John Stevenson

I certainly think so.

In terms of returns, Mike, there's no doubt that it's a...

It's a good time.

We've seen strong milk prices.

We've also, for Fonterra Farm, have seen strong returns on our shares.

The thing to look out for, though, is the input costs, which are continuing to creep up.

Certainly, looking at everything out there, future of the trading around 9.70, 9.80 for next year, that's

That seems about right, but hey look, the Fonterra boards make the decision on that.

They have a lot more information than us, so we'll leave that to them on Thursday.

We start pretty early in the morning, Mike, so it's not at the pub, I can tell you that, but it's certainly a lot of people I feel are sitting on it at the moment.

There's a few that are sitting in bank accounts and

And things, you know, input costs like fertiliser in particular, 30% of that goes through the Strait of Hormuz and we're seeing DAP and urea up above 20% on last year.

So that's certainly got people sitting on their hands a little bit.

That's what we're hearing, certainly on the fertiliser side of things as well.

I think there'll be some tail on that.

I know of farmers, particularly cropping farmers, that do supply our dairy industry, a lot of them have stored furt and sheds in anticipation of either supply or price challenges in the spring.

Certainly, like the dairy NZ break-even milk price at the moment is at $8.36.

I'd expect that to creep up a bit, but, you know, there's still a decent margin in there, which, you know, is really good for farmers as they look to invest in technology, improve their efficiency and all that sort of thing.

One of the most efficient dairy industries in the world.

But if we stand still, we go backwards.