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Agsafe Weekly Rural Report

ENVIRONMENT Finance: The Reserve Bank maintained the OCR in the interim. It was split decision with the Governor having the casting vote to retain it at 2.25%. NZ dollar firmed over the week but remains a very weak currency. Brent Crude continues to vary daily and is currently $93.02/barrel with punters expecting the Straits of Hormuz to remain open & crude prices to fall. Wool: The wool prices continue to firm with growing optimism in the coarse wool market. The recent sales were very encouraging. Beef, Sheep & Venison schedules: The meat schedules are steady to firmer for the coming week. There are indications that the India Free Trade will increase lamb demand & prices. Dairy Prices. Fonterra has a Farm Gate range of $8 to $11 for the 2026/27 season with a mid-point of $9.75. A good offer against a very uncertain world commodity market. Health & Safety inductions with new employees on the farm is essential. The wearing of helmets, the regular servicing of all vehicles and identifying hazards are all equally important. Check that the motorbike sizes are OK for the staff – on one farm we arranged for a smaller bike as some immigrant employees have shorter legs and it is important that they can hold the bike up while standing astride it. Jim’s Weekly Rant: I will comment on the NZ budget when I have had time to analyse it properly. The thought of a “Super El Nino” creating climate extremes around the world will give the climate alarmists plenty of ammunition to attack those of us labelled as “Climate Deniers”. The NZ media and many of the politicians in national office and more so in local government office will have a field day with the statistics. The announcement of the Super El Nino came at the same time as the UN IPCC changed their view on Climate Change. They have said their catastrophic predictions relating the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 was implausible and they should never have used words like “Likely”. This has been the biggest shift the IPPC has made public. The RCP8.5 has been behind the New Zealand’s planning policy development and now it has been debunked. The RCP8.5 was the main document used to develop the coastal climate change planning system developing a simple legal standard: “councils must plan for the likely effects of climate change, using the best available evidence”. It is reflected in the sea level projections used by councils nationwide using the 'SeaRise' online tool, and it remains embedded in scientific studies relied on in the National Climate Change Risk Assessment. It is also likely at the root of extreme forecasts that have become part of the popular narratives. It has moved from being scientific to being embedded in law underpinning the perceived climate catastrophes. In simple terms the IPCC has stated that the modelling that declared the extreme RCP8.5 is implausible. The significance of the IPCC’s decision cannot be overstated as NZ had accepted the doomsday scenario where catastrophic warming of 4 to 6 degrees Celsius by 2050 with sea-levels rising well over 1-meter, and now it is stated as being unreliable. But there has been no serious reporting or acceptance of the findings by our media or government. The acceptance of the RCP8.5 has led to climate hysteria, kids missing school for protests along with a number of irrational governmental and local government restrictions, increases in insurance costs and the downgrading of coastal properties. There have been NZ scientists supporting the RCP8.5 document while those opposing it have been muzzled and their credibility questioned by a blinded irrational media. So where did RCP8.5 come from? It was a computer model produced in Austria to test the outer-limits of climate sensitivity and was irrationally accepted as “fact”. It had predicted a future dominated by coal use, explosive world populations and explosive economic growth, it was a doomsday type model and now the truth has been exposed. The RCP8.5 has seriously distorted the NZ electricity markets with the rising costs of carbon relating to gas and coal and the Emissions Trading Scheme is reported to add another $200 per annum to the average power bill and $0.20/litre to fuel with expectations of further increases as NZ targets Net Zero by whenever. It has affected our trade as the exporters have tried to comply with Net Zero compliance from the Paris Accord. All the virtual signalling and de facto trade compliance has cost NZ dearly and now we are told it was an implausible projection that our master’s have been following. It is time to stand-up as the electioneering begins and bring some reality and sanity back to our nation!! ( Source )

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