Hey Farmers of NZ.
How are things?
Look, just wanted to touch base because I’m a tad confused about something.
Walk me through why you get all so pissy and shitty at the Left again?
Like I get the Left are not happy with you over your abuse of our water and pollution of our water and theft of our water and your climate creating gases that you point blank refuse to do anything meaningful about. I get that the Left are critical over your enormous political power and how synthetic milk and meat will utterly destroy your industry, I get all of that, but what Mungo no understand is where the Christ you all get off hating on the left.
Because from where I’m sitting, it’s YOUR National Party scumbags and corporate Bank wankers who have fucked you all good and proper, NOT the Left!
How banks peddled a product that killed New Zealand farmers
The disastrous impact of banks selling risky financial derivatives to farmers is still being felt in rural communities more than a decade later. How did it happen and how can we stop banks doing it again?
Your political party, the National Party, conned you all into believing John Key’s pump and dump economic policy and tricked you into dairy intensification for China while you were pressured into taking on enormous amounts of debt by the banks and when that China fantasy popped, you’ve all been left with that enormous debt, Fonterra melting down and depression levels that make you suicidal AND THAT’S ALL THE LEFT’S PROBLEM???
If you are incandescent with rage over how you were conned by National into dairy intensification, then maybe you should be taking that out on your lying and deceitful National Party MPs, and not the Left!
The Left are simply requiring you to stop polluting and stealing the water for that intensification and let’s not forget that YOUR Party, the National Party, sold off 49% of our hydro assets to fund you a $400million irrigation slush fund for that intensification so the Left owe you jack shit.
The position you’ve been tricked into isn’t the Left’s fault, it is YOUR National Party MPs who deserve the rage. Take your anger and put it where it deserves to go, your own scumbag National Party MPs and wanker Banks who have trapped you in a spiral of debt.
As the political landscape becomes warped by identity politics and the working classes of the West turn against globalisation, the left/right dichotomy is in flux.
What I see here is an opportunity for the NZ Left to make gains with the Farming industry. As climate change impacts destroy the agricultural calendar and synthetic milk and meat snap the spine of the farming industry, they will be left high and dry with enormous debt and no way to service it. Foreign speculators will be lining up to buy our rich productive land and if we want to avoid that and build new political alliances, the Left should be ready with a bail out package that takes on the debt IF Farmers move away from dairy intensification and plant forests and hemp instead.
There is no point our farmers feeding 40million people, with the coming climate crisis, we need to feed NZers first, no one else.
Farmers, you are are crucial to our survival in the coming climate catastrophe, but you’ve been damaged by your own political leaders and shat upon by the Banks. Your future is with a protectionist Government, not a free market one.
Not sure if true, but I heard that the shitty managers running Fonterra into the ground have decided to pour more investment into China, after already losing a fortune there… sigh
… meanwhile in NZ nobody can afford the $15 of that block of cheese… weird , the Fonterra strategy is low cost for overseas market share but in NZ the managers don’t care if they price themselves out of the market… weird..
also Fonterra still obsessed with putting gelatine in yoghurts and products so even if they choose to ignore the growing vegetarian movement shooting ahead for decades now, they also are out of odds with the growing Indian 1.3 billion community of which there are significant vegetarians….
Another issue, Countdown now have their own brand cheese, then low and behold they put their new brand cheese (which is probably from Fonterra anyway) in the Fonterra section of cheese and the ‘special’ on Fonterra cheese moved elsewhere. Commerce commission nowhere to be seen of course, they somehow failed to find anything anticompetitive in the supermarkets last time they looked, sarcasm, as more Kiwis are obese from bad food, hardship grands for food up 50% and alcohol costs less than milk.
Meanwhile the continual destruction from the supermarkets of range of products changed to their own products… using many devious ways.
Also heard a rumour (not sure if true) that Fonterra apparently don’t pay their organic milk farmers any extra for the milk…
Essentially you could run a tanker full of world trends that Fonterra miss, while paying out millions in big bonuses to bovine managers who are obsessed with creating more and more China and South America losses… meanwhile overseas brands pick up former Fonterra brands like Tip Top cheap, and Fonterra is apparently still reinvesting the money from selling their good businesses into the same failed China strategies.
I guess then, they are not putting a stop to paying managers bonuses for bad short term strategy that will end up bankrupting more and more farmers going forward!
Also Fonterra under Theo Spiering has done huge damage environmentally, as money could have been spend a decade ago to solve many environmental issues for farming, but was not because they wanted to avoid it on his watch. They had the money as the farmers apparently pay into a fund for innovation but it’s just wasted because they don’t want to innovate on anything and the managers over seeing it, just sit on their arses.
Now we have more polluted streams and farmers who are broke from Theo Spiering and Co, bad overseas investments and have less money to invest in environmental good practise! Disgusting!
Apparently Fonterra’s IT outsourcing has also been appalling waste of money and putting them into the dark ages as other companies speed ahead technologically.
Sigh.
The sort of thinking by the sort of thinkers in the photo won’t have them getting anywhere near the comprehension needed to understand a complicated article like this. Hell, Simon won’t even need Taskforce Raptor lathering and ‘taking my pet gun’ fury to get them going. You know that if they were in the USA the signs they’d be holding would be about Obama being born in Kenya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Ydoh_5EjU
Look like doze farm sales done falled off a cliff Mungo. Cordin to interest.co, farm sellings drop by 32% over last 4 years (exclooding those purdy little lifestyle farms, day don’t count). Damn boy, we’s in real trubble now, I got mouths to feed. Hopefooly young Jacinda come thru for us.
What’s so great about farm sales? Unless you think that what amounts to a symptom of how desperate farmers are as a result of their support for an incompetent, duplicious, and utterly corrupt national party.. And if you don’t believe me, then look through a few overseas newspapers, and find out what everybody else knows that uncle ruperts whores in the fourth estate have hidden from you lot..
@Stefan, Just put in overseas managers like Theo Spiering, to destroy the company in the hope that the neoliberals can ‘rescue it’ with a sharemarket float so China and everyone else can get control of the company with greater ease than they can through the co operative model and buying up the farm land, (also working to buy up the land, but so, so, slow in the modern, quick flick, business world).
NZ can learn from selling off the state houses and 49% sales of state owned power generators, under John Key sarcasm which have proved to be a bargain, not for the tax payers, silly. Not to be outdone, Labour and Greens joining up with quasi companies like Panuku, to slowly build unaffordable houses that cost more than state houses and have limited appeal, while giving the land away as a bonus to an unaccountable quasi business. What great ideas these neoliberals have bought to parliament both for the right and the left. All roads lead to fire sales of public assets and higher prices for consumers. sarcasm.
Running down Fonterra for sale, has always been high on the neoliberals agenda. And they are trying to do it, from the inside out.
All true …but in same breath I can not think why we deem Labour Jacinda admin left wing.
Like National Labour is borrowing and increasing the debt cycle..
Like National Labour signed the TPPA (you know that thing they said they would walk away from if we voted for them..remind how that turned out).
Like National Labour has welcomed in the military industrial complex big time.
It was Labour who signed off the 20 billion National borrowed for defence. It was Labour who invited a B52 ( built largely to drop nukes) Wings Wairarapa as Winston Peter told Wellington Peace Action no we wont ask if they are carrying nukes.
Fact is Jacinda not a pretty communist (we wish), if ‘communism’ means a left wing who gave us a 40 hour week, free education and health. She come from the same cut as Roger Douglas and its no surprise to find the architect of the beloved migration pact (free sweat shops for every one) was UN special envoy Mike Moore Roger Douglas’s PR wing man. Moore the man whose ‘World Without Borders’ model got a firm thumbs down from the left in Seattle back in 99 by the left when it was actually left. Moore basically had done a shit job on packaging his Trojan horse so we would not see the damage it did to workers rights, the environments, indigenous people and democracy in general.
Farmers blame the left for the crap things bankers do.
Were as the Millennials (who did not live through Rogernomics), to days avante garde think they are left, as they embrace a model of liberalism that encourages ‘Moore’ debts to the banks, ‘Moore’ privatisation, ‘Moore’ of gap between rich and poor, all the while drinking their $14 dollar craft beers and $75.00 hipster haircuts. They are not left-wing they are spawn of Blair and it no surprise this cult of persa-ba-nality has picked one of Tony Blair’s entourage (sent courtesy of Basettville aka University of Waikato and Victoria) to lead the charge of the spin brigade.
As for climate change have you ever actually read the UN Climate sustainability model. Looked at who its ‘strategic partners’, ‘investors’, and ‘shareholders’ are. They are not left wing for sure and when you read the fine print and track down the core corporation Goldman Sach, Nestles, Bayer, Dupont, BP, Chevron, ect they are not people with a great track record for genuine liberalism, environmentalism, or humanitarianism. They are people who get along with bankers just fine. We gone and put the same junkies who got us into this mess back in charge of the medicine cabinet oops.
If the farmers are confused about the left you can not blame them and the left is confused about what being left means these days as well.
Fact is in horrible landscape dominated by two choices neoliberal (talk left walk right) and neoconservative (talk right walk right) racing to a finishing line of the few.
Captained by the cult of persa-banality in each case telling the rest of us to do as they say not as they do. Both parties ultimately take their orders from the bankers and corporations or as I like to call them bastards without borders.
Sorry the music died the day poor Leo got a ice pick in the back of his head in Mexico. Its being eye right ever since.
I hate all our middle class (globalisation) political parties; yes as far as I know we still have the freedom to love & hate, but i need to point this out; Those who claim to be left today are not in the same league as the good old lefties I remember well. This new crop may well fantasise about being real hard nut lefties, but they’re not a patch on the old mob.
Semi automatics are banned now, so who has the power?
” Dear Farmers of NZ – tell me why you hate the Left again? ”
But farmers farm more than Deer…?
Oh, wait?
‘DEAR’ farmers. I see now. Being a farmer, not that bright. And am dirty and like to sleep in my gumboots. Yes. all that is true.
I’ll start again.
“Dear Farmers of NZ – tell me why you hate the Left again?”
Well, it might be because about thirty years ago there was a short little pig farmer called roger douglas who, along with several deviant urban others were excreted out the arsehole of neoliberalism AKA, the lazily neglected left wing workers party. The Labour Party.
[They] were able to do so, because no one saw them coming until it was too late. And lets remember, the assets those scum swindled away from under our noses was bought and paid for with farmer money.
Before you start arguing, then who’s money was it?
Oh! The wailing and the moaning and the wringing of hankies that’s followed.
Prior to that, Labour, and it’s urban sandal wearers were all for cheap farmer money, cheaper farmer foods and those well washed non farmer people enjoyed all that the farmer earned export revenue could provide. Like tertiary education, dental, hospital, health, roading, rail, mutton pies, city development and of course lets not forget the careful construction of today’s multimillionaires and billionaires who wouldn’t know a sheep if they were caught kissing one and yet they’re billionaires.
That picture above BTW? ” She’s a pretty communist.”
More like “She’s a, pretty fucking useless.”
“Lets do this” ? has surely become a ” Fuck! I wish I hadn’t said that. ”
The Labour Party. What a useless pack of over paid fuckers.
Labour? National? Same-same son.
The reason The Natzo’s are perceived as the farmers political party is because the Natzo’s told you to think that via their all-bought-and-paid-for media. Even many farmers themselves have come to believe that but that might be because farmers are isolated, ill informed, poorly catered too culturally and are very carefully portrayed as Fred Dagg people but without the class. Aye Trev? to dissuade anyone from the city going anywhere near farmers for fear of being forced to marry one then having to skin a cow on their wedding night to feed the Mrs’s family for the breakfast feed.
I’m a farmer. I’m a third generation farmer from Southland. My Whanau and I went on to farm 3000 acres near Fairlie. We had 4000 sheep, 200 or so Angus cattle and harvested grains and grass seeds and no matter how hard we tried, we were always broke and working our arses off, and we had no mortgage. ( Book being written. And she’s a beaut. With pictures too.)
If you want to know the dire reasons for wool farmers being eternally broke? Go ask the crooked wool board members? Aye boys? You dodgy fuckers! Why’s all that wool triple dumped and languishing in warehouses? Seeping lanolin onto those concrete floors? What are your mates in the reserve bank doing with those OCR’s again? Fiddling with the rates? Making a little coin?
That paragraph was an unqualified qualification for what I’m about to write.
The National Party are a party of fat lazy liars and swindlers. They have a Machiavellian Confederate head-fuck mandate down pat and can spew it out on any occasion. They trade in logical fallacies and will do anything to keep that most AO/NZ minority voter, the AO/NZ Farmer, locked in the drawing room while The Fine and Fancy prance about on the gold paved streets of the cities.
Farmers shouldn’t ask for better political representation. They should demand that political representation DO WHAT IT’S FUCKING TOLD! TO DO WHAT IT’S PAID TO DO! NOT PLEASE ITS FUCKING SELF!
And the only way that, that can be achieved is for farmers to unite and team up with their agrarian primary industry’s down stream service providers and brawl ( Strike ! ) their way back into control over their own endeavours.
At this point in time, the scum foreign banksters control ALL our lives and while we ALL work our arses off, [they] suck out $5 billion a year from our exhausted economy and that’s fucking OK by labour and national ! We AO/NZ’ers can no longer afford the luxury of living in hope. We must demand a fair days work out of our fair and flouncy politicians.
BTW @ MB?
Serious Question.
Have you ever actually been out to the ‘flat-green, yet oddly-lumpy’ that are ‘farm lands’ to talk to farmers?
I have. I’m a locations scout in the film business and I spend a lot of time interacting with farmers and we, of course, spend time talking about this and that.
I want to point out that most farmers are a-political. They have no confidence in any party, including the minority parties. The only reason some farmers are Blue-as are because the local Natzo’s are smart enough to say nice things to them. They’re all lies, of course, but who cares when you know you’re hated by everyone and your arse is on the financial line. Even if they tell you to borrow, diversify and cut costs.
I suggested to Chloe Swarbrick once to head out into the farmlands and schmooze the farmer. The Green Party should focus on securing the farmer, and their export derived money away from the dirty little bent Natzo’s. The Green Party should also call upon the trade unions ( Or what’s left of them. ) to come in and shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers.
What’s she done? Fuck all. ” Make do, work harder.”
Other than complaining about cow-pissed-in water. Does Chloe Swarbrick know WHY farmers had to turn to cowsploitation? My guess would be no, going from what I see, hear and read.
And neither do you @ MB. But I have to say; I’m very heartened to see that you’ve made an effort to understand farmers and farming although, ever from here, I can smell the sarcasm on your breath.
There’re quite a few farmers ‘out there’ who know the value of farming holistically and organically but they’re working under enormous pressure to comply.
To borrow, to beg and prostrate themselves at the feet of the bankster while smiling shiny arsed Natzo liars steal off with their money.
I have one more thing to write:
Farmers. Unionists. Well intended politicians. The general populace…
Be very aware of the dreaded Confederate.
Be very suspicious of anyone telling you farmers that uniting with your downstream service industry providers is a piss poor idea.
That, will be the work of the political Machiavellian Confederate with more devious agendas than a God bothering real estate agent with a law degree with a brother in law in banking.
Look it up.
Now, I’m off for a nice cup of tea and a wee lie down.
Probably the only real meaningful diff @ CB between gNatz and the alternative is that the gNatz are certain to facilitate more of the same (debt,foreign ownership, corporatisation and trickle up), whereas there’s a feint possibility that there are a number on the left that are beginning to realise it’s all been a load of complete kaka (even if they can’t quite bring themselves to own up and apologise).
It’s a game of the lesser of a few evils – that is until the natives get really really restless (which in lil ‘ole NuZull that punches above its weight), is going to be a long time coming.
Leave where you’re at man!.
As a film location specialist, there’s a dainty little hotspot not far north of Wellington where you could fit in (indeed shine!) amongst it all, and where the coffee’s and green washing is in abundance, and where middle aged parents have their offspring as their bestes of best friends. It’ll even be bypassed once Transmushun Gully is opened. It’s a real treat to behold, and I don’t even think Peter Jackson has yet been able to gain a foothold despite one or two of his worshippers living there
Hey Countryboy, I’d say that was the most enjoyable read I’ve ever seen in the TDB comments! I’m a farmer, and yeah National do support the interests of big time corporate agri-business (even more so if you can add ‘multi-national’ to that list), but as for small scale tree-hugging organic-certified permaculture farmers like me? No way. Small family-based farms are almost always more sustainable and environmentally conscious. It’s about time the city people started differentiating between corporate farming and sustainable farming.
@BW some of us do differentiate, it’s the media to blame mostly.
Oh Country Boy you made my day what a wonderful rant. I and the main man are going to be down your way in 10 days and would love to catch up with you. Ask Martyn for the email address, we have talked before.
Countryboy – do you suppose that farmers could get together to create a bank? Jim Anderton managed Kiwibank. There are some good credit unions. Why not for farmers of all stripes and types? Get those pricey black brogues off the necks of the independent rural business people.
There are plenty of savvy farmers. They’ve kept the Feds on the go for years. They have kids and at least some of them must have gone into media or marketing.
When the cowpats hit the fan farmers are definitely able to organise to give loving and knowing support to other farmers at the hard end.
How about a farmers’ collective/union? The activist arm – which puts the fear of extinction into the drab little critters currently attempting politics.
(The activists can’t be politicians. Why? Because pollies have to represent the many – and swallow lots of dead rats. But the activists do have to avoid the righteousness that pops up when the wrong people climb on the bandwagon.)
How would you go about it? Who’s worth talking to? Someone like Doug Avery.
The seeds are there. Howsabout it, then?
It depends. Any retail bank over 2000 depositors is a prime take over opportunity. At that size you’re not going to have access to the global infrastructure where you can access your cash anywhere in the world. So you’ll have to look at what financial services are lacking in your area.
Reading down the comments , then coming to your post , CB, I nipped out to get a bottle of sherry just so I could settle in and have a read. Good stuff. You mentioned ( Book being written. And she’s a beaut. With pictures too.) a book being written.. was that figurative? I hope not, I’d be one of the first to buy a copy!
My son works with my ex sister in laws son , hes a manager of a dairy farm, my son just goes out to stay for a bit , work and help out and recharge his batteries,… loves it. His cousin is that ‘ hard worker’ as you say… bringing up his three children, managing the farm…
I love what you write about unions and farmers uniting,… in recognition of the shafter’s and grifter’s who have traditionally divided us on purpose. In order to fill their pockets, and those of the ‘ banksters’. Because that’s the truth.
You call it the ‘ Great Institutionalized Lie’.
I would like to see you write a book on the subject.
I’d like to see that become a household term such as ‘ Rogernomics’ is.
The banking and business cartels, the politicians and the news media propaganda machine that glues it all together. You have the wit, you have the colourful humour , and you have the insight, .. and you most certainly have the motive going by past events in your family’s life.
Epic rant, and can’t disagree with anything you said. Auckland city slickers still don’t understand where NZ get’s its “wealth” from. Hint: it isn’t the service industry, middlemen, or bloggers.
I cannot understand why the farmers put up with Theo earning all that ridiculous salary, he will be laughing for the rest of his life.
I know they aren’t allowed to do any more dairy conversions here in Canty, well I think that is right. But surely we should be looking seriously at reducing the number if necessary by a government hand out to those interested in getting out of dairy and into something else sustainable that doesn’t degrade our rivers and ruin the Canterbury Plains.
Just use the public waterways as your toilet going forward into the intensive farming that transfer the risk to the public in profit driven mega-farms…
“Consent documents state that while the company already has consent to discharge all its wastewater on to 404ha of surrounding farmland, the company has access to only 278ha and planned further expansion would increase the wastewater produced onsite.”
“Oceania has limited ability to obtain more land for wastewater irrigation purposes. The surrounding community does not support more wastewater being discharged on land. The consideration of the alternative options has identified that the only viable solution is to discharge from the wastewater treatment plant on the factory site via a pipeline and outfall into the Pacific Ocean.”
The viable solution is the environment in Canterbury is NOT suited to more intensive dairying and this farm obviously has too many stock if they have to discharge into public spaces with their waste. The precedent is being set for farms to have too many stock on land that is not suited to those numbers. Why farm environmentally when you can use the public sea as your toilet.
Dairy firm wants ocean wastewater outfall
https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/dairy/dairy-firm-wants-ocean-wastewater-outfall
The public takes on the risk, and it’s the public and environment that pay the most for mistakes!
Thousands of litres of dairy effluent discharged into stream closes popular Hawke’s Bay swimming spot on Christmas Eve
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12296437&ref=clavis
“we should be looking seriously at reducing the number of dairy farms”
Good luck with that – I agree, but what exactly would you convert them to? Please appreciate every dairy conversion multiplied the supposed value (& debt) of the farm by 3x or 4x of the original value? The only industry that could match that intensive use of land would be medical canna… Or what other use is so intensive as to be able to maintain the debt associated with a dairy conversion?
I bet the banks throw a little party for themselves every time they fund another dairy conversion… Destroying the equity in farming for decades now…
@Thomas, I guess using imagination to create new high paid jobs and industries in NZ is out of the question. sarcasm.
Instead the thinking seems to be more cheap stuff cheaper, lack of diversification, obsession with sunset industries expanding while being subsidised for their pollution risks and making quality lower and costs of the average worker lower.
Millions of new businesses and industries are being created across the world from solar panels to IT to bio packaging…NZ seems absent in the movement (a bit of action in IT now third biggest exporter). However the general lack of green tech is surprising when supposedly we are both clean and green (more a slogan now than reality) and have a 8 wire innovation?
Countries who embraced new tech often profit the most from that industry… NZ seems against embracing anything new and still widely stuck in the ‘lower and lower’ (cheap, raw, exports) cost model until the business is weakened, sold off and become some blip in an accounting multinational supply chain. Which is a very precarious position for a small country to be in, going forward.
NZ industry (in particular dairy) has little focus on the biggest trend driving business profits which is consumer demand and innovation. Fonterra actually fired people from this part of the business in 2015 in favour of more bonuses for executives…
“The 230 cuts announced on Monday hit administration roles in sales – ingredients, consumer, marketing, research and development, communications, health and safety, food safety and quality, group resilience and risk, property, procurement and change management.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/72244467/fonterra-confirms-230-more-job-cuts
Ok then Fonterra jobs in, health and safety, research and development, food safety and quality, risk property and change management and sales the ones to go… they then spend the money on executive bonuses and risky strategies and partnerships that have already proven to be detrimental aka Sanlu, surprise, surprise 4 years later Fonterra are announcing record losses again!
Business ain’t rocket science!
Nor is there any concern from government over the increased profitability of banks in the world and tax avoidance by multinationals. In this study the top 5 companies by profit are Apple (US) no 1, and the next 4 most profitable companies are now Chinese owned banks… https://victormatara.com/top-100-most-profitable-companies-in-the-world-2018/
It seems modern business in NZ is more about a) supporting industry ripping off people with obscene profits like banks and money laundering that regulators ignore here.
b)Getting the government to subsidise everything from migrant labour to power prices to industry,
c) Encourage new dirty business with huge risks and pollution aka asset give-a-ways to big polluters like using the sea as your toilet (dairy, industry, cruise ships) or free asset grab (sand, oil, water) or fracking (fun fact since 30 years of fracking we have had 56 major earthquakes while the previous 49 before fracking there were only 27 major earthquakes – the link is known https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/225753-united-states-geological-survey-confirms-it-fracking-causes-earthquakes ).
Until NZ government stop subsidising bad industries, start to regulate banking and become wise to financial profiteering and scams, environmental risks, importing of income beneficiaries from around the world and move to ihigh wages and innovation, NZ woes will continue.
The only thing keeping Kiwis prosperous amongst world rankings, is the high ownership of housing, generous benefits by world standards, but the government neoliberals seem to want to take that away from taxpayers and give more of that share to the already bloated, unregulated, rip off financial industry and polluters!
… ” Your future is with a protectionist Government, not a free market one ” …
——————————
That’s it Martyn , – that’s it.
Like we used to have pre 1984. Before Roger ”Shit on YOU” Douglas , – the Godfather of Labour and Nationals plunder and rapine of the countryside. Odd that it was Labours Douglas that introduced all that , yet Nationals Bolger carried it on.
Like the one we had in Michael Joseph Savage ,Norman Kirk and even Rob Muldoon’s day. A Keynes based economy. Where farmers were subsidized even. Govt assistance to keep the farmers going strong, not going under debt and killing themselves. Not a neo liberal economy.
A neo liberal economy / political system is cancer for those in the urban as well as those in the rural.
There was a time when the backbone of the economy that is farming was well respected in this country , – BEFORE 1984. I see no reason why we cannot return to that status. The Scandinavians,… never really left it…. and are per head of capita , the wealthiest people on earth.
I think its a load of ‘Bullshit!’. Put back in place the “Cow(Heard) Tax”. That fund, if it hadn’t been removed in 1987? Would be worth Billions of dollars by now.
Just imagine ….
What has, and is, happening in the dairy industry will profoundly affect NZ’s future.
This is corruption on a scale never seen before on our shores.
Keep up the good work, and some great comments, mostly guided.
This should be in the top three election issues.
I believe that the program to turn farmland (as well as any other land they can get their mitts on, including protected land) into pine plantations “for the good of the environment” or to “slow climate change” is a scam and a swindle, and that somewhere down the line we’ve bought into a pack of lies.
The small amounts of reading that I’ve done on the subject so far, and things that I’ve seen, have convinced me of this.
I would like to see this topic (conversion of farms to forestry) examined and researched, to look at what it’s based on, and what the realities are. Something about it (the current forestry sales and expansion program) seems fundamentally flawed, fundamentally wrong.
Dairy is not the only animal farmed in NZ. Sheep, goats, buffalo, horses, birds…
I don’t have a problem with dairy farming in NZ, the problem is the recent drive towards low cost, intensive dairy farming in NZ which is driven by short term profiteering, stupidity and greed and not suitable for the conditions.
Lets not throw out the bath with the bathwater!
They’re already taking the water, – before we’ve even bathed in it.
Here is one article showing how forestry, in the way it is presently being done in NZ, is a bigger contributor to climate change than farming, in at least a couple of states in the US. logging study reveals huge hidden emissions of the forestry industry
By establishing these massive cloned-pine plantations we are creating a bigger problem for ourselves, for Aotearoa in the future.
Here is a local example of the harm caused: Councils Failure to Monitor Forestry Company
And another: Pine Trees Arent the Answer
And this one: Forestry Conversion Rules Totally Out of Control
There are more…
Farming is the only real thing in the NZ economy. The rest is tourism and property flipping. We are on track to become a vassal state of Imperial China whose purpose is to provide meat and milk to our overlords.
The future of the hobbits of NZ will be servicing our overseas masters and working “their” land
Technology is now New Zealand’s third largest export sector
https://www.nzstory.govt.nz/news/technology-is-now-new-zealands-third-largest-export-sector/
I don’t have the latest figures but in 2009 agriculture was a mere 4% of GDP
But is that really how we measure success. Best if we all stop consuming so much.
I want, I want, I want
You GOT IT!
Denis Glover said it all 70+ years ago – The Magpies.
When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm
The bracken made their bed,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Tom’s hand was strong to the plough
Elizabeth’s lips were red,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Year in year out they worked
While the pines grew overhead,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
But all the beautiful crops soon went
To the mortgage-man instead,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Elizabeth is dead now (it’s years ago)
Old Tom went light in the head;
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
The farm’s still there. Mortgage corporations
Couldn’t give it away.
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies say.
E-clectic, you’re a treasure.
(Not even going to try and explain why.)
Another use for farmland is to build houses and create communities on it!
Instant Kaitiaki!
“Let’s Do This!”
Perhaps farmers should stop delivering food to townies for a week, and see what will happen?
Animal farming today is so huge worldwide that it takes up an enormous biomass – humans and their farmed animals comprise about 93% of terrestrial biomass, leaving the remaining 7% as just wild animals. This is far from a natural predator/prey relationship. It is science fiction. In fact, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Given the levels of water use, animal feed required, deforestation, biodiversity loss, fossil fuel use, fertilisers, etc.etc. not to mention the sheer scale of the animal suffering, it is way out of balance and a long way from so-called ‘nature’. Our modern industrial society has been built on animal suffering. Alongside fossil fuels, animals have provided the energy for the massive expansion of the human enterprise. Animal liberationists like myself can only see this in the same light as human slavery. But as the huge consumption of fossil fuels is creating a warming atmosphere, so is the sheer size of the animal industrial complex, via greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. These are the changing realities for animal farmers, and I do feel for the poor blighters facing these issues and trying to hold onto their livelihood. Its gonna get tough, and many of them are not equipped with a broad and open worldview to accept that changes are occurring. We are seeing this play out in Australia in the face of the bushfire crisis. The narrative of climate denialism is so strong in Australia – even stronger than in Aotearoa – that everything else but climate change is being blamed for the fires. Fueled by the corporate media and the conspiracy nutters whom the farmers seem to mirror in their belief systems. Tragic for the human race, tragic for our entire living planet.
Top post. Thanks PJ.
Well put Paul
As humans delve into commercialised cruelty then they loose sight of their environment and other species that we depend on to balance the interaction of living things, a process of evolution we depend upon.
Plant based diet for humans is not only healthier but less demanding on resources. NZ can become self sufficient in growing food locally by developing an economy that focusses on plant based food crops and little need for transport nor fertilizer if permaculture is our mainstay.
Sounds impressive because your “facts” are bullshit.
Insects are the largest terrestrial biomass.
Coughs* second only to the largest biomass type of soil of course.
Neither insects nor soil are the largest biomass, soil isn’t even part of the biomass but biological organisms who live predominantly within are.
The biomass of bacteria is about 500,000 times that of humans.
The classification of living organisms is incredibly anthropomorphic and bears no relation whatsoever to reality.
All classification should be based around the prokaryotes (bacteria) with humans and animals just a blip to the side, if even bothered with.
Yes it’s all arbitrary bullshit isn’t it.
Comments are closed.