The size of the farmer protests should seriously wipe the smug condescension off the Woke on Twitter.
I don’t think NZ Farmers have a working definition of socialism, communism or democracy if they are claiming Jacinda is making NZ a socialist state
Labour won their unprecedented MMP victory because Jacinda’s Covid leadership won over hundreds of thousands of 45+ female voters who John Key had won over in 2008 when they were in their 30s.
Those 45+ women voters want EVs and love the rebate, the naked truth is that the majority of Men driving Utes don’t vote Labour.
The truth is water quality now impacts everyone and the pollution of that water from dairy intensification won’t be tolerated.
The truth is climate change is real and we can’t allow cows to keep contributing to that.
The truth is Farmers are selling productive land to the Americans and Chinese and we must stop this for our own national interest.
The truth is the National Party are in decline and Farmers can’t get them to sell 49% of our state owned energy assets to create an irrigation slush fund worth $400million to convert as many square inches of NZ into intensified dairy farms!
The truth is that large scale corporate Dairy is a sunset industry with synthetic milk and meat likely to produce far cheaper and less environmentally damaging food, (plus an end of cruelty to the animals themselves)…
Milk shake – Why the future of dairy looks scary
At a lab in San Francisco, scientists working for New Zealand synthetic dairy start-up New Culture are trying to work out how they can produce mozzarella that looks, tastes and very importantly stretches like the real thing. Across the Pacific at home in Auckland, the company’s founder Matt Gibson says, as a vegan himself, the plant-based cheese offerings that refuse to melt properly and fail to satisfy in the taste department drew him towards exploring yeast fermented dairy protein, that cuts out the need for cows.
Plant-based diets are moving from niche to mainstream as consumers become more aware of the issues of animal welfare, climate change and pressure to feed the growing population. And this shift is predicted to be a huge disruption for New Zealand dairy, as makers of lab-produced products race to take over the ingredients market our farmers rely on.
Yeast fermentation of dairy protein is not an entirely new idea. But figuring out how to make it cheaper than real dairy, minimising its environmental impact and getting over the hurdle of consumer reluctance towards genetic modification are still being worked out.
But New Zealand dairy insider, food technologist and founder of multiple dairy start-ups Danielle Appleton, says it’s other Californian start-ups using similar technology specifically to ferment dairy bulk ingredients that could bring New Zealand’s biggest export commodity to its knees.
The vast majority of New Zealand dairy ends up not as recognisable, nicely marketed products in the supermarket fridge, but as anonymous milk-based powders like whey protein and casein. These powders are mostly sold to big food and manufacturing companies as ingredients. Appleton says what comes from New Zealand paddocks ends up in not just obvious products like chocolate, yoghurts or packets of cheese sauce powder.
“When someone like me in the dairy industry thinks about milk, I think about the milk sugar that goes into paracetamol. I think about some of the ingredients used to make wine really crystal clear. Some other stuff that might surprise you are frozen foods, so often [dairy powder is used] to stop your chicken strips or bits of potato sticking together in the freezer and my favorite, [unusual place dairy ends up] is furniture paint.”
In Gibson’s lab, the milk used to make cheese is created by taking a gene that contains what he describes as the ‘instruction manual’ for a dairy protein. That set of instructions is then introduced to microbes, essentially teaching them how to make dairy proteins. When his scientists put the microbes in a fermentation tank, they ferment sugar, turning it into dairy. The scientists then harvest the proteins and combine them with plant-based fats to create a milk-like solution.
…it is time we amputated corporate Dairy before it collapses and drags the entire country into a massive economic black hole. Technology will leap frog dairy, and the millisecond synthetic milk and meat can meet consumer taste, flavour and texture at a fraction of the price, it’s over!
We need to create a sinking cap on the number of cows with a view to reducing any of the benefits Dairy have used to prop up their sunset industry and divert that resource into new industries, new technology and new research and development. As many Dairy farms need to be converted to forests as quickly as possible and focus needs to be on providing for the domestic market and not the international market any longer.
Farmers feed 40 million people but we need them to just feed the 5million of us!
Labour shouldn’t panic, these Utes & Tractors don’t vote for us, but if this anger spreads to the suburbs via Hate Speech backlash – we are fucked!
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Interesting idea but how do you suggest we offset the loss of income that would entail to NZ Inc? Last time I checked money still doesn’t grow on trees
Correct it does not grow on trees, but it IS created out of thin air by a select few of the ‘uber wealthy’, who are the ALLOWED to charge interest. Great work if you can get it, or be born into it; conveniently born !
Used to be done by Government but at various stages the ‘really rich’ eased it away from democratically elected Governments, by slight of hand or through convenient Govt stupidity.
The Federal reserve act 1913 (ish) is the biggest contributor. Although it is NOT Federal and has NO RESERVES. For you and I, it’s called counterfeiting and we’d go to jail.
That is 90+% of the reason for almost ANY problem we (the 90%) have in the world and fixing that is WAY WAY MORE important than petty political bickering. It’s akin to arguing which record to play at a party in stowage class down below, as the Titanic is sinking.
Read up on Fractional reserve lending and Fiat currencies (by private central banks), if you are unaware of this.
p.s. Fruit growing on trees is also fairly close to money growing on trees.
Yeyi, to me your comment identifies the root cause of where we find ourselves. The economic system we have is busy destroying our planet – do we just continue to allow this destruction to occur in the name of profit or do we change the economic system so as it drives environmentally sustainable profit.
How do we tell farmers it’s over for them?
I don’t think you can @ Martyn. To an extent, I agree with much of @Countryboy’s opinions when it comes to farmers, and he has a battle on his hands trying to convince them that the gNats, banksters et al are not their friends.
Then there’s this: http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-howl-of-ugliness.html Valid points there as they undermine much of their own argument.
And what amused me watching the tractor protests across various towns and cities were the tractors themselves. All but one I saw relatively the latest. Wanted, but not necessarily needed that they’d got themselves in hock for. Then the double cab back on the farm, plus the runaround for the missus.
And look how they fucked Fonterra as a cooperative when it was sabotaged and marketised and put in the hands of the wideboys when their were warnings as it was being fucked at the time. THEY voted for its destruction.
Kieran McNulty may well be right (correct).
For the arseholes amongst them – diddums. Many of them are full of it.
For those that genuinely give a shit and are prepared to take responsibility for the environmental damage they’ve already done and atone for it – kudos and best of luck. It’s not as though there hasn’t been adequate warnings that things need to change.
Otherwise pffft – next
On the lighter side, the bike lobby/Greater Auckland/bus spotting fraternity must have been absolutely beside themselves with all those Ute’s and I can’t believe in saying it, tractors, invading their Queen St playground. I can only hope they obeyed the 30 km/hr speed limit
Wall to wall internal combustion engines. The irony is off the scale.
Will nobody think of the children?
So true Xray.
If only the farmers had been wearing bike pants or a gang patch the government would have chucked $700 million at a bridge or something for them.
Precisely, could have done burn outs with the police’s blessing too!
I am sure many that thought Labour was their salvation will think what a good idea it is to protest . There are plenty of groups out there that are suffering under this government. Those with mental health those needing hospital care from nurses who are not burnt out benefituries who got a pretend rise which has gone in the 3. 3 per cent inflation the 190000 children in poverty
those businesses due to lose business because they have no Maori shareholders businesses that a looking for staff to stay afloat doctors and dentists who do not warrent a rise anybody effected by family not being able to return because of the stuff up MIQ is . That should fill a few squares around the country.
The only ones not joining in will be landlords and homeowners who will be guarding their investment as the police are too busy trying to control the gangs
Then of course there’s Jen and Burton to consider. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for her to have to consider the alternatives to high-necked blue chiffon or be responsible for having to explain why Burton is basically a bit of a thick shit. Please – think of the children! AND Westpac ffs! It could be catastrofuk @Martyn. Reputations could be damaged and then where would we be?
No filthy rivers, No cows farting, no inefficient water usage, no bovine diseases, no unhappy cows to the slaughter, and no whinging farmers. Sounds wonderful! We’ll have to keep some produce farmers though. After the cull they may cease whinging. Either way, they’d be more manageable 🙂
A great piece of writing Martyn, and so true. Imagine the carbon footprint of the protest today. But then I guess it was only marginally more than the carbon footprint of any working day on farms across NZ.
And by the way, it’s not cow’s farting that’s the problem, it’s their burping. As ruminant animals they release methane as they chew their cud. I heard some cow-cocky (I think it was Gisborne district councillor Kerry Warsnop) on RNZ this morning and she didn’t even know that, she kept saying it was methane coming from their backsides. She also spent quite a bit of time denying that methane was a problem for climate change. These farmers (and councillors) really need some sort of education program. Besides the dangers of methane they don’t know the actual meaning of the term ‘communist’.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018804231/mass-rural-protest-across-the-country
By the way, the so-called “Clean” or cellular meats industry now appears to be part of the meat industry’s long-term strategy of creating a diverse “protein market” that still includes meat from live animals. “Hopes that Clean Meat might be part of the solution to the many ethical and ecological problems with animal agriculture now appear to be a distraction from the fundamental issues, papering over the problem of human mass violence against animals, and obscuring the urgent need for a plant-based human diet.”
https://www.cleanmeat-hoax.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNt8g_AZlMc
If it’s over for farmers, then it’s over for all of us. How do you think we’ll eat? WHAT do you think we’ll eat? How do you think this country will earn the foreign exchange to buy other necessities?
If farming goes down, all of us go too. Australia is sounding more and more attractive. You’re welcome to this godforsaken, woke hellhole at the arse end of nowhere.
1 – synthetic meat and milk is coming, it will be far cheaper and price dictates.
2 – Where did I say ‘stop feeding us’? Where? I said, stop feeding the other 40 million’
3 – I always laugh so hard when you claim you are off to Australia because it’s so bad here. As you well know Australia BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING will be a radioactive sand pit in 10 years. You pop off over to Australia and I bet we will all see you fleeing from their climate crisis hell hole for a glass of pure nz water – pure because we will have cracked down on the polluting farmers.
Happy days
Who else is left to attack?
Landlords – done
Firearms owners – done
Farmers – done
Tradies with utes – done
White males – done
Whose next in this debacle of societal fragmentation?
I am picking next on the agenda will will be the owners recreational vehicles (caravans, motorhomes, off road vehicles) through increased road tax and EV subsidies, private airplane owners and buyers of new ICE powered boats and PWC’s
Just to bring something slightly less misleading than Newstalk ZB repeated bullshit.
Landlords — only ever thinking of the community apparently except these pricks buy and sell housing for their own enrichment so fuck the community. And more often than not get paid by the taxpayers in housing supplements to do so. And as they neatly squirrel away their house collection they drive up prices of what’s left denying genuine buyers who want a roof over their heads, the opportunity. There’s a special place in hell for the greedy!
Firearms owners. Where the fuck do you think criminals get most of their hardware from? Poorly stored, easily stolen in burglaries of gun lovers and untraceable. And why do we ever need the kind of guns targeted in the buy back? Cry me a river.
Farmers – our lapse attitude to water poisoned a whole town and killed if I remember correctly. Many of our rivers are flowing cesspools. Bovine produced more of our climate change than any other thing. Even the former Chief Justice and part time farmer thought it perfectly acceptable to have her cattle using a river to literally shit in. That highlighted how bad things had got.
Tradies with utes. Again the world’s not going to end. Get a life. If Toyota want, and they don’t, their vehicles don’t need to be powered by filthy big diesels. The levy is stuff all and the first manufacturer to start selling lower emission vehicles will take all. Tradi3s just add it to the bill, they always do!
White males. Not having to many issues myself dude, but I’m not into victimhood either!
Yes, where did our colorblind, tolerant society go?
When did we stop helping each other and start hating on each other? Just look at some of the disturbing comments on here lately.
Who wins when the woke have everyone at each other’s throat?
What is the political answer to the woke religion?
I’d go to that rally too.
Home owners otherwise knows at NIMBYs – done.
NZ workers (lazy, drugged, refusing to pay for work, thus needing and relying on foreign workers) – done.
NZ gangs – current, but then given 2.75m to say sorry.
Feminists who believe in biological sex – current
Freedom of speech (racist, transphobic, et) – current
Pakeha who caused the CHCH terror attacks and all things racist in NZ through micro aggression – current
British Ex-pats who are colonial abusers (because they invented social welfare and democracy) responsible for everything bad in NZ, Asia, Africa and everywhere else – current
Until NZ is 100% foreign owned with 100% onshored foreign work force on minimum wages or free labour via Interns and students and other elaborate schemes, get rid of democracy in local and central government and remove evil middle class social welfare, the Neoliberals (both Natz and Labour) will not be happy.
Response to Andrews comment about all the current attacks – only he missed some out
Governments have sought to undermine the NZ community by attacking various groups to blame for the on-going problems, while masking and enabling who is the problem.
Note what is an issue is that some corporations like Rio Tinto and “NZ” Waste management seem to get the opposite treatment, no attacks when warranted, aka free rides from government to pollute and immunity from deaths from their trucks (Carla Neems), and being able to pollute towns with waste (Rio Tinto), subsidised power (Rio Tinto) and in the case of Waste management soon to pollute Auckland with more landfill (also granted to bring in overseas toxic waste to dump in NZ/Auckland Dome) and 700 truck movements per day.
All that about plant-based foods – Ummm – guess who produces those plants
Soooo…. What was all that about “Free Speech” again???
All the farmers are asking for is the chance to HAVE THEIR SAY –
To be a part of the discussions – TO BE HEARD!!!
Free speech for some. Others?
“Somebody Shut Him Up” …where have I heard that before (Oh, I remember..)
That phrase is not in the actual words above, but it is the clear message given Decisions made in advance of discussion. Conclusions gymnastically leaped through with double twists and turns.
Free speech? Yeah, right.
I posted this elsewhere but it belongs HERE –
It is NOT THE FARMERS who have caused this – It is the govt:
Why a block of NZ cheese costs twice as much in NZ as in Aus
Remove the GST on our own essential NZ foods NOW!!!!!!!!
…. I feel so angry about this … It is so fundamentally WRONG!!!
And it hurts everyone – the farmers and growers as much as ALL KIWIS!!!!!
Especially the children!!!!!
(What is WRONG with those stuffed pretenders in the beehive?????????? They are blind and deaf to the obvious.)
How can you blame the government? Deducting GST is going to remove about $3.30 per massively overpriced block. That, by the way, does not come close to the difference in cost!
Freight to Australia probably is a similar cost.
Dairy NZ just rips off New Zealanders, always has, always will.
What we badly need is overseas products to introduce actual competition. Then Fonterra can stick their monopoly up their over paid arses!
going to remove about $3.30
And yet the govt considers that such a fortune that they cannot even give that amount as a per-day increase to those most in need. At the same time they tout their less-than-$3 per day increase to benes as something amazing, – LESS than the amount per block of cheese saved on ONE block alone if even only the final end gst were removed.
That 15% GST is added at every step of the way – or rather is snatched by the govt at every step of the way – not just the final end product. And, there are hundreds of steps – services and products required along the way which all demand that extra 15% to go to the govt – In the end it feels like they want to tax every breath you take, by 15%.
How do our growers compete with O/S products – all kinds of fruit and vegs which are sold here cheaper than those grown down the road?
It is criminal that this is happening.
Kheala. Well said, again. Of course gst should be removed from foodstuffs. It is indefensible poor clobbering.
Than you for referencing the children. New Zealand hospitals are currently bursting at the seams with babies struggling to breathe with the cruel RSV virus, and doctors say that it hasn’t peaked yet.
The RSV virus is transmitted from the day care centres who look after toddlers because parents cannot afford not to work at two or three jobs. Better diets with healthier nutrition would help the immune system of all children, and every child counts, not just the children of the few to whom gst is a negligible cost. Once again, this country is showing how little it cares about the children of the poor.
Snow White: Take GST off dairy and I’m taking an easy bet Fonterra would screw us and add the equivalent back on to profit from!
Having said that dairy products are not that good for human consumption anyway, we would be better off if we didn’t eat them at all.
I do wonder how many of the farmers that protested yesterday used vehicles in the protest that cost over $100,000 and thanks to special deals between government and farmers that the NZ taxpayers contributed to those vehicles?
I wonder how many farmers took advantage of the Wage Subsidy Scheme last year because they have staff and managed to make huge profits anyway and didn’t have to pay back the WSS?
I wonder what farmers would have thought if John Key was still prime minister of New Zilland and called their protests as “Rent a Protestor”?
Now whilst I respect our farmers they are doing themselves a dis-service. I am sure there were many farmers who didn’t go on the protest because they realise they are onto a good thing.
Firstly much of the pollution in NZ is caused by people not dairy. Dairy and farming is not causing pollution, but the rise of intensive farming is a huge and growing problem as is farming in places that are unsuitable for that type of farming (aka CHCH for Dairy).
Added to this is the rise in monopolies and mega farms which is very alarming for NZ’s future (traditionally farms were farmed by families not corporations).
The rise in corporation farming has resulted in unsustainable farming practises, more pollution and exploitative working conditions for people who are bought in to farm (traditionally farmers were their own workforce – they didn’t need workers as they and their family farmed the lands) with all the associate problems.
In the US huge monopolies have started to occur with very poor practises from this.
Investigation shows scale of big food corporations’ market dominance and political power
“A handful of powerful companies control the majority market share of almost 80% of dozens of grocery items bought regularly by ordinary Americans, new analysis reveals.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/jul/14/food-monopoly-meals-profits-data-investigation
In NZ there are signs that multinational companies or private equity are taking over NZ farms and farming practises which are highly polluting and they don’t farm the land themselves, are farming unsustainably, and driving the need for foreign workers to come into NZ to work for them. (While NZ taxpayers pay for the risks, health care, schooling, welfare subsidies etc)
United States citizens and companies are buying up New Zealand land for farming, forestry and wine-making, an RNZ analysis reveals.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/whoseatingnewzealand/446687/us-buying-up-our-primary-industries
While Chinese interests seem to hold the majority interests of NZ’s largest companies and expanding from Silver Fern Farms, Comvita, water bottling, Wrightsons, Milk NZ, Westland Milk, NEW ZEALAND KING SALMON INVESTMENTS LIMITED (ultimate holding company registered in Virgin Islands with Callander Group Limited) and this practise of NZ façadism disguises the true identity of the true owners, who often live elsewhere or have been handed NZ citizenship recently.
Clearly OIO and Commerce commission are asleep at the wheel and happy to hand over all of NZ assets into foreign control (or give foreign nationals NZ citizenship to ‘hide’ the practise) to ensure high prices, poor work practises and little profits going back to NZ!
Nothing changes for the better for anyone until the banksters stranglehold control of society is broken. And the banksters are not going to allow their stranglehold on society to to be broken.
So we will keep ‘throwing babies and children onto the fire’ to keep current banking arrangements -creation of money out of thin air and charging interest on it- intact for just a little longer. And will fuck the [planet and people a bit more in the process,
Needless to say, the mendacity and cowardice that charaacterises ALL POLITICANS OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES ensures that NZ will be driven off the cliff, along with all other industrial nations. Quite soon.
Everyone is now thoroughly
“The truth is climate change is real and we can’t allow cows to keep contributing to that”.
You’re not wrong Martyn. But don’t blame the cows, blame the economic model that supports diary intensification. Carbon sequestration is the name of the game but in the Waikato region alone, which has almost half of New Zealand’s peatlands, around 70,000 hectares have been lost to dairying. That’s around a 75% loss. The science tells us that intact peat bogs, such as the Kopuatai dome in the Waikato region, can hold up to 1,400 tonnes of carbon per hectare. But collectively, the Waikato’s drained peatlands produce 10-33 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions per hectare each year. One only needs to do the math.
The draining of peatlands in the Waikato region, for intensive dairying, has done far more damage, in terms of emissions, than the cows themselves.
https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-is-new-zealand-losing-or-gaining-native-forests-163976
blame the economic model that supports diary intensification.
Yes. And allowing ownership by mega-corps and foreign entities.
Right on John, about all we have left now to earn an income in the world is farming forestry and fishing, pretty much everything else, tourism, foreign students, energy and major manufacturing is near dead with nothing coming in behind. farming exports are vital for maintaining anything like the current standard of living of the country, let alone anything better.
Yesterday needs to be seen for what it was, it was the awakening and mobilization of a hither too dormant and generally compliant sector. The country now has a new political movement that has resources and clearly demonstrated strength, a newly organized power base to be reconned with.
Now Martyn says that it is the 45 plus women of the country who put Jacinda into power, yes they voted for her but it was the provincial cities and towns that gave the the out right majority. Yesterday these voters put her on notice that they are not happy with where things are heading.
Jacinda in her desperation to “out Green” the Greens and “out Maori” the Maori party has imploded that provincial support. In short she has divided the team of five million into at least two teams.
Now she has two options plough on with her unworkable regulations:for water soil and SNA’s and the plainly unfair “ute tax” and deal with unrest and discord, which will not go away (yesterday demonstrated a depth and breath of willingness of Provincial people to stand up and say enough is enough, it will only grow from here)
OR back off and accept that each of these proposals is flawed in part and rework them with proper consultation with those directly affected.
What will she do?
The country now has a new political movement that has resources and clearly demonstrated strength, a newly organized power base to be reckoned with.
Something to think about.
Far from being “the end” for farmers, the opposite is the case. This is a time of re-birth or rather, regeneration of farming. For one thing, in the times just ahead (already here, if the greedy money grabbers didn’t get in the way) the world will need food as it never has done before.
What IDIOTS are we, to have turned what should have been a food basket for the world, into a guy-fawkes heap of tinder-pine? Insanity. Mindless stupidity, driven by greed.
100% Kheala
large scale corporate Dairy is a sunset industry
Yes, that bit is correct (or let’s hope so – and that that sun sets fast!)
But you have thrown ALL FARMERS into that same box, when the term includes many more diverse situations than that. Big Corps should be banned here in AO/ NZ, yes. True farming needs to regenerate, to diversify, to go organic. Farmers often grow crops as well, btw. Farmers and growers and orchardists are our hope of survival into the future. Without food, as without water, as without land – we’ve got nothing. Yet the govt seems to be merrily selling off the lot of them. As well as our past and our future. I call treason.
Re the Megacorps: So, what were those 20+ “Investors” who arrived on our shores a week or so ago? – No info so far. Yet more exploiters of our serfdom?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/07/08/family-farms-can-help-solve-climate-change
From that link:
We need to stop investing in systems that don’t work and start investing in the ones that do. We need a fair price for what we produce, one that covers the cost of using the best practices for our farms and the climate. We need to expand and improve USDA’s [or AO/ NZ’s] conservation programs to promote and support farms using practices that are beneficial to soil health and the environment. We need to invest in the local food and local processing facilities that will allow family farm agriculture to thrive and feed our communities.
We can create a strong stable food system that can withstand a pandemic, global economic pressure, and help the climate. Independent family farms and diverse, decentralized ownership of food production, distribution and farmland are the solutions to climate change—now let’s get the policies in place that put the tools in the hands of family farmers and ranchers needed to address climate change.
It is the government that has incentivized the conversion of productive farmland into invasive pines. They’re being used as carbon offsets for other nations and killing off our economy.
The cloned alien pines are killing the land itself – See where any of them have been clear-felled – Wrecked land. They have displaced our native trees and wildlife – these disappear – then they blame the hedgehogs!
They are alien mono-forests, – they do not belong on this land. And from what I have read, they cause more harm to the climate. They certainly do to the environment, to the soil, to the birds and native plants. And they are a massive fire risk. And, much of this is foreign owned – that land should NEVER have been sold. They had no right to sell it. It was not theirs to sell.
In the Climate commission report there was mention of this – of the dangers of such mono-forests. Yet there is NO mention of this anywhere by the govt or in the media. Instead, they put it all on the farmers. There are lies, deceit and all kinds of crap going on here.
Here’s the thing. With the advent of faux foods, the only people who will be looking to use our produce, will be extremely discerning and likely wealthy. If we continue to not put the environment very high on the agenda, they will not buy from us.
It is as simple as that.
Why are successive govts, of whatever stripe, so reluctant to show us clearly how much of our land, how much of Aotearoa is now in foreign ownership. I’d like to see a map showing this, clearly, as well as all the stats.
Those who find themselves in the halls of power cannot continue to sell off our land to foreign nations and foreign entities – to overseas interests. Aotearoa is not theirs to sell. They are holding it in trust; their role is to guard and protect the land. …Never, ever to profiteer from it.
Waimata – can you name any country that has gained clean drinkable water by relaxing water quality regulations.
This is what the world needs, and urgently. It’s right here in black and white, and it is so clear it makes a nonsense of all the silly arguments presented by many.
Here it is. If we don’t take on board what this treaty proposes, we are truly stuffed;
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15i3Szq-yqHowPC58AYvAfdWjjLeSbTczDPxydvJNwvs/edit
The Plant Based Treaty initiative is a grassroots campaign designed to put food systems at the forefront of combating the climate crisis. Modeled on the popular Fossil Fuel Treaty, the Plant Based Treaty aims to halt the widespread degradation of critical ecosystems caused by animal agriculture and to promote a shift to healthier, sustainable, plant-based diets. We are urging scientists, individuals, groups, businesses, and cities to endorse this call to action and put pressure on national governments to negotiate an international Plant Based Treaty.
The Three Demands
As a companion to the UNFCCC/Paris Agreement, we are urging governments to negotiate a global treaty which will include the following three principles.
RELINQUISH – No land use change, ecosystem degradation or deforestation for the purposes of animal agriculture
REDIRECT – An active transition away from animal-based agricultural systems to plant-based food systems
RESTORE – Restore key ecosystems and reforest the Earth
There is a growing number of scientists calling for urgent action to address the elephant (or rather – the cow) in the room: animal agriculture and the need to radically transform our food systems. Even if all of the world’s fossil fuel emissions ended today, we still wouldn’t be able to cap rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – all due to the significant impact of animal agriculture on resources, pollution, emissions, ecosystem integrity and land use.
Farmers selling land to foreign interests is very worrying. They do not think it matters who owns NZ?
I can think of at least three countries who think they already do.
Are farmers NZers , or just selfish greedy bastards prostituting to the highest bidder?
With covid and climate change where are they going to live?
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