New Board For Dairy Insight

New Board For Dairy Insight

Dairy InSight, the industry good organisation for the dairy industry, today has a new board following the announcement of the results of the postal ballot which closed yesterday. This is the first dairy farmer election for the Dairy InSight board, and follows the formal authorisation from the Minister of Agriculture for Dairy InSight to be funded from a levy on milksolids under the Commodity Levies Act.

The board is a mixture of incumbent and new members. Of the total of seven members, three are newly elected, two have been returned and two are existing appointed members who have yet to complete their term.

The new members are: Dr Ken Kirkpatrick of Wellington Doug Leeder of Opotiki John Penna of Rakaia

The returned members are:
Philip Luscombe of Manaia
Ian Robb of Kumara

The existing members are:
Nick Pyke
Mike Dunbier

The new board will elect a chairman at its first meeting which will take place on Thursday 5 June. The incumbent chairman Dr Alan Frampton did not stand for re-election.

"This is an important milestone for Dairy InSight. From July Dairy InSight will be funded by dairy farmers rather than through dairy companies and it will be governed by its first elected board, as the previous board was appointed by the dairy companies. We regard this funding as an investment by dairy farmers and we will be looking to get the best possible return for the investment.

"We now have management of dairy industry good of the farmers, by the farmers and for the farmers, (to borrow the well-known quote from Lincoln's Gettysburg address)," says Peter Bodeker, chief executive.

The new board takes up the reins of governance as Dairy InSight makes its first round of grants totalling $39 million. These are to be announced over coming weeks. This investment in industry good includes over $9 million for research and development which has already been announced and also includes a programme of industry promotion in direct response to the request of dairy farmers to lift the image of their industry.

© Scoop Media