Donald Aubrey is Vice-President of Federated Farmers and a High Country farmer
In recent weeks, two very strange events have occurred. First, was the auction of goods from the Canterbury earthquake being held in Auckland. Canterbury suffered the earthquake but Auckland got the bargains. Second, was the Auckland based Environmental Defence Society (EDS), with Wellington headquartered Forest & Bird, coming south to explain why the Mackenzie’s ‘working landscape’ must have restrictive controls slapped upon it.
Many have the impression EDS/Forest & Bird see themselves as civilizing agents, coming south to teach us uncouth yokels a thing or two about ‘our’ environmental obligations. Job done, they utter ‘veni, vidi, vici" – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ – before boarding their flights back north. Afterwards, they’ll laugh at how they couldn’t get a decent ristretto in the High Country. These people love the Mackenzie so much, that’s why they mostly live elsewhere.
So the great 2010 ‘imposium’ is over. Is Federated Farmers worried about its boycott? Only that one was needed. Few in the media stopped to ask this, does the Mackenzie need saving by North Island environmentalists or does it need saving from them? After the talking, farmers and farm workers will get up and go to work. That work entails a huge commitment to keeping rabbits, hieracium and wilding pines under control. We work to generate food and fibre that is exported, helping New Zealand pay for healthcare, education and services, that a first world nation expects. After the talking, we’re still in the Mackenzie but those who wish to save it, aren’t.
I also wonder how Auckland would react, if Federated Farmers turned up in the Queen City to run a two-day symposium on ‘saving Auckland’, with urban representatives only allotted the final hour, of the final day. Somehow, I think one or two noses would be put out of joint. Many of us have an interest in the future of the Mackenzie Basin and especially the good folk that live and work there. But in all of its majesty, you cannot but help notice Meridian’s electricity infrastructure and that reminds us that the Mackenzie, when all is said and done, is a modified working landscape.
Maori and Pakeha influences created the Mackenzie we know today, not nature. Forest & Bird may claim the Mackenzie is a ‘natural desert’ but that’s fantasy. Without farming, the Mackenzie would be condemned to a slow death by hieracium and wilding pines. Because farmers will be forced off the land, those areas not covered in pine trees and weeds, would suffer desertification after an explosion in rabbits. Bumper sticker slogans, like Forest & Bird’s ‘Keep the Mackenzie Brown’, is short on reality. No irrigation, no taking of water for new farming ventures or initiatives, locks down all existing pastoral leases in their current state, or less
Keeping weeds and pests under control isn’t easy because clean and green costs money. Even the Department of Conservation struggles to manage weeds and predators and it’s no different for farming families. You cannot be ‘green’, if you’re constantly in the red. So come next year, a fresh start is needed and Federated Farmers will provide it through collaborative engagement modeled on the Land and Water Forum process. The difference is that we won’t pay lip service to the process.
Part of this is a realisation that environmental and landscape issues are extremely complex. You cannot start by fudging council boundaries as EDS/Forest & Bird did. Being honest is a realisation that the best way of ‘saving’ the Mackenize is through economically viable farms. It also demands that EDS/Forest & Bird ‘get over’ their extreme agenda to deprive farming leaseholders of their legal land rights. Yet what’s needed is a celebration of the role farmers perform as environmental stewards - from pest control to the thousands of hectares voluntarily protected by QEII National Trust covenants. That tells me we need a lot more than one hour, it also tells me that while others talk, farmers get on and do.
The Mackenzie farming community is also engaged in dialogue with government at all levels. We’re a committed participant in the current Plan change 13 process, now awaiting an Environment Court decision. It’s why holding that symposium before the outcome of this RMA process is, I believe, an attempt to influence due process. For 150 years we have cared for the landscape we live in. It’s why local landowners, farmers and residents all support realistic protection. We know a community can marry the best parts of conservation with economic development.
19 Comments
I'm not surprised if auctions and agencies are based in Auckland, it is New Zealand’s main center despite all the prejudice against it.
On the environment points though I completely agree, many people don't seem to realise that if we left nature to itself New Zealand would become one giant pine forest. Thanks to the introduction of possums killing our natives and wilding pines encroaching into our forest our natives don't stand a chance.
The dairy conversions are DESTROYING the high country.
As a RESIDENT of said high country, I speak from experience.
The area between Omarama and Twizel is utterly munted now.
The water supply has been polluted, stock graze in the rivers and streams, and the place looks like a mess.
The tussock is gone, replaced by pasture that shouldn't be there and which in fact takes VAST quantities of irrigation just to remain there.
For people who think the smell of cow manure is the smell of gold, then it's a wonderful thing, because that smell is inescapable.
Ditto the swarms of flies and mozzies, pests we never had in the Mackenzie before the cows and cow pats and the irrigation and the lush green grass arrived.
Now when they get heavy rain the council posts water-boiling notices, because of the effluent run-off into waterways, and seepage into groundwater.
That iconic golden landscape people like Graham Sydney captured so well is gone down there, while the Mackenzie Irrigation Company and others are already carving out new dairy turf between Twizel and my home near Dog Kennel Corner, just north of Lake Tekapo.
Another nail in the coffin of property owners and sellers in the area, because who the hell wants to be stuck with exorbitant mortgage payments on an overpriced get-away-from-it-all pad by the lake when it's smack dab in the middle of a giant cow factory, and the lake is turning into a sewage aeration pond?
Dairy has totally f@#$%^ the High Country, make no mistake about it. There is nothing good about that unless you're just another greedy and pig-ignorant farmer and Fonterra shareholder.
Example after example how not to do business.
How much longer does our government need to understand only a comprehensive, structured and “NZ100% pure Economy” promises success ?
How much longer does our government need to understand, without an ethic economic direction we are increasingly cleaning up the extreme costly mess left behind ?
When does our “Patchwork Economy” stops and our government start thinking of making real money ?
If gb/man's council is anything like the ones I've been involved with then one half of the people on it are ex property developers and the other half are ex farmers. That's why they wanted to be on the council --- so they could change the rules to push through pet projects for themselves and their mates.
can david charston have a look at this--professor william baily[who is a big wig in the us dairy industry] made this comment that was reported in the odt on friday
Meanwhile, Prof William Bailey, the chairman of the Department of Agriculture at West Illinois University in the United States, said the world's dairy industry was watching the impact on prices of China's demand for New Zealand whole milk powder (WMP).
Writing in ASB's commodities weekly, Prof Bailey said New Zealand supplied 85% of China's WMP imports.
"If China slows or stops those imports, there will be a lot of WMP looking for a home with the associated negative impact on dairy prices."
is there something in the wind?
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/business/139017/internet-dairy-auction-prices-stabilise
Fonterra accounts for about 40 percent of global trade in butter, milk powder and cheese, and has sales in 140 countries. China’s imports of whole milk powder rose almost fourfold in 2009 to 176,000 metric tons, representing about 12 percent of the trade, according to an Australian government report.
http://www.wdexpo.org/2010/11/11/fonterra-to-boost-china-exports/
Lake Tekapo came out as one of the most pristine lake in the country in the 2010 Lake Water Quality Report. That is no excuse to say that dairy conversions should be allowed to continue unhindered. However it is reason to say to gingerbread man - talk facts, not emotion and you will get more support for your stance of 'no dairy in the McKenzie country'.
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/ser/lake-water-quality-in-nz-2010/l…
'The data in this report is not comprehensive and has some gaps. More information is required on why the greatest deterioration in water quality has occurred in catchments with more native than pastoral land cover'
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10686869
I would challenge GBM to prove that stock from traditional high country farming enterprises dont also apply to your statement 'stock graze in the rivers and streams'. I may have misunderstood and it maybe only traditional high country farming stock that you are referring to. Under the Clean Stream Accord dairy cattle are to be excluded from 90% of waterways from 2012. In Northland, Otago and Southland this target has already been met.
GBM Another nail in the coffin of property owners and sellers in the area, because who the hell wants to be stuck with exorbitant mortgage payments on an overpriced get-away-from-it-all pad by the lake.
This part of your statement has more to do with falling property prices than dairying.
Recently I drove from Queenstown to Te Anau and then up to Christchurch and I can attest to the appalling state of the landscape around Twizel.
What on Earth were the authorities thinking, allowing that kind of development?
And the idea that the same will be happening around lakes Pukaki and Tekapo is simply staggering.
What percentage of tourists are lured to NZ with images of the Alps and lakes?
It must be huge and yet that is the area to be ruined for dairy profits???
Also Casual Observer my take on the post you are replying to is that the cows are wading in the rivers despite the regulations prohibiting them from doing so and I have no problem believing it because I've seen the attitude of farmers towards rules and regulations -- and indeed the environment -- in my own home area.
As far as they appear to be concerned regs and the environment is something to be treated with utter contempt and to be evaded whenever and wherever possible.
Do you farmers think the rest of the country won't notice, or do you think we won't care?
Or is it that you just don't give a stuff about the rest of the country?
Are we not witnessing a change in our culture. My ancestors thought long term,generations into the future.(as do some immigrants especially Asian do in NZ)
The Culture we have sold our futures to, is have it now, you deserve it, you own it do what you like, the next generation will have to stand on their own feet , they will be better off for it.
I still farm like my grandfather, lots of slack in the system. Its the way I was brought up. Its stuck in my mind. The next generation on from me didn't have parents that fought in the war they look short, they want it all and stuff anyone else.
Now we only need to look at some of the activities in the finance sector to see what damage we have done, what arrogant,selfish bastards many have turned into thanks to a lavish spoilt lifestyle built on debt, and other peoples money.
People used to be modest, now they are extreme in the opposite.
Drooler: GBM only states 'stock' graze rivers, streams etc. He is clearly anti dairying for the changes it has wrought on the area he lives in and quite frankly if it is blatant then why is he not reporting it - unless it is not prohibited. I find stock in water unacceptable and one of the first things we did on buying our farm many years ago was to fence off all the waterways - simply because we believed it was the right thing to do. You do see stock (sheep/beef/deer) using natural waterways as water sources on some farms.
I do think you raise a valid point in that it is the system that has allowed these changes to occur - just as it appears that the system allowed the proliferation of finance companies and their subsequent destruction of the hard earned savings of many small investors.
There are many farmers out there who do care and practice sustainable farming - so don't think urban dwellers/non farmers have the exclusive ownership on environmental concerns.
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