Bruce Wills says our pastoral farming systems are worth celebrating allowing us to be world competitive without subsidies. Your view?

By Bruce Wills

The national sport of pulling ourselves down has gone global.

This week, I took a call from a reporter at a major American newspaper writing a story on the tension between New Zealand green tourism marketing and some of our “less than great results in international environment measures”.

He wanted a point of view from us, as farmers, as to whether this criticism was unfounded or not.

Our angst going global reflects the reality we Kiwis don’t do moderation. As a people, we tend to be most critical of ourselves meaning we are either the very best at something or the very worst.

The international visitors I meet at Trelinnoe are confounded by this level of intense self-criticism. We call it the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome but when visitors look at our countryside and our waterways, they are struck by how free they are of plastic bottles and the detritus of modern life.

I experienced that for myself in Rome this year, where the River Tiber looked more like plastic infused treacle than the ancient waterway I expected.

The one comment many visitors make to me is that we farm animals in a free-range system here. We forget our animals are largely not cooped up 24-7 and I cherish that.

So what about the conflict between economy and environment then?

When it comes to human drinking water, we share with Switzerland the same number one ranking according to Yale and Columbia University’s Environmental Performance Index.

Switzerland is the top ranked country while New Zealand comes in at fourteenth place.

But we must also read our EPI score alongside the OECD’s examination of agricultural subsidies. As we know, New Zealand is the least subsidised farm system on earth, at 0.53 percent, whereas farm incomes in the European Union are supported to the tune of 20 percent.  In Iceland it is 47 percent, Korea 50 percent, Japan 51 percent, Switzerland 56 percent, and in Norway, it is 60 percent.

The supreme irony is the call about our “less than great results,” came only two days before the UK’s Daily Mail made media here accept our farms are pretty darn carbon efficient.

That of course was the Daily Mail’s golden headline, “Buy New Zealand lamb to save the planet”.

While that story was about food production being responsible for 29 percent of global emissions, it seemed to overlook the obvious fact food is a basic physiological need. Along with water and shelter we die without it.

New Zealand produces emissions because we over achieve in food production.

When it comes to global food production, New Zealand is no island and the world is better for it.

But to produce food you need water and I am proud Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has voted eight to one to back the Ruataniwha Plains Water Storage project.

The centrepiece is a $200 million project with a dam wall 77 metres high and the resulting reservoir will cover an area of some 400 hectares. This is only slightly smaller than Sydney's central business district and double the size of Wellington's. It will lift our irrigable area from 6,000 hectares to over 20,000 hectares.

This greatly aids the development of not just our sector, but horticulture as well. We are already seeing positive indicators for how farming and value adding industries mesh.

At the beginning of this year, Heinz announced they were closing their Australian plant in favour of the Hawke's Bay. It means Heinz will no longer make sauces or ketchup for Australia. It means they’ll be eating our ketchup, there.

Realistically, there aren’t enough raw ingredients for Heinz to use only New Zealand grown product. Yet this water storage project creates the real potential for horticulture to grow by creating the means to utilise summer without fear of what happens when rain does not fall.

Environmentally, the best way to prevent the loss of top soil and nutrients is to keep pasture and crops growing.

Ohio State University’s Professor Rattan Lal has praised New Zealand for leading the world in the uplift of soil carbon. Soil carbon is increasing here partly due of that free range system I mentioned earlier.

Science is also starting to show that pasture is one of the best tools we have to keep nutrients on-farm.

To keep our pastures green demands water storage of the kind backed by Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.

Things like this is why I told that major American newspaper I honestly believe New Zealand’s farmers are way up there for environmental performance.

As the proof of the pudding is always in the eating, nothing beats seeing things with your own two eyes. With the summer break fast approaching, why not a farm stay these holidays?

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Bruce Wills is the President of Federated Farmers. You can contact him here »