Trading Among Farmers (TAF) and the future of the New Zealand Dairy Industry.

On the 25th June 2012, farmer shareholders in the Co-Op Fonterra, voted in favour of implementing TAF. TAF allows outside capital in the form of buying units; in return for rights to dividends, but not ownership or votes. When researched; there is no agricultural co-op in the world that has taken outside capital and still primarily focused on maximising returns to the supplying shareholders, (ourco-op.co.nz) as primary focus becomes the share price and dividend, eventuating in the demise of the co-operative.

A co-operative is set up by its shareholders to maximise the price for the suppliers milk. Shareholders invest their share capital into a co-operative in return they give loyal supply of the raw material (milk). Farmers will want to supply Fonterra because they own them. When you introduce outside investors you introduce different drivers to the business. Outside investors invest capital to receive a good dividend. The Directors are torn what do they do with company profits, do they retain funds to make the balance sheet strong, do they maximise the milk price or do they maximise the dividend? This divergence of interests will eventually lead to the demise of the co-op. For example Satara and EastPack in the kiwifruit industry. Historically they were both co-ops competing against one another for a number of years. Satara then listed its investor shares on the NZAX. It now had supplying shareholders and investing shareholders. This was fine until Satara wanted to build a new coolstore to better keep the suppliers’ fruit. However the investor shareholders were concerned that the investment in a new coolstore would affect the company profits and therefore dividends. The growers view was that the new coolstore would reduce fruit loss and enhance the Grower orchard gate