Enough with the farmer bashing
Ido not represent any dairy farmers in New Zealand except for myself. My views and opinion are purely my own. When I write about farmers, I usually default to dairy farming, as that is the field I am in, but I am generally thinking about all food producers, including sheep and beef and horticulture when I am writing my stories.
I default to dairy farming as that is where I am coming from day to day, and it is outrageous to me that a sector involving 36,000 people that brings in a quarter of the nation’s export dollars is vilified and misrepresented constantly on TV, media and social media and hounded by the government to pay, pay, pay, more, more, more.
It is never ending and that is so historically, too.
The ridiculous fart tax mooted and overturned in 2003 – thanks in no small part to some serious tractor protesting at Parliament – just raises its ugly head again with the current leaders signalling emission prices, water taxes and calling for a land-use change.
The future is scary. I actually feel under physical stress from it all.
You see, for all the smoke and mirrors and politicians saying they want their ‘‘nuclear free moments’’ and we need to honour our Paris commitments, I can clearly see they just want to keep their cushy jobs and make the farmer pay for it – as they always have done.
When I speak out, it is negative as I am angry and upset about the current increasing trends of farmer-bashing with one hand, eat your Jelly Tip with the other.
I often get the reaction, oh, she is not doing herself or dairy farming any favours going around moaning, and maybe I am not, but someone has to say something.
But I fear it is already too late. People also suggest I should get out of farming if it’s doing my head in, but it’s not the actual farming that I am complaining about, it’s the rising pool of political BS that threatens my very existence every day.
I can’t be the only farmer who feels threatened and if everybody who complained about being sick of the constant stream of idiotic ideas and strange ways of measuring things and unbalanced reporting and media and politicians throwing farmers under the bus chooses to ‘‘get out’’, as suggested by the charming critics … what if we all got out?
But no. Clever people pulling strings are saying we will only charge the farmer 5 per cent of their yearly emission cost, so she will only be paying $2300 a year, when we should really be charging her $230,000. Then, in order to keep the peace and appear PC, our farming leaders who we pay huge levies to represent us, will accept the 5 per cent, but set the precedent for that to easily increase to 10, 12.5, 15 per cent.
They want to keep us hanging by a string because if farmers go – then who will pay? Not to mention what will you eat?
What sane country in the world throws its food producers under the bus? When society has developed in such a way that instead of everybody having a house cow and all the hassles and dramas and pollution and cost that involves, we let some people milk heaps of cows on behalf of all of us and take responsibility for everything that involves? Which is fine until the finger starts being pointed at the impacts that specialist business creates and all the good that business brings is ignored.
Meanwhile shall we all stop for morning tea, cafe´ au lait … do you have milk in your tea? A biscuit? Perhaps do you want butter on it? Oh, no, I am having cheese on crackers today.