Source
https://www.dairynz.co.nz/resources/resource-list/dairynz-economic-survey-2023-24/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
DairyNZ — Economic Survey 2023-24 (60th edition)
The OpEx anchor for the community-dairy pathway — commercial scale, no CAPEX
The DairyNZ annual farm-economics survey, built on DairyBase financial records. National owner-operator averages 2023-24: 148 effective ha · 411 cows · 2.8 cows/ha · 423 kg MS/cow ·
8.92/kg MS gross farm revenue ·5.45/kg MS farm working (cash) expenses ·6.51/kg MS operating expenses ·2.41/kg MS operating profit ($2,845/ha). ⚠ Two hard caveats. (1) Scale gap — the sample is commercial owner-operators (herds under 50 cows excluded, average 411 cows, under-represented below 200 cows); it says nothing directly about a handful-of-house-cows community dairy. (2) No CAPEX — the survey reports operating economics only; it carries no shed / plant / vat / effluent construction cost, so it advances but does NOT close RT_387.
Summary
The DairyNZ Economic Survey 2023-24 is the 60th annual edition of the sector’s benchmark farm-economics publication, produced by DairyNZ from farm financial data validated and committed to the DairyBase database. It reports the physical and financial characteristics of the average New Zealand dairy farm by ownership structure (owner-operator and 50:50 sharemilker), nationally and by region, with a 60-year time series. It is a first-hand statistical publication, not a synthesis.
For Neobiome it secures the operating-cost (OpEx) leg of the community-dairy / edible-fat pathway. Its sibling OT_172 (Dairy Statistics) supplies the physical production and per-cow milkfat; OT_171 supplies feed demand; this source now supplies what the annual cost of running a producing dairy actually is — farm working (cash) expenses of 5.45/kg MS and full operating expenses of 6.51/kg MS, with the composition of that spend (feed, labour, maintenance, fertiliser). It must be applied with two guards: it is commercial scale (herds under 50 cows are excluded from the sample, average 411 cows), so it is an upper-scale proxy for a low-input community house-cow operation rather than a like-for-like figure; and it contains no capital / establishment cost, so the shed-plant-vat-effluent CAPEX leg of RT_387 stays open.
Key claims
- claim: "NATIONAL OWNER-OPERATOR AVERAGES 2023-24 (final sample of 200 owner-operator herds): 148 effective hectares; 411 peak cows milked; 2.8 cows/ha stocking rate; 174,235 kg milksolids sold; 1,180 kg MS/ha; 423 kg MS/cow. Payout received $8.33/kg MS sold; dairy gross farm revenue $8.92/kg MS; farm working expenses $5.45/kg MS; dairy operating expenses $6.51/kg MS; dairy operating profit $2.41/kg MS. Per hectare: dairy gross farm revenue $10,526; operating expenses $7,680; operating profit $2,845. [verified verbatim against the source]"
source_location: "Economic Survey 2023-24, Owner-operator Summary Table (Page 2); final sample size (n=200 owner-operators) in §2.1 Survey Methodology."
- claim: "COST DEFINITIONS. 'Farm working expenses' (FWE) are CASH expenses only — $5.45/kg MS in 2023-24, down $0.30 (-5%) on the previous season. 'Dairy operating expenses' is the larger $6.51/kg MS figure, which additionally accounts for depreciation and change in hectares but still EXCLUDES the cost of capital. Dairy operating profit ($2.41/kg MS, equal to $2,845/ha) is gross farm revenue less operating expenses. [verified verbatim against the source]"
source_location: "Economic Survey 2023-24, §5.3 Expenditure ('average farm working expenses (i.e. cash expenses) per kilogram of milksolids... to $5.45') and the Productivity (PFP) definition ('It excludes the cost of capital, although depreciation and changes in hectares are accounted for')."
- claim: "OPERATING-EXPENDITURE COMPOSITION 2023-24: Feed is the largest category at 29% (29.3% of total operating expenditure, the largest expense category since 2007-08); Labour is second at 20.0%; Maintenance 18%; Fertiliser 9% (9.0%). [verified verbatim against the source]"
source_location: "Economic Survey 2023-24, §5.3 Expenditure (Graph 5.3; Table 5.1, proportion (%) of dairy operating expenditure over the last 10 years)."
- claim: "SCALE OF THE SAMPLE (the community-dairy caveat). Farm groups were selected to match average regional herd size, hectares and milksolids production. Businesses with herds of fewer than 50 cows were EXCLUDED (along with multi-herd businesses, >10% land-area change, extreme outliers and incomplete data). The final owner-operator sample averaged 411 cows on 148 ha, and its distribution is over-represented by 200-599-cow herds and under-represented by herds with fewer than 200 cows. There is no representation of a handful-of-cows / house-cow operation. [verified verbatim against the source]"
source_location: "Economic Survey 2023-24, §2.1 Survey Methodology (exclusion criteria; final n=200 owner-operator herds) and §2.5 Herd Size Distributions."
- claim: "CAPEX NEGATIVE — the survey reports OPERATING economics only. It carries no establishment / capital-cost breakdown for building a dairy (milking shed, milking plant, milk vat + cooling, effluent system): its profit measures explicitly exclude the cost of capital, and capital appears only as asset values / revaluation, debt-to-asset ratio and return-on-assets, never as itemised construction cost. The community-scale-dairy CAPEX leg (RT_387) is therefore NOT sourced by this document. [verified verbatim against the source — recorded as a negative]"
source_location: "Economic Survey 2023-24 — absence confirmed across the report; profitability basis stated in the Productivity (PFP) definition ('excludes the cost of capital') and the balance-sheet / §2.8 Operating Profit Adjustments sections."NI relevance
- Secures the OpEx anchor for the food model’s community-dairy pathway. The recurring cost of running a producing NZ dairy is now sourced first-hand:
$5.45/kg MScash operating cost (FWE) or$6.51/kg MSincluding depreciation, against423 kg MS/cow. That converts to roughly$2,300–$2,750cash operating cost per cow per year at commercial scale — the first NZ dairy OpEx figure in corpus (the existing livestock-cost cells OT_091 / CR_044 are sheep-and-beef, not dairy). - Feed dominates the OpEx. Feed is 29% and labour 20% of operating spend — the two levers that most change when a community system runs low-input and family-labour rather than commercial. This is exactly why the commercial figure is an upper bound, not a transfer.
- Two guards on any use of these numbers. (1) Scale: the sample excludes herds under 50 cows; a community house-cow dairy is an order of magnitude smaller, so per-kg-MS costs would likely be higher (lost scale economies) even before input substitution. (2) The CAPEX leg is still empty — this source cannot size the shed, plant, vat, cooling or effluent build.
Research targets
Research gaps
- RT_387 (ADVANCED, stays OPEN). This source fills the OpEx half of the community-scale dairy cost gap (commercial operating economics now anchored: FWE
5.45/kg MS, operating expenses6.51/kg MS, operating profit $2,845/ha at 423 kg MS/cow). The CAPEX half — milking shed, plant, vat + cooling, effluent handling for a small on-site registered farm dairy — remains unsourced by this document, and the operating figures are commercial-scale, not house-cow scale. RT_387 therefore stays open, retargeted onto (a) a dairy-build CAPEX primary and (b) a small-scale / house-cow operating cost if one exists.
No new research targets raised.
Notes
- Direct authoritative download, not AI-prepared. This is an authoritative open PDF downloaded from DairyNZ (the 60th edition of the Economic Survey).
- Sibling to OT_172. OT_172 (Dairy Statistics) is the physical / production volume (herd counts, per-cow milkfat, breed liveweights); this is the economics volume. Read together they cover physical + operating-cost legs of the dairy pathway; only CAPEX is now missing.
- Publication year. Cited here as DairyNZ (2024) for the 2023-24 season, 60th edition; one reference inside the report was retrieved 3 April 2025, so the print date may be 2025 — the season (2023-24) and edition (60th) are the unambiguous identifiers.
- MPI farm-dairy registration fee is NOT in this PDF. The community-dairy regulatory cost (an on-site registered farm dairy supplying resident members, per REG_031) carries an MPI registration fee reported elsewhere as ~$135 excl GST on the mpi.govt.nz fees schedule. That figure is a separate secondary web fact — it is not stated in this survey and is unverified here, so it is recorded only as a pointer for the RT_387 CAPEX/registration leg, never as a claim from this source.
Connections
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