 1: struck a deal. They're going to take a sixty five

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Speaker 1: percent steak in the process for two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: million dollars and it looks like it's the best of

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Speaker 1: some other worse options, to be perfectly honest, because it

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Speaker 1: is one hundred percent farmer owned cooperative and a lot

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Speaker 1: of the farmers wanted to keep it that way. But

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Speaker 1: they've just run out of rope. So they've basically got

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Speaker 1: to get get a deal done so they can pave

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Speaker 1: back back two hundred million dollars of its working capital

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Speaker 1: for facilities, or the banks could shut them down. However,

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Speaker 1: some well heled and high profile Southland farmers have made

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Speaker 1: a large last effort to recapitalize the company themselves. Now,

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Speaker 1: they tried to do that last year. It didn't work,

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Speaker 1: But these farmers are saying look, farm sheep farmings and

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Speaker 1: a lot better nick than it was this time a

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Speaker 1: year ago. And to chuck some numbers at that Ryan,

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Speaker 1: this time a year ago, the average profit on a

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Speaker 1: sheep farm was nineteen thousand dollars. Forty percent of the

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Speaker 1: farms ran at a loss. In the coming season, they're

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Speaker 1: predicting the average farm profit to be one hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty six five hundred. So these five large scale farmers,

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Speaker 1: they've written to the board, they've written to the bank.

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Speaker 1: They want to revisit this. But the Alliance Group chair Markwin,

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Speaker 1: who used to be the chief executive of Balance Aggrenutrients,

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Speaker 1: a reasonably qualified sort of business operator, and the commercial

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Speaker 1: world has said, look, he's all but shut down the idea.

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Speaker 1: He says, they're just giving the farmer shareholders false hope.

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Speaker 1: So these guys will have to vote. I think it's

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Speaker 1: October the twenty. They're not going to have much mind,

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Speaker 1: much time, should I say, to make up their mind

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Speaker 1: on an alternative proposal. But one is going to be

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Speaker 1: out there, and they're running up against that deadline, and

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Speaker 1: it's coming up pretty soon, isn't it. As you say?

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Speaker 1: To read its absolutely and just interestingly, Mark winn Is

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Speaker 1: saying that if the vote fails, this is the October

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Speaker 1: twenty vote. He said Dawn Meets could purchase the Alliance

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Speaker 1: Group in an insolvency process. He says that's the most

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Speaker 1: probable outcome. And if that was the case, Ryan, they

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Speaker 1: may not need to pay two hundred and fifty million dollars.

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Speaker 1: They could get it at a fire soil price. Does

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Speaker 1: not sound like a good outcome at all. Do we

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Speaker 1: need to brush off the cobwebs for Sir Dave Dobbin, Well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I think farmers here in New Zealand

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Speaker 1: are doing considerably better than their US counterparts. It was

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Speaker 1: just interesting only story I picked up on Ryan. I

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Speaker 1: know you're a keen music fan. So last Saturday in

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Speaker 1: the US they had farm Made Farm Made forty a

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Speaker 1: bit like life. You might remember in nineteen eighty five

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Speaker 1: we had Live Aid Wembley Stadium in Philadelphia Stadium, or

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Speaker 1: not long after that they had farm Aid. Because Bob

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Speaker 1: Dylan was quoted, some would say incorrectly as at the

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Speaker 1: time of saying, look, we're worried about the people in Africa,

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Speaker 1: what about our own farmers? Because in nineteen eighty five

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Speaker 1: crop prices were crashing, bank foreclosures were wiping out family

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Speaker 1: farms at alarming rates and pushing farmer suicides to record levels.

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Speaker 1: So they got together in September of nineteen eighty five.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting that Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Bob Dylan,

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Speaker 1: John Mellencamp, I can't remember whether he was a cougar

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Speaker 1: or not at the time. Ryan, they were in the

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Speaker 1: original cast in nineteen eighty five. They came back again

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Speaker 1: for farm Aid last weekend. Over the forty years, they've

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Speaker 1: raised something like eighty five million, nine million in the

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Speaker 1: first year. And you look back to the playlist or

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Speaker 1: the people who turned up eighty five for farm Maid,

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Speaker 1: Foreigner Chris Christopherson, Bonnie Rait, Roy Orbison, Billy Joel, Tom Petty,

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Speaker 1: the Beach Boys, Emmy Lou Harris, Glenn Campbell. To stop me, Ryan,

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Speaker 1: because they really got in behind this. And with the

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Speaker 1: exception of one or two years, we've had a farm

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Speaker 1: Maid concert every year since. All right, and we'll stop

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Speaker 1: you there. Actually, Jamie Jamie McKay hosted The Country. Good

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Speaker 1: to have you on the show. For more from Hither

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Speaker 1: Duplessy Allen Drive listen live to News Talks. It'd be

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