‘I’d love to get out of here’
One woman’s gratitude for a brand new state house has turned to heartache, and she wants to leave. By Richard Walker. A woman’s struggle for a safe home
Ruta Wright has almost finished the jumbo crossword that lies open on her dining table. It’s a weekly go-to, along with Sudoku, courtesy of the community newspaper.
Her bichon dog Buffy, having alerted Wright to her visitor, is keeping an eye on proceedings from a couch in her immaculate home.
Outside, brightly painted tins hold an array of ornamental plants, while leafy greens grow in a raised vegetable garden. She calls it her boilup garden. But the first thing a visitor sees is a beautifully tended corokia hedge. Wright is houseproud, she loves gardening, and it shows.
She also wants out. As one of the original tenants of this row of Kā inga Ora houses, she’s been here two years. For the past year of that time, she’s had an application in for a transfer.
The brightly coloured housing alongside Wairere Dr was built to replace a notorious slum. The rundown old houses have gone and so has the street name – Jebson Pl is no more, replaced by Te Kaarearea. But Ruta Wright feels unsafe and on edge.
Wright is living in one of 4360 Kā inga Ora state houses in the Waikato. The pressure is intense, with around a further 2500 people on the Waikato public housing register waiting for a home, many staying in emergency accommodation.
Five years ago, in March 2017, Hamilton had just 210 people on the register. In March 2022, the number was 1782, and rising. Covid didn’t help, though it hardly changed the trajectory, with numbers already surging to 960 by the end of 2019.
The rest of the Waikato is similarly rising, and each applicant may also have family members to house.
Unsurprisingly, Kā inga Ora is struggling to keep up, not helped by stock being sold off under a previous Government. But it has announced a pipeline of 1066 new dwellings by the end of 2024, exceeding a government target of 960, and surely enough to make a difference.
Waikato regional director Mark Rawson says the bulk will come from a redevelopment programme replacing conventional threebedroom state homes on a 700 or 800sqm section. He says the agency is focusing on adjoining sites, meaning four houses might be replaced by 10 or 12, ranging in size. ‘‘It’s the fastest, best use of the investment we have, best use of the land we already own to try and get as many whā nau as possible out of the motels or the current living arrangements they have and into a safe, warm home,’’ he says.
‘‘Plus, we get a far better level of community. So for that small community now we’ve got some shared play areas for the kids, we purposely create connection areas, maybe a garden.’’
PRuta Wright
erhaps Ruta Wright’s experience in the Te Kaarearea units serves as a reality check. Wright, who turns 70 this year, says she’s had her car stolen, she’s witnessed domestics and she’s had intruders.
Once she came inside from hanging out her washing to find a man in her kitchen, clearly under the influence. She grabbed an umbrella and started yelling. Fortunately, a neighbour came to her aid and marched him off. She says she has also had people coming through the back gate ‘‘looking for the drug house’’.
It’s the undesirables coming into the area that are the problem, she said. ‘‘Everybody’s friendly. Just that when other people come into the neighbourhood it gets a bit scary.’’
When it gets too much, she locks the door, or goes to stay with her daughter, or has her granddaughter stay with her.
The time around the car theft in June last year, when she says other cars were also stolen, was particularly alarming and she stayed at her daughter’s for about three weeks.
‘‘I’d love to get out of here. I just feel so on edge most times. Because you can hear the carry-ons, and I just go and lock my door,’’ she says.
‘‘I’ve told them it’s very unhealthy, unsafe here, I’ve told Kā inga Ora, and they just say, ‘Oh, well, you’ve just got to wait till something comes up’.’’
Her hometown of Te Awamutu could work, bringing her closer to her marae which she is active on. But she thinks Hamilton might be more convenient, with cheaper petrol and shopping.
In a written response to Waikato Times questions, Kā inga Ora said Wright first let it know in July last year that she wanted a transfer to a different home, and has raised this three further times. It said it had explained she needs to contact the Ministry of Social Development which manages the transfer process. ‘‘We don’t have any concerns that her home is unhealthy or the environment is unsafe, but would be very happy to offer suitable support or take any action needed if she was able to provide us with details to back her concerns up,’’ the agency said.
It also said it had received very few complaints about tenants in the development, aside from very occasionally about noise or parties ‘‘which we have followed up with our customers’’.
The Ministry of Social Development confirmed Ruta Wright had applied for a transfer to Te Awamutu in April last year. In a written response, it said she was rated as A14.
That would appear to suggest some urgency. According to the Office of the Auditor-General, people on the social housing register are given a ‘‘need score’’ out of 20 (20 being the highest need) and a priority category (A for high priority and B for lower priority). The ministry said Wright has been in contact with it regularly but that her circumstances haven’t changed since her last assessment on September 24 last year.
Police declined to answer questions around units in the development, citing privacy.
Wright’s previous house was a private rental in Nawton with off-street parking and a large garden, as well as easy access to shops like greengrocers and butchers. But the house was sold, leaving her ‘‘virtually homeless’’. ‘‘So when I was given this, I was really grateful.’’
Her one-bedroom Kā inga Ora home costs $120 a week, up from $100 when she moved in.
‘‘I’d love to get out of here. I just feel so on edge most times. Because you can hear the carry-ons, and I just go and lock my door.’’
She does a fortnightly supermarket shop – using the replacement car her granddaughter bought for her for Christmas – and also a regular trip to Pukete for free food supplied by Kaivolution. Occasionally, with just 11 parking spaces for 12 units, she has to park down the road and carry her groceries back.
She says all the units from hers south – 12 in total – are for people aged over 65, and those in the upstairs units, such as her elderly neighbour, have to negotiate external stairs every time they go out.
In its written response, Kā inga Ora said the homes are not just for people over 65 years, but many living in them are kaumā tua of all ages. ‘‘Those who moved in to the first floor homes would have needed to be comfortable with the stairs before moving in.’’
Wright has a solution. Shift out the older residents. ‘‘I think if you place it somewhere else and one level – be bang on.’’ Younger people would probably be okay there, she thinks. In fact, she had planned to attend a meeting earlier in the morning about housing being built in Nawton and Glenview and Melville. ‘‘I wanted to just put my view across about what would be ideal for us and our age group.’’
Across town at Flagstaff, residents got their view across in no uncertain terms about a planned Kā inga Ora development on a vacant Endeavour Ave site. A petition in opposition gained 2700 signatures, and the government agency held a public meeting at the rugby club before scaling back its plan from 70 homes to 60, a mixture of public and privately owned. It also scrapped a proposed three-storey apartment block; all the housing now will be two-storey, with
development on the 1.9ha site set to start later this year.
Residents on neighbouring Halyard Cl, while resigned, aren’t happy. The cul-desac is a mixed area. There are some larger houses, but plenty of smaller ones, including Kā inga Ora houses. It certainly doesn’t scream wealth.
Kathryn Henderson, a resident since 1995, is concerned about the traffic, saying it’s already very busy. ‘‘I don’t think they’ve really thought about what’s going to happen with cars.’’
She is pleased the number of dwellings dropped to 60, though she doesn’t know what that will look like. ‘‘As long as there are no thieves.’’
Henderson signed the petition and attended the rugby club meeting, where she gave her written feedback. That included a delightful suggestion: To install a central fountain with a mosaic, to stop it being totally utilitarian. ‘‘Some visual thing of beauty.’’
She also thinks the private housing should be designed to suit older people who might be looking to downsize. ‘‘I don’t know that they’ve thought of it. Nobody’s said, ‘It’s coming, are you interested’?’’
Another resident, Patricia, would have been more comfortable with single-storey housing, but the two-storey design means she is letting her camellia hedge grow out to offer her some privacy. At certain times of the year, that will also block out some of the sun which her home is well positioned for, and which was part of its appeal when she bought in 1989.
Since then, she has seen the designation of the vacant land over her fence, once grazed by cows and horses, change from educational to housing. She could have put up with a primary school, but state housing was never on her horizon, let alone two-storey housing.
She has a particular reason for that; she and her husband used to live in a state house in Hamilton, initially renting and then buying it in the 1960s. For a while it was fine, but neighbours changed, she couldn’t leave her washing on the line and her letterbox was interfered with despite being locked. Patricia, whose husband had died, felt unsafe.
The last thing she wants is a return to those days.
‘‘I’m caught in a difficult situation, in that I particularly like this area. The closeness to the shops, Chartwell, the Base, bus stop at the end of the street,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t really want to leave.’’
Others spoken to express similar sentiments but decline to give their names. One is considering shifting. ‘‘We’ve moved here for a reason, and it’s not to have big houses built in our backyard.’’
Kā inga Ora said the new housing would be set back a further 3.9m from the 10m-wide reserve land and footpath which adjoin the Halyard Close properties.
Kā inga Ora operates across a continuum, providing modified housing for people with higher needs, and public housing for rent, while also opening up land for affordable housing. Rawson cites a lakeside development in Te Kauwhata, where the developer is required to make at least 20% of the homes affordable, partly enabled by Kā inga Ora selling the land at cost. In that case, a three-bedroom home with garage would be delivered for $650,000. Stage one, with 230 lots, has just been released and Rawson says just over 30% are affordable.
Rawson, who comes from an economic development background, says it’s about leveraging off their core business of providing public housing to influence other outcomes. Security of tenure, like that of a state house, is important but one of the agency’s roles is to create pathways back into house ownership for those who have ‘‘just tipped into the public housing support area because of affordability’’.
‘‘There is plenty of evidence to show that when someone is able to get into a home-ownership situation, the natural wealth factor that comes from that, and all the things associated, they very rarely then come back into the social support system.’’
As for that security of tenure, with media stories focusing on an apparent inability or unwillingness to deal with troublesome tenants, Rawson says the law changed late last year, giving Kā inga Ora a ‘‘new set of tools’’ to be used as a last resort. They don’t evict, as such, but they can move tenants on to ‘‘a more appropriate’’ place.
He says the threat of the tool was enough to deal with one ‘‘customer’’ (as Kā inga Ora calls tenants) who was shifted from a cul-de-sac to a house where the neighbours weren’t so close, and says there have been no complaints about them in the new house. In some cases, wrap-around support can be provided through cross-agency collaboration.
Kā inga Ora said 13 Waikato households were relocated for disruptive behaviour between June 2021 and last month. Nationally, the agency said each month it receives complaints about disruptive behaviour relating to approximately 1% of its tenancies. In the Waikato, the total complaints for 2021 was 903, up slightly on a five year average. Those complaints cover a range of disruptions, including car noise and frequency of visitors, it said.
‘‘On average, last year we received less than three complaints per day in the Waikato region across our 4360 homes.’’
Whether you see that as a good number or not, clearly for many people Kā inga Ora works, and that’s certainly the case for one Hamilton household that has faced serious challenges.
It’s a moment that lives on through the lives of father and son. Stephen Wallace was picking up his young daughter and then 20-month-old son James from preschool. He released James’ hand when unlatching the gate. At that moment a car driving past caught James, throwing him through the air in front of his father’s despairing gaze.
Stephen can still remember lifting
James out of the gutter, and he can remember the following weeks and months in hospital as James somehow, miraculously, survived.
Stephen can also remember the years since, years during which he has been his son’s fulltime caregiver as the head injury accident changed everything for both of them.
‘‘Our life hasn’t been the same, eh, son?’’ Stephen says. ‘‘It’s been very, very hard.
‘‘If I could take all his pain, I would.’’ It’s difficult for James, 34, to hear his father recount their life together. ‘‘It always is,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m just surprised I’m still here.’’
‘‘Thankful,’’ he adds.
His left side is ‘‘slower’’ than his right, and he uses a walking frame around the house and neighbourhood. He also has a wheelchair. He speaks slowly as a result of the injury, and that can be frustrating when people react negatively.
Father and son’s shared path led them over the years via a Glenview do-up farm cottage and then rental houses in west Hamilton to a housebus on a mechanic mate’s semi-rural place near Huntly. Selfcontained, with shower and kitchen, it was a thing of beauty for Stephen. Not so much for James. They were surrounded by cars and dogs, on uneven ground. For James, it was also isolating, and they got in touch with Winz. In short order, they spent five days in emergency accommodation in Glenview before shifting into their current Kā inga Ora semi-detached home in Hillcrest.
It has two bedrooms and a good-sized open space with lounge, dining area and kitchen. There is level access outdoors, and a shower seat and handrails have been installed.
‘‘We love it,’’ says Stephen. ‘‘It’s ideal for James.’’
After a cold start last winter, when they had only a fan heater, a heat pump has been installed. Stephen’s pretty sure they’re the first people living in the new build, which he says is costing them $156 weekly. ‘‘We’re very lucky to be here, really.’’
The neighbourhood’s good, James says. Quiet. They keep an eye on their elderly neighbour, and James can chat to locals when he’s out for a walk.
In a quirk of fate, his former high school, Hillcrest, is nearby, and he is still close to a school friend from those days. She shifted to Wellington at the start of the year, and has talked to James about him eventually moving down there as well. It’s an appealing thought. ‘‘But being in this house now, I guess I’ll stay here for a couple of years before I can move on.’’
Maybe longer. ‘‘I’m not young, I’m 68 years of age now,’’ Stephen says. ‘‘I’m not going to be around forever. So I really wanted to see James set up in his own place first before anything happens to me.’’
Potentially, this could be that place.
Ruta Wright also endured a cold winter – saying she cranked the elements on her stove for warmth – before a heat pump was installed in her unit. She is unimpressed by the workmanship of the build, saying the wind gets through gaps around the doorframe and windows.
Kā inga Ora said that at the time of the build heat pumps were not necessarily required, especially in smaller homes like Wright’s. ‘‘Since then the Government’s new Healthy Homes Standards have been introduced and we are in the process of assessing our homes, including these [Te Kaarearea], to ensure they meet these standards.’’
A few metres away from Wright’s unit, vehicles pour past on Wairere Dr, a major arterial route for the city. Wright, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (‘‘smoking’’, she explains), thinks the traffic isn’t good for her health. Rats have also been a problem; she trapped eight in about four weeks. Some of that, she thinks, is because of others not looking after their places.
Wright can see the contradiction in her situation. ‘‘I feel quite blessed that I’m in a house, but that’s about it.’’
‘‘I would really like to move and have a little bit more space,’’ she says, ‘‘just to be able to work out there and feel safe working out there. Because I love my gardening and I love doing things but yeah, it’s just a bit of a . . . ’’
She tails off, and starts again. ‘‘I feel lucky after I see so many stories about people being homeless or living in motels and stuff, you know and I think, ‘Oh, God, I shouldn’t complain’. I shouldn’t complain but, oh, I would like to think I’ve worked hard all my life for something a little bit, you know – surely we deserve a little bit of pleasure for the rest of our lives. Be happy for the rest of our lives maybe. But this is not happening.’’
It’s raining hard in south Waikato. Absolutely pouring. What a beautiful sound. ‘‘It’s very good,’’ dairy farmer Pete Morgan agrees.
Four of the last five summers have been unusually dry where he is. No-one needs to tell Morgan and others like him about climate change. It’s a daily reality.
The official reason to be on the phone with Morgan, who talks thoughtfully and at length about farming’s challenges as well as its appeal, is that he is one of the speakers at an event in Canterbury on June 17 called Dairy 2032.
As the name suggests, it is about the future of dairy farming. The pitch from the organisers is that while dairy contributes nearly one in every three dollars earned from total goods exports, the sector is beset by multiple problems.
There is pressure to farm more sustainably and meet environmental standards. There are acute labour shortages and mental health concerns.
And while the organisers do not mention it, dairy farming is more political than it has ever been in New Zealand. Town and country are increasingly polarised, driven by groups purporting to speak for both sides, whether it is Greenpeace in the cities or Groundswell in the country.
Responses to this week’s release of the He Waka Eke Noa proposal, in which farmers could begin calculating their own emissions from 2025 in an alternative to the Emissions Trading Scheme, are typical of recent polarisation.
Green Party agricultural spokesperson Teanau Tuiono dubbed it ‘‘He Waka Eke Nowhere’’ on social media. His ideological adversary, Groundswell, also opposed it, due to the costs it adds to farmers.
In the political centre, Tuiono’s own co-leader, James Shaw, in his role as climate change minister, welcomed the progress made by farmers in a joint statement with Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor.
Only a week earlier, Victoria University senior researcher Mike Joy shocked Cantabrians with a claim that to continue dairy production and have healthy water ‘‘would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a
12-fold reduction in cows’’.
The idea of a mass cull is appealing to some. Greenpeace, which called He
Waka Eke Noa ‘‘an absolute lemon’’, is promoting a petition to halve the national dairy herd, which has nearly doubled in three decades.
In 1990, we had 3.5 million cows. Now New Zealand is home to 6.3m of them. If we used to joke about being outnumbered by sheep, now we can add cows to the list.
With this bad press, and controversial calls that only going vegan can truly combat the effects of climate change, some may wonder if dairy has any future at all.
The middle ground
But loud voices on both sides conceal a vast middle ground, or quieter majority.
When a 1News poll asked if New Zealand should reduce the number of dairy cows to meet climate change targets, 34% agreed but 54% said no.
In the same story, O’Connor called the Greenpeace proposal ‘‘economically devastating’’. Shaw called it ‘‘simplistic’’.
Morgan is one of those farmers who is trying to do the right thing and is dismissive of the extremes on both sides. He and his partner, Ann Bouma, were joint winners of the Responsible Dairying Award in 2021.
‘‘The central theme, beyond water, beyond labour, beyond anything else, is us adapting to our need to reduce emissions,’’ he says. ‘‘We have that as a very central focus. There is not one bit of our business that isn’t reasonably clear what that longerterm picture needs to look like.’’
The 2032 date is just one among many. There is 2025, when the selfreporting proposed by He Waka Eke Noa would start. There is the big 2030 climate target.
Given the speed of change and global instability, a decade must sound like a vast stretch of time, almost science fiction. Few would have picked labour shortages, inflation and Covid-19 a decade ago.
‘‘We’ve already become accustomed to change,’’ Morgan says. ‘‘Ten years might sound like a huge amount of time. But in a farming career, 10 years is the day after tomorrow.
‘‘There’s been some fantastic advances in our understanding.’’
And, he concedes, reducing herd numbers may still be part of the answer. He has reduced his own stocking rates over 20 years and stayed profitable.
But some opinions get him warmer under the collar, especially when they are repeated uncritically. One is the idea that dairy in New Zealand is akin to coal in Australia, in terms of both economic size and environmental impact.
That comparison ignores the changes and mitigations dairy can make.
As for Mike Joy, ‘‘what he’s got wrong is he’s paying very limited attention to where the majority of the industry is wanting to go. He’s using historical data to make assumptions about what the future is going to look like.’’
Morgan thinks Joy is ‘‘being selective in the way he uses the statistics, for example the volumes of water he’s using, extrapolating those across all of New Zealand’’.
The research was from five Canterbury farms, in 2017 and 2018, but those not paying close attention might have seen it as a snapshot of dairy across New Zealand in 2022.
Still, the arguments are welcome, Morgan says.
‘‘I’d rather have someone out there nudging our comfort zone, testing our integrity and being part of the conversation, so we do get challenged and get the chance to show what the truth is. We should never shy away from that.’’
Social cohesion
We live in times when social cohesion is strained and even fraying. The city-country polarisation is just one example, as University of Canterbury political scientist Bronwyn Hayward, a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) co-author, has observed.
‘‘We told everyone to invest in dairy,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s what we wanted as a country. And now it’s a problem that we have so many cows and need to reduce methane emissions.
‘‘Yes, there was a large amount of money made, but there was a large amount of debt, and people were actively encouraged to do that. Thinking about it as a shared problem is important.’’ Hayward says she has been disturbed listening to young teenagers who are growing up on farms, especially dairy farms, and who are feeling victimised or anxious about how their family and their role in the environmental crisis is seen by others.
‘‘They feel it in classrooms and general conversations, and they feel torn, defensive of their parents and proud of the work they do, and wanting to make a difference in farming for a better, more sustainable future.
‘‘I think we have more opportunities to connect across our communities than we are doing at the moment. We also have to be very thoughtful and targeted about this, because it’s too easy to inflame our differences.’’
When it comes to He Waka Eke Noa, she wonders whether the farm-level reporting model could add strain to already strained relationships. That means ‘‘the accounting has to be transparent and the action far-reaching’’.
Emissions are not just farming’s problem: ‘‘It is similarly hard to reduce urban transport emissions.’’
Morgan agrees we need to be collectively moving forward. Individual choices must be balanced with collective need.
‘‘When it comes to Groundswell, while I defend anyone’s right to express how they feel, given the pace of change that is needed to meet these challenges, it has never been more critical than now that we do that collectively.
‘‘I do not demonstrate. I have conversations with my peers, and with anyone that would like to explore the differences we have, within and without the dairy industry.’’
He goes to conferences, he hears from experts, he listens to evidence. He was recently at a dairy environment leaders’ conference during which Environment Minister David Parker spoke, and ‘‘some really frank conversations’’ followed about ‘‘the three biggies’’, nitrogen, water and emissions.
‘‘That’s how I choose to move forward,’’ he says. ‘‘That’s my approach, rather than driving a tractor down the main street. But it’s not up to me to judge how anyone else does it.’’
The holy grail
Technologies to mitigate methane and other emissions cannot come
‘‘They feel it in classrooms and general conversations, and they feel torn, defensive of their parents and proud of the work they do, and wanting to make a difference in farming for a better, more sustainable future.’’
on stream fast enough. This is the holy grail, or the promise of the near future.
The Government committed $339m towards research and development in the Emissions Reduction Plan last month and established the Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions.
‘‘Farmers are crying out for solutions to help them lower their agricultural greenhouse gas
Bronwyn Hayward says we must avoid inflaming differences. emissions, so any new investment and impetus in the area of research and development is welcome,’’ as AgResearch senior scientist Robyn Dynes said at the time.
Areas of research include methane inhibitors, methane vaccines and low-methane feeds. ‘‘There is a shift at the moment,’’ Halter founder and CEO Craig Piggott says. ‘‘Farmers know they can’t just do nothing. They have to be better. There is a macro tailwind on technology adoption.’’ Piggott, who is only 27, is one of the rising stars of the agriculture tech sector in New Zealand. From a Waikato farming background, he founded Halter five years ago after a year at Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab. Halter now employs 130 people, and operates in Waikato and Canterbury, while head office is in Auckland, ‘‘from a talent perspective’’, he says, almost apologetically.
The company puts solar-powered, GPSenabled collars on cows, enabling them to be managed remotely while collecting data about their behaviour. Farm work becomes less tedious and more varied. Farms become fenceless, optimising pasture without being constrained by paddock size. ‘‘Who’s to say a paddock is the perfect amount of food a bunch of cows need for that day?’’ Piggott asks.
As for the collar, ‘‘it’s a bit like Pavlov and his dog’’, Massey University professor of animal health Scott McDougall explains. ‘‘It trains the cow with sound and physical stimuli.’’
The technology is only scratching the surface, McDougall says. The promise is that it will collect health data as well. As Piggott says, if there is one farmer for every 200 or 300 cows, it is not always easy to detect when a cow is sick or behaving strangely. Heat detection could also pick up on which cows are in oestrus. It may be labour-saving, but are there environmental benefits? ‘‘To give you an example, animals that are not well expend energy in fighting infections and are less efficient,’’ McDougall says. ‘‘The impact on the environment of a sick animal is bigger than a well animal.
‘‘If we can reduce the disease burdens on animals, we can actually produce food more efficiently, with less welfare costs and less environmental impacts as well.’’
Morgan, Piggott and McDougall will all be presenting at Dairy 2032, along with agribusiness academic Hamish Gow, environmental consultant Charlotte Glass and Ngā i Tahu Farming general manager Will Burrett, at the Ngā i Tahu Farming Dairy Hub, just north of Christchurch.
Given the money and urgency involved, is there a technology arms race to solve the methane problem?
‘‘It’s not zero-sum,’’ Piggott says. ‘‘There could be five different approaches that cumulatively add together. For instance, we know that the genetic variation between how much methane a cow emits is large, so breeding for methane is very doable. But that doesn’t mean you also can’t be more efficient with your feed, or you can’t be intentional about where they urinate.’’
As for the political polarisation over farming, Piggott is diplomatic and neutral. ‘‘I think there are valid views on both sides,’’ he says. ‘‘Most of these are a bit nuanced. I think we have to be better. The science on climate, emissions, even the labour shortage. We have to solve that.’’
Feed the world
The paradox is that agriculture is responsible for 48% of New Zealand’s emissions, with dairy cattle producing nearly half of those, yet our milk production has the lowest carbon footprint in the world.
But image matters and consumers notice. Dairy farmers must answer to global markets.
Or local critics. Try having 20-something-year-old children, Morgan says. ‘‘Two of mine are environmental scientists and one of them was lectured by Mike Joy for a number of years. She’d come home, challenging us, which doesn’t do any harm at all.’’
Speaking again of Joy, Morgan took issue with a comment during a recent RNZ interview. It was a dismissive remark about New Zealand milk powder mostly ending up as ‘‘cheap junk food filler’’.
Morgan has been to markets in South America, the Middle East, Australia and the US. He has read the fine print in supermarkets. He has seen our milk powder go into high-quality feta in Saudi Arabia or into millions of affordable milk sachets in North Africa. Junk food? That line really bothers him.
‘‘I could not disagree more, based on some very strong evidence.’’
For Morgan, as for many others, there is even a sense of mission about farming. He sounds almost lyrical as he describes it. ‘‘There are very few things more fundamental to humans than caring about people, animals and environment, producing food, which is so critical, and ensuring security of food supply into the future.
‘‘That is what it means to be a farmer as an identity, our whole careers. We’ll ride through any ups and downs. It’s not just about the profitability, although it’s an important part of the performance, to be sustainable.
‘‘But we really love what we do. How meaningful it is to be actually producing food.’’