The xenophobic attitude to the purchase of New Zealand farmland by Chinese might make them feel unwelcome.
But if they came here, one suggestion in the Deloitte Red Meat Strategy report would make them feel at home.
The removal of stock agents from the meat industry is a business-destruction-by-edict measure that might happen in a dictatorship but has no place in a free-market society like New Zealand.
Farmers use stock agents because of relationships built up over generations; they offer different options from selling directly to a meat company, or they offer better prices.
Sometimes, when stock is ready for sale, there is no killing space.
Sometimes feed might run short before stock is at the optimum weight for sale.
In both these instances, stock agents could buy, or arrange the sale, of stock when a meat company might not be interested.
Whatever the reason, a farmer chooses to deal with a stock agent and whatever goes on in a deal between a willing buyer and a willing seller, it is nobody's business but theirs.
If farmers gained no benefit from stock agents, they would stop using them. But as long as the agents satisfy a demand, there will be a place for the services they supply.
The steep fall in the number of sheep in the past 20 years means there is excess killing capacity, but how much is enough?The meat industry is not like the dairy industry, where supply builds steadily to a peak and falls steadily away, which allows a high degree of forward planning.
Meat supply is lumpy and it is difficult to predict when larger and smaller numbers of stock will be ready for slaughter.
There is potential for some reduction in killing capacity. However, the meat industry is procurement driven. If killing capacity falls too low, farmers will have more difficulty getting stock killed when it suits and prices will fall.
The recommendation in the report for better relationships between farmers and meat companies and more supply contracts has merit.
However, not all farmers will want to tie themselves to contracts. Even if they do sign up, what happens if either stock aren't at the desired weight at the right time, or the works are not able to process stock when it's ready?
The recommendation that farmers make better use of discussion groups, learn from top performers, pilot new technology and learn from benchmarking are also sensible.
But Beef + Lamb have run monitor farms successfully for 10 years and not all farmers choose to learn from them.
The call for more co-operation has been made many times.
But the difficulties Wool Partners is facing shows the problem there would be in trying to get more co-operation in the meat industry.
If farmers won't commit 50% of the wool clip to the Wool Partners co-operative, there isn't much hope of getting co-operation in the meat industry without recourse to draconian measures not available in a free-market democracy.
• Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer.