Sensible words on realities of farm life

HURRAH for Anna Campbell (ODT, 21.7.21) and her eversensible take on rural matters.

Hers is the voice of reason, with an understanding of what is actually occurring on farms. Has any urbanbased letter writer to the Otago Daily

Times ever experienced the reality of farm life, with the stress of the huge mortgages most farmers carry for their land and essential equipment, even for those tractors?

No townie is facing the current avalanche of government policies being imposed on them, yet somehow they feel entitled to voice an opinion on what our hardworking farmers ‘‘ought’’ to be doing. The fact that they are already taking action to improve their land and water care at considerable cost to themselves seems to have escaped the critics' notice.

Do farmers ever take to letter writing to criticise urban dwellers and demand they should be doing things differently to change their environment? Perhaps it’s time they did, to even things up a bit.

Surely we’re all aiming for the same outcomes: clean water and air; New Zealandproduced, pasturefed meat, dairy and horticulture products in our supermarkets; and a unified country, all doing our best to achieve these goals.

Mary Gray

Wanaka

ANNA Campbell's attempt to add balance to the farmers’ Groundswell protest (ODT, 21.7.21) was credible. At least she kept the persistent political blame game out of it.

However, Anna could have elaborated that much of the angst from both sides of urban/rural divide was over the issue of land ownership. That is, family farmers versus the CBD corporate farmers and overseas land investors and buyers.

Successive governments, following the neoliberal mantra that the market rules, have weakened the Overseas Investment Office to the extent that international investors have been able to sweep up tracts of land with vague promises that it would be of benefit to you and I. Some may have funded much needed development. But it’s the spreadsheet for shareholder profit that counts in the end.

Anna rightly says family farmers are doing their best to follow the rules based on clean water, biodiversity management and mitigating climate change, and don't need Wellingtonbased bureaucrats to tell them how to do it.

Regenerating farming is catching on in areas such as the Maniototo and much of it is science based.

However, I would advise in any future protests, farmers should not trundle out modern, highly expensive machinery, much of which (I wager) would be contractors’ gear.

Aged utes and dogs would be the caper.

Jim Childerstone

Hampden