ACT and Green parties on agriculture

As the rugby world cup phases down to the last 3 games, election 2011 gears up and the Greens and ACT have announced their agricultural policy.

The question unanswered by the Greens is what are the costs of such a policy on the price of food.

It has been recognised that one of the huge challenges for the future will be food supply in an ever growing world on a smaller area of productive land.

While agreeing with the principles of clean and green, the issues often for farmers, is who pays for lower stocking rates, and less intensive systems, because to date the economics of large scale organic pastoral systems appear doubtful.

Consumers seem unwilling to pay enough of a premium to make large scale adoption of these principles economic.

The ACT party in its history had strong rural links, but past events seem to have typecast the party with the "flash Harry Auckland brigade". Don Nicolson as a past Federated Farmers president renown for his right wing views, has been allocated a high list position in an attempt to readdress the balance of this party and appeal to the rural sector.

Both parties mention the need for a stronger biosecurity system in their policies and few in the rural community would disagree, with the outbreak of PSA in kiwifruit a graphic example of the damage occurring to that $2 billion sector through an imported disease outbreak.

You can follow the parties election policies here »

The Green Party says a priority for New Zealand should be protection of its brand reports Stuff. New Zealand is at a crossroads. We can keep on the path of industrial food production, selling bulk commodities at low prices, making a quick buck now and letting future generations deal with the consequences of our polluted rivers and loss of our economically vital clean, green brand. Or we can position ourselves with a determined strategy to support our growers to produce and market the highest quality, clean, green and safe food, making our reputation a reality before we lose it. The existing default strategy of intensification is inherently limited by the carrying capacity of the environment, while a quality-oriented strategy, based on a high knowledge component with value added, will deliver higher returns and wages while protecting the brand.

"To protect our 100% Pure brand the Green Party will clean up our rivers and lakes by 1) setting standards for clean water, 2) introducing a fair price for irrigation water, and 3) supporting water cleanup initiatives. We will also put a fair price on carbon, promote the organics industry, rapidly phase out farming practices that are cruel or inhumane such as sow crates and battery chicken cages, and keep New Zealand GE-free." Another priority issue for the party is overseas ownership.

Maintaining control of our productive agricultural lands and keeping agricultural profits in New Zealand is important for the economy. The Greens would "keep it Kiwi" by only allowing the sale of land to New Zealand permanent residents and citizens. Biosecurity is another issue for the Greens. "We need to maintain a world class biosecurity system and ensure that biosecurity protections are always considered a higher priority than our commitments to `free trade deals'," the party said. It says climate change and animal welfare are also high priorities.

The ACT party says protecting "the freedom to farm" against rules and regulations and the sentiments of people who do not know anything about farming is one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture. Rural spokesman Don Nicolson said these sentiments were expressed by people with "nothing to sell and no knowledge of running multimillion-dollar industries". "ACT doesn't trade on slogans ... all these slogans like clean and green involve a lot of unreality. We need to get past the slogans and get to what we do best, which is producing food with credentials."

Another issue for agriculture was big government, he said. "We have to responsibly use the environment because without responsible use of it, there is no economy. We have seen a massive increase in Crown expenses on the back of people telling us how to use the environment. "We are damaging ourselves locally when we are trying to trade internationally through rising compliance costs and expectations from the government sector."

Nicolson said bureaucratic inflation had been running at between two and five times the rate of inflation since 2000. "Farmers can't keep pushing against that tide. It's a huge tide. There are not many years you would hear farmers say were great years." Biosecurity was also a hot-button issue for ACT, he said.

"Those government-industry agreements concern me. You cannot export a biosecurity excursion to yourself. The consumers of New Zealand need to pay for more rigorous border security." Funding for science was also a priority issue for the party, he said. "I just want that to stop being a political football. We have to make sure we have independence in our science funding. At the moment the independence in the science fraternity has diminished.