A chance to re-set farming’s image and social standing

Where to from here?

It was interesting to re-read a column I wrote that was printed on the eve of the lockdown. Some of my assumptions were wrong. I wrote about ‘‘waves of the pandemic’’ – in New Zealand this clearly hasn’t been the case, mainly due to the discipline of the average Kiwi. I also wrote that there may be regional disruptions rather than a sustained widespread one, wrong again.

My point is, this was only five weeks ago. Let’s go back 10 weeks when our biggest problem, it seemed was a Swedish teenager with the first name Greta, infuriating the ‘‘baby boomers’’ by proposing a curbing of our lifestyles.

It’s worth remembering it took two years for the last Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to make a significant mark on our lives, giving us time to adjust accordingly, this time more health and economic damage has been inflicted in five short weeks than the entirety of the GFC.

So, the question is, where are we going to be in another five weeks once our shared mission is complete?

Farming’s collective social licence was in need of a ‘‘lick of paint’’ pre Covid19. Agriculture and its importance have been thrust back into the spotlight in an incredibly positive way. We now have a prime opportunity to re-set our image and social standing with New Zealanders.

This can be done through actions and an empathetic approach to situations that many Kiwis find themselves in. We have the advantage of knowing how ineffective our past strategies have been in engaging with our critics. We now find ourselves in a unique position of being granted a second chance.

Major capacity cuts at the processing plants throughout the country will have a compounding effect. The old question arising yet again may well be, who should carry the costs of extra capacity in times of need - the farms or the processors?

In a highly competitive processing sector, latent capacity directly impacts on procurement pricing. So, while we demand streamlined efficiencies from our processors, shouldn’t farmers then react to create capacity on our own farms?

Of course, in the name of efficiency a lot of farmers, for profit or debt reasons have viewed latent on farm capacity as an opportunity cost to be recovered. To have an inbuilt redundancy sitting there for a rainy day is inefficient, that is the conventional model as it stands. Does this thinking need to be revised?

A repeated line thrown out there at the moment is ‘‘everything’s going to be different’’ while this may be true, I am more interested in who and how we rebuild economies. My wish is simple, that we re-connect with science.

Science has navigated us through this pandemic. We have trusted it and its modelling and we now need to trust that science will tackle and guide us to solve many of our systemic problems that are still awaiting us.