To differentiate between cows raised for beef and those raised for dairy. Dairy is huge in NZ, and grew massively in the last 25 years, especially in places not naturally suited to it that require lots of irrigation. It has also completely fucked all of our waterways and the nitrate runoffs into our drinking supplies may be spiking bowel cancer rates.

Anywho, sheep and beef cows are often raised together, or at least have similar grazing land and economics so they’re often referred to as one sector.

The economics are also dogshit, which is why there’s so many conversions to pine plantations, which in itself is driven by forestry being an uncapped form of emissions removals in our emissions trading scheme.