Groundswell have addicted us to China’s money – we should be protesting Corporate Farmers! 

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
58
1937

Well that was all a bit of nonsense wasn’t it?

The Groundswell protest was a cow fart in an empty paddock wasn’t it?

Despite all the connections, it fell very flat.

 

 

Groundswell want to know why we in the urban centres are so pissed off with them, so let’s answer that shall we?

We are pissed off at Corporate Farmers over how John Key sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund that was used to intensify dairy farming while polluting our water and generating climate changing gasses!

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

We are sick to death at the way the entire economy is forced to bend over backwards for a sunset industry that will crash the millisecond the fast food industry can create a synthetic milk powder.

By the way claiming that NZs emissions mean nothing in comparison to China and India isn’t a justification to do nothing, it’s an acknowledgement that radical adaptation is the only move left because those Goliath economies have already doomed us to a dangerous climate change future!

Shouldn’t the Corporate Farmer Quislings be apologising to us?

The Corporate Farmer Quislings tell us the $20billion in trade they get from John Key’s ‘all our cows in one Beijing paddock’ strategy is beneficial for us.

Really?

We don’t see any of that fucking money!

We pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so we are competing with the 400million others wanting that product!

So we don’t see no price benefit from those quisling corporate farmers getting richer.

A cow shits the same as 14 humans, we have 10 million cows, that’s the equivalent of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our rivers.

We don’t see no environmental benefit from these quisling corporate farmers getting richer.

We are now utterly addicted to Chinese money and can’t disentangle ourselves from their influence and power, especially with 200 000 Chinese NZers now living in Auckland, a city of 1.2million.

We don’t see no sovereignty benefit from these quisling corporate farmers getting richer.

The quisling corporate farmers claim they are generating jobs, yet they import cheap foreign labour to do those jobs!

Look at the fuss kicked up by Farmers at the mere suggestion they pay for their pollution!

This money generated by trade with China comes with so many fish hooks there’s more hook than fish.

We have been betrayed by the quisling corporate farmers and their National Party patsies. THEY are getting rich, we aren’t.

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.

If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

58 COMMENTS

  1. Pak n Save “special” on leg of lamb the other day $52 ish, down from $62 ish. A leg in my freezer purchased some months back was $25 on special. Someone’s creaming it but I’m not getting fatter. I just won’t pay those prices. They’ll no doubt be lots of lamb legs in land fill this Xmas. Hopefully they get given to food banks though. That would be hearty.

  2. Another townie calling farming a sunset industry. Farming in NZ is world leading because NZ farmers keep innovating and are increasingly productive.
    At the same tlme as you want the government to spend vast amounts helping the poor, you want to kneecap our most productive industry.
    Lets get rid of oil and farmers because obviously we don’t need them and see how NZ turns out. This won’t make the slightest difference to climate change and your doomsday predictions even for 2030. But you will be moaning about even more poverty.

    • Mass dairy farming for export milk powder is a sunset industry
      Mass consumption of meat is a sunset industry.
      If you cant appreciate the wishes of your future consumers you will perish despite your futile and ignorant sloganeering and protestations.

    • What a crock of shit Tom. Farmers have been moaning their tits off since the subsidies were taken off them back in the 80s. Remember Muldoons guaranteed minimum price payments. Paid each farmer based on stock units, no checking, someone close to me seemed to have 200 ewes on his dairy farm. They were unique sheep, totally invisible and lived off fresh air.The sky didn’t fall then. Those that went broke were only in business because of said subsidies and were replaced in due course. Didn’t see any empty farms back then or since.
      Reality is that farmers, NatActs are dirty polluting bags of shit and if they had any sense of responsibility to the country that has given them a soft ride for ever they would suck it up and get on with doing the right thing. This is coming from one whose parents were farmers and one who has spent 50 years in the dairy industry I am almost ashamed to say.

      • MW. There are plenty of good Dairy farmers out there. Why were you and your parents so bad. In your own words dirty polluting bags of shit.

        • Probably would be viewed that way now. And lots still are. I think I have the ability to see the error of our ways, many are still ignoring the facts and continue to spout shit both literally and figuratively.

    • tom, farmers in NZ were ‘world leaders’ because of government funded research, and research stations back in the day…techniques fonterra were happy to sell to china.

  3. All this is true but a fart tax is a tax on food production and will only increase consumer price for butter milk and cheese.

    And why dont other industries gather enough political muscle to demand a $400 million or $1billion fund to jump scale a human pharmecueticals industry or gaming industry or any cleaner greener industry?

    • which brings us back to windfall taxes on the duopoly and the introduction of a decent quality europian player…jo…if we can bribe hollywood we can bribe aldi….if we actually want to that is

    • “fart tax ”

      Yes, fart tax. That’s where the methane is.
      Your attempt at mockery through language is asinine.

  4. The culprits are the Transnational Capital and Wage Slave Labour Parties… and don’t forget the real estate agents.

  5. NZ has allowed a dysfunctional system of importing cheap foreign labour and it’s not just farming.

    50% of Auckland’s construction is now Chinese. It hasn’t even lowered construction prices it seems to have made property higher as the new builds are worth more than the old builds being demolished and everyones rates (which effect rent) go up for all the new infrastructure of construction that new migrants are buying in a ponzi to access NZ. Not to mention spiralling insurance premiums as people in NZ keep being allowed to build is places effected by flooding, climate change etc.

    When things go wrong with all the cheap labour, taxpayers pay the bill, unions support taxpayers paying the bill, and nobody from the Chinese community is even bought to justice even if a person is dead, working illegally etc. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/illegally-working-overstayer-dies-on-the-job-acc-payment-made-to-widow-in-china/OWADEJMGCUYM36WLF6YNKUA2SE/

    Occasionally NZ justice make tentative attempts at other nationalities but NZ residency is never revoked so it’s win, win, work illegally, get residency, get dowry from arranged marriage, take ERA action and get compensation, get to keep NZ residency for family and get more relatives over. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/10/exploited-migrant-worker-awarded-nearly-100k-in-compensation.html (Note if it’s a Chinese national found using illegal construction labour, the fines seem more like a fraction of that)

    NZ does not care if labour is exploited, we even buy more from China itself!

    New Zealand buying more from Chinese region linked to forced labour
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/china-and-nz/125873315/new-zealand-buying-more-from-chinese-region-linked-to-forced-labour

    This is green lit by government, they allow the immigration visas, they control the policy so that police, woke safe, ACC, labour inspectorate and not prosecuting and if they do, the fines are pathetic and everyone in the exploitation get to win, by keeping their recent NZ citizenship and residency status.

    • Why does a country import labour? Because the citizens don’t want to, or don’t have to do the work. Has nothing to do with cheap or expensive. Has everything to do with attitude.

      • Happened to Britain too. Then those braying for cheap labour as they can’t retain workers, wanted Brexit, then low behold, more to Singapore after saying how Great Brexit would be. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/21/lobbying-row-james-dyson-is-no-stranger-to-political-controversy

        Too many self serving thicko’s with money able to access and influence Western politics now. When it goes wrong the billionaires leave and buy another citizenship residency situation, but the rest of the population has to live with the mess.

        • Brexistani billioner’s greatest skill has always been convincing they are well meaning benevolently smiling do-gooders while ripping everyone off. Dyson the highest achiever there. His bullshit ignores the laws of physics but almost every progressive environmentally aware etc consumer buys his products. After paying so much, no one wants to admit mistake (example of the well known “Leica-syndrome”).

    • This is the very purpose of hyper neolib capitalism.
      Extract the maximum profit through the lowest cost input and charge the absolute maximum the market will bear.
      It may be outrageous but thats what it’s designed to do.

      • and needs globalism to flourish, otherwise once they backrupt the locals, when need ‘fresh’ consumers and labour from other countries to keep going. It’s economic ponzi.

    • “In 2016, Dhiman was granted a three-year essential work visa as a store manager for the pizza store in Flat Bush.”

      This is my favourite line from the articles above. I never realised running a pizza store was “essential work”. Who needs nurses when you’ve got junk food, right?

  6. “We pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so we are competing with the 400million others wanting that product!”

    That could be simply solved by government policy. Minimum reservations for New Zealand consumers and price controls.

  7. When the emissions trading scheme was initiated farmers were let off the hook to give them time to develop technologies to reduce their emissions. Since then emissions have increased rather than decrease.
    Farmers its time you started paying like the rest of us. Stop this bloody whinging.
    Stop with the excuses that you are the bread basket of NZ, 90% of the products you make go overseas and only you profit from that, zero benefit to the rest of us. We’re just stuck with the muck you chuck in rivers.

  8. This is very heartfelt Martyn and mostly true. I think we should separate the three very different issues though.
    Corporate farming: same as corporate everything else, we are being screwed with the express permission of our (different parties) governments as mentioned above.
    Pollution: Farmers have been working very hard on this one with billions having been spent over the last two decades on fencing and riparian plantings of waterways and other mitigations. Look at our farms when you are driving through the country…don’t they look great? So many trees on farms now.
    Emissions reduction: This is a very contested subject with many different points of view from many people involved in the science and agriculture specialties fields. Apart from which branch of the religion one follows it is important to apply logic as to “If we do this, what happens next, and what happens after that?”
    Do we want a country of 6 million people with less food production and lower GDP? We may not be able to afford to import the food we no longer produce. I imagine someone will build an insect farm so we can eat bugs! It will be a corporation so we can be bled from the artery again.
    Do we want a ghost country of pine trees where farmers used to live and ghost towns where the mechanics, teachers, farm workers used to live?
    Carbon credits are a world-wide ponzi scheme. There I’ve said it.

    • Good points M. GDP is how the government finance’s everything. If we restrict farmers to produce cheaper food for NZrs there is way less tax paid by farmers and less produce sold overseas, therefore way less money for the government to spend. Those that feel farmers should subsidise their food can’t have it both ways.

      • Wrong. It’s easy to set limited quotas. Ardern won’t do it because she hates working left-wing solutions.

  9. NZ’s other problem is that they can’t be bothered to get accurate data on emission and climate change and compare who is doing a great job in NZ business to those who should try and do better.

    It’s just name calling at this stage.

    There are international standards to measure climate change but are NZ regulators up to the job?

    Will NZ regulators just virtue signal so that NZ emissions are not comparable due to being in PDF’s not publicly available to the public and then be surprised when in a decade (like NZ recycling that is pathetic at 5% and after spending a fortune on pretending we are clean and green) be found out when our trading partners mandate knowing this information and laugh at NZ, due to our inability to meet the correct international climate change standard and report in a practical and measurable way?

  10. Instead of penalizing farmers, why don’t we incentivize/teach them to convert their farms to lower polluting methods/produce. Governments love to tax as it fills their coffers with no outlay.

    However assisting & rewarding people to change their practice take effort, and is always more long lasting and fruitful.

  11. Many of these comments say they do not see the results of the money earned by the farmers .When farmers and associated businesses make a profit then they pay tax as do all the workers involved . These taxes pay for all the thinks that makes NZ a great place to live. No exports and we would quickly lose our standard of income and that would effect our other main earner which is tourism . High end tourists would find this country less attractive if we had poor roads etc.

    • I thought the whole point was farmers don’t want to pay tax trev…..high end tourists are probably not impressed by the goat tracks we laughingly refer to as roads.

  12. We need more Yuan.
    Should get them in to build some Silk Road infrastructure and Houses too!

    Get them in to also build us a port up north and also some rail infrastructure all in exchange for some potatoes.

  13. Everything is a Sunset Industry once lake Taupo blows. In the meantime Fonteara should do the smart PR thing and half the price of cheese and milk to kiwi customers. Call it kiwi cheese and kiwi milk

  14. Yes, but Martyn — many of the anti – Groundswell lot – are keen for us to abolish dairy, sheep, pig farming all together…and have soy, and bugs instead (but, not them of course)

  15. “Groundswell have addicted us to China’s money – we should be protesting Corporate Farmers! ”
    Oh God…
    Have you learned nothing from my years here of writing about the politics, and the consequential economics, of AO/NZ agriculture ? Clearly not. I mean, God man, WTF?
    The reason why China is now our only market is because politicians, specifically National Party politicians and their cronies, many of whom were farmers, and ‘were’ being the operative word here ran our world first, world best farmers into he dust with our traditional trading partners in the UK, the USA and Europe so another market/s had to be found. In short, The Natzo’s and a hand full of dodgy traitor cockies fucked us, their neighbours and our traditional Made In England, Made in USA, Made in Germany, Made in Italy trading partners.
    ‘Groundswell’ is a swelling alright. It’s a brain-fart swelling of one or two to subvert the thinking of a select few intelligent farmers down into a lonely, dead-end road where their thinking is lured then murdered and buried with the help of the Kiwi-as MSM. Aye Boys ? Yes. You. You nine multi billionaires. You’d know about that, right?
    What you’re doing @ MB is effectively blaming the lead miners for the bullet that killed JFK. That was a metaphor btw. What you don’t realise is that our farmers have no power. None. They do what they’re lead to believe is the right thing to do and those ‘leading are Machiavellian confederates with the smell of cheap and easy money in their nostrils. They’ll follow the Judas goats to their slaughter while carrying their trust in their trembling little hands and every time they do that, they get fucked on the deal. Their throats are cut then they’re thrown to the foreign owned banksters. Every single time. And why is that? Well, the evidence is hard to miss. See Auckland? Now, ask yourself? Why, Auckland? How, Auckland? Where did Auckland come from? Where did urban AO/NZ come from, for that matter? And who’s money was used to link the towns and cities? Who’s money was it? Where did that money come from? Tourism? Was tourism our mainstay primary industry in the 1930’s and ’40’s ? Did the nine billionaires make their billions by selling trinkets to tourists in Queenstown? A bungy jump? A jet boat ride? Spot a skiing?
    The truth is right there in front of you and it’s so obvious you can’t see it and it all started with a boat.
    Wikipedia:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_(ship)
    “The Dunedin listen (help·info) (1876–90) was the first ship to successfully transport a full cargo of refrigerated meat from New Zealand to England. In this capacity, it provided the impetus to develop the capacity of New Zealand as a major provider of agricultural exports, notwithstanding its remoteness from most markets. Dunedin disappeared at sea in 1890, and neither the ship nor her crew has ever been seen or heard from since. ”
    PS. ‘Groundswell’. There will be, deep within that swelling, a maggot or two who will be wriggling as I write. ‘Groundswell’ will be a movement to discredit farmers and in so doing will trivialise their efforts to be heard and understood. Driving tractors through town is idiotic. It just pisses people off while in reality-land it achieves nothing other than proving just how powerless our farmers are at making a desperate point.
    Farmers. All you have to do, is to do nothing. Keep the rams from the ewes, the bulls from the heifer cows and the seed from the soil. That’s all you have to do. Then wait. Trust me, you wont be waiting long.
    Banksters ? I know what you do, you dirty fuckers. You swing your leg over our politicians then you all lie to us. You’re greedy, dangerously psychopathic liars, thieves and crooks. You’re in fact the head of the pimple on the arse of AO/NZ. We don’t want you , we don’t need you, so fuck off, and you can leave our $billions behind as you go because, thanks to you scum bags, there are plenty of Kiwi kids who need new shoes and a good breakfast.

    • You might be surprised at the results of a “Farmer strike”. There is actually a massive surplus of food globally, so I’m sure NZ will just print up some new NZDs and import meat from our “trading partners”, most who we have free trade deals with. Of course none of them farm as sustainably or as clean as NZ farmers do and thus increase the very emissions we’re trying to fix – but that doesn’t matter because it won’t be “in our backyard”. It’s the same mentally of European countries closing their nuclear power reactors to be more “clean and green” (e.g Netherlands, Germany), but are now importing electricity from France who generate their surplus electricity from…. nuclear reactors (and are happy to build more to meet demand).

  16. Just curious how the corporate farmer/pollution hate applies to Ngai Tahu being the corporate behemoth overseeing 100 000 hectares of land in dairy beef and forestry.
    Bearing in mind they were knocked back for more conversions to irrigated dairy land in Canterbury.

    One doesn’t have to wonder very hard what happens when you give the same iwi control of the water as well under 3 waters.

    As far as the farmer tax itself goes, it’s not going to stand so probably not something to get upset about.
    The cost and availability of food due to climate change is one of the core reasons for the Paris climate accord so banging a tax on farmers is counter intuitive (fucking stupid), and not something any else is doing.
    It will go.

    The modest protest didn’t upset the townies too much (deliberately) and there was a lot of support from city folks.
    Compare and contrast to the twats at the other protest (all 5 of them) glueing their hands to the pavement and annoying the shit out of everyone.

    • so your favoured group is free to disrupt traffic whilst those you oppose are not keepcalm…?
      the phrase full of shit springs to mind.

  19. I irony of all this is, while the farming fraternity is highly critical of this government, incessantly claiming they and it’s leader are communist, yet the farming industry is wedded to the concept of making as much money any way they can with the largest communist country on the planet.

  21. Corporate farms ? didn’t the government that calls itself Labour ,suggest we have more foreign Corporates own of Build to Rent Housing in NZ.
    Blackrocks and other corporates been buying big into housing in the US.
    They sell big blocks of land to foreign Corporates to plant in pines.
    We have to reduce carbon.
    But this tax will mean more complexity and Corporate ownership of land.

Comments are closed.