The Agriculture Minister says labour shortage numbers heard in farming circles are bigger than the industry has told him about.

Damien O'Connor says New Zealand's agriculture sector is in a strong position overall, despite labour shortages.

He says he is aware the dairy sector is down about one-thousand workers.

O'Connor was surprised when told a Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers survey claims the shortage is four times that.

“I’m seeing Dairy NZ today, I’ll ask them how that survey was conducted and indeed if it was four thousand, they’ve never used that figure with me.”

He then told The Country host Jamie Mackay that he thinks the primary sector is struggling to attract workers due to the content of his show.

“We should be playing it up, because then we’re wondering why we can’t attract people to our sectors, because if they listen to your programme at times Jamie, they wouldn’t want to be there.”

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