Alan Crafar says the way out of the hole created after the banks seized his farms is to give them back.
The banks seized his dairy empire and put the 16 dairy farms in the hands of receivers KordaMentha, who arranged a sale with Hong Kong company Natural Dairy and it's sister company, New Zealand based UBNZ Asset Holdings for $200 million.

Alan Crafar.

The Chinese company's application was declined on Wednesday by Cabinet ministers Maurice Williamson and Kate Wilkinson, says the Chinese company's directors and frontwoman May Wang failed a "good character" test. May Wang, a UBNZ director and frontwoman for the Crafar deal, was bankrupted by the High Court at Auckland this month over a $22 million debt.
'I would think that their best option now is to give the farms back to us and apologize for the state that they have got them in,” says Alan. 'We could pay our way if we were running our farm right now. But the problem is, the bank won't accept that they have got to share the pain.
'Too many people are wasting too much time and nervous energy pleading with their bank instead of getting on and getting production.”
Declining the Chinese offer was on the cards, says Alan, because the ‘clobbering machine' had been knocking May Wang and Natural Dairy around for some time.
'The government couldn't afford to let it happen anyway, they would lose the election,” says Alan. 'I suppose they will ring me on Christmas Eve and say ‘how about you take your farms back over because the receivers are making a hell of a mess of it'.”
Production is halved says Alan, which is costing the country a lot of money in lost export sales.
'I worked out that they are costing $22,000 a day to have these receivers in here and they have dropped the production by half. It's costing us a hell of a lot more than that, conservatively, bloody near a thousand dollars an hour to have receivers in this business - and the banks haven't had any returns.”
The current economic situation is the same as it was two years ago, when the banks happily loaned money to the Crafars, believing they had 50 per cent equity.
'Nothing has changed except the banks' bloody nerves have gone,” says Alan.
'This is nation wide. I'll guarantee there are thousands of farmers who are being told, ‘you haven't got any equity left, you need to sell something'. Why is that?
'There's nothing changed. The product price is the same. It's not down to the farmers that they are in this situation, it's the bankers - and they are blaming the farmers.
'The banks have lost their nerve, it's all caused by banking world wide. And now because nothing is selling and nobody is moving a thing, people are being told, ‘Well you are one hundred per cent owned now because the value has dropped by half'. That's what they have been told nationwide. This is happening.”
Farmers who have been trading profitably are being put into receivership on a daily basis. says Alan. He knows because of his public profile. They ring him up.

There's a sort of a network of people around the country, says Alan. Individual farmers are ringing and telling him their life stories.
'I get it in the ear from them all the time,” says Alan. 'Some of them are in a no-hope situation and I don't know how they got there. A lot of them aren't though. Their equity position is considered to be too low by the bank, so they sell them up. These are the people who are paying, who have never missed a payment.
'Nobody's talked about it. The problem is while things are going good, the banks they tell you that they are your partner, they want full honesty from you and you talk to them. 'But they are not telling you that behind the scenes they are being quite dishonest and they are going to bloody well strangle you, at the first chance they get – which they do.”
The bank managers are threatening people's lives every day says Alan.
'You get a letter from a bank saying you have got to sell something in the next three months, people are threatened by that, that'll kill people. Without pointing a gun at them they can kill people. They don't want to sell their life's work, but they've been told to.
'There was a abloke on TV last Friday night, I've been on the phone with him several occasions now and I can't see a good reason why they have put him under, but they have.
'I don't know the other side of the story, but there will be some cock and bull story about his equity being no good. But he was paying his way, never missed a payment on his mortgage and they gave him eight hours to pay his mortgage off. That's not being in for the long haul.
'He got a long time, I got 31 minutes when they did it to me but they had obviously been planning that for some time.”