How long would Fonterra remain a New Zealand Company if it was listed?

That is the question posed by Federated Farmers Dairy Chairperson Willie Leferink in an opinion piece published in the business magazine Idealog.

Mr Leferink says Federated Farmers backs the Fonterra Shareholder’s Council’s call for Fonterra to remain a 100 per cent farmer owned and controlled co-operative.

He says if Fonterra was publicly listed, within a decade it would go down the same path to foreign ownership trodden by Nufarm and Lion Nathan and it is to their credit that Fonterra’s owners have seen through the thirty pieces of silver in return for ‘stagging’ their shareholding.

Mr Leferink says farmers only need to look across the Tasman to see what a non-co-operative future would be like.

In Australia, Japanese and Italian companies dominate fresh milk processing, and farmers are not happy about being pawns in the current supermarket ‘milk war’.

Having skin in the game keeps you grounded, he says, and farmer ownership has aided rather than impeded innovation.