If approved, meat co-operative Silver Fern Farms, rural servicing company PGG Wrightson and genetics co-operative LIC will work to create an integrated system using science, genetics and analysis to allow farmers to produce meat with specific attributes for specific markets.
The Investment Advisory Panel yesterday asked the syndicate to produce a business model for the PGP to consider, with the project's future expected to be known by the middle of the year.
Silver Fern Farms (SFF) chief executive Keith Cooper said the dairy industry provided an integrated model for the meat industry to replicate.
Decades of scientific analysis had allowed dairy farmers to determine which bulls bred the most productive milking cows, and the performance of each cow was tracked each day.
Farmers had access to information on the type of grass suited to each soil type, the ideal fertiliser regime, stocking rates, genetics, predicted cow performance and a likely milk price each season, giving farmers an idea of their expected income each year.
Mr Cooper said each day a tanker collected milk, a sample was automatically taken and within 24 hours the farmer had a host of information about its quality.
"That to me is really great stuff and it is only one leg of it."
Within that same time frame meat companies provided the weight and grade of animals supplied.
In what would be a seven-year project, he hoped to gather information from market research, product development, processing and on-farm nutrition and genetics to inform farmers of the type of meat cuts and flavour characteristics each market required.
The project would take in sheep meat, beef and venison.
Farmers would then have access to information on genetics, pasture type and management which would allow them to supply markets in which they would receive a known price for their products.
The attributes of animals would be monitored to ensure they developed as expected and there was continued improvement.
Mr Cooper said this proposal went further than the proposed merger between SFF and PGG Wrightson (PGGW), which collapsed because of the economic recession.
"PGGW was more about operational integration. This is absolutely end-to-end integration, which utilises a lot of science, benchmarking and the latest technology."
Mr Cooper said the meat industry had to do something or it would continue to be left behind, a view supported by two recent reports, Meat the Future and the KPMG Agribusiness Agenda, which saw the meat industry as still driven by companies maximising the number of animals processed.
SFF shareholders had also shown they wanted change by voting twice in the past two years to alter the company's structure.
"Farmers are crying out for something to happen. They often talk about a merger, but SFF has focused on a strategy that is all about delivering marketplace requirements."
