‘Ewe bet’: Sheep dairying as an innovative, responsible and profitable pastoral system for New Zealand regional development

Abstract

With farmers facing volatile and often diminishing economic returns, and social and environmental challenges, New Zealand pastoral farming needs a game changer with a lighter environmental footprint to achieve greater resilience. This paper asserts that sheep dairying offers a competitive system option for conventional sheep or cow dairying farmers wanting to convert particularly on irrigable land in vulnerable water catchments for example in Canterbury, but scalable for other parts of New Zealand. However, despite the development of niche artisan producers and Blue River Dairy with its focus on milk powder for export, there has been a little research into the opportunities and challenges of sheep dairying in New Zealand on which farmers and investors can make sound investment decisions. This paper examines the economic returns offered by sheep dairying compared to other current sheep finishing and dairy systems and explores other issues that enhance or impede investor’s motivations to enter the industry.