So how do you woo a farmer?

It would seem there’s a revival of appreciation for the farming sector. Let’s not overstate the extent to which this is due to Covid-19 sheeting home to a housebound nation the importance of agriculture in terms of . . . well, not starving, for one thing. Being healthy for another. And providing the mainstay of our national economic wellbeing.

The pandemic’s impact savaged the tourism industry but left agriculture with a case of the could’ve-been-worses.

Not that these are exactly heydays for the primary sector.

Other events have conspired to leave challenges aplenty, from droughts further north to a degree of stimulated curiosity in the south about how we’re going to get by for winter feed.

But this ambient sound of purring in praise of our salt-of-theearth farmers, as opposed to the ecological vandals we were hearing about not that long ago, might just have something to do with the looming approach of an election.

The nation’s primary producers are again finding political parties lining up to swirl them around the dance floor. Thing is, they’re not that easily swept off their feet. Or giddied. It’s hard to picture a section of society less liable to being impelled by rhetoric and shimmering promises.

It may be nice to be feeling appreciated again. But the nation’s farmers will consider Budget 2020. They will reflect on how satisfied they are with the changes to the national policy statement on freshwater that, in its initial form, had so many of them feeling waterblasted.

As individuals the courted countryfolk will look – dare we say deeper than you tend to find in many other sectors – into the specifics of the party policies. And you better believe they will pay just as much attention to what’s not in them as to what is.

Recently, outgoing Federated Farmers president Katie Milne rang a tuning fork of recognition with her people when she assailed policymakers in Wellington. As you do.

Interestingly, her criticisms weren’t so much directed at the Ministry for Primary Industries, which she ventured to suggest did generally understand the implications of policy.

But central government has a lot of departments. A lot of agencies. Some get it, she said. And some get parts of it. (You get the feeding that there might even be a third group.)

The upshot, as Milne saw it, was decisions that dramatically affect farmers’ lives being made by people who don’t understand the nuances of production.

A result, perhaps, of fewer New Zealanders having any connection to farms.

Now it’s tempting to say that, come on, there’s not a sector in New Zealand that wouldn’t hanker for public policymakers to have a more profound understanding of what they’re about.

That might not be right, however. It’s entirely possible that some outfits are in fact benefiting from a lack of true understanding of what they contribute to, and extract from, our collective wellbeing.

However, our primary industries deal with essential needs. Essential, but hardly simple. Theirs is a business of highly complex systems and continuing need for adaptation.

Certainly, they need to operate within laws and public policy that will at times constrain their ambitions. But not for needless or nonsensical reasons.

So they need to be understood. As opposed to seduced.

Primary producers are again finding political parties lining up to swirl them around the dance floor.