Jehan Casinader: Farmers need support, not an endless stack of regulations
When was the last time you watched a cow being milked? Have you ever sat behind the wheel of a tractor? Or swept wool off the oily floor of a shearing shed?
In a game of “farming bingo”, many Kiwis would struggle to cross off a single square, let alone a whole row. Around 84% of us live in urban areas. We’re totally disconnected from rural life.
A few decades ago, city kids would visit their rural relatives during the holidays – chopping wood, chasing sheep and hooning around on farmbikes. Now, we have a whole generation of adults who’ve never even caught a whiff of a cow shed.
We love eating red meat, but wince at the thought of an animal being killed. We boast about drinking plant-based milk, but forget that dairy is our biggest export earner. We complain about food waste, but expect supermarkets to only sell perfect, blemish-free fruit and veg.
Some city-dwellers view farmers with suspicion. There’s a common belief that farmers are stuck in their ways. They don’t care about the environment, and they just want to make money.
That’s not the reality. People go into farming because they want to develop the land, not trash it. I’ve never met a farmer who hopes to leave the environment in a worse state than they found it. Their property isn’t just a source of income, it’s a source of prestige.
Some people believe farmers are rolling in cash. But a recent survey by Federated Farmers found that only 54% of farms are turning a profit. Believe it or not, that was considered a good result. (Six months ago, only 27% of farms were profitable.)
A farm is not an office. There are no well-being workshops or lunchtime yoga sessions. There’s no such thing as “flexible working” during calving season. Weekends are non-existent and holidays are rare. Every day, farmers contend with changes in weather, interest rates and the global commodities market.
They love the job, but often, it takes a toll. I can’t count how many times I’ve walked up a dusty driveway to interview a farming family that has lost a loved one to suicide.
If we’re honest, many urban New Zealanders just don’t understand the pressures farmers face – or the value they generate. Can you blame them for feeling neglected?
On and on and on it goes.
Is he dating a Farmer’s daughter or something?
I do like Jehan Casinader, he is an intelligent and thoughtful writer but this long whinge about poor Farmers not getting the love they deserve kinda ignores a whole bunch of stuff doesn’t it?
Can we please all thank National and their Farmer mates for putting all our cows in one Beijing Paddock and placing us all in a position where China can hack us and get away with it because we are so beholden to our Chinese Economic overlords now!
NZ Dairy farms were forced to take on huge debt for Dairy intensification that our environment couldn’t sustain WHILE enslaving us to our new Chinese Economic Overlords.
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!
Enjoying those new power price bills? That’s because of what Key did for the Farmers!
We are sick to death of 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.
Can we all please thank John Key, Corporate Farmers and the Banks for addicting us to our Chinese Economic Overlords?
It’s neat that Jehan wants to cuddle the Farmers because they do need our respect, but the totality off NZ political muscle has ensured their interests are put first and the next generation of Kiwis won’t put up with that no more.
The Left needs a new deal with Farmers.
The Biggest Lie in NZ Politics is that NZ Dairy is the cleanest and greenest in the world when the reality is that it’s a cherry picked nonsense that leaves out pollution so NZ Dairy can get to the numbers to pretend to be clean and green.
Russel Norman’s take down of this Dairy propaganda is ruthless…
“NZ is the biggest seller of a simple commodity called dried milk powder, the cheapest of the cheap, and if you look at what is happening in food production around the world they are looking for more environmentally sound food products.
They are looking for higher value products.
We’ve gone down the pathway of the lowest quality commodity you can produce in the world.
NZ is mid range in terms of its environmental cost per kilogram of milk solids, there is nothing special about it, and we do feed a small number of people compared to the billions on the planet and the economics is very clear that you can be just as profitable if you pull back on the stock rate, pull back on the amount of fertiliser and actually produce a higher product.
Organics is in fact doing incredibly well globally, so why don’t we become a producer of dairy rather than the producer of the cheapest commodity on the planet which results in us trashing our water ways and being big climate producers, that’s a better pathway isn’t it?
…he’s so right!
We always ignore that the 40million number is based on us selling milk powder as a base line ingredient filler for the manufactured food industry. The PR spin pretends it’s wholesome NZ cheese and milk and meat those 40million are eating when the truth is the vast majority of what we export is basic bitch milk powder used as a filler ingredient!
The Climate Crisis was some event we feared at the end of the century, what we are seeing is an unleashing of heat events well beyond what we feared.
There is just no plan to adapt to this new reality when it should be the driving force to begin immediate and radical adaptation for what is coming.
We have no comprehension of what is coming and we are simply not prepared for the age of consequences.
Watching National, ACT and Corporate Farmers use their economic and political muscle to avoid responsibility for what comes next can only be resolved by civil unrest and a campaign of civil disobedience against those interests.
Just consider how the Corporate Farming Lobby have managed to avoid any tax on their pollution since mid 2004!
They have pushed and pushed and pushed it off for 20 years!
National have already promised ANOTHER 5 year extension which will mean the agricultural industry have managed to stop any tax on their pollution for quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Left must force a bargain with Farmers and Growers for strategically essential reasons.
They are going to feed us when the famine comes.
A recent report on food security found NZ had incredibly low food security because it was so open market driven and refused to subsidise farmers.
Which is where we on the Left must drive the debate.
We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.
For growers we need to protect our most productive growing land for food by giving those producers tax breaks to ensure they can continue to feed NZers first.
Rebuilding a direct link between the harvest grown here, the people who grow it and a grateful local market who enjoy the product WITH a 15% price reduction.
Climate change will kill global free market supply chains, we are locked into hyper-regionalism. We need to build new economic structures, subsidising NZ kai for the domestic market would lock in certainty for producers while strengthening food security for the population.
We have to find new ways of working together to ensure we can survive what’s coming.
The old greeds, the old hates and the old exploitations will no longer hold the system together if that system is melting in real time.
Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality
Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions
This is the age of consequences.
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You can’t really blame individual farmers for the countries economic strategy. Addicting the country to selling milk powder to china can be slated home to National but what is the export income economic policy from Labour TPM Greens to fix the problem? Its still the same primary produce single buyer problem NZ had 60 years ago with Britain. And the country is still exporting commodities. A commodity export tax would incentivise value added exports.
If farmers paid for their emmissions what are the consequences? Possibly speeded up development of fart defying cow and grass genetics. Definately lowered overseas income and sending of carbon credit money offshore affecting the balance of payments. If farmers paid an emmissions tax how likely is it that money would be strategically used to diversify the economy away from exporting to China? Zilch.
AND what is the % of GDP that can be attributed to dairy these days .It used to be around 60% but now is closer to 20% as many other industries are growing .NZ is no longer a one trick pony .
For clean rivers it’s not a matter of voting green you would need public protesters continually turning up at council meetings and the council enforcement officers, offices demanding a green fix. Environmentalists would have to get the general public really activated. River Keepers?
The ‘dairy industry’ and farmers: same same but different?
Who would sympathize with the dairy industry knowing the facts? Not the rhetoric, not the spin but an understaning of the real cost of supporting the industry.
The dairy farmers? They’re the human face of the industry of course – other than the corporate enablers at Fonterra. But who are these dairy farmers? Owner operator cow cockies struggling with a mortage, inconsistent weather, stress, god knows what. The pioneering myth leads us to believe so. Man and his hard working wife battling the land. Who wouldn’t extend a hand of support.
But how many “dairy farmers’ are simply managers in the employment of corporate interests, neither owning the land nor the livestock?
How many are sharemilkers, wandering tennants trying to etch out a living with the hope of owning a small farm themselves. And the rural landlords, who are these and how many are there?
All farmers need to do. Indeed MUST do, is unite. Unionise. Become a union. Mandate unity. Farmers? You MUST unite. Be together. Stand shoulder to shoulder, side by side together and fuck the details of who’s who and what’s what. Becoming united is far, far more important than what you farm, how you farm it or of what sadly ignorant towns people think, assume or indeed know as truisms, logical fallacies or plain, simple good ol bullshit if for no other reason than to support ignorant rhetoric fed to us and them via an entirely corrupted MSM. Forget all that stuff. That can wait until later. But right now, today, this minute, farmers MUST unite. Compulsorily and immediately. Give mandated unity, say, two electoral cycles a go and see what happens. Farmers? You have zero to lose and 100% to gain but don’t take my word for that. Listen to federated farmers chairman’s and national party members and their privateer lobbyist arse kissers instead. Ba hahahahahahahahabababab bbbbaaaaa hHHHHaaaahahahaha a ah…
During my years as a farmer and as a locations scout and locations manager in the film industry I’ve met with many, many farmers. Some were gruff old bastards who became friends, others were suprisingly urbane and well travelled, other farmers still were young and ignorant with no interest in becoming otherwise but they’re a rare breed and would be quick to change.
They all did however have two things in common. Fear and loneliness. Two elements of the human condition that are extremely useful when manipulative control is required by those many who seek to exploit them. Unity would dispel both those unfortunate conditions and it would fuck systemic urban abuse of our most vital industry.
AND what is the % of GDP that can be attributed to dairy these days .It used to be around 60% but now is closer to 20% as many other industries are growing .NZ is no longer a one trick pony .
gordon please do not comment on issues of which you know nothing.
It’s never stopped you BTF.
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