Made 4x on their stock since I added them to my portfolio. Ironically doing better than most tech companies.
But there’s also scale, etc involved - Fonterra is cumulatively a huge dairy producer so has significant pricing power.
Also as far as I can make out (moved from nz to the us many many years ago) farming in the US seems to be much less efficient - the mere existence of subsidies speaks to that.
(Minor edit: I did a quick google to make sure I was still right about the above statements, and per Wikipedia - so 100% accurate - NZ is the only developed nation with no subsidies or price rules on agriculture, and Fonterra alone is responsible for 30% of global dairy exports)
If money is all that you count. Switching from low-impact sheep farming (especially in the South Island) to dairy has basically ruined the environment. It's NZ's worst kept secret. I guess it will take something like Japan's "四大公害病" to make everyone wake up
But yeah it does seem like the Canterbury authorities especially have been terrible at actually enforcing environmental laws (based on stuff.co.nz -- the best reporting and editing in the world :) ).
The alternative (directly dealing with numerous separate farmers) and then finding a company to do the transport and processing would be stupidly inefficient.