About DairyNZ

DairyNZ is the industry good organisation, representing New Zealand’s dairy farmers. Funded by a levy on milksolids and through government investment, our purpose is to secure and enhance the profitability, sustainability and competitiveness of New Zealand dairy farming. We aim to do this by leading innovation in world-class dairy farming and by working always in the best interests of New Zealand’s dairy farmers.

Structure
DairyNZ was created in November 2007 through the merger of Dairy InSight and Dexcel. Our structure has three key investment areas: productivity (feed, animals and farm systems); sustainability (environmental management, biosecurity, animal welfare and community impact); and people and business (farm business and human capability). These enable us to focus on delivering real value to farmers.

We deliver this value through leadership, influencing, investing, partnering with other providers and through our own strategic capability, with the goal of better positioning New Zealand’s dairy farmers, on-farm, nationally and internationally. Our work includes research and development to create practical on-farm tools, leading on-farm adoption of best practice farming, promoting careers in dairying and advocating for policy, legislative and investment decisions by central and regional government which are good for dairy farming.

Regional presence
Our main office is at Newstead, near Hamilton, where we have three research farms and are also close to the major dairy research facilities in the Waikato. We have a significant regional presence through research and demonstration farms in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki, Canterbury and Southland, and we have consulting officers in every dairy farming area in the country. Our policy and advocacy team is primarily based in Wellington, to interact with ministers, government departments and other stakeholders and also works directly with regional councils in key dairying areas.

DairyNZ’s levy is voted on every six years, and the last vote was held in May 2008. We actively encouraged farmers to vote and succeeded with 61 per cent (by milksolids) of farmers voting, one of the highest-ever participations recorded in a commodity levy vote. The yes vote of 75 per cent, an increase of eight per cent on the 2003 result, was a resounding mandate from farmers and strong evidence of the fact we have farmer support for our work.  >>Find out more