Having failed to drive change in the meat industry, crossbred sheep farmers are now being urged to make changes in the ailing wool industry.
As with meat, farmers have been told that they alone would decide what direction the industry took, because they knew who bought their wool; and they also knew who or what was to blame for declining prices.
Wool Exporters blame the global financial crisis and the almost complete absence of promotion, while Wool Partners International (WPI), the body created by growers and the government to restore profitability to the wool sector, blamed the credit crunch and the current selling system.
The facts point to an industry in crisis.
Returns for farmers in inflation-adjusted terms were less than half the value of 1980, and shearing costs were now starting to exceed many farmers' wool cheques.
Wool once prided itself on covering the floors of the world's rich, but the price of woollen carpets today was 30% lower than synthetics, yet even at those low prices demand for wool was still declining.
WPI chief executive Iain Abercrombie said the current selling system was failing farmers and it had to change to place the sector in a stronger selling position.
"What we haven't done is differentiate the product from the competition."
Synthetic carpet was winning by default, he said.
Farmers needed to commit to one camp or the other and be prepared to fund promotion.
"Farmers need to back a horse instead of placing a dollar each way.
"They need to get behind one or two organisations and say this is best for the future."
The United Wool Marketers Group, a group representing exporters, private buyers, independent brokers and manufacturers, agree that farmers needed to fund promotion, but they want to see an international push by all wool growing countries.
Council of Wool Exporters executive director Nick Nicholson said a generation of consumers had grown up ignorant of wool and its in-vogue attributes of being natural and sustainable.
Talk by WPI of supply contracts and working more closely with users was already happening, he said.
But WPI believed more drastic surgery was needed.
Mr Abercrombie pointed to the New Zealand Merino Ltd model of supply contracts and relationships between growers as an example, and proposed using the Wools of New Zealand brand as a solution for crossbred wool.
Part of the reason for the acrimony was that it was a fight for survival.
All sides of the debate agreed that no-one was making money out of wool and there was no doubt WPI's solution was a threat to exporters.
"There will be losers," Mr Abercrombie said.
Perhaps because of this, exporters have viewed WPI with suspicion and mistrust, saying it was taking a monopolistic approach, could get access to Meat and Wool New Zealand levies and was given a "sweetheart deal" by paying $1 million for the Wools of New Zealand brand, which other companies were also interested in buying.
Exporters believe they have been painted as the villains and sidelined during the formation of WPI.
They question the merits of the appointment of WPI chief executive Iain Abercrombie and chairwoman Theresa Gattung, saying neither has any knowledge or experience in the wool industry.
WPI counters that exporters were doing what they have always done and the result has been a continued erosion in the price of wool.
Change was needed.
The company also claimed the current selling system was flawed because it pitted growers and exporters against each other with contrary aims - exporters to buy wool as cheaply as possible and growers to sell it for as much as possible.
Meanwhile, Meat and Wool New Zealand chairman Mike Petersen has called on the various factions debating the future of the wool industry to cease what he called "destructive communication".
Mr Petersen said there was an element of patch protection in the negative attacks between exporters, WPI, and Meat and Wool New Zealand, which was harmful to the industry.
"It's time the industry stopped in-fighting and came together."
Mr Petersen said there were discussions occurring behind the scenes aimed at addressing the crisis facing the sector, but he said there were some issues where there was broad agreement.
Resurrecting the wool industry had to be commercially based and the four guiding principles adopted by WPI of unifying wool growers, consolidating the clip, industry collaboration and market innovation were generally agreed as being the foundations for a recovery.