Mike Hosking Breakfast

In January farmer confidence was at the lowest level recorded in biannual surveys that Federated Farmers has been running since 2009. Last month's survey found it had dropped even further. More than 1200 farmers from around New Zealand responded to the July survey, Feds said. A net 47.8 per cent of farmers considered current economic conditions to be bad, down 55.6 points from January, when a net 7.8 per cent considered conditions to be good. "That's a huge drop in six months, Federated Farmers President and trade/economy spokesman Andrew Hoggard said. "Obviously inflation and supply chain disruption, fallout from Covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine are part of it, but continued concern over the pace and direction of government reform and regulation, not to mention staff shortages, are also contributing to uncertainty and gloom," he said. A net 80.9 per cent of respondents expect general economic conditions to worsen over the next 12 months, up 16.9 points on the Janu