Brighter future ahead

The chief executive of Deer Industry New Zealand, Innes Moffat, says despite the challenges it is currently facing, indicators show a positive future is on the horizon.

The well-known proverb ‘‘don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched’’ means that a little bit of fortune now doesn’t guarantee success tomorrow. I’ve been spending time with many farmers over winter. The weather has not been kind and rising input prices and interest rates are hurting.

While farmers are feeling better about the steady and rising prices that venison has been fetching, there’s still some way to go before they will be celebrating. The rising on-farm costs mean we have to get to the place where venison can command more on the international market.

Venison has recovered strongly from the Covid-induced fall in prices, with closed restaurants everywhere. The world is a volatile place and change is always going to be imposed upon us; commodity prices go up and down.

If you have the land, then having deer in the mix is a good thing, because we are now seeing rising payments to farmers, with contracts at $10.30/kg - and we are very confident about future demand for our products.

Farmers with deer are now benefiting from having that diversification. This comes at a time when other commodities are experiencing less favourable conditions in the global marketplace.

There is some evidence of that confidence growing among venison producers, which we are excited to see. I’ve been speaking to a few farmers who say they are increasing their herd numbers.

Our industry still faces challenges, however. We have been putting a lot of work into increasing returns for New Zealand venison and promoting it as a competitive land-use option on the right type of land. We believe trees should form part of our agricultural landscape, but we

are always very concerned when blanket monoculture forestry is put on good foodproducing land, because once it’s been taken out of production it’s unlikely to ever be returned.

The quality of food produced in New Zealand is recognised around the world by our trading partners, and we should be rightfully proud of that.

We shouldn’t put at risk our ability to provide nutritious high-quality food for both the domestic and international markets and to bring in much-needed foreign earnings for our economy. As well as farmers benefiting from having deer as part of a diversified mix, our marketers are also working hard on diversification of the markets around the world for venison.

One of the key initiatives that Deer Industry New Zealand and venison marketing companies are working on is market diversification for venison. Our aspiration is to have about a third of New Zealand’s venison volumes going into the US, one-third to Europe, and the rest to China and other Asian markets.

In North America, we’re appealing to segments that are interested in nonindustrial, grass-fed, free-range meats, as well as the ‘hipster-hunters’ – urban people who might not go hunting but will buy venison from the exotic meat section in the supermarket. It seems a good time to be focusing on activity in that market.

So, while we’re certainly not counting our proverbial unhatched chickens, we can clearly see an increasingly positive future for venison farmers, underpinned by the work to strengthen and grow demand in key export markets.■

Domestically, venison prices have been steadily rising. but there is still work to be done to ensure this occurs in international markets.