Farmers need help in eco minefield
Ihave always held the view that families’ most honest conversations occur at the dinner table, often as the used plates wait to be returned to the bench and the wine is closer to the bottom of the glass.
As a child, I can recall my parents’ discussions, as they struggled to hold on to the kiwifruit orchard in the downturn of the early 1990s.
And the conversations in rural homes today are the tensest in a generation. There is a sense of stress and unrelenting pressure.
Our primary industries and the families that work in them feel isolated and undervalued.
Some feel they are under attack. Take our dairy farmers as an example. They are a minority, living on 12,000 dairy farms – equivalent to about 0.2 per cent of
the population. Over the past 17 years these dairy farmers have made big strides to improve their environmental performance.
They have fenced and planted more than 20,000 kilometres of waterways. They have invested more than $1 billion on environmental improvements over the past five years. They have been running a fertiliser budget for about 15 years now, meaning they calculate precisely how much fertiliser is needed on their farm. This has resulted in a reduction in fertiliser use per hectare. In addition to everincreasing environmental regulation, farmers have had to weather mycoplasma bovis, with more than 100,000 cows culled.
Farmers on the West Coast have seen their co-operative sold to private interests and then, as the value is released, paid straight back to bankers who are wanting to lessen their exposure to rural New Zealand.
Fonterra shareholders have seen their co-op announce a $675 million loss and sell iconic assets like Tip Top Ice Cream.
Fonterra shares have gone from $8 to $3.63, and as farmers have to own a share for every unit of milk they supply, wiping hundreds of thousands of dollars off the retirement savings of every dairy farmer.
But what is causing the frustration at the dinner table is the feeling the country doesn’t have their backs, in fact the opposite. Most feel that urban New Zealand see them as environmental villains.
Agriculture sector business confidence is at net negative 80.
This means if you asked 100 farmers if they are confident, neutral or pessimistic, 80 would say pessimistic. This is worse than any other sector. This is in fact worse than any other sector in the past 14 years.
Farmers used to say there were three things they needed to worry about: interest rates, dairy prices and the weather. Interest rates are at record lows, dairy prices are above historical averages, and the weather has been pretty good. This crisis of confidence cannot be waved away. If dairy and the wider rural sector is hurting, it affects all of New Zealand.
Dairy accounts for 28 per cent of exports. If we include all agriculture, we are talking about 60 per cent of exports. New Zealand is too small to competitively produce cars, computers or pharmaceutical goods. If we want first world healthcare, transport and education, we have to sell something to pay for it.
On top of this, next month the Government will introduce brutal new freshwater targets, rules, standards and obligations.
I am expecting farming and its associated activities to now need resource consents. I expect the Government to say in effect, it is time to wind back intensive land use. It is time to wind back primary industries and their impact on the land and water.
I have not met a farmer in my many years of work in the primary sector who does not try to lessen their impact on their environment. I have rarely met a city dweller who understands their waste water ends up in some local water body.
Water quality has to improve but it will take time. Let progress, not overnight perfection, be our goal. For decades, successive governments and urban communities have leant heavily on primary industries to keep the country afloat. That has meant big expansion in activity which has put pressure on some waterways. But is it now fair, to turn back to that same sector and demand it struggles alone in a single generation to materially reduce its impact? I think not.
My plea is that we pause and recognise the situation we have collectively got ourselves into and take a measured path to recovery.
Are we so shallow to see water quality as only a farmer problem?
Can I ask that at your dinner tonight, you reflect on how we can tackle water quality together and start a conversation around how you and your family will reduce your impact on surrounding waterways.