A feed conversion efficiency and methane testing facility run by Pāmu Farms near Taupō. Photo: Pamu
The ACT party's pushing for some state owned farms to go on the market - claiming they are taking taxpayers for a ride by losing money.
This follows Prime Minister Christopher Luxon hinting National will campaign on asset sales in next year's general election, saying a win in 2026 would be the mandate he needed to push ahead with the move.
ACT leader David Seymour agrees, saying privatisation needs to be talked about more openly while the party's agriculture spokesman Mark Cameron says selling Landcorp is a "no brainer".
Pāmu, formerly Landcorp, is a state owned enterprise and the country's largest pastoral farmer, managing about 360,000 hectares across 100 farms.
Included in the mix is Molesworth station, one of the largest high country sheep stations in the country. It is owned by the Department of Conservation and managed by Pāmu.
Beef cattle on Molesworth Station. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
Across its farms throughout the country Pāmu employs more than 600 permanent staff and runs 1.3 million stock.
Last year Pāmu recorded a $26 million loss it attributed to falling livestock prices, high interest rates and the ongoing costs related to Cyclone Gabrielle.
Cameron, who farms in Northland, and is the Primary Productions Select Committee chairperson, doesn't believe the state should run farms that have underperformed on taxpayers' rural investment for years.
"Sadly, Pāmu has more recently run at a loss quite continually so the issue comes back to would the private citizen do a better job of running said farms and there are several of them. I have always argued that perhaps they would."
Cameron is keen for parcels of the land to be sold to create an environment for new farming ventures in the private sector.
"How is it so that the dear old taxpayers are on the hook continually flogging a dead horse and arguably Pāmu has not managed to get on the right side of the fiscal ledger?"
He described Pāmu farms he has been on as beautiful - but believed cross subsidisation from one farm that was doing well to another that wasn't performing as well was wrong.
"I think it's high time that everyday New Zealanders have a say on the $2.2 billion of assets locked up in Pāmu Farms that might be better run by private citizens."
Cameron added that some of the land would stay in the state's hands.
ACT's agriculture spokesperson Mark Cameron. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Support for ACT's stance
Federated Farmers is meeting next week to discuss its stance on whether it supports some Pāmu farmland being sold to private farmers.
Its president, Wayne Langford, said despite not making a stance about Pāmu's future yet farmers were understandably questioning the SOE's performance following a multi-million dollar loss last year.
''Mark Cameron and a number of farmers I have talked to are right to be questioning this and the options put forward because we haven't seen the highest levels of profitability coming out of Pāmu. However, my understanding is that this year they are heading towards a record profitability and potentially we could see the return many of us have been asking for for some time."
Langford said some of the farms would be worth over $100 million and not many farmers could afford them.
Some private farmers believed it was an uneven playing field when buying stock at the same time as a Pāmu farm.
''One concern we have heard from our members when they are neighbours of a Pāmu farm that sometimes those farms are buying stock and feed at a higher price. It's setting an unfair platform that those farmers that are neighbours feel they are competing against the government on a Pāmu farm that is potentially making a loss.''
Pāmu agrees on shortcomings
Pāmu Farms expects to make a profit this financial year but its chief executive admitted it needed to improve its performance.
Mark Leslie said its farms created more value beyond just the cash in the business.
''I accept there's been some areas we have probably underperformed in and hence there's been a real focus to shift performance.
"But at the same time I think there's a real opportunity for New Zealand there around what we are doing with genetics and methane mitigation. There's real value that Pāmu provides that would be lost, and to me that would be sad."
Pāmu Farms chief executive Mark Leslie. Photo: Kara Tait Photography
Leslie said Pāmu regularly met with Treasury and has yet to meet with new SOE minister Simeon Brown.
''We made some significant changes about two years ago to really focus on our farming performance and that was setting targets for every farm and we had a clear goal to lift the profitability across the board. An element was making some structural changes that integrated the dairy and livestock business with a more regional focus."
Leslie said some of its farms were more profitable than others and some were extremely large, so there would be complexities and challenges if the shareholder (the government) put some on the market.
In a statement to RNZ Brown said he wanted to ensure taxpayers got good value for money from all SOEs and he would ruthlessly find areas where the government could push harder to improve performance, including from Pāmu.
