The Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) chief executive introduced himself to farmers at the B+LNZ Genetics Beef Breeder Forum in Christchurch last week.
He replaced former chief executive Sam McIvor in November after exiting Hitachi Australia as the agribusiness director. Before this he worked for Ravensdown in several roles in New Zealand and Australia.
The forum was the launching ground for the free online tool, nProve Beef, to help commercial farmers match the right bull genetics for improving the productivity and profitability in their herds.
Mr Thompson said he was living and working comfortably in Sydney when he was approached to apply for the role. He initially discarded the idea.
"Then I thought I started in agriculture 40 years ago as a Ravensdown field officer ... and farmers were making a substantive loss. A gentleman just down here said not much has changed and that was exactly it — I thought I didn’t want to finish my career kind of where I started with farmers making a loss and it felt like I hadn’t done enough. Other than some slight increases I think $108,000 before drawings is the average profit for a NZ sheep and beef farmer. So my [goal] is to try and make this step change we need given in 40 years we have trebled productivity, but are still not making an eggnog [Champagne] return."
Mr Thompson said he was keen to get feedback from farmers on what B+LNZ should keep doing and stop for their levy payments.
"The single biggest expenditure item outside our payroll is what we invest in genetics. It’s a very key item in what we do collectively with your levy payments so I’m very keen to get your feedback on that."
Genetics was the core way which did not cost farmers a great deal of money to get crucial gains in productivity, he said.
He said 50% of the productivity improvement made in the sheep industry from 1990 had come from genetics.
"You get probably in a farmer’s career 30 or 40 chances to make this decision. So B+LNZ is excited to launch nProve at this forum for beef. It’s a key plank for improving the decision-making for commercial farmers."
As chief executive, his role is to execute the resetting of B+LNZ’s strategy by the board last year.
He said the key to the strategy was having thriving sheep and beef farmers.
"It’s interesting the government has come out with doubling export receipts and my focus with the team is not so much doubling export receipts, but how we substantively increase farming profitability."
He said advocacy was a big part of what B+LNZ did.
"I’m really keen to get your view on that. I think the entity suffered a bit of PTSD after the previous government and we stepped back from our leadership role fearful that we might get it wrong again. But in fact my four months of talking to farmers they have said we expect you to point what is the right thing to do environmentally and what are the wrong things to do and to make sure we all do that well. But we also want you to lead on climate change with the government on E. coli or sediment or vocational training and those things of agriculture so I’m keen to get your one-on-one views on that."
Part of the strategy was research extension and learning from other farmers.
Mr Thompson said they had made changes to the delivery of extension work and this was a work in progress.
"We have probably invested $200 million to $300m of your levy over the last 40 years in research. So there’s one thing to have knowledge and it’s helped along with farmers driving that trebling of productivity, but if our biggest cost is our extension team, guys and girls on the field, then we have to find ways of getting that knowledge into your hands more quickly, cheaply and immediately."
A chatbot had been developed for farmers to access research and a knowledge hub was a good first effort at providing customised information for farmers, he said.
"You will get just that knowing it’s not from some Norwegian fringe farmer that has put something on the internet and knowing it’s our data and your ability to drill down into that really quickly."
Replying to a question about the way to bring long-term profitability to the sheep and beef sector, he said he did not have all the answers.
He said the way forward was to look at other value chains aligning the raw material to the processor and the ultimate customer and "decommoditise" products.
"Our job at B+LNZ is to aid through research and through extension [to get] that raw material to the processor to meet their demands for their customers."
