US entrepreneur buys Marlborough farm for $4.3m to convert into intensive feedlot
Thursday, 25 June 2026
A 288-hectare farm in the Marlborough Sounds has been bought by an entrepreneur who intends to turn it into an American-style feedlot, where large numbers of cows are kept in high-density pens and fed grain to fatten them up for slaughter.
The development is likely to need resource consent, as intensive farming is not permitted in coastal areas under the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan, a Marlborough District Council spokesperson has confirmed.
The Overseas Investment Office approved the $4.3 million purchase of the sheep and beef farm, on Titirangi Rd at the head of Kenepuru Sound, in April.
US dairy and cattle entrepreneur Sjerp William Ysselstein said in his application to the Overseas Investment Office that he planned to turn the traditional sheep and cattle breeding and finishing farm into an intensive feedlot farming system, with dedicated barn systems for housing and feeding cattle.
Ysselstein, whose registered address was in Hawaii, had a multi-state cattle empire stretching across the US Midwest and Southwest. He was the founder of Green Meadows Foods which grew to be one of the largest dairy farms in the US Midwest. It was sold to a Canadian dairy co-operative in 2009.
In 2017, one of Ysselstein’s companies, Meadowvale Dairy LLC, was fined US$160,000 (NZ$278,019) for violations of the federal Clean Water Act after it illegally discharged animal waste and process wastewater into Iowa streams.
Ysselstein could not be reached for comment on the Kenepuru purchase.
Intensive farming feedlots were controversial in New Zealand because they clashed with the “clean and green” pasture-fed image on which New Zealand beef was globally marketed.
The practice involved confining high numbers of cattle to high-density pens and feeding them grain instead of grass to fatten them up before slaughter.
The high-density method carried increased risk of disease outbreaks, animal welfare issues and pollution.
ANZCO Foods’ Five Star Beef feedlot operation in Ashburton had an outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis in 2018, prompting animal welfare group Safe to criticise the practice, saying feedlots raised serious animal welfare concerns, denied cattle their natural instinct to graze and forced them onto a diet that caused bloating and diarrhoea.
A feedlot farm proposing to produce high-end wagyu for export in Banks Peninsula, which would have kept the cattle indoors 24 hours a day, drew petitions from neighbours concerned by the environmental risks to the floodplain and the already-polluted Lake Ellesmere, alongside animal welfare issues. The company dropped its consent application in 2023.
Kenepuru Rd, the only road access from Titirangi Rd to Queen Charlotte Drive, was particularly prone to flood damage, with resident access lost after heavy rain events in 2021 and 2022.
The Marlborough District Council had not received a resource consent application for the feedlot proposal as of Friday.
A council spokesperson said an intensive farming operation in a Coastal Environment Zone would need resource consent under the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan.
“Any discretionary activity application would be assessed by council on its merits, with full discretion over potential adverse effects, including any impacts on the Kenepuru Rd and the surrounding environment.”