A study of excess livestock transport costs in the South Island of New Zealand

Abstract

This study should be seen as a contribution to the Agricultural Economics Research Unit's research efforts aimed at holding or reducing marketing costs for major agricultural export products. The feature of livestock passing the nearest freezing works for slaughter, so incurring excessive transport costs, has drawn considerable comment over the past few years. The study reported here attempts to place these excess transport costs for South Island livestock in perspective, with respect to both explanations for their occurrence and their significance in dollar terms.