Dairy farming is a crutch to our economy, but under current conditions, it’s financially and environmentally unsustainable. With the National Party’s links to farming interests, that’s unlikely to change soon.
There’s no doubt about the significance of dairying to our economy, and the role of New Zealand dairy in global markets. Dairy farming contributes $5.6 billion pa to our economy – 2.8% of GDP. That’s 10 x the wine sector, 3 x forestry and logging and 40 x the utilities sector. An estimated 10,000 farm owners employ 35,000 workers. At face value, dairying makes the Government look good because of its contribution to growing the economy. But there’s a dark side to the green hills and docile cows grazing in the paddock.
NZ has one of the world’s lowest dairy cost models because of our lax labour and environmental laws, meaning we’re not paying the full price for our milk. The financial incentive of artificially high returns has encouraged the massive intensification and conversion to dairy farming across the country. It’s a capital intensive process that has led to a tripling of dairy farm debt over the last decade, to a current level of $32 billion. The Reserve Bank warns that high farm debt is a threat to the country’s financial stability.
Big farming is now an industry for investors, where shareholders are at arms’ length from the land, and bank on increasing profits at the cost of clean water and animal welfare. National is the party of farmers and there would be fewer profits for farmers and investors (including National MPs) if environmental and social externalities were addressed!
We all know the environmental footprint of dairying is huge, especially as intensification and conversion increase. More than 283,700 ha of land were converted to dairy farms between 1996-2008, with more since, and more still to come. That’s led to deforestation, sedimentation and habitat loss. We’ve got more than 6 million dairy cows producing 48% of New Zealand’s total Greenhouse Gas Emissions. As herd size has grown, so have pollution loadings.
These days pastoral farming is the ‘overwhelming source of pollution’ in rivers and streams.
Between 1992 and 2002 the number of cows in the Waikato grew 37%, and nitrogen in steams increased 40%. The mean herd size in Canterbury where significant intensification has occurred, is now 710 cows. This has led to a tripling of irrigation and water demand and subsequent calls for subsidised irrigation schemes.
The National Party has always represented the interests of farming. But Amy Adam’s farm ownership in the Central Plains Water supply area, Judith Collins’ links to the dairy industry, Party President Peter Goodfellow’s massive farming interests in the Waikato, and the shareholdings of John Key and other current and ex-MPs in farming investments, show the National Party have more interests in a profitable dairy sector than most. We shouldn’t expect changes to environmental policy soon.
How totally sad. Milk has suddenly lost it’s appeal, especially after I saw this picture:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/30/russian-dairy-plant-close_n_5059053.html
Hammering the Government and the farmers who bring the the country’s biggest income not good at all .Try working with them to sort the issues out .
We’ve tried that – it didn’t work. All we get from the farmers is whinging that it’s too hard. Time to set the standards irrespective of what the dirty, filthy farmers want.
Well that confirms my theory of not to expect anything constructive to come from Mr Bastard. We are supposed to be a civilised society, but there are always those with only negative and spiteful comments.
How did Helen Clark refer to people such as this with nothing but hateful and unconsructive criticism?…….Haters and Wreckers.
What I said was constructive. You preconceptions prevent you from seeing that.
For more than twenty five years various branches of national and local government have endeavoured to ‘work with the farming community’ to protect riparian strips, plant up stream banks and blot up effluent being sprayed onto pasture (or over rural roads as the milch mobs move to the milking shed…) Seminars. Presentations. One to one. It’s all been there.
There’s a solid core of farmers who are in for the long haul and respect their stock, breedlines, pastures. They can see the sense to it. Dirty water helps no one. And the share-milkers looking for their stake to get onto their own land. That herd’s precious.
Then there’s the quick-buck brigade. Just as there was with kiwifruit, deer farming, alpaca, olives etc etc etc. Shares in. Glamour of. Faked ‘aristocracy’ and ‘credibility’. Artistic mud splats on the Range Rover.
At the bottom end of the food chain is the poor bloke working his guts out to increase equity, reduce debt, ride out the droughts and under-capitalization – and committing suicide.
The second mob are great on lip-service. The last group – they’re already facing too many demands, in my view. They need help, not hammering. The first group already know and do.
For water quality in our rivers and streams, and out into estuaries, to be degrading at the rate it is – how about we ‘hammer’ the recently-converted set a lot harder and remind the land users that farming is a long haul business? make it seriously hard to convert marginal lands in drought-prone areas, or difficult soils. Give the regional councils more fangs.
Remind that short cuts usually end in tears (Molesworth, for example) and the other tax payers in the country see insufficient trickle-down to be willing to pay for a fifty-year plus recovery of what should never have been harmed.
‘Walk softly – and carry a big stick’. Courtesy and carrots don’t work for some.
Amazing how environmental protocols are walked all over in the name of profit, to hell with the other users of our fresh water resources.
Unfortunately we have a PM who is $ driven and does not see the big picture or the potential environmental consequences of poor decision making.
Government & Local Government need to start acting and stop sitting on their hands.
Other users of our freshwater resources are just as inclined to say “to hell with the other users of our fresh water resources” as the irrigators are. It is a very divided issue with virtually every interested party being economic with the truth and mostly interested in looking after their best interests.
Government at all levels is doing more than it ever has to place restrictions on land use up and down the country. This process is not like painting a fence….green one day, blue the next. it takes time, scientific research and patience.
New Zealand does indeed have one of the worlds lowest dairy cost models but it has virtually nothing to do with “lax labour and environmental laws.” It actually has almost everything to do with our temperate climate. Our climate (and therefor our method of production) is the envy of the world because our temperate climate allows us to keep the cows outside all year round, grow grass all year round and feed the cows on a mainly grass diet. Grass is almost always the cheapest form of feed at not much more than 14 to 15 cents per kg of dry matter as opposed to supplements at over 22 cents/kgDM. Cheap feed in…competing with a cut-and-carry barn fed system in a colder climate than ours means bigger profits for the owner/investor when selling processed milk on the international market.
The main problem dairy farmers have at the moment (excluding the drought) is the temptation to become ‘production orientated’ and pump supplementary feeds into the cows in order to produce more milk solids while the payout is high, the consequences of which can be costly on the farm input side. If dairy farming is to succeed on the current NZ model, they need to control costs, especially feed costs, by making the most of the cheapest feed available to them….grass.
Dairy farming has not led to deforestation, lack of profitability, price volatility, harvest costs and an unacceptably long planting to harvest time period have all led to a decrease in interest in replanting forests. That in turn has led to the landowner investigating a lower risk more profitable land use.
Yes, big farming is indeed an industry for investors, and that has led to “arms length” shareholders placing unrealistic expectations on the farm management and staff and in some cases the environment, but that has nothing to do with any ‘National party dairy farming interests conspiracy.’ You will in fact find that the huge majority of dairy farmers are very environmentally astute and are in most cases environmentalists themselves, but a few bad apples are ruining it for everyone else, namely owners and investors placing unrealistic financial and productivity expectations on their management leading to exploitation of stock, staff and the environment. That has to stop. Any forward thinking farmer is in the game for 3 reasons; lifestyle, conservation of resources (leaving the asset in a better condition than when they took over) and to make a living (profit). They need to do all 3 simultaneously to make it work. Farming is an extremely long term investment. Running the asset down is not in the best interests of the farmer. Need I say more?
Six million cows don’t produce 48% of NZ’s greenhouse gas, they are in fact only part of the total number of ruminant animals in NZ that theoretically contribute towards the total. Sheep, beef cattle, and (although only single stomach mammals) horses and humans also contribute their share.
Environmental policy is changing a lot faster than you are leading your readers to believe. The CRRP, for instance, demands all farmers (not just dairy farmers) produce a nutrient management plan, less than 3% of streams on dairy farms remain unfenced and most of the Canterbury plains is in a newly created ‘nutrient red zone.’ (look it up). There are more restrictions on intensive agriculture than ever before and you can be rest assured that those restrictions will lead to exponential improvements in water and land quality in the future.
Mike when you finally wake up .
Try reading something other than the Feds propaganda.
Your comment is riddled with inaccuracies and lies (3% remain unfenced -just one example)
I don’t lie. I often get this and similar reactions from people when I tell the version of the truth that they don’t want to hear.
Three percent is the amount of waterway still to be fenced, and will be completed within two years, under the Fonterra clean streams accord.
To accuse me of reading only propaganda and not researching the subject is to seriously misjudge me and my extensive professional experience, qualifications and downright passion to the point of obsession on the subject of sustainable land use.
The solution to that is to keep the land in public ownership and as native forest. This desire by the farmers to farm every square inch of land is detrimental to society.
Except the National Party MPs pushing for it.
What a load of codswallop. If they were environmentalists then they wouldn’t be dairy farmers running as many cows as they possibly can. They’d be organic farmers with food forests and maybe a small herd of meat animals.
Except that they’re not leaving things in a better condition as all the pollution that we’re going to have to clean up proves. And, no, don’t give me the BS about it only being a few bad apples. There’s no way we’d get the pollution from just a few bad apples.
Actually, humans are excluded from that and the majority is made by diary cows.
National’s making it worse.
Mr Bastard, you have obviously made up your mind on this and there is nothing I can say, based on science and/or my hands on experience on the subject, that will change your closed mind.
To put land in public ownership and native bush is not a solution. New Zealand is already well served with both public owned and bush clad land as a percentage of our total land area. And to state that we seem to have an obsession with farming every square inch of our land is just emotive nonsense.
State control of land may not necessarily be the answer. The farmers are of course all answerable to their respective regional councils for restrictions on land use. If anyone has it wrong as far as resource management goes, it is the regional councils for granting consent in the first place.
One doesn’t need to be an organic farmer to be an environmentalist any more than one needs to be a full time mechanic to be interested in cars.
I am not convinced. You claim that lax labour and environment laws have “virtually nothing” to do with the cost efficiency of NZ dairying. But how do our labour and environment laws compare with the best being practised elsewhere? Even taking into account differences in geography/climate etc I don’t think anyone seriously believes that our dairying (or farming tout court) practices would past muster in, say, Austria.
Dairy conversions have been going on in NZ for a very long time now. It is not as if we have all suddenly woken up to discover that the country has been turned into the biggest bovine latrine on the planet. It took a quite a while to construct this particular toilet, so I’m always a bit amazed that farming interests keep begging for more latitude. We already have more than sufficient evidence to indicate that the quality of freshwater in NZ has declined rapidly due to the influence of highly intensive dairying practices. Farmers have had more than a fair crack of the whip. Time to regulate. (So, I agree with Draco but can’t condone his less than civil language.)
Dairy farmers are environmentalists themselves? Yes, I suppose, if by “environmentalist” you mean someone who is happy to dust off a little greenish rhetoric if it means deflecting unwelcome attention from their business. I’d be slightly more convinced by your claim that farmers are conservationists if the “family farm” itself was not a dying breed. I don’t see why the new generation of corporate farmers would really commit themselves to the long-term future of the NZ environment – any more than mining interests in Equatorial Guinea would be interested in contributing to the social fabric of the communities that provide their workers.
The international money flowing into NZ dairying from a variety of sources is not interested in the complex relationship of a specific local community to its environment (spiritual, recreational, aesthetic etc etc), it is not interested in the preservation of freshwater species threatened by absurdly high extraction rates for irrigation, it is not interested in whether rivers/lakes are safe for children to swim in. And so on. Its focus is strictly the maximisation of profits – how to squeeze the most out of a natural resource for a limited period of time, that is, a period of time which cannot be counted in the multi-generational periods you need to begin talking about a “nation” or “society”.
No doubt you will say: “Well, we are dependent on dairying. That’s how the country earns its living.” To which I say: “That’s true, but it just means it is high time we started earning our money some other way. Let’s start a succession plan. Have a really serious discussion about phasing out intensive agriculture and thinking about what else we can do. We squandered our chance after WWII to invest in sectors other than agriculture. Now that we are confronted with another global crisis (climate change) we shouldn’t botch it again.” But I don’t think you should worry. The conformism of NZers, aided and abetted by the clinch between big business, government and the media, means these discussions are never likely to shape political reality here.
Yes Yes Yes, we are a world leader in our farm management and levels of productivity. Yes, it is because of our temperate climate and our ability to make the most of that. As an example outside dairy systems, we have a worldwide reputation as one of the worlds best ryegrass seed producers, and to put icing on the cake, arable farmers can finish export lambs on ryegrass, take a silage crop AND close the paddock to take a seed crop. Triple cropping! I was told by a Nuffield scholar recently who was here from the UK to study our farming methods that he envies our temperate climate that means “we can chase those lucrative ryegrass seed contracts”, we can marry stock breeding and finishing in to our cropping systems and the family farm still has a presence here.
Our labour laws are as fair as they could be when looked at from both sides. When we sign an agreement, the rights of all parties are laid out in black and white and we retain the right to sue. If only I sued the obnoxious, intimidating bully I employed here for twelve (long) months for the stress, grief and agravation he caused me, my family and other staff to endure while he was here. Instead I chose to go with my instinct that he will leave in his own time and we can avoid litigation. Turns out he was waiting for day 366 so he qualified for holiday pay and other entitlements.
Yes, we are at the top of our game and if you choose not to believe it, then that is your loss. I suggest that if you would like to make a fair comparison, try farming in one of those “lucky” countries and see how you go re. Civil liberties and private property rights
According to this report we are only 32nd. on the list for “ecosystem sustainability”, that doesn’t sound too good for a country with so much area and so few people.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11231593
@ Drako-T-Bastard …
Here’s another option . A Country wide farmer down – tools . No rams out , no bulls out , no milk trucked , no grain harvested , no meat , no fruits , no pork . Nothing . No leather , no skins , no freezing works bi-products that the farmers don’t get paid for . And lets not forget … no wool .
Then tell us we’re dirty you fuck !
Jesus ! I’m so angry !
I loath jonky MORE than any of you can imagine . His ilk have head – fucked us all . Particularly the farmer . That greasy , hooked nosed little shit is just horrible . He has all the non thinkers , either on the ropes or up his arse .
And you other ignorant bastards out there ! Don’t you DARE bite the hand that feeds you !
Wake the fuck Up !
Fuck this ! I’m starting my Blog . This is too much .
K K Countryboy…you have a point and you’ve been making it for a while.
Although I don’t regret my post earlier, because that picture is maybe a kind of allegorical comment on the way that food, our greatest taonga, is taken for granted, spilled, dumped, left to rot in vast pits in Taranaki, thrown around in undignified ways at human gatherings, stockpiled, genetically modified and trashed in all manner of ways, I do know and live around people who get up at ungodly hours, work in rotten and unhygienic conditions, bugger their backs for life shearing sheep etc. in the agricultural sector. The type of people who do not spend idle hours posting blog comments or watching parliament tv, as I do.
What I hear about your anger is that while all this debate about everything from fracking to farking is going on, who digs the soil and pulls out the potatoes? because those people don’t voice a great deal, it is hard work growing a pan full of spuds. A single frost can wipeout…well, you know. If it doesn’t rain, well, you know. Hail? Again, crap. The old ways, when nana had a great big vege garden and there was always plenty to feed the community, they’re gone, well and truly. These days, nana is at Sky City or down the cossie club playing pokies. Kids think potatoes are made at the supermarket. Milk comes from a plastic cow. This is true poverty.
So please, write your blog. Someone, somewhere, will discover it and maybe be inspired to grow something, make something from scratch, dig up something and take it down to the cossie club to ask nana whether they can eat it or if it’s poisonous, and could she please get away from those pokies? ‘cos Countryboy says they’re stink.
Don’t lose your rag mate.
The problem here is corporatisation. Big dairy stops being farming, loses contact with the community, and starts to act pathologically. Responsible farmers get tainted with that.
But don’t get to thinking farmers pay all the bills – you think you don’t need nurses and teachers? I was a deepsea fisherman for a while – we were productive too. The quota system let all that industry be grabbed by chair polishing assholes running foreign slave ships. Worst thing is the neo-libs imagine this is some kind of success – they lost capacity, industry knowledge, employment, a tax stream – and screwed up the resource and failed to extend or develop new ones. Epic fail.
The Gnat farmer/investors are fat pigs, and the RMA got between them and the trough. As with the asset sales – these scoundrels listen to nobody. It takes extremes of activism to get them to pay any attention at all, and those extremes rightly piss off the responsible farmers.
Quote: “Don’t you DARE bite the hand that feeds you !”
Did you notice all the OTHER people the agribusiness farmers are reliant upon?
Did you?
Because we need each other to succeed. From the smallest boutique producer to the multi-hectare pastoralist, we need our suppliers and customers, export agents and advisers.
And it’s better all round if we’re pretty much equal instead of ‘king of the castle – I’m special and more hard-working than you lot’ BS.
So, if you’d like us to value and respect your contribution to our lives, might you do the same for all that we hold dear? Or at least most of it.
Some of the South Island Rivers like the Selwyn were pristine 40-50 years ago now I believe they are cess pits for the dairy industry correct me if I am wrong or is somebody feeding me BS
To be absolutely blunt and honest about this, it is not just farming in New Zealand, it is modern, industrialised, large scale, more intensive dairy and all other forms of farming world wide, that are not sustainable. The facts are there, and scientists can provide them on soil erosion, soil quality deterioration, negative effects not just on water quality, but also on wider environments, where the dominant mono culture does not assist keeping biodiversity in the whole biosphere.
Look at problems also with herbicides, insecticides, with fertiliser use and abuse, and why bees and other essential insects are vanishing. Look also at the threat to the local biosphere from pests coming in from overseas, as the result of high volume trade and transport of goods, of travel and more.
There are limits to soil, land, water and fertiliser, there are limits to fuel sources. If you want to replace all fossil sourced fuels there are with biofuel, there will not be enough space left to grow food in.
And last not least, the huge population on this planet is not sustainable either, and the living standards in developed countries, still largely only maintained due to the extensive use of fossil fuel for energy, for fuel, for resource to make plastics, synthetic fertilisers and many other products, are also not sustainable.
With the technology we have, this planet’s population, lifestyles and productive practices are all not sustainable. The scarcity will eventually lead to wars over what is left, and the advantage NZ has in climate and soil and space, it will attract invading forces, to get hold of this land, to use it for providing the needs for their populations.
The human species has a condition, the human mental and psychological condition, and it is one of inclination to delusion and shortsightedness. The days of reckoning are coming fast, and we better all face up to the facts, be this climate change and more to come. It is already here, and we are just starting to see what will come.
Those going to the supermarkets full with all these nice, clean and “decorated” products on the shelves, and other retail outlets, one day, you may have to fight to get something to put into your mouthes, believe it or not.
The economists though do not want to see this, suffering themselves from the human condition, and all they dream of is ever larger markets, more sales, more profits, more growth into the endless sky. They forget that virtually everything is FINITE, also their lives.
Oh what fools we are, we humans.
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