Production and supply relationships in the New Zealand sheep and beef industries

Abstract

This study has been concerned with the development of an econometric model capable of explaining the annual changes in total livestock units that are carried on New Zealand sheep and beef farms. Although there have been a number of previous econometric studies of New Zealand livestock production, none of these has analysed the effect of annual variations in climatic and other physical factors on the numbers of livestock carried. In addition there have been no studies of livestock numbers that have considered sheep and cattle as enterprises that are competing for the same set of input resources. For these reasons it was considered that none of the previous studies provided a suitable framework for analysing the changes in the industry that have occurred in the decade up to 1975. The development of a new econometric model was seriously affected by a lack of suitable data. A number of tests were conducted on the national livestock series as published by the New Zealand Department of Statistics. These tests indicated a number of inconsistencies in these data that appear to be sufficiently serious as to confound any econometric analysis of annual changes in the numbers of livestock as measured by these series. Analyses indicated that, for the period 1964 to 1975, data obtained by the New Zealand Meat and Wool Boards Economic Service during the course of their Sheep and Beef Farm Survey are the best available source of information on changes in livestock numbers. However, before these data could be incorporated into an econometric model a standardisation procedure had to be devised so as to link successive years of the survey.