Aria: The good life – but is it at risk?
Aria in the King Country is a slice of farming paradise, and locals want to keep it that way. But the pine trees are closing in,
On Tuesday, Dani Darke has a ram sale, a board subcommittee meeting and a pony club meeting. Her neighbour up the valley, Natasha Cave, has an online business seminar in the morning and sheep crutching in the afternoon. On Sunday, Cave and her husband Alan crutched 800 ewes and lambs. Tuesday will be less, though still in the hundreds.
On Monday, both women attended their kids’ school athletics morning, Darke helped her husband on the farm and took her daughter to tutoring.
It’s a busy life. It’s a good life. And it’s a life the two Aria women fear is at risk. Pine trees are starting to arrive in the picturesque King Country, and they’re likely to keep coming. That does nothing for local communities. The plantations are company owned, and the workers are bussed in from who knows where.
Natasha Cave was driven to write an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern almost a year ago after another King Country farm was sold to trees.
‘‘This breaks my heart seeing beautiful and some of our most productive farmland going into trees – forever,’’ she wrote. ‘‘I’m not surprised by this, however, with the never-ending deluge of regulation, paperwork and more costs that keep coming at us at a phenomenal rate of knots. Add in the average age of farmers and you have the perfect situation for vast tracts of productive land going to trees for carbon or forestry. Don’t get me wrong I am not opposed to retiring the worst of our land and planting into natives to regenerate, but this is not anything like that, this is wholesale planting of farms into a blimmen exotic weed.’’
Sitting at her dining room table today, the worry is barely diminished, with farmers beset by change on all sides. Drought is becoming more common, and last year’s was a doozy. The legislation and regulations keep pouring out of Wellington. She’s staying off social media because of anti-farmer posts.
It’s not that farmers don’t want to change and do the right thing, she says. It’s that the speed and amount of change is hard, and has unintended damaging consequences. Cave is no supporter of Groundswell, but she understands the frustration that is driving its members.
She loves the concept of growing high-quality protein to feed people. Beef and Lamb has just released a report saying New Zealand farmers perform exceptionally well by international standards when it comes to carbon footprint. New Zealand farmers should be proud. But they’re not, and that’s really sad, Cave reckons. ‘‘Morale is pretty low, I would suggest.’’
The latest Government proposal for a farm-based levy on emissions referred to an expected 20% drop in sector revenue for beef and lamb and 6% for dairy. That could suggest a similar decrease in land farmed for beef and lamb. For a community like Aria – its tiny centre little more than a primary school, the Cossie club, a handful of houses, a cemetery and, more unexpectedly, a squash club – the consequences could be severe.
There’s a simple equation that’s working against the area. An ageing farmer population is challenged by all the change. You can hardly blame those nearing retirement if they sell up, and it’s carbon-farming companies paying top dollar to plant forestry. That’s driving up the price, including the more marginal land which would traditionally have been bought by people like the Caves as an entry to ownership. Market forces are seemingly inexorable. The emissions trading scheme (ETS) is working as intended.
And, everyone agrees, around Aria there are a lot of farms on the market at the moment.
Here’s the rub. The Caves have one kid at the local primary school, another at the playcentre. Natasha is on the school board and is president of the playcentre. She’s also on the Beef and Lamb farmer council. ‘‘You take one farm out. And if they’re a family that’s heavily involved in the community, it’s a huge toll.’’
That toll extends to other jobs dependent on farming, including in shops, meatworks and shearing. In that context, the Government proposal, submissions on which closed last week, starts to feel like another nail in the coffin.
A decent handful of cars are parked outside Aria School on Barclay Rd late on Tuesday morning. The playground’s empty for now, awaiting lunchtime. In a nice touch, a small bark garden has flat rocks laid out to spell the word ‘‘Aria’’.
Principal Pam Voyce has been at the school for 26 years, the last 23 as teaching principal, and she’s seen the roll fluctuate throughout that time. About 20 years ago dairy conversions boosted the roll as young families arrived, but now, with the sector tending to employ single people, the school has only two children from dairy farms out of a total roll of about 42.
Meanwhile, drystock farms have been amalgamating, meaning fewer families. Smaller too: Shahnee Johnston (Ngā ti Waiora), who had roles at the school before taking up a health job this year, says the sheep and beef families used to have four or five kids and send them to the local primary. Voyce says at the moment the young ones aren’t wanting to take over the family farms.
Through all the changes, however, the school has only once dipped below three teachers, and that was just for six months. Next year, it will be down to two teachers again, and this time it’s for the foreseeable future. The school needed 50 pupils, maybe 49, enrolled in July if it was to keep three teachers for next year. It wasn’t really close, and Voyce had already bought some time with some clever shuffling to keep the three this year.
The school has benefited from the annual two-day Aria trail bike ride, which pulls
in up to $50,000 annually for the community, most of it going to the school. That helps fund school camps and a minivan and also saw Voyce also manage this year to employ a teacher aide to support a pupil with severe autism for 25 hours a week. But this year’s ride was cancelled because of Covid, and the scramble for ministry funding to support the pupil has begun – currently for just five hours’ support a week.
There are always fresh problems, and they are seemingly arriving at a greater rate. Like the bus contract being passed from a long-term local to Go Bus. For some weeks, the Go Bus driver, as per contract, would diligently drive the bus to a prescribed stop where there
‘‘I don’t want to be here farming by myself.’’ Natasha Cave
were no children, and wait, Voyce says. That would never have happened before.
There are other issues with bus routes. At its own cost, the school runs a minivan from the Piopio side of the school because the Ministry doesn’t fund a service on that side. Voyce, who lives on a farm near Piopio, is bringing children to school in her own car.
Rural schools pick up a lot of largely unseen tasks their town cousins would never think of.
But Voyce has also brought her considerable energy to bear on a larger problem. She could see the sense of an amalgamation with Piopio Primary just over 10 minutes away and even with its neighbouring college to form an area school with critical mass, in the face of dropping rolls at all the schools. She investigated it for three or four years, and then in July consulted with the Aria community. That’s when Voyce got a reminder of just what the school means to locals. She says 7% thought combining the three schools was an option, while 70% said a flat no to combining with Piopio Primary. The remainder said only if the roll dropped below about 20. The school’s unique in its character and we don’t want to change it, they said in their comments. We like what we’ve got. End of investigation. Outside Voyce’s office, there is the tinkling of a hand-held school bell – literally old school – to signal the start of the lunch break.
Voyce’s own four adult sons don’t want to take over the family farm. ‘‘You show your kids the world and then they leave,’’ she says. ‘‘Which is fine.’’
‘‘They can be astronauts now, can’t they?’’ Johnston jokes.
Voyce reckons her husband, 71, will stick it out on the beef and sheep farm till he can’t do it any longer. ‘‘Anyone else buying it would put it straight into trees, I’m sure. There’s no way he’s going to do that. He spent all his life making it productive farmland. He couldn’t do that,’’ she says. ‘‘Because he loves every piece of that land.’’
But the speed of change is wearying. If it was fair, and given a reasonable timeframe, rural people would accept it, she says. ‘‘But when things are imposed on you really, really fast and don’t seem to have any great scientific backing to things, then they’re going to be resistant, aren’t they?’’
Everything has to be done with a piece of paper now, says Johnston. She and her dad, a farmer, spent long hours putting together a plan for how they were going to fence off waterways and plant trees. But nothing follows, she says. ‘‘There’s no support going on from that.’’
Johnston managed the Cossie Club until the end of last year. Tuesdays and Thursdays were the busy evenings, but numbers have been declining.
Those sessions at the club are important for mental health, Voyce says, though the actual conversation is less than riveting for an outsider.
They’re always talking about the same things, she says.
Like how someone’s motorbike got stuck, says Johnston.
Voyce: ‘‘They’re the same things they talked about last week and the week before and the week before that.’’
Johnston: ‘‘‘The grass grew this much!’ And to me, you know, what a waste of flippin’ time, but it’s good for them.’’
The conversation at the Aria squash club night is more varied, given members include the likes of police officers and teachers. Things are winding up for the year at the clubrooms on Kumara Rd, and president Mark Anderson will be able to get on top of some niggling injuries.
The large clubrooms with two courts have been here since the 80s, alongside a couple of tennis courts, thanks to a heroic fundraising effort by locals.
Numbers have dwindled over the years – club nights used to attract 20 to 30 and now draw in up to a dozen, says Anderson, 53, a farm manager who has been with the club about seven years. But they’re trying to foster the junior side of the club, and were getting 20 schoolkids there on Friday afternoons during term 2.
At the senior level, the club has men’s and women’s teams in the Waikato competition. Anderson, who has been playing interclub for 22 years, originally in Taumarunui, is current club champion and graded a highly credible C1. Guile helps, and maybe a few mind games, when you’re up against someone in their 20s.
He confirms the legend that the team used to enjoy a few beers on the way to interclub, but that has stopped during his time. They didn’t used to win a lot, he laughs. ‘‘We’ve had a lot more success over the last few years.’’
Come Waitangi weekend, the domain on which the squash club stands will host a community sports day with equestrian, shearing, dog trials, food stalls. And, fingers crossed, next year the fundraising trail ride will return, with the domain as its base.
Dani Darke, who has been farming in her valley for 13 years, is event organiser for the trail ride and that sees her attending yet another meeting this week, on Thursday. The ride gets 600 or 700 arriving for a blat, and is all run by volunteers.
At school athletics on Monday she got chatting to a farmer and builder who has just started a Friday night touch social competition in Piopio. They’ve got 156 players, so the grounds are packed.
‘‘Country folk, I reckon, do more than pull their own weight in their communities, because there aren’t many of us, so everyone’s got a bunch of jobs. You know, everyone’s a rugby ref or coaching a team, on the club committee, whatever it is.’’ It’s what’s special about rural communities. Sometimes she thinks Wellington forgets about that.
Her own farm includes patches of long-established bush, and an area near the house is reverting from pines to scrub. Darke says sheep and beef farmers have enough land to meet government pine targets if they do it in small blocks, 10ha here and there. ‘‘There’s good money in it.’’
That won’t stop the carbon-farmers continuing to arrive, however.
Natasha Cave has an alternative
in mind. Plenty of farmers would like to retire their more marginal land into natives. Fencing is expensive, but with the right mechanisms in place a lot more farmers will be able to do it.
Under the ETS, natives are less cost-effective, however, partly because pines are faster growing.
‘‘I would suggest natives sequester for a whole lot longer than a pine tree does, because they’re there for 250 years, not 50,’’ says Cave.
And her comment in her open letter about blimmen exotic weeds? That wasn’t tongue in cheek, she says. In the South Island money is being poured into trying to eradicate wilding pines.
Tuesday afternoon and it’s time for crutching to get sheep ready for shearing. Natasha and Alan Cave have plenty of ewes and lambs ahead of them this afternoon. Daughter Charley, 15, channels the animals to her parents, hard at work on their separate stations. As each sheep emerges from the chute, the farmers clamp the animal, flip it on its side and shave its backside of dirty wool. Somehow all sizes fit the clamp, some with more wrangling than others, but it’s over in a jiffy and the liberated animal bounds off. This is hard work, it’s a hot afternoon and the couple will be at it for some time. The money they ultimately get for their fleeces won’t
cover their costs; they’ve just learned shearing costs are rising 10% this season.
The Caves are also dealing with rising interest rates, after taking on debt to buy the farm from Alan’s parents just over six months ago. And when it comes to the meat side of the business, Covid has not only been isolating, it continues to take a toll on meatworks staffing levels, in turn making it difficult for farmers sending stock off.
Cave recognises every industry is facing its own battles. ‘‘It’s not just us that have got high interest rates, everyone’s got high interest rates.’’
The thing about the advance of forestry is Aria is good farmland. In the late 19th century, Mā ori growers were producing apples, quinces, pears, taro and cereals in profusion on the nearby Mahoenui block, according to a 1929 King Country Chronicle report. Then in 1903, former Public Works Department employees were given land at Aria under the Improved Farm Settlement Act. Each was allotted 200 acres. By 1929, the Chronicle was reporting the undulating land had proved its capacity for pastoral farming, with an ‘‘up-to-date’’ butter factory in the town capable of producing 600 to 700 tons of butter every year. Rainfall was abundant, the land was easily worked, saleyards had been reopened and dairying was on the up. Eventually, those 200 acre dairy
farms, at least in the Paraheka Valley about 10 minutes from Aria, fell victim to ragwort and were converted to beef and sheep farms, including the intergenerational one farmed by Wendy and Martin Coup.
When the Coups got started, there were about 11 farms in their valley, now there are five. Farms have got bigger, farmers have tended to employ single people, increasingly efficient systems require less labour. Change has been a constant.
Martin Coup thinks the fear in the community is about the future, rather than the here and now. That said, pine can earn five times as much as drystock. To compete, a farmer buyer has to take on more debt, therefore bigger interest payments and reduced profitability. Costs of fertiliser, fencing and water systems have shot up. That’s down to market forces, not government regulation. Whatever the reason, it becomes prohibitively expensive to upgrade, particularly on a farm that may have fallen behind. Who’s going to buy such a place? Maybe a forester.
At the moment a company like Air NZ can offset 100% of its emissions by planting trees. It’s greenwashing in a way, Coup says, and New Zealand is the only country where it happens to that extent.
On one side, the Government with its climate change imperatives. On the other side, the consumer. McDonald’s has committed to a 31% reduction in emissions intensity across its supply chain by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Nestle wants a 50% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Those numbers are driving change in themselves.
Wendy Coup makes the point that the last 15 years have been good for farming, and she still sees a ‘‘huge future’’ in beef and sheep. People need protein, they won’t stop eating meat. ‘‘If we can really get ahead, and make a good job of doing this well, whatever that’s going to look like, I think our product is going to be really favoured.’’
That raises an interesting question. How expensive will such meat become?
‘‘We can produce all this incredible food, but can our people afford it? And how do we ethically deal with that? To me, that’s probably one of the big challenges.’’
In any case, change won’t be limited to the farm. ‘‘I think farmers do often think that they’re the only ones that have been targeted. I think as time goes on, there’ll be more and more pressure on people to think about, how do we behave? And what do we do? And how can we cut down [our own emissions]?’’
This all feels like it could go any which way. Pines might take over. Equally, the settings might be tweaked on the 100% offset regime. The heat might come out of land prices, putting them within reach of younger farmers again. Maybe that younger generation will, in any case, diversify land use. It’s been happening for generations, no doubt it will continue to happen, with or without – but especially with – climate change.
One approach to the Caves’ farm is off the SH4 Taumarunui road. Within about a kilometre of turning onto Ramaroa Rd, you reach a crest, with the Mokauiti valley spread before you, dotted with trees and pasture, a series of bluffs to your left, bush-clad hills in the far distance. It’s easy to understand the fierce attachment farmers have to this beautiful land. The placidly grazing stock have no idea what’s coming. Then again, even the humans can only guess, and hope.
Natasha Cave is a trouper and sportingly agrees to get miked up for a short video clip which has been sprung on her. With absolutely no rehearsing, she speaks well, to the point, crisp and clear about stresses on farmer mental health, the isolating impact of Covid, her passion for the community.
Until this stoical farmer falters at the last.
What does she want to see happen?
‘‘I just want to see our farming communities still farming together as a community, together socially as farmers, as schools, all of that stuff.’’
The emotion wells up.
‘‘But I don’t want to be here farming by myself, because without the community it’s nothing.’’