Reaction shows ‘distressing’ lack of knowledge
New Zealand farmers are global leaders in efficiency, but the work they do for the environment is being overlooked, finds
Arat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. The term was coined in the early-1930s, but in Alice Through the Looking Glass, published in the early-1870s, Lewis Carroll had the Red Queen tell Alice that ‘‘here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast as that.’’
That is the point of the ‘‘howl of a protest’’ that was made by the convoy of tractors, utes and dogs last week.
Farmers were expressing frustration at the deluge of regulations and paperwork. The work they do for the environment is being overlooked.
The irony of having used income to create and protect wetlands, only to have the area designated an SNA (Significant Natural Area) and find that regulation excludes the surrounding area from farming, thereby reducing income, is being missed by regulators.
Native trees planted, biodiversity encouraged and QEII covenants created are also glossed over.
Research shows that New Zealand farmers are the most efficient of 18 countries surveyed and have been improving in efficiency year-on-year. Productivity gains are generally higher in the agricultural sector than any other industry.
The Productivity Commission has said that ‘‘achieving higher productivity – producing more with what we have (people, knowledge, skills, produced capital, and natural resources) – means there is more to go around’’.
The commission has also stated that innovation and technological change are critical to productivity growth.
Innovation doesn’t come from regulation, nor can you regulate for excellence. New Zealand farmers have achieved a position of world leadership by working with scientists, researchers and industry. They are recognised globally as being early adopters of technology.
Despite this, the howl from some non-farmers being interviewed about the tractor convoy was greater than the howl from the dogs on the protest.
‘‘Farmers should do their part’’ . . . as though they haven’t been paying the ETS on fuel and power, just the same as urban dwellers, as though they haven’t been planting trees and achieving environmental improvements as science develops.
Research from Our Land and Water has shown that without advances, there would have been more sediment and nutrients lost to waterways. The research showed the improving trends and calculated that with further implementation of existing technologies, many catchments would be able to meet the current water quality objectives by 2035.
This is good news – but farmers won’t be able to implement anything if the current regulations impact upon their cash flow or take so much time in paperwork that they are distracted.
The KPMG Agribusiness Agenda 2021 carried a warning about the amount of paperwork that is being required in the agrisector that is not linked to value creation. The agenda focused on agribusiness, but the effect is also on farm.
From Kaita¯ ia to Bluff, farmers are acknowledging the stress they are experiencing, agreeing that they need a break, and then feeling inadequate because they have no time to take the break because of paperwork. Staff shortages are real, and compliance has escalated – pages of paperwork to be completed annually for processing companies and ministries and Statsnz just to keep going.
The regulations that are being created in cities by policy developers at a distance from where the impact is being felt are probably well-meaning but are attempting to define procedures in a biological system that requires contextual interpretation – and they cannot be aware of the context on the farm.
Treasury’s ‘‘Review of Expenditure on Policy Advice’’ more than a decade ago found that more than half of the people in policy advice had a background in political studies or economics and 14 per cent had a background in public policy. The remainder had studied law or humanities.
There were no policy analysts with qualifications in engineering, science or agriculture in the responses. Environment wasn’t mentioned, either.
The difficulty is then for people to understand the issues around which they are setting policy. The result is increased paperwork being issued to provide reassurance.