The strategy, initiated by the Meat Industry Association (MIA) and Beef and Lamb and released in May last year, was aimed at improving the sector's viability and increasing its earnings from $8 billion to $14 billion by 2025.
The report, by Deloitte, identified the greatest possible increase in sustainable profitability would only be delivered by all sector participants' taking action in three key areas: in-market co-ordination, efficient and aligned procurement, and sector best practice.
While there had been "some really good stuff happening" with a lot "below the radar", one area which Mr Petersen believed had gone backwards over the past 12 months was more efficient aligned procurement.
Addressing the Federated Farmers Otago annual meeting last week, Mr Petersen said it was the second-lowest lamb crop on record this year, with the lowest crop last year, but the amount of capacity to process that crop had fundamentally not changed.
"There's been some tweaking, no doubt there's been some shifts laid off and all that sort of thing, but fundamentally there's still excess capacity, intense competition among processors and exporters for the available livestock, and that's led to a culture of distrust.
"We're working quite hard on trying to understand how we can do this better ... we're struggling for answers here.
"Our view is that if we actually had both sides of the farm gate talking and working together with planned marketing programmes, delivering the product the market wants, then we would make real progress.
"But at the moment, we've probably got a real gap in the middle that we're struggling to bridge," he said.
Mr Petersen described himself as a loyal supplier to one company, supplying direct.
He did not believe it made sense that if he went through a third party, he could get 10c a kg more for supplying the same company, yet that was happening every day.
"All we're doing is adding cost, all we're doing is breaking down the transparency, all we're doing is eroding the trust between the farmers and the companies and that's not going to help us move it forward," he said.
In response, Federated Farmers national vice-president Dr William Rolleston, of South Canterbury, said he believed farmers should be looking at the issue in a different way.
Rather than saying to the meat companies that they should not be paying that, farmers should be asking themselves why those suppliers were getting extra.
The reason for getting extra was that those suppliers were reducing the risk for the meat companies.
He believed there was an opportunity for mini-co-operatives of farmers to get together and take that space.