Agsafe Weekly Rural Report

Finance: The NZ dollar was steady over the week with a slight easing against the Australian dollar. Brent Crude remains above $70/barrel and is currently $US71.06/barrel.
Wool: The wool prices are firming. There is some renewed optimism in the coarse wool market & it is almost worthwhile shearing the sheep!!
Beef, Sheep & Venison schedules: The meat schedules are mostly steady to easier but there are expectations that beef schedules will lift. The summer grass growth has allowed farmers to retain stock on the farmers – cull cows are being milked on.
Dairy Prices. Dairy prices remain strong the 2025 results have been promoted in the media with the dairy industry returning $27billion into the economy and that excludes the beef industry that comes out from the dairy industries surplus calves..
The 3-months’ notice to sharemilkers and contract milkers to end the current contracts is up today!! Notices of repair or tasks to complete the contracts also need to be given with the 3-months’ notice. It is also a useful time to check with employees as their intentions for the 2026/27 season. Some of the good staff are already taken!!
Jim’s Weekly Rant:
even at my age there are new experiences. At the end of November, a former neighbour died and then this week a close friend/client died and the experiences are worth some comment as an encouragement to get things in order in plenty of time and make sure someone knows what to do. The November death saw the former neighbour in-and-out of hospital a few times before he died. I had visited him and he seemed OK. I got a call from the police in late November to see if I knew “N” as they had me on some contact form they had that related to “N”. There had been no next-of-kin recorded at the hospital. They put me in contact with a church group where “N” had been attending church and then we jointly started the task of finding if he had any family, I did know of a niece somewhere in Hamilton. A few questions later and a contact to the niece that I knew opened up an interesting few days. He had one son and a granddaughter in her early 30’s that he was starting to get to know. He had two other adult children that had become his via the Maori-family adoption system – nothing formal, but the family knew who they were. There was no will, no instructions and no money. The church group stepped in and arranged the funeral and paid for everything to hopefully be reimbursed. Work & Income have a grant of up to $3,000 for people with minimal assets to pay funeral expenses. The son and granddaughter then appointed me and another from the church to be the executors of the estate. The Public Trust only take-over if there is no will and the estate is over $40,000 and this one was well shy of the $40,000. It has been an interesting journey working with banks, electricity companies and others. Westpac has been excellent and now everything is complete and we will advise the son and granddaughter of the assets and the use of the funds. It was an interesting lesson and a steep learning curve, but it can be done. He even had a joint account still open with his wife who died nearly 20-years ago just to add to the problems. We had to find a death certificate for her to close that account as well, and again Westpac was very helpful. The second death was this week and the funeral is today. “A” had every sorted with his lawyer, but not signed off until a week before he died. I sold his 2-units for him at the end of January and soon after the sale he went into palliative care and deteriorated over the next three weeks. I had many visits and liaised with the family arranging for his personal items to go to storage and the two units to be vacated. On the Tuesday the previous week I met the lawyer to get all the documents signed for Power of Attorney, the unit sales and the Wills. He had to learn to use his left hand to sign documents and convince the lawyer his memory was perfect as he had refused the lawyers assistants the week before. All was going well to settle the properties on 27th February, but because he died before settlement even though the documents were signed the settlement cannot be completed. The Lawyer now has to apply for an urgent issuing of probate. Powers of Attorney expire on death and everything goes into limbo. Bank accounts are frozen and while his cousin & I managed to access some funds to bring his son home from Australia and arrange the Tangi we now have no access to funds until after Probate is granted. The lessons learnt are perhaps simple, but are often difficult to deal with and are best done before the person has died or is terminally ill. It is hard asking a dying person if they want to be cremated or buried, or where their Will is and even who their family are. So please have these conversations with the family, have your Wills prepared with clear instructions and if the family is fractured ensure there is accessible documentation as to whom should be contacted. If the person is a sole operator it would be useful to $10,000 cash in a safe box that a responsible person knows about, as access to bank accounts will be blocked for a time and a funeral and cremation can easily cost in excess of $10,000 and that doesn’t include the “wake” that often starts with an afternoon tea, and then there are sundry expenses. Everyone finds death difficult to talk about, but not talking about the needs and wants can put unnecessary pressure on family and friends in those days immediately before and after the death.