NZ small dairy farmers content with their lot
New Lincoln University research has found many small dairy farmers are content with the size of their operation, despite the constant calls for economic growth. Dr Victoria Westbrooke and Dr Peter Nuthall, from the Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce, surveyed 330 randomly selected farmers running small dairy farms for the small farmers’ organisation (SMASH). The project was funded by DairyNZ via OneFarm. “It was clear from this research, and similar previous work, that the farmers were content to simply carry on working their current farm,” Dr Westbrooke says. “They did not want to buy more land, or sell and buy bigger, or use other expansion possibilities.” She says small farmers were shown to be more family and friends oriented than their larger farm colleagues and to have a laid back attitude. They were getting on with enjoying life even if not having a lot of spare cash, she says, and take a balanced view. While they scored ‘making maximum sustainable cash returns’ at 4.4 out of a maximum of 5 they also scored ‘having reasonable time off and holidays’ at 4.3 out of 5. “Clearly life has other objectives than just profit for these farmers,” Dr Westbrooke concludes. They rated ‘I don’t sleep at night worrying about decisions’ a low 2.1 out of 5 as a score on the truth of the assertion. Succession was not an issue either. “Overall, many of the small dairy farmers were not interested in having their children take over from them”, Dr Westbrooke says. “Perhaps they believed their farm was too small and the children would be better off in another profession”. However, a sub group of younger farmers were interested in expanding. They tended to be looking for extra land such as a bigger farm on which to expand their share milking business. […]