New Zealand's economy was built on the sheep's back, but today that industry is shrinking and in turmoil.
It will not disappear, but for many, the industry is a daily struggle for survival and one in which meat companies have been described as being on a slippery slope to find the last man standing.
Farmers and companies are making decisions based on short-term financial gains, leading to competition between meat companies paying above market rates for animals to keep their plants full.
If the rate is low, most parties will make a good living.
If it is high, processors and farmers struggle - and they are leaving in droves.
But ANZCO and Alliance Group say there is no crisis.
Lamb prices are historically high, although low, relative to dairying, and the problem is one of competition for land use.
The facts say farmers see it differently.
What are the problems?Product prices not keeping pace with costs.
Prices for lambs which can fluctuate $30 between seasons.
Low sheep farmer confidence -just 34% in last week's Rabobank confidence survey expected the agricultural economy to improve.
Farmers leaving the industry for dairying: 340 in Otago and Southland in the last three years and another 250 throughout the South Island expected to change in the next few years These figures are substantiated by the dairy industry.
- Meat companies paying above market prices for lamb to keep their plants busy, rather than being market-led.
- Excess meat processing capacity.
- An industry unable to co-operate and lacking leadership.
- Farmers not being loyal to meat companies.
- Both meat and wool industries lacking a consumer focus.
- A decade of little or no promotion of wool.
- Competition for land use.
The current industry model is considered by many - but not all - to be broken, but many farmers who can are leaving.
The sheep flock has almost halved in 20 years and continues to shrink, as farmers are lured by the more profitable dairy industry on one side and forestry on the other.
Since 2008, there have been at least four independent reports on wool, and another four on meat, which have called for changes in the way the farmers supply stock and the way companies market the end product.
Critics may question the motive behind these reports, but there is uniformity in their findings that the current models are unsustainable.
Just last week, Beef and lamb New Zealand chairman Mike Petersen said farmers may have to change their behaviour and Meat Industry Association chairman Bill Falconer said his members may have to switch from a supply model to a value model, providing products in the form wanted by markets.
The meat industry has had to fend for itself since the end of subsidies in 1984, unlike Fonterra, which has had legislated access to dairy markets following its formation in 2001, and forestry, which has been given a cash injection through rights to carbon credits.
Lamb prices in recent years have been some of the best, and declining crossbred wool prices have slashed the earning capacity of New Zealand's traditional multi-purpose sheep.
If wool returns were to double, the picture would be quite different.
Farm incomes cannot be guaranteed, but the rate at which farmers are leaving and the decline in sheep numbers is clearly a vote of no-confidence in the meat and wool industries.
We are constantly told our meat and wool is the best in the world, which begs the question why that is not reflected in higher profits.
The reality is that while there have been huge productivity gains on-farm, the way farmers and companies market meat and wool is largely unchanged.
Most lambs are killed from January to March and more than half the meat ends up in Europe.
Prof Caroline Saunders, from Lincoln University, asked recently how many farmers were rich as a result of New Zealand's preferential sheep meat access to Europe.
Farmers can initiate change among companies, because they own and control the stock and decide who to supply.
But that influence is seldom used, overruled by short-term thinking which typifies the wider industry.
Many farmers still sell the way their fathers did, but increasingly they are chasing short-term fixes, taking the highest price offered.
This can be from third-party meat traders, or in the case of wool, private traders, who chase margins and have little interest in influencing industry change.
The crossbred wool sector has an even worse track record.
Farmers a decade ago virtually abandoned all product promotion.
Prices since have declined steadily and a generation of consumers is ignorant of the merits of wool.
Wool has become a by-product of the meat industry and its quality has started to slip as breeding stock are selected for reproduction and meat traits.
The Wool Industry Network in 2007 estimated $200 million in unrealised export earnings from strong wool alone, due to failure to promote its niche attributes, which should command premium prices.
Traditionally, the meat and wool sectors have relied on efficiency to be price-competitive, but there is general agreement - highlighted in eight independent studies in recent years - that their future relies on growing the value of products and capturing more value.
Meat and wool are hard industries, run by hard, independent men, and this culture is also seen as an obstacle.
That lack of co-operation promoted Silver Fern Farms chairman Eoin Garden to calculate the industry was forgoing $100 million a year in savings by companies not merging.
Further evidence of this dysfunction is the inability of meat companies to jointly tackle the huge Chinese market.
Having competed for livestock at the farm gate, the accusation is that competition extends to the markets, where companies are accused are bidding product prices in order to get sales, an accusation companies reject.
The meat industry is labour intensive, but the lack of company profitability, between zero and 4% return on investment, means it is unable to invest in innovation at levels needed.
Silver Fern Farms (SFF) is investing in robotics and yield measurement, Alliance has developed its own yield assessment programme and nine companies, excluding Affco, have backed a $16.7 million research project to automate the early stages of sheep processing.
Part of that has been caused by a lack of cash and certainty, from farmers not committing supply to one company and also from the lack of investment in the co-operatives.
A dairy farmer will own shares worth $1 million in Fonterra, their value linked to company performance, while a sheep and beef farmer will have about $14,000 invested in a meat co-operative.
That level of investment does not demand loyalty, resulting in a largely spot market relationship, and the conclusion to be drawn is that farmers do not see meat co-operatives as a wise investment.
When SFF went to shareholders for more capital, it raised only $18 million.
That lack of certainty also compromises a company's ability to invest in branding and marketing the quality claims of meat and wool.
Efforts at reforming both the meat and wool sectors have provoked savage reactions.
Wool Partners International and Elders Primary Wool have embarked on similar integrated supply chain strategies, but the vitriol between the two and reaction of those left outside the plans, was reminiscent of street fighters.
Similarly, Owen Poole's efforts two years ago to unite 80% of the meat industry into one entity was met with, at best, a lukewarm response and fell apart when SFF withdrew its support.
If the industry is not in crisis, or broken, the number of farmers leaving suggests otherwise.
At the very least, its current structure is one in which no-one is winning and that, surely, requires participants to look closely at what they do.
If you keep on doing what you have always done, you will always get the same result.