New Zealand agricultural history. No 28. Importing exotic sheep breeds

 

The costs of the exotic sheep importations

The benefits to the NZ sheep industry

Give me a bid on the cost

It was not real money

By Dr Clive Dalton

Do we need to know the cost?

I believe we do need to know the costs/benefits of past MAF importations, for the simple reason that sometime in the future, somebody will want to import sheep again from other parts of the world, and the costs of what happened last time’ would surely be the first question to be asked by the boffins in Treasury.

I’m in no doubt that New Zealand is going to get Foot and Mouth disease which will wipe out millions of livestock, and which will have to be replaced by animals with good genetics.  So this means looking overseas again.  But maybe if this happened, the disaster would be so great for New Zealand's economic survival that nobody would even think about the cost.  If FMD took out the sheep industry, it would take out all other cloven hoofed animals too.

Why were the costs of the whole exercise never published?   Where they ever worked out?  There’s nobody in Treasury today who would go back through the accounts, if they could ever find them.  There’s probably nobody in Treasury now who would know what a sheep is, or that the small island they can see from their high-rise office in Wellington harbour, was once a prime animal quarantine station!

Where were the farming media?

Where was the farming press at the time asking about the costs? Why didn’t the media chase the Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Finance, or get questions asked by opposition members in the House about the cost and benefits of the exercise, especially after the waste and horror of the slaughter of the first importation.

You have to wonder looking back, if the cost was so high that for political reasons it had to be buried along with the sheep at Mana and Crater!  Why did Federated Farmers not question the cost/benefits of the exercise?  They were probably carried away with all the hype like so many others in the industry about the hyped massive benefits to New Zealand.

Give me a bid!

In idle moments I muse over a likely cost, and start making mental bids starting with millions.  You’d need to start bidding in the low millions, and probably move into the hundreds of millions. I could see the bidding heading for half a billion.

It would be easy to say that’s ridiculous, but try to itemise the bill for the two MAF importations which taxpayers paid for:

•   All the travel back and forwards between NZ, UK and Europe over the years for scientists, vets and bureaucrats. 
•   Costs of meetings, meetings and more endless meetings.
•   Cost of the whole disaster of the first MAF importation.
•  Purchase of the sheep for live import and ET.
•  All the vet costs associated with all of that.
•  Transport approvals, clearance documentation and travel costs.
•  Preparing Somes Island and care of sheep 24/7 for both imports.
•   Continual vet testing of sheep on Somes at Wallaceville for both imports.
•  Preparing Mana Island and care of sheep 24/7 for second import.
•  Continual vet testing of sheep on Somes at Wallaceville.
• Costs of slaughter and burial at Mana.
• Preparing Crater block and care of sheep 24/7.
• Costs of slaughter and burial at Crater of first import.
• The costs of taking Mana and Crater block out of livestock farming.
• Preparing Hopuhopu farm and care of sheep 24/7. 
• Cost of setting up and running the secondary quarantine units.
• Salaries of all staff who had time allocated to these projects over the years. 
• And much more that never saw the light of day - deliberately!

·    

·         Not real money!

I haven’t met anyone who when invited dare make a bid at the cost of the MAF imports.  But then as my former MAF veterinary colleague commented when I tried to get a bid out of him – ‘what’s the worry, it wasn’t real money’! 

And that really is it! What he meant was that it was taxpayers dosh, and even if the cost was published, after some initial disgust, there’s nothing anybody could do about it as it would just be written off with zillions of other dollars that nobody knows about.  So, I’ve stopped worrying as taxpayers’ money apparently isn’t real money, and sadly this attitude very much alive – as we speak!

New Zealand agricultural history. No 29. Importing exotic sheep

 

Did New Zealand get value for money?

Dr Jock Allison's view 

Bruce Koller's view

Cost/benefits

By Dr Clive Dalton

Did NZ get value for money?

This is the $64,000 question!  If you sprung this question on most farmers today – most, if they could remember the importations would probably answer – ‘What importations and who cares anyway’?  

For those who can remember, their immediate response would probably be a clear YES, if they have been involved with composite breeds with exotic genes in them, or if they remember all the good things that were pumped out in the media about the great benefits these breeds achieved for the nation. 

But it would be fair to say that the vast majority of sheep farmers never got involved with the exotics and their composites, and didn’t see the need for them as their ‘traditional’ breeds had improved so much under Sheeplan, and became light years ahead of the old models that were rightly heavily criticised.

It would be nice to run a survey of commercial sheep farmers today, to find out if they ever got involved with the exotics or their composites, and if not why not?  It would be pointless asking them if the importations were cost effective, as nobody knows what the cost was and we'll never find out.

Dr Jock Allison’s view 2006

Dr Jock Allison.
Photo: Otago Daily Times

Jock’s views below are from his role of both scientist and business entrepreneur, heavily involved in importations.

·      The imported exotic sheep breeds have been the large part of the renaissance of the sheep industry as we have seen lambing percentages increase from about 100% to 126% since 1993. 

·      Lamb carcass weights have increased from about 13.5kg to 17.5kg which are at levels that meat company executives only a couple of decades ago were adamant were not suited to overseas markets. 

·      East Friesian, Finn and Texel are now all part of composite breeds. The exotic crosses have put additional pressure on the existing ewe breeds, Romney, Coopworth and Perendale which themselves have benefited, with most now much more productive than they were earlier. 

·      The East Friesian and Finn have made mating ewe hoggets a real option for sheep farmers to gain good lambing percentages from these young animals. 

·      Sheep milking has not really taken off, but there are a number of flocks producing milk for cheese making, with one particularly big operation underway in Southland. 

·      In fact the sheep industry has been one of New Zealand’s most successful industries since 1992/3.

 My quick comments on Jock's points
 The renaissance of the sheep industry was already on the way driven by Sheeplan when the exotics arrived, and our breeds didn’t need any pressure from the exotics to get them moving.  

 
 Today’s carcass needs have changed with the changes in the NZ meat breeds, and ewe hogget mating was going on through improved local breeds, better feeding and better advisory support long before the exotics hit town.

You would have to be dreaming to believe that the importation of the Oxford Down and Texel breeds was the reason why Polled Dorset breeders for example produced sheep like the ones in the photo, taken at a recent Frankton ram sale.  
  
It was years of performance recording through the National Flock Recording Scheme (NFRS), then Sheeplan and now Sheep Improvement Limited (SIL) that bred sheep like this. And the same comments apply to all the the specialist meat breeds in New Zealand. The imported exotics had nothing to do with this progress! 

Bruce Koller's MAFTech Sheepac view 2014

• 'Not only was the Sheepac technology-transfer program unique and successful, but also the selling systems developed largely  by Robin Hilson and Richard Bradley. And the influence of the sheep that were sold has been massive.

• Twenty years on lambing percentages are 130 to 200 percent on commercial farms, and carcase weights of 18 to 20 kg is now the norm , and we produce increased volumes and value of exports, from much reduced sheep numbers; which may be a message for the dairy industry'.

My quick comments on Bruce's points
I would repeat the comments re Jock Allison's comments.  Bruce must have missed what was going on in the sheep industry long before the exotic sheep breeds arrived, and especially in what the NFRS and Sheeplan achieved.

New Zealand agricultural history. No 32. Importing exotic sheep breeds

My final shots 
Why didn’t MAF check?
Ask today’s sheep farmers 
My last call 

By Dr Clive Dalton

My final shots 

It was not the threat of the exotic breed importation that drove the changes in New Zealand sheep from the 1970s and beyond.  This is a standard old chestnut by those who lauded and still do, the exotic sheep importations.  What the exotics did so well was to draw massive attention to sheep performance, and successfully drew attention away from our NZ sheep breeds, which were well on the way to providing the genetics New Zealand farmers needed - at a slow but steady pace. 

BUT - the genetic gains in the basic breeds were not promoted by breed organisations, many of whom were still in the old 'stud' thinking, and didn't know what promotion and marketing was all about.  The exotic importation undoubtedly gave sheep genetics a massive boost of interest,  and much is still going on by those selling sheep with exotic genes in them.

Genetic progress in New Zealand flocks was going on long before the exotic importations were proposed, but the genetic gain per year was not massive - varying from 0.1 to 0.6% per year, so it didn't hit ram buyers in they eye when they went to inspect the rams up for sale. 

This this genetic gain didn't stand out like the crosses of the exotic breeds did, especially in the First Cross (F1s) which  could give 2-3% gains/year from some initial hybrid vigour.

The exotics had a massive 'visual impact' which as anyone in sheep recording knows, has a far bigger impact than columns of hard data on SIL selection lists!

And the exotic breeds seemed to get all the hype in the farming media, as they had big ‘news’ impact.  And the sheep today currently being marketed as 'stableised crossbreds' from the initial exotic imports look good, when accompanied with general vague promotional terms.

What I will never understand though, is why so many MAF folk in positions of responsibility for the public purse, got so hyped up over the importations. Was it the word ‘exotic’ that got to them? Why did they assume that our NZ breeds were ‘stuffed’ to need this boost mainly of fertility?   

Didn’t they know or want to hear about what was going in as a result of Sheeplan and Group Breeding Schemes?  It was as if the exotic sheep were seen as a ‘new toy’ for folk who hadn’t bothered to learn how to make their old one work properly! It’s an old mistake that is still being made in today’s highly disposable world!

I often wonder if it was the prospect of overseas trips at MAF's expense that coloured a lot of what should have been cold hard reasoning based on financial budgets.  I know that Dr Alan Carter was a master at organising overseas trips for himself, and made sure that before he was heading home again, he always had an official invitation for another one in his pocket.

Imagine today's social media getting hols of this picture and circulating it world wide! What would it do to our 'clean, green and humane' image?

And we wouldn’t have had all that slaughter of livestock, which would have been a national public relations disaster of mega proportions if today’s social media had got wind of it.  Thankfully, I can’t remember any photos of the burning and burials at Mana and Crater ever getting into the papers or on TV.

The media were different in those days as there were responsible agricultural journalists and farming editors around who had some status.  Not today I'm afraid.

Can you imagine how the disaster would have been handled today?  It would have been around the world in nano seconds and been a lot worse than finding false botulism on our markets!

I was involved as MAFQual Information Coordinator in the Canterbury snow crisis in 1999, and the BBC phoned me immediately wanting pictures of the hundreds of dead lambs being pushed into the big hole after a storm, and were asking if it would affect the price of lamb in UK. Today’s social media would go ballistic on any issue where blood and death were involved.

Why didn’t MAF check?

Who I wonder did a full economic analysis of the short-term and long-term economic cost/benefits of the proposal, including the ‘unintended consequences’. Clearly, nobody did! 

 If the money and technology put into the exotic importations had been put into getting the known sheep research out to farmers in the 1970s and 1980s, the long-term economic benefits to New Zealand could have been achieved ten times over, if not more than from the exotic imports. That's my view of course which can never be proved now.

The MAF Research Division had a brilliant economist Dr Grant Scobie on the staff at Ruakura about that time, and I remember he did a famous analysis which showed that investment in agricultural research yielded about 80% return on investment, BUT, there was a 10-12 year lag in seeing this come through into the economy. 

Why didn’t the MAF Head Office bureaucrats get Scobie to run his ruler over the cost/benefits of a sheep importation – to check whether all the push from the geneticists was based on facts or over indulgence!  Grant is now a Principal Adviser at the New Zealand Treasury so he knows his onions! He would have been the very man to do an honest analysis.

Hard North Island hills where all our sheep will be found in future. 
 Survival without water will be an essential sheep trait if the climate keeps changing.

Ask today’s sheep farmers
If you don’t agree with my blogged views, just ask any of the current and shrinking number of hill country sheep farmers with average age of 60+, and having to farm the harder country as 'dairy support' has taken up the lower ground.  Dairy support may provides regular income, which is rare in sheep farming, but graziers are going to discover that they need to grow more feed, use more fertiliser and provide reticulated water.

And if a younger generation takes over farming the hills, they'll certainly not put up with the hard yakka for little profit of the past generations. There's easier and more profitable things they can do with their capital. 

My last call
The question I'd like to ask, and see some hard researched data and not just advertising hype, is  this.   
How have the  genes from imported exotic sheep currently helped farmers to make more PROFIT. I don't mean more PRODUCTION, or that weasel word 'PRODUCTIVITY' - but good clean profit that can be spent at the supermarket and return on capital investment in the bank?   Are farmers really achieving more with the composites or stableised crossbreeds than with the modern basic straight breeds?

And the most important issue of all, have they provided less physical work in yards and woolsheds, and less worry as a result of the exotic breed importations?  This is the acid test in my view.  

In the old days when MAF  had a Research Division and teams of scientists who were in constant touch with farmers, we could  have found answers to these questions. Sadly there's no hope of getting answers to anything in today's research climate. So in the meantime, we are in the hands of unsubstantiated advertising claims - which sadly is the way of the modern world.