Farmers to close door on wool levy in April 

Farmers may have voted to dump their $6 million wool levy - and another $5 million worth of taxpayer funding their sector was expected to collect - but they will continue to pay the levy until April 18 next year.

Meat and Wool New Zealand notified new levy rates for the next year, effective from October 1 - and woolgrowers will pay 3c/kg of wool until the levy order runs out in April.

Lamb and mutton producers will pay 45c a head for the next year and beef producers $3.80 a head of cattle, both levies being charged on the animals slaughtered.

Wool and a small levy on goatmeat levies were lost in Meat and Wool's recent referendum, with some observers suggesting the levy was supported by larger farmers, but lifestyle blocks and other cottage-industry farms voted heavily against it.

Meat and Wool must hold a referendum every five years under the Commodity Levies Act, and it has planned to use the levy to provide research and development, skills and education, market development, information and analysis and market access.

The body's chairman Mike Petersen says the industry-good body had contracts to manage and an orderly exit of these was being negotiated.

"Collecting wool through to April will be required to meet these costs."

Petersen says the levy on dags had already been stopped.

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