New Zealand: Continuous milk production under pressure

The end of 2022 means that we have data on New Zealand's full year milk production, and while this measure is somewhat irrelevant given the seasonal nature of the country's milk production, this data is key to assessing how production is behaving in general. For the year 2022, New Zealand milk production, in kilograms of milk solids, was 3.5% lower than the previous year and 3.8% lower in terms of tonnes. This is equivalent to 835 thousand tons of production, which makes it clear that milk production in the country is under pressure. Despite these annual data, December production was positive, being 0.6% higher than the previous year, with 1.2 million kilograms of milk solids produced more in the month. With weather conditions during November rapidly changing from a wet, cold and dreary spring to a warmer and wetter early summer, there was little doubt that the December production data would indeed bring significant changes over the previous season's data. However, that 0.6% ...