In much of New Zealand, farming is a way of life. But that may come to an end, in the not so distant future. Farmers are having a tough time, and many don't see a way forward. Farming is hard work, should be nothing really surprising about that. These family farms pull in what many would consider big revenues. But the net income after expenses is only a fraction of that, and have prices fall by even a little bit, it can really cut into profit margins. The below story describes a couple, who are bringing in $500,000 a year from the farm, but the expenses are eating it all up and they have barely anything left over. He and his wife each work 90 hours a week, and for all their efforts he calculates he is only earning $2.46 per hour. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12112467 Apparently, big corporations are taking over the dairy industry in New Zealand, in a country once dominated by medium sized family-owned operations. https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/9kgm8z/big-dairy-and-the-squeeze-on-small-town-new-zealand For young dairy workers in the 80s or 90s, if they were smart with their money and worked hard, the trajectory towards partial or full ownership of a farm could be as little as five years in the industry. But now, with rising farm and herd prices and the increasing corporatisation of New Zealand’s dairy industry, what was once a five-year plan has quickly become a 15 to 20-year one. Speaking to young dairy farmers, it is clear a sense of hope has been taken from the industry. A 23-year-old dairy worker in Taranaki we will call John—as he wished to remain anonymous—said while the dream once was the ownership of a farm, now, it is simply having a job at all and the ability to look after your family. “If you talked to a young farmer in Taranaki 20 years ago, he probably would have just gone looking for a farm and found one,” Penny said. “Whereas today, there aren’t many farms that are going to be within a young farmer’s budget or reach.” If you read further into the article in that link, it covers how entire communities are being destroyed and how it is leading to a lost generation of unemployed young men in the rural areas, young men who would have followed in their parent's footsteps and gone into farming themselves. Part of what has been fueling this corporate takeover is that many of the workers employed on the big corporate farms come from immigrant backgrounds, since the country has been taking in more foreign migration over the last two decades. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/344040/Foreign-workers-need-welcome Migrant workers 'backbone of the dairy industry': https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/fa...tstrip-kiwis-in-qualifications-and-work-ethic They claim migrants will do work that New Zealanders won't. The real issue is that New Zealanders don't want to work on those corporate farms.
