Green foodies told to fork out for sustainability
Taupo farmer Mike Barton says consumers have to pay the price for no dirty dairying, reports Gerald Piddock Want to eat sustainably farmed food? Then be prepared to pay more for it, Mike Barton says.
If consumers expect farmers to operate under increasingly greater environmental restrictions then they must expect to pay a premium for it, Barton, who farms beef in the Lake Taupo catchment said.
Barton was in Hamilton last week to talk to scientists and farmers at the New Zealand Society of Animal Production Conference.
Farmers were being blamed by urban consumers for polluting waterways but paid the cheapest possible price for food. They were not willing to internalise the environmental cost of food production into a price they were willing to pay.
Paying this premium would show how much consumers truly valued water quality, Barton said. ‘‘If you are not prepared to pay a premium then you don’t really have the moral authority to talk about dirty dairying or the like.’’
Consumers could no longer eat food and divorce themselves from the agricultural process it took to create it. ‘‘We have spent the last 100 years mortgaging the environment in order to produce cheap food. At some point, we are going to have to pay that mortgage back.’’
Barton envisions consumers entering a supermarket in 20 years’ time and looking for the emissions profile in the food they are buying.
He said farmers also had to front-foot the issue and take it to consumers, while the industry as a whole should see it as a long-term strategy and put a brand proposition in front of consumers.
‘‘If you get the story right and the verification right, consumers – be they people buying meat over the counter or paying for a meal – they will pay a premium.’’
Barton, who farms his beef under a nitrogen cap in the Taupo catchment – would know.
Over the past three years he has been trialling his beef at local restaurants to see if consumers would to pay a premium for his beef because it is farmed under a catchment plan that would protect the lake.
‘‘We have had outstanding feedback from diners and chefs, and demand exceeds our ability to supply.’’
Barton is capped at his 2004 stocking levels despite his on-farm costs rising by 45 per cent over that time.
He runs hereford-friesian cross cows which he mates to simmental-charolais bulls. He buys in charolais-angus cross weaners for increased hybrid vigour and finishes them at 270kg carcass weight at 18 months which keeps their lifetime nitrogen production to a minimum.
He was in the top quintile for beef production per hectare and per stock unit. ‘‘There is nothing more I can produce to get out of this problem. I need consumers to pay more for my beef because it’s grown in a way that protects the lake.’’
His biggest is challenge is growing the premium he receives to match rising onfarm costs. The alternative would be the same cost spiral and lack of profitability that farmers had come to accept.
Barton is also a member of the Lake Taupo Protection Trust.
One of the components of the legislation that protected the lake was that 20 per cent of the manageable nitrogen from farming had to be taken out of the system. That equated to 170 tonnes of nitrogen a year leaking into the lake.
The trust has managed to mitigate that amount of nitrogen five years ahead of their target of 2018.
But Barton is not celebrating. He said it was achieved by buying out farms and shutting them down.
‘‘As a farmer who had four farms shut down in my own road and those four families no longer go to the local schools.’’
He questioned how science became so disconnected from the needs of farmers that the trust was left with no other option but to shut farms in the catchment down.
Scientists should have engaged with farmers and helped those farmers find a solution that would allow them to keep farming while protecting the lake.
‘‘Why did we get ourselves in this position? Where is the leadership that has allowed us to get to this point?’’
Getting paid more for sustainably produced food would help fund research by scientists into finding solutions to protecting water quality and mitigating nitrogen, he said.
Scientists should measure their work by profit per kilogram of nitrogen leached. They also needed to select and breed the most efficient converter of grass to protein.
Barton also believed there was a tension between environmental restrictions and calls from the Ministry of Primary Industries to double exports by 2025.
The value of exports could be doubled, but New Zealand was ‘‘buggered’’ from a production standpoint.
More value had to be extracted without increasing intensity.
‘‘Maybe if we can get the science around the issue and get verifiable claims to our overseas markets around this issue, then we can do it.
‘‘It’s a value, not a production-driven process.’’
How can councils get away with daily breaching their resource consents if justice is meant to be even handed? asks Federated Farmers dairy leader Willy Leferink.