Rachel Stewart destroys lying corporate dairy farmer water propaganda

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Rachel Stewart is a national treasure. Her fearless writing forces one of the largest and most powerful lobby groups, the corporate dairy industry, to front up to their bullshit.

Her column today destroys the spin ones that the corporate dairy farmer propaganda division, (the National Party), always use when trying to divert attention away from the fact they are polluting, destroying and stealing our water.

“New Zealand farmers feed the world.” No, they don’t. They sell bulk milk powder to the (mostly) lactose-intolerant Chinese. Further, they need to get used to the future of synthetic milk and plant-based meat.

That’s the future, and it’s coming. Ready or not.

“We’ll go broke.” No, you won’t. And if you do, you weren’t sustainable anyway. You took on too much debt, and/or you’re doing something very wrong.

“We are the backbone of the country.” Tourism is the backbone now, so best adjust to the fact the two are incompatible. Clean, green, pure New Zealand? Pull the other one.

“We’ve spent a billion dollars in environmental initiatives.” Prove it. I’ve asked for a breakdown many times and I’ve yet to see this random figure ever quantified. Still waiting.

“Urban waterways are more polluted than rural.” Yes, they are polluted but, considering urban waterways make up less than 1 per cent of all waterways, it’s an oft repeated bit of essentially fake news. Stop insulting our intelligence.

You’ve all heard the corporate dairy farmer lies before, you’ve seen the corporate dairy farmer propaganda on TV and you’ve all seen the extreme lengths they’ll go to shut down Greenpeace’s dissent against them.

National are the political expression of corporate farming and for too long we’ve allowed these thieves to rob us of our water for the benefit of their mates. they sold our bloody state energy assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund.

How long are NZers going to allow National to keep putting our interests second to their corporate farmer mates when it comes to our water and our environment?

24 COMMENTS

  1. The Waikatoa River is New Zealand’s largest river and where you go determines how bad it is. I personally bathed in Lake Taupo and the maintain estuaries that feed it, near its forming point in the mountains. At that point it’s mostly just mountain water than anything else. It stays relatively clean for most of its length as well. It gets really really dirty at Hamilton, and that is where its bad reputation comes from. Because of Hamiltons importance to Farming, The Waikato rivers dirtiness is magnified in the minds of people. It is awful there, way way way to dirty. But Hamilton is surrounded by profitable farmland.

    That being said, The Waikato River is in dire needs of cleanup and though I find the exact measure silly, I congratulate all attempts to protect New Zealand’s natural wonders. Because in the end, the great natural landmarks, whether in New Zealand or abroad, are the world’s greatest treasures. Beyond nationality, we should all work towards maintaining the world’s natural beauties.

  2. Great. What percentage goes to China, do you know? We all suck on too much diary anyway, not good for us to over eat it.

  3. I do truly appreciate seeing the word ‘ corporate’ before the word ‘ farmer’.
    Two entirely different beasties as I’ve argued annoyingly and repetitively.

    ” Tourism is now our main foreign currency source. ”
    I’d blindly and without figures to stand up for my ill conceived opinion by saying bullshit. No pun intended.

    I like to think I’m the kind of spherical thinking human that tries its best to look at any scenario from all sides. Mainly, in case I get jumped by a linear thinker with a logical fallacy to back up its lies.

    Lets see now? What was NZ BEFORE tourism? Yes, a first world country within the actual meaning of the words. How else could we have afforded to build the infrastructure the neo liberal apologists took off us and sold?
    Back in Never-Never Land that was once NZ/Aotearoa we grew foods etc blah, blah,blah…to export in exchange for money to allow us to have a first world life style. Schools, health, rail, roading, beautiful Dunedin, fabulous Auckland and a scattering of expensive cities in between. Timaru, for example. It’s going well and those lovely and I’m certain very expensive to build historic Edwardian commercial buildings ? Built by tourist money? In the early 1900’s? Does the world’s populations of humans still need to eat? Yes, would probably be the answer. So what then has changed? Are we like loopy christian creationists who believe the Earth is only 9000 years old and that dinosaur bones were put here by the devil to fool us? Someone is bullshitting someone in my view and any figures that support tourism numbers can go fuck themselves along with the dodgy shit that warped them into a logical fallacy to fool us. The devil’s in the detail after all.

    FYI. NZ farmers don’t feed the world. That’s silly. We can feed about 40 million according to nathan guy.

      • Geez James;

        I say that daily about leaving the country and going back to my second home as a kiwi born!!!!!

        But now a Canadian citizen also since 1976, but when the weather turns into crap I recall the long winters over there, so I say NO, as I am still hopeful that Labour NZ First, will take over the treasury benches with greens backup and straighten out our once clean green country as Country boy says correctly it was!!

        II remember before the “tourism scourge” hit our shores and fouled it up.

        Shit James I lived in Florida during the 1990’s when the locals there were complaining of the same thing as Country Boy is saying that tourism has negative environmental impacts!!!!

        The truth is that where-ever tourism flocks to as I saw in Florida was then being over-run by tourism too!!!!!!!

    • And what is expanding farming and dirty dairying doing to our rivers. Who are the corporates taking over farmers land.
      Don’t miss out the important stuff that is happening now.

  4. Big lesson in Venezuela right now – they were creaming it for a few years off high oil prices, but failed to invest in the infrastructure and frittered away the money instead of using it to build up other aspects, and now they’re in the shit because the oil price collapsed.

    • Finally we have been mentioned globally as I heard today over the latest Dairy auction and a spokesperson for the Global Dairy industry said that there now is a question about NZ’s “Intensive dairying” being responsible for the pollution of our countries water supply, and rivers/lakes.!!!!!!!

      Finally globally we are being seen as a dirty little secret.

      Was just a matter of time.

      This all occurred today when the Whole milk powder price dipped today when the industry was forecasting the price to increase again so perhaps the bad press actually had some effect on the price of our whole milk powder?

      • Chinese Babies dying from contaminated milk powder was always going to be difficult to come back from. Today’s dairy auction just confirms what the smart money already new, the weak energy sector is dragging down the entire commodities sector. It’s a zombie industry being resuscitated back to life by huge unsustainable government subsidies.

    • Spread the word Sue

      Rachel Stewart has guts and knows what she is talking about.

      I really miss her input on Waatea Fifth Estate and yours too Bomber !!!

      Any chance of an Election night special ? now that would be worth staying up for.

  5. http://www.whoar.co.nz/2017/cant-defend-animal-rights-dont-deserve-call-progressives-op-ed/

    (excerpt..)

    (ed:..perhaps one of the most egregious examples of this disconnect most of the left/progressives have with animal-rights/welfare..is yr bog-standard greenpeace/green party bbq….

    the sight of earnest young activists emoting all over some animals (whales?) whilst chowing down on other animals (chickens.?) is really quite something to behold..

    the arguments for animal-welfare – and against eating them – or their bye-products – are met with blank/uncomprehending stares from most ‘progressives’..

    to them the brutalities/exploitation/environmental-damages from the animal-industries are all negated/discounted because they like the ‘taste’ of them..(or some other such utterly facile reason..)

    and this has to change..)

  6. Dairy farming (for mass consumption and export) is not sustainable, since it is dependent on HUGE inputs of fossil-fuel energy and HUGE inputs of imported fertilisers (which are ‘progressively’ contaminating the land with toxins such as cadmium).

    Tourism is not sustainable, since it is dependent on HUGE inputs of fossil-fuel energy.

    Both dairy farming (as practiced in NZ) and tourism are extremely environmentally destructive and have no long term future.

    The fact that ALL political parties promote tourism as a ‘sustainable’ component of the NZ economy is scary beyond belief and is a clear demonstration that we are government by liars, thieves and moron, with other morons in the wings waiting for the opportunity to fuck up everything they touch.

    • AFKTT 100%
      NZ is deliberately being saddled with debt yet the import sector is not constrained in any way but encouraged.

      Wake up sleepy Kiwis as we just don’t have a future that is more of the same.

      Human habitation of this planet is just not sustainable.
      Humans are showing that just cannot adapt to preventing a messy collapse of environmental systems and impending food shortage.

      Just making money not an answer but large part of the problem.

  7. Clean green pure NZ ?
    A picture IS often worth a thousand words.
    When it comes to our water quality, National ignore the increasing deterioration because they fear the reprise of their farming mates.
    It was inexcusable to sell our energy assets to set up a large
    irrigation fund to favour/bribe farmers with.
    Maori Party have made no gains for the long term asset of clean water
    as they are a minor minority party.

    • farming is actually only about 4.35 percent of gdp but that industries actions can affect the wider economy beyond the farm gate

  8. There’s a hole in the biz thinking. And the fable of ‘free enterprise’.

    If a farming business is unviable because it has to include the cost of water and cannot compete in its market/s – then, according to the orthodoxy, there are choices to be made. Water is a legitimate cost for the business. There’s probably some useful tax break they can call upon to ease the pain. (Meh.)

    They can convert to a less water intensive farming model – e.g. sheep and beef, or forestry, or field crops that aren’t as water-dependent.

    They could go out of business and sell to someone else.

    They can start innovating to ensure their water use is thrifty without harming their stock.

    Among others.

    They cannot continue freeloading and still call themselves ‘business people’ Wouldn’t be Right…

    • Andrea the water massive usage by the rural sector will be used as an excuse to privatise water. Already the discussion is going that way.

      They never miss an opportunity.

      Regulation and restriction is needed not just levying.

  9. Almost. Every day I pass a small stream that feeds into the Waikato River before it reaches hamilton, and with the rain we’ve hadf later, it is pretty swollen, plus, for the past few days, there has been some foam floating on top of the water in one section of this stream. Now, I don’t claim to know what the foam is, but seeing as it has survived there in the same place for a couple of days, it can’t be good. I have no doubt that some farms are trying to clean up their act, but there is a long way to go. They could start by laying off the Monsanto products . . .

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