Cattle farmers will pay a lower levy for the cost of running the national animal identification and traceability (NAIT) programme.
Farmers are required to pay an ear tag as well as a slaughter levy, with the latter halved to 50 cents a carcass.
NAIT programme design and farm operations head Stu Hutchings said it was the second levy reduction in a year, following cuts in both the slaughter and NAIT levy in March last year.
"The intention of the NAIT programme is that we just recover those costs that we need in order to operate successfully and so because we've had a very good level of uptake of farmers doing their tagging for NAIT, that means that we've been able to realise income earlier than what we originally budgeted and so have been able to have this reduction," Mr Hutchings said.
Mr Hutchings said farmers' early adoption of the new ear-tagging system for cattle and deer had helped to keep their levy costs down.
The latest levy reduction did not apply to deer farmers, he said.
There will be a full funding review later this year.
