Brian Doughty - Wanganui farmer cheese maker and Federated Farmers president.

02/04/2013 (Wanganui Chrronicle) - The Headlines in last week's Straight Furrow have "Shock findings at PKE plant".

From an agriculture point of view, we can understand what the likely issues will be.

For the urban population they will be wondering just what that headline means and how important it is to them.

It would seem that a couple of farming leaders visited some palm oil crushing plants in Malaysia last year. One of these visits was unofficial, with the resulting findings being well below standards required by New Zealand's health import standards. The fact that the Ministry for Primary Industries has had the report from the farming leaders and made no response to date will be causing some disquiet within the agriculture industry.

So, to put it simply, palm kernel expeller (PKE) is imported into New Zealand for use as a stock feed, used primarily by the dairy industry.

Palm kernel has three main uses: crude palm oil for food, and palm kernel oil for cosmetics with palm kernel expeller being used for animal feed.

With Indonesia and Malaysia producing 80 per cent of the world production, it's not hard to see what will be happening to the internal politics within both countries as far as the environmental issues are concerned, with the destruction of rainforests - not to mention the debate being had within a host of other countries.

It's interesting to note that some of the smallholders are producing as much as 30 per cent of the national output, which in turn allows them to participate in the cash economy, resulting in improved local infrastructure, greater access to schooling and medical care - all things we in New Zealand have ready access to.

Now I know there are some pretty strong feelings about the importation of some 1.5 million tonnes of PKE into NZ and the damage this is reportedly doing to the producing countries, so how does this sit with some within agriculture?

I can only speak for ourselves, but owing to the recent dry spell we are having, one of the issues was that, with little grass growth since early January, our stock were starting to show signs of losing condition, not to mention a drop in production.

After looking at a number of options, we opted to purchase a small amount of PKE from our local retailer with the idea of looking to see how the cows and goats responded to the change of feed.

Suffice to say the cows took to it rather quickly, while the goats showed a reluctance to indulge to any great degree.

In deciding to use PKE, we looked at all the issues of its production, from forest destruction and importation of animal diseases.

From where I sit, I find it hard to try and influence how another country should or shouldn't derive an income from their available land.

We in New Zealand learned our lesson on historically clearing land, leading to some erosion in parts of our district.

Let's hope that Indonesia and Malaysia can find a balance in the production of palm products versus environmental protection to ensure a sustainable future for all.

Bryan Doughty is a farmer and cheesemaker, and president of Wanganui Federated Farmers .