In Focus this week:

• At last month’s Beef + Lamb New Zealand annual meeting just 12% of eligible farmers bothered to vote on the six remits put forward.That lack of engagement is one of the big challenges chair Kate Acland and her leadership team face in the year ahead.This week Bryan speaks with her about how she plans to get levy-payers back in the game and also about some of the other big issues, including methane targets, regulation and designing an advocacy system that works for all our food producers.

• The government is taking tentative steps towards fulfilling Federated Farmers’ wish of a full investigation into rural banking. The Primary Production Select committee has initiated a briefing on the issue and Feds dairy chair Richard McIntyre hopes that will lead to a full enquiry.

• Methane is all over the news right now with the government setting up an independent panel to review agricultural methane targets. Meanwhile, the Climate Change Commission has just released its latest advice to the government, which is pretty clear on how much methane should be reduced in our food production industry. Senior reporter Richard Rennie tries to make sense of this.