Like lambs to the slaughter?
Twenty five years ago I moved to Wellington for a position of paid employment with a producer board. Back then there was a Wool Board. Today nothing remains of that once mighty organisation.
A quarter of a century ago the New Zealand Wool Board had just recently completed an edifice of great magnificence on Featherston Street. The inside walls of this Taj Mahal -- fully funded by this nation's wool growers -- were decked out in intricate tapestries and the floor of the entrance foyer covered in carpets hand-made by skilled artisans, presumably at some cost.
The first floor of Wool House even had a theatrette purpose-built for the bi-annual meetings of the Meat and Wool Boards' Electoral Committee -- an august body that decided the fates of producer representatives on the respective boards, with members selected from electorates based on sheep numbers. This space is now occupied by the D4 restaurant and bar.
This conspicuous excess had been garnered from a levy collected on the auction price of wool over the preceding decades.
Such were the statutory powers granted to the Wool Board it was able to intervene in the wool market -- buying wool when prices fell and selling again once the market had recovered. At times this market intervention was funded by New Zealand's taxpayers. The rationale for this was to provide a price smoothing mechanism and to protect farmers from the whims of the market. In reality it resulted in little more than warehouses full of wool and effectively shielding wool growers from what international markets were actually telling them through the proxy of low prices.
Still fresh in the minds of wool industry people in the early 1980s was what was referred to as The Great Wool Debate of the 1970s where "compulsory acquisition" of all wool by the Wool Board was being seriously mooted as a way of dealing with the vagaries of international markets and pricing. This proposition went dangerously close to succeeding, and the associated vitriol and hystrionics split asunder communities and farming families in the process.
Wool industry leaders over the years have probably been generally well-intentioned. Amongst other things these good intentions resulted in the creation of a body called the International Wool Secretariat (IWS). This was supposed to be a research and development agency for wool, based near a gold-plated hole in the ground near Ilkley in Yorkshire of all places where millions of dollars of farmer funds were poured for little tangible benefit. Funding came from wool growers in New Zealand, Australia, and Uruguay. The IWS was the owner of the Woolmark and can claim some success for the international awareness of that brand, albeit bought at some cost. Other than that the IWS's successes include loop pile carpet and permanent press woollen trousers.
Today New Zealand's wool growers no longer have a representative body, thanks to a recent referendum to increase the levies they pay to an industry-good body meeting with a combination of apathy and disinterest. I think that that is particularly sad and that wool growers deserve better. The fact that wool growers don't appear to share my view suggests that we have a different take on things farmers can or should do to invest in their own future and that of their industry. I think it's also a sad indictment of the state of leadership in New Zealand farming circles.
I don't believe that there is no future for crossbred wools. It may be a problematic fibre to process and manufacture, but it has a better carbon footprint than synthetic carpets. It is less likely to result in asbestosis than fibreglass when used as a home insulation material. It potentially has 1,001 uses around the home as a natural, renewable fibre. Of course whether such uses can return prices that make production economically viable is the big question. But now wool growers have basically given up and thrown in the towel. They no longer have anybody on their team who can go out and look for opportunities.
The market, like the customer, is not always right. Markets don't know what they don't know. Markets didn't demand microwave ovens or iphones.
I suggest that wool growers, like customers and markets, aren't always right either, the recent referendum being an example. Over the years they have been strung along by false prophets as well as by false profits. So called "industry leaders" have fought petty turf wars or postulated solutions to the wool industry's woes driven by self-interest. The legal battles fighting over the scraps following the demise of the Wool Board several years ago are grim testimony to petty grudge holding by people with little vested interest in the industry's future. This bickering has done little more than to line the pockets of lawyers whose only real interest in wool is to wear suits during the week and Icebreaker during their ski holidays.
Industry good funding for the wool industry didn't just extend to market and product development. It was also an investment in funding on-farm technologies and for training in specialist skills, such as shearing and wool classing. In a sector that already struggles to find suitably skilled people to do essential tasks, that is a huge perhaps even a calamitous loss.
So in the absence of good leadership and credible analysis of options, wool growers are now on their own. It's just them and the various commercial players. They have the option, as long as there is a Commodities Levies Act, to reestablish an industry-good body funded by grower levies. It will be interesting to see if they ever will.
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Originally Posted by monkeymcbean
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