The National Party is telling farmers they will have access to genetic technology if the party wins the October 14 election.
There would also be eased rules on water storage but more protections against the spread of forestry.
These are among a series of promises made to the rural sector by the National Party in its latest election announcement.
“National backs our farmers,” says the party leader Christopher Luxon.
“This plan puts the primary sector at the heart of New Zealand’s economic recovery. National will cut red tape and give farmers the tools they need to increase production while reducing emissions for the benefit of all of us.”
One big promise is that farmers will be able to establish water storage systems on their farms without needing to get resource consent.
National says New Zealand has abundant freshwater resources, but captures less than 10% of the water flowing across the land.
It says red tape is making water storage schemes almost impossible to build – getting resource consent can take years and cost millions of dollars – and climate change will aggravate the impact of these difficulties.
But storing water is one thing, taking it is another.
Taking water from a river or some other source would still need consent, as would schemes that affect wetlands or Significant Natural Areas (SNAs). But applications for consent here would have to be dealt with inside two years and the consents granted would last for 30 years, up from 10.
National also wants a sinking lid on regulations, so that for every one new regulation that central or local government wants to introduce on the rural sector, two existing rules would have to be abolished.
The financial costs imposed by any new rules would also have to be calculated, and there would be a ban on any new rule that duplicates existing rules.
The party also says stock exclusion regulations would be changed to make them more “practical”, and the need for resource consents for winter grazing would be deferred until freshwater farm plans are in place.
Live cattle exports back again
The party would restart the exports of live cattle but with strict controls.
The National Party would also make fruit and vegetable production a permitted activity so that growers would not need a resource consent to produce more food.
However, to protect environmental limits, growers in sub-catchments where nutrients are over-allocated for nitrogen would need a consent to expand production, though not to maintain existing production.
National would also streamline approvals under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 for pesticides, fertilisers and other chemicals which are used in horticulture. And the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) would be scrutinised to increase efficiency and to reduce approval times.
National also says it would double the number of workers allowed under the Regional Seasonal Employers (RSE) scheme to 38,000 per year over five years.
It would investigate multi-year visas for RSE workers who have worked one season prior to applying for the multi-year visa.
End to effective ban on gene editing & genetic modification
The party also wants to end the effective ban on gene editing (GE) and genetic modification (GM) in New Zealand. It also wants to create a dedicated biotech regulator in the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment to ensure safe and ethical use of gene technologies and other biotech methods.
“Gene technologies including gene editing, which allows precise changes within individual genes, and genetic modification, which adds or removes DNA from the genome, are being used around the world to help solve health, environmental and economic challenges,” National says.
“National will back the primary sector to find solutions to lower agricultural emissions by allowing researchers and farmers to access cutting edge biotechnologies.”
National says New Zealand farmers are global leaders in the production of high-quality food and fibre, and are carbon-efficient by international standards.
But to keep this advantage, they must have access to “cutting edge’ technology such as GE and GM.
National also pledged to keep farmers out of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and to have on-farm emissions assessments in place by 2024. All on-farm sequestrations such as patches of native bush would be recognised on a robust, scientific basis.
Whole-farm conversions into forestry for entry into the ETS would be banned, as would foreign-backed conversions of farmland into carbon farming.
Other aspects of National’s rural programme have been announced already, such as pushing for better foreign trade and improving after-tax incomes.
*You can see all the major political parties' policies here.
34 Comments
As a sheep and beef farmer I feel NZ should stay away from the Genetic engineering tech. We are lucky enough to be isolated from the world to keep away from it. The wealthy will want natural non bioengineered food products in the future in my view. There will be no turning back.
Australia is predicting that GE technologies will add $19.2bn to their food and agriculture sector by 2040.
Evidence is that generally there is no premium for GE free foods. Australia has different rules by state. For them analysis shows that Japan was the only market a premium was realised from memory about 10%. Outweighed by productivity gains. This was motivation for other states to change.
Globally the shift (as is happening in the EU) carbon footprint is the biggest drive of both regulatory and consumer behaviour. They want to be less dependent on oil based states.
Other countries will become less depended on fertilisers and pesticides (responsible for about 12% of oil production), their cattle will produce less methane because the grass they eat has been engineered. They will have less diseases, and less land will be required.
The world is moving on from the perception of GE being frankenfoods. To the realisation that much of our food and clothing already are GE products.
So it is a brochure from the transgenics industry. "Under a high growth, high market share scenario, synthetic biology could unlock up to $27 billion in annual revenue and 44,000 new jobs for Australia by 2040." Could could. Problem is, the human superorganism needs to degrow not reinvent itself as a growing synthetic superorganism.
That’s the Australian Government research institute. But if you want to classify it as “Transgenics industry” go ahead.
As for mocking the prediction. A New Zealand success story is Lanzatech. They moved off shore and one of the primary reasons was GMO legislation……they are now valued at $3.8 bn ……
So it is a brochure from the transgenics industry
You sound ignorant when you label anything to do with genetic modification as "transgenics". Transgenics is splicing genes from outside an organism's genome into it's genome. Gene editing is simply favouring one gene from within the existing genome over another and does not involve e.g. shrimp genes being inserted into a tomato as early transgenics did.
I sound ignorant? Not as ignorant as arrogant gene jockeys. Personally I don't give a toss how you personally frame fiddling with genes, cut and paste, or transgenics, only a sick mind fantasizes this activity is anything more than an extension of anthropogenic annihilation of the natural world for profit.
They must not have watched the news from Libya , showing how a relatively small dam can cause a huge amount of damage. Or taken note of how a unrestrained hot water cylinder can damage an entire house in an earthquake. Or that the amount of water that sunk the Zebrugge was about a paddling pools worth .
The rules are there for good reason, but they seem to think they are just made for the hell of it . Witness the get rid of 2 rules for every rule introduced . How simplistic can you get ???
If your wearing anything cotton there is a 98% chance this is GE. Insulin no longer comes from pigs, it’s produced from engineered microbes. Enjoy soy milk ? That will likely be GE. Guess where the enzymes in your washing powder come from ?
We already eat, wear, wash our clothes and use medicines made by GE. We like to believe we are GE free but we are consuming GE products every day.
In NZ we might not create GE products here but are quite happy to perform selective breeding to make golden kiwi or eat pink grapefruit (sold as organic) that was created in the 70s by shooting radiation to create random mutations.
if anything tough GE rules have enabled the big corporations. As they have been the only ones with enough money to overcome regulations. By easing regulations it democracies the technology. NZ CRIs/Universities have technologies that could help NZ.
Gee Alec, you demonstrate how transgenics has been forced on us without permission. Quick fixes looking for problems that often don't exist is typical hyper capitalist BS. Why do we need mass insulin supplies? Soy milk? No. Cotton? Do I have a choice?
The old random mutation false equivalence meme. Random mutation is how speciation occurs, i.e. it's a natural event!
Transgenics is a typical example of human arrogance applied to the natural world. All the wonder tech of the past oddly hasn't averted biosphere and civilisation collapse. It's enhanced it!
Well if your diabetic having mass production of insulin is a good thing ! As are numerous other medicines now possible. GE cotton has reduced insecticide use in Australia 97% … the environmental benefit is a good thing. Soy oil that does not go rancid reduces waste, again a good thing for the environment.
To be honest it’s like AI, you might be scared of terminator robots, but you don’t have a choice, even New Zealand does not have a choice. The world is adopting these technologies to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, generate new medicines, improve productivity.
As for random mutagenesis being “natural” telling a scientist they can use radiation or chemicals to cause millions of random mutations because it’s “natural” is like telling a surgeon that he can use a chain saw but not a scalpel.
As for your last point on arrogance, I would say that it’s a position of privilege to say that we don’t need GE technologies. Golden rice will stop millions each year going blind, NHS recently cured a little girl from Leukaemia when all over treatments had failed, American chestnut tree (extinct because of disease) is now being reintroduced. There are hundreds of examples of those technologies being a benefit for people, environment and economy.
Oh FFS, your green washing as justification for co opting the planets genetic resources and turn it into a commercial freak show just doesn't wash! For the sake of eating a leafy green veg for vitamin A, instead of genetically fiddled with trojan horse is ridiculous. Poverty, education and dietary variety are the issue.
Mutagenesis is natural! Being ignorant about that is not a selling point for synthetic organisms!
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/your-body-acquires-…
Humans are diseasing themselves with the byproducts of their mad industrialism. https://www.passenpowell.com/leukemia-caused-by-toxic-exposure/
"GE cotton has reduced insecticide use in Australia 97%" And yet overall pesticide/herbicide has increased in Aus/NZ. Bt stacked traits are not forever. A natural solution to Lepidoptera damage has been privatised, overused and will ultimately become useless.
"The average time from first planting of a particular Bt crop to the appearance of practical resistance was 6.6 years. Over half of the cases of practical resistance were in three species—the moths Helicoverpa zea and Spodoptera frugiperda and the beetle Diabrotica virgifera virgifera."
https://entomologytoday.org/2023/04/18/insect-resistance-transgenic-bt-….
"To be honest it’s like AI, you might be scared of terminator robots, but you don’t have a choice"
I may not have a choice in the desire of the human super organism to co opt the entire biosphere of planet Earth to fuel the species self entitled megalomania, but I'm not going to accept it!
I hope you can appreciate that as humans we can take something natural and adapt it, industrialise it, so that it is now a tool.
If you have an x-ray machine, I think you would consider this a human tool (not something natural). If you developed cancer by having too many x-rays. You would not say that this is natural. You would say that cancer has been caused by a human tool.
If you agree with that basic concept. It might surprise you to know that the tool frequently used in accelerated mutagenesis in plant breeding is ….. an x-ray machine.
Most people so anti-GM don’t realise that our fruit and veg isle in the supermarket does not represent nature. Most has been domesticated beyond recognition or been subject to accelerated mutagenesis. Orange carrots are about 600 years old, pink grapefruit 50 years old, modern corn is 600 years old, have a look at what bananas or water melons looked like 300 years ago. As humans we have crossed species that never would have met, accentuate breeding for the traits we want, transformed the world around us.
From egg plants to pugs humans have been interfering with genetics.
Nope that was mutagenesis.
As for your joke..well I am sure you will love discovering that bacterial DNA (and viral DNA) does indeed get transfer between organisms in nature.
Here’s a paper demonstrating it in tomato plants from bacteria
https://www.nature.com/articles/219932a0
😂
"humans we have crossed species that never would have met" Well that's not true is it. Those genetics diverged from common ancestor at some point. It's not possible to cross species (without lab coats in the mix) that don't have a large proportion of common genetics and when it happens, the offspring are usually sterile, or in the case of plants unstable.
New rule - any politician who says “red tape” immediately has to punch themselves in the face and have 10,000 votes deducted.
Second new rule - no one gets to take unlimited water on a first in-first served basis. This is why we have the RMA.
I remember a Hawkes Bay dairy farmer complaining that if the local fire brigade and recreational fishers blocked his unlimited water take from the Tukituki River then his farm was non viable….well I guess it’s non-viable then, duh.
pine forests have become a blight on the NZ landscape, farmers down south spend thousands pulling seedlings out of the high country, i was walking through the back country and was watching them use a helicopter to get at the ones on the steep slopes not a cheap exercise but if you leave them they will slowly invade the high country tussock and kill all your grazing land, ironically some of the seedlings are coming from a DOC pine forest which they are slowly chopping down and converting to native
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.