Meat company shareholders have vented their frustrations by first voting out Alliance chairman John Turner and then last week PPCS chairman Reese Hart. New PPCS chairman Eoin Garden tells agribusiness editor Neal Wallace he views his elevation as yet another challenge in a lifetime of challenges.
He had just listened to a proposal to establish a meatworks at Omakau, prompting Mr Garden to turn to a colleague and comment that the last thing he wanted to do was to be involved in the meat industry.
Some 40 years - and a lot more wisdom - later, Mr Garden could hardly have embraced a greater role in the meat industry, elected chairman of the country's largest meat company, PPCS, soon to be known as Silver Fern Farms.
It is no hospital pass, and there is no reluctance in his taking on the role, but it illustrates two things: the benefit of maturity that comes with age and a lifetime of service to the rural sector, and, that politics and the meat industry are indelibly and historically linked.
A week after being elected PPCS chairman, Mr Garden is relishing the challenge even though the company's accounts are stained with red ink and it is an industry from which sheep farmers are leaving in droves.
He does not play down the task that lies ahead of him.
‘‘We're not sitting on our laurels. Notwithstanding the meat mega merger process, there are a lot of things PPCS is going to do to get on and grow our own business.''
One of his first goals is to regain the respect of shareholders.
Mr Garden said PPCS still suffered from the acrimonious and drawn-out takeover battle of Richmond and also from some of its procurement policies, such as dealing with third parties, different pricing models and offering preferential space.
The company has already addressed procurement issues with new policies announced last year, but Mr Garden said the company was also listening to what suppliers were saying.
He sympathised with shareholder uncertainty following the sudden dumping of former chairman Reese Hart, but said the hallmark of his career was taking on challenges.
‘‘I just want to say to shareholders I have a lot of confidence in the industry and I propose fronting up and leading the company in the future.''
Part of his maturity has come from farming through and surviving four commodity price cycles.
‘‘I remember in 1972 when the Meat Board guaranteed a minimum price for lamb of $4.50 a lamb. That was crisis time.''
That boom and bust cycle was in part due to failure by the industry to make the hard decisions.
Company names such as Weddell, Southland Frozen Meat, Waitaki and Hawkes Bay Farmers have all disappeared, but they were quick fixes, the remnants divided up among remaining companies, but the low cost of entry allowed new players to enter the fray.
At last, he said, there was an opportunity for the industry to make some hard but lasting restructuring.
The industry was in a corner with companies struggling financially, farmers united in their calls for change but, more importantly, millions of sheep were being replaced by dairy cows.
While earlier troughs were considered serious, Mr Garden said this cycle was a particular threat to the sheep meat industry given competition for land and labour from dairying.
‘‘We don't want to just have something big but the same as what we've already got. We've got to have a different industry, a different model.'' The industry was in a cycle and he recalled another dairy boom in the 1950s which was followed soon after by land reverting back to sheep and beef.
While not being dismissive of current industry problems, Mr Garden said it was not so long ago that lamb producers were competing financially with dairy farmers.
‘‘Let's not be too emotive, let's be rational and pragmatic.''
To return to those boom days required an industry with greater control of the genetics and timing of supply of animals supplied by farmer, as well as greater focus on resources on markets.
PPCS will this year implement its first meat yield X-ray scanner which will provide suppliers with information about the quality and desirability of lambs they have supplied so they can make breeding and supply decisions.
It is a move which could one day see differential payment based on factors such as carcass quality and timing of supply, including year-round-supply.
‘‘We have operated under a big averaging system. We have got to get producers to respond to financial signals rather than an averaging system.''
Mr Garden said the cooperative structure would remain at the heart of any industry change, but he said it could require a rethink about the level of capital co-operative shareholders have invested.
‘‘It is important, particularly in the new co-operative model, that there has to be a real commitment in terms of capital commitment and commitment of supply.''
The relatively low capital now required was tantamount to a farmer investing in a property, but not using their back paddock, he said.
Mr Garden has spent 30 years serving farmers and the rural community.
One of five boys born and raised on a Moa Flat farm in West Otago, the family bought the rundown and isolated 5000ha Avenel Station in 1965, in which Eoin, brother Pat and father Jack were partners.
Debt and the rundown state of the property proved a great motivator, and the family waded into their work, transforming the property.
It also encouraged them to be innovative and progressive, and despite advice to the contrary, they could see value in forestry for stock shelter on the exposed Millers Flat hills, sparking a lifelong involvement in that sector.
They also saw value improving the genetics of their livestock and in the mid-1970s started to farm deer - decisions which soon paid financial dividends.
Being progressive has also been rewarding, with their business receiving numerous national accolades.
The brothers dissolved the partnership and split the property in half in 1989.
Mr Garden's community involvement has varied from helping keep the Faigans Community Store in Millers Flat open to the senior echelons of Federated Farmers and the recipient of farm scholarships.
It also saw him play a mediating role supporting farmers going through exit discussions with banks during the late 1980s.
During the 1970s, he was a member of Otagodale, a group of farmers canvassing meat companies to increase processing capacity in Otago, but the group also toyed with the idea of establishing their own meatworks.
Recent signals from PPCS that it will be closing plants in the coming few years - under Mr Garden's watch - dramatically illustrate the meat industry's vexed fortunes.