Fonterra needs to convince shareholders it will have completed its capital restructuring when it starts consultation on the third and final stage of the process this week.
Shareholders will be looking for some finality and certainty the board will not come back in four or five years' time with another proposal, such as opening the company to outside shareholders, Federated Farmers dairy section chairman Lachlan McKenzie said.
He said farmers would be looking for detail about the proposal, which allows shareholders to trade shares among themselves, and seeking an idea of the direction the new structure would take the company.
The crucial point however, was certainty that Fonterra's co-operative structure would not be weakened.
Fonterra will brief shareholders tomorrow about the third stage of the capital-raising proposal, which removes the obligation of the co-operative to redeem shares, part of a wider move to remove redemption risk and provide a permanent capital base.
This follows two earlier stages, already approved by shareholders, allowing farmers to own shares up to 120% of their current or expected milk production, and changes in the way Fonterra shares were valued to reflect the market being restricted to Fonterra shareholders.
It will prove harder to convince shareholders about share trading as, in the case of older farmers, they have seen the value of their shares increase, but are accustomed to having a ready buyer for their shares in their co-operative.
Mr McKenzie said the New Zealand farming industry, and the dairy sector in particular, had benefited from a strong co-operative structure, something other sectors, such as the meat sector, envied.
New Zealand's two largest fertiliser companies were also co-operatively owned, and Mr McKenzie said superphosphate prices farmers paid were $100 a tonne less than prices in Australia - evidence of the merits of a strong co-operative.
"Farmers want a very strong co-operative and for it to stay that way in the future," he said.
It also helped that New Zealand dairy farmers enjoy the highest milk prices in the world.
"New Zealand dairy farmers were some of the best paid in the world, and that is because of our very strong co-operative philosophy and the resulting benefits of a very high milk price."
He rejected criticism of the share trading proposal by the chairman of Open Country Dairy, Laurie Margrain, who said if it was approved, Fonterra shareholders would be locked in to supplying the company, making it more difficult for new companies to get suppliers and potentially fuelling international criticism about Fonterra's dominance.
Mr McKenzie described those comments as "self-interest and scaremongering" intended to weaken the co-operative and benefit Mr Margrain's investor-owned company.
"If you weaken Fonterra and pay a low milk price, then you can improve your returns to your shareholders."
Meanwhile, a report prepared by NZ Law Ltd, an association of independent legal practices, has warned dairy farmers to look carefully at the repercussions of the first two stages of capital restructuring and its implications to sharemilking agreements.
The report said changing the share structure had created a distinction between what farmers were paid for their milk and the dividend paid on company shares.
By law, the dividend must be paid in its entirety to the shareholder, with no ability for farm owners to instruct Fonterra to split the payment with the sharemilker, even though they were entitled to the production-linked portion.
Fonterra has initiated a dividend-related payment adjustment to address this issue by allowing shareholders to adjust the milk payment allocation to reflect their sharemilking contract obligations.
Some agreements protected sharemilkers from these changes, but others may need to be addressed, the report said.
