Eleven more commercial beef farmers have been selected to take part in the Informing New Zealand Beef programme.
The seven-year Informing New Zealand Beef (INZB) partnership, supported by Beef + Lamb New Zealand, the New Zealand Meat Board and the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund, aims to boost the sector’s profits by $460m over the next 25 years.
The programme focuses on increasing the use of high-quality genetics in the beef industry. The main components of the programme are developing NZ-specific breeding indexes, building an across-breed genetic evaluation and data infrastructure, running a beef progeny test and linking in data from commercial herds.
“These 11 farmers from across the country will join last year’s intake and support our mission to give breeders and farmers genetic tools to help produce great tasting beef and drive production efficiency,” INZB genetics programme manager Gemma Jenkins said.
“We’re now in the third year of this programme, which is helping commercial farmers understand the value of better genetics and offer them the opportunity to easily select the right genetics for their system to drive greater profitability on their farms.”
The 11 new farmers, from Waikato, King Country, Gisborne, Wellington, Canterbury, Otago and Southland, bring the total number of farmers involved in the programme to 22.
The INZB programme aims to sign at least 10 commercial farmers to the programme each year.
