Clock ticks for Federated Farmers president
With his three-year term as president of Federated Farmers almost at an end, William Rolleston reckons farmers are now better placed to have their say on the environment. He talked to Tony Benny.
As he squeezes in a cup of coffee in the remodelled kitchen of the historic family homestead at Blue Cliffs Station in South Canterbury, before rushing off on another week of meetings up and down the country, William Rolleston is acutely aware his time in the top job is almost over.
He grabs his mobile, which has been regularly beeping with messages. ‘‘Everyone keeps asking me so I thought there must be an app. I have 37 days, four hours, 10 minutes and two seconds left in the job.’’
‘‘I don’t know – part of me is saying, ‘I’m really looking forward to after exams’, as it were, and another part of me is saying, is that all?’’
‘‘There’s so much more to do and I guess there’s a sense of frustration from my point of view that actually all the cogs are turning together and I’ve only got that much time to really do stuff with it.’’
Rolleston took over from Bruce Wills in 2014 and says he carried on the job his predecessor started, making Federated Farmers not only visible but credible too.
‘‘I would say this was like a sixyear transition, and by really putting science to the fore and having evidence-based arguments, that we have made ourselves credible.’’
He says it was important farmers joined the conversation about the effects of farming on the environment, rather than just resisting moves for change.’’i think Bruce was really good in having got up and said ‘we’re part of the problem’. We want to be part of the solution and I think we have moved towards that.’’
Farmers have moved with the times, Rolleston believes, and are now eager to be involved in efforts to reverse damage to the environment caused by farming. He points to his local zone committee, charged with setting limits under the Canterbury Water Management Strategy.
‘‘They were about to do their report back to council and 50 to 70 farmers turned up in Waimate, angry as anything, with comments like, ‘There’s tumbleweeds blowing down the streets of Waimate and it’s all your fault and you’re not going to take one drop of water off me or constrain me for one kilogram of nitrogen’.’’
‘‘Six weeks later I came back to the farmer meeting and the same farmers were actually saying, ‘How do we fix these problems, how do we deal with this situation?’, and it comes down to what I see from farmers and that is that they hate being told what to do but give them a problem and they want to fix it.’’
Rolleston detects a growing understanding among the urban population of the challenges farming faces and welcomes comments by Oamaru councillor Jim Hopkins, nationally known as a comedian.
‘‘He said an attack on agriculture is an attack on our standard of living. I could say that until I’m blue in the face and it would go nowhere but for somebody outside of agriculture to say that is quite strong message.’’
But while that was a positive, Rolleston says TVNZ’S ‘‘flinty’’ programme about struggling dairy farmers was a real low point. ‘‘I thought it was TVNZ stumbling around in the dark.’’
He says the angry reaction of thousands of farmers taking to Facebook was appropriate but cautions against making the media an enemy.
‘‘You’re better to actually point out where we think they’ve been incompetent because as a journalist it’s far worse to be told you’re incompetent than just to be told I disagree with you because you can handle that.’’
Rolleston remains convinced of the value of science and arguments based on hard evidence. The Feds have to be ‘‘the dripping voice of reason’’. He says that’s the only way to counter ‘‘one dimensional arguments’’ by environmental campaigners and believes that’s why Fish and Game and Forest and Bird pulled out of the Land and Water Forum.
‘‘My view is the Land and Water Forum is starting to put that science in and actually starting to show it’s not just about slashing agriculture, it’s about doing things smarter.
‘‘Now that we’re thinking about it, and that’s probably only been for about 10 to 15 years, there are tools that are starting to come to the fore that are going to allow that to happen.
‘‘They (the environmental groups) don’t like that because as soon as we can start solving those problems, then they can’t push against us and their money dries up until they can find the next cause celebre.’’
The key has been a willingness to take part in the process and engage with decision makers, Rolleston says. ‘‘When Bruce came in as president, we were barely getting in the Minister of Agriculture’s office, let alone talking to MPI. You just get nowhere if you don’t engage and we have engaged with him.
‘‘If we just pushed back, shouted and yelled at regulators and didn’t engage and got ourselves offside with everyone else in the industry because we had an unsubstantiated view, then what can happen is you end up with regulation that way overshoots what is required and people are stuck with it for a long time.’’
Rolleston’s not pretending all issues have been sorted out and accepts there’s still a long way to go. He agrees with other critics that Overseer farm nutrient software is not perfect and wasn’t designed to be a regulatory tool but believes it’s the best available.
‘‘The alternative for councils who are struggling with numbers is that they go to an inputs policy in which case everyone’s told how much fertiliser they’re allowed to put on and that’s what they have in Europe and it’s highly restrictive and doesn’t allow for any innovation, whereas our outputs and effects-based policy does.’’
Looking back over his term, Rolleston counts as successes the way Feds have engaged on the environment, their acceptance of climate change and the need to act on that and their work on health safety regulations which mean there are now guidelines for farmers to take passengers on motorbikes.
But he’s frustrated there hasn’t been a way found for farmers to be recognised for their role as custodians of the land.
‘‘How do you do that without throwing subsidies in or distorting trade? I think that’s a really hard one to crack – it’s been in the back of my mind because I don’t think you just go, hey, we’re clean and green and you’re going to pay a premium for our products, the equation doesn’t add up.’’
As his time as Feds president runs out, Rolleston is contemplating his next move. He’s acting president of the World Farming Organisation and is standing for election into that role.
‘‘Members of the World Farming Organisation go from the free traders to the protectionists. We have a very good trade policy – it’s about having the ability to trade, for farmers to get their products to market, but also some recognition that there are other values that farming provides to communities and to the environment.’’
But before that, he has another month or so at the helm of New Zealand’s farming organisation.
‘‘The thing I’ve learnt about this job is the job’s never finished, it will always go on but I think between Bruce and I, we’ve set the direction of travel.
‘‘It is one about collaboration, it is one about farmers dealing with the problems and not just being told what to do because if you just push back and say, ‘Bugger off’, then it’s going to happen without you and you’re better to be sitting around the table. That’s what we’ve really managed to achieve.’’