The politics of farming

It’s often said that we live in a time of polarised politics, but others will tell you it has always been this way. A key part of political life is creating opposition or identifying enemies. Differences will be exaggerated if you want to give people a reason to vote.

That said, it is becoming easier than ever to exaggerate and to polarise. Social media is central to that, as studies of the effects of Facebook and other platforms show.

The urban-rural divide has long been an important fracture in New Zealand politics. National is traditionally the party of farmers and Labour was, initially, the party of workers.

Rural communities have felt scapegoated as polluters of the environment by politicians on the left. Many farmers will tell you that they care as much about the health of the land and the purity of the water as Green-voting urban dwellers who rarely step beyond city limits.

But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was not wrong when she said, during Tuesday night’s first televised leaders’ debate, that the urban-rural divide is not as insurmountable as has sometimes been portrayed. Or, as she said in a hotly contested quote, it is a ‘‘view of the world that has passed’’.

Former Federated Farmers’ president Katie Milne made the point during her farewell speech in June that ‘‘we’ve made excellent progress bringing town and country to a better understanding of each other’’.

She spoke about the national discussions that started on ‘‘everything from global warming and water quality to biodiversity and job security’’.

The older, binary view of town versus country was missing from Milne’s assessment.

‘‘Those few who used to call us ‘environment vandals’ have been drowned out by the consistent messages from polls, and politicians and media pundits who now hail us as economic heroes,’’ she said.

That was in the context of Covid-19, when farmers were essential workers and dairy overtook tourism as our biggest exporter.

Ardern’s view is too rosy for some. There is no question that many farmers still feel ‘‘a lot of weight and uncertainty,’’ as a Southland dairy farmer told Stuff this week.

Some farmers say they are ‘‘continually overwhelmed with comments, policies and forever changing goalposts’’.

Labour has since announced a $50 million policy to help with compliance costs.

National tried to turn a sense of being underappreciated into a greater sense of grievance by misrepresenting Ardern’s comments about farming. The messaging, widely shared online by National MPs until they were challenged, claimed that Ardern had said farming itself was a thing of the past, rather than the negative perception of farmers by people in cities, which is clearly what she meant. This has been confirmed by a Stuff fact-check.

National’s agriculture policy, released yesterday, also made a point of presenting farmers as a marginalised community. The headline claimed that ‘‘National will restore farmer confidence and pride’’.

That would be restored by rolling back regulations, including those around water quality, and delaying farming’s introduction to the emissions trading scheme. Foreign workers would be allowed back in to work on farms. Large forestry plantations, designed to offset carbon emissions, would be reviewed.

The electorate can decide whether these are good or bad ideas to support in 2020.

The older, binary view of town versus country was missing from Milne’s assessment.