The forming of dairy giant Fonterra coming out of an era when there were no Queensbury rules was a miracle, says dairy industry historian Clive Lind.
Being part of a changing dairying industry has not been for the fainthearted and nor was it easy to track the last 40 years of its history, Lind says.
His latest book, Till the cows came home, follows the beginnings of Great Britain joining the European Economic Community, as the EU was then known, through a bruising period ending with many dairy co-operatives merging into the Fonterra powerhouse.
«It is a miracle that what became Fonterra came about as politicians and larger-than-life characters worked on solutions in their own driven ways,» he said at a book launch in Wellington.
«But it did come about because in the end, the dairy farmers who owned the co-operatives, had to have their say and what they said was what counted.»
The emergence of Europe’s economic community removed many of the commercial and trade benefits New Zealand once depended on.
New Zealand dairying had to transform itself into an international, competitive business, or wither.
New thinking and ways of doing business, and developing markets in countries which often regarded dairy imports as some sort of plague – and protected their farmers through import tariffs or subsidies – had to be devised by a country proud of its entrepreneurial spirit, but which in many areas often encased initiative in narrow laws and regulations.
When 1960s legislation effectively allowed the New Zealand Dairy Board to do anything it liked as long as it wasn’t breaking any laws, along came people delighted to exploit that openness.
This worked well until different political forces brought other economic ideologies to the fore from the mid-1980s, and the dairy industry’s structure came under attack.
The government of the day began talking about creating level playing fields for an industry which sold 5 per cent of its product in New Zealand and 95 per cent internationally.
As Dairy Board leader John Parker once said when Treasury wanted to hobble the board in the 1980s, there was no such thing as Queensbury rules in business.
His view was that New Zealand had to make sure it never did anything so dumb as to get on a level playing field. New Zealand had to scramble so it could play on the uphill end, with the wind behind.
Then came Fonterra, run by bruised and exhausted directors from different backgrounds who had fought their own battles for what they believed, and what they thought should happen to the industry, said Lind.
«There were no outright winners, and a lot of people had been burned in the process that saw 100 dairy companies over four decades become effectively one. The survivors may not have disagreed on the outcome but they did disagree on the detail.»
Lind said he sought to explain this important phase beyond wooden descriptions of test tubes, stainless steel and chemical compositions by telling the story largely through the people involved.
The launch was attended by Minster of Finance Bill English and Labour’s Primary Industries spokesman Damien O’Connor among dairying dignitaries.
English said he had enjoyed reading the book because it was «lively and candid», and it was about people and their opinions.
He said the botulism report used the term that Fonterra was an involuntary national champion, but that was not the deal and politicians wanted it to become a national champion.
Fonterra had a set of obligations to take companies with them, help them into markets and make sure they had a comfortable relationship with the New Zealand community, he said.
Source: Stuff