Arable Industry Marketing Initiative (AIMI)
The New Zealand arable industry has suffered from unstable prices and markets in the past few years, but with the help of an Arable Industry Marketing Initiative (AIMI), the arable sector hopes to soon be back on track.
Funded by the MAF Sustainable Farming Fund (MAF SFF) and co funded by the Foundation for Arable Research, Federated Farmers, Arable Food Industry Council (AFIC) and United Wheat Growers, the AIMI has been developed with the objective of ensuring future sustainability and improved competitiveness for the industry.
In order for the New Zealand arable industry to improve, it is vital that growers produce high specification products, specifically with the end user in mind.
Here in New Zealand we are extremely fortunate to have access to one of the most versatile and most diversified land, not to mention water; this gives New Zealand an advantage in the global markets. We are smaller than many other grain growing countries and are able to grow and change production relatively quickly. Arable is also pivotal to the meat, dairy and horticultural production which can often be disregarded.
As part of this initiative, meetings with end users have taken place to ascertain their perception of the industry and find out what the main issues are that they see.
We need to ensure we can deliver what the end user wants. It’s all too easy for them to get what they want from Australia; we need to make certain they can do that here. At the moment we have no idea what’s grown year on year or what’s stored in the silos. We need to overcome these plus many other issues before we can start to deliver what the end user wants.
The lack of up-to-date market information is currently the most critical of a number of key issues confronting the industry. One of the prepared action areas of the AIMI is to capture and report on market information that is not currently available. A quarterly survey will collect information on the major cereal crops grown in New Zealand including wheat, barley, oats; maize data will also be captured. It will include areas sown, harvested as grain crops and harvest volumes, volumes in storage at the end of each quarter, volumes sold, marketing channels and end users. The results from the survey are published below.
We need to ensure that growers, end users and all market participants are able to take advantage of world markets and business opportunities that arise. With efficient distribution, better information and appropriate contracts we should be able to do this.
Click here to view International grain pricing and trends......
Click here to view AIMI cereals survey to October 2011 (PDF 434KB)
Click here to view AIMI cereals survey to July 2011 (PDF 399KB)
Click here to view AIMI cereals survey to April 2011 (PDF 98KB)
Click here to view AIMI cereals survey to 1 Nov 2010 (PDF 120 KB)
Click here to view AIMI cereals survey to 1 Sept 2010 (PDF 67KB)
