Farmers’ comments ‘ill-informed’
Fonterra has torn a strip off Federated Farmers, accusing the peak rural lobby group of repeatedly making ‘‘illinformed’’ comments about its share trading scheme, Trading Among Farmers.
Federated Farmers dairy wing chairman Willy Leferink suggested last week that Fonterra’s overseas farming interests could be spun off into a listed company to raise capital and avoid the dairy giant’s brand being tainted by another scandal similar to the Chinese San Lu melamine-poisoning incident. A federation spokesman said such a spinoff could serve as an alternative to Fonterra’s proposal to let farmers trade shares with one another.
Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings said yesterday that Trading Among Farmers had nothing to do with raising capital, and its goals were to ‘‘protect the co-operative’’ and preserve farmer control and ownership. ‘‘Fortunately, most of our farmer shareholders understand. It’s disappointing to see Federated Farmers making such ill-informed comments on an issue that is for our farmer shareholders to decide.’’
Spierings said the federation’s ‘‘inaccurate comments’’ ran counter to giving farmers all the facts and unifying the co-operative.
‘‘This is about the third time that Federated Farmers has issued a media comment on Trading Among Farmers and got things wrong,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m confident our farmers would not want us to break off bits of Fonterra and sell them to raise capital.’’