Is it time to amputate sunset industries like Dairy, Tourism and international education?
National Party stormtrooper Todd Mueller is unhappy that his Dairy industry mates are getting a hard time…
…Hey Todd, there wouldn’t be so much fucking resentment if your Party showed leadership in power rather than sell assets to fund irrigation and allow Farmers to steal and pollute so much water you sanctimonious clown.
That’s right folks, Dairy doesn’t shit into our rivers or steal our water! They didn’t get National to privatise 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! They don’t create climate changing gases. How dare the rest of us get annoyed at the way National have allowed their mates to rob, steal and alter the entire economic prosperity of our future for a cheap buck using cheap milk powder.
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.
While we are amputating one sunset industry, how about Tourism as well?
Too many tourists: Should we limit visitor numbers to NZ?
Crowded towns, clogged roads, dangerous drivers, filthy freedom campers, congested trails: the rapid growth in tourism is causing concerns throughout New Zealand, and headaches for politicians and public alike. Mike White investigates the growing backlash against our country’s largest industry and asks if we need to limit the number of tourists coming here.
The Tourist tax should be far higher than $35 to truly build the infrastructure our rapacious tourism industry floods us with annually.
I see little benefit to the average Kiwi who has to live with the overcrowding tourism generates, the industry seems to be of loaded economic benefit.
Take the situation at many major ports right now. Normally access to our waterfront is guaranteed, but when those bloody cruise ships come in to town, much of that access is shut down to locals to process the ships, and the amount of days that occurs is steadily rising.
This influx of cruise ship tourists with large wallets leads to retail rents in the area spiking and the cluster of luxury brand shops to explode.
Some will call that progress, I call it economic segregation.
The industry claims that International tourism brought us $14.5 billion in 2017 with 3.5million tourists.
That’s almost the entire domestic population of NZ visiting us and when you consider the enormous amount of pollution flights here create, there are limited returns from this empty economics.
While I certainly believe NZ businesses do well from tourism, and that it will continue to play a vital role in our economic future, I don’t believe this unsustainable level of tourism has been properly provided for in terms of the infrastructure necessary to carry the current level of visiters.
It’s time for those visiting us to not only be paying for a Tourist Tax for infrastructure, Australians included, it’s time to start thinking about what peak tourism would be because right now, NZ is at risk of killing the very thing that is attracting those 3.5million to us.
There’s little point in making $14.5b from International Tourists each year if they are eroding the natural and pristine environment they are all coming to see.
TDB Blogger, Christine Rose, summed up the dilemma in a blog from 2016…
New Zealand’s natural environment and associated ‘brand’ provide our tourism industry with a competitive advantage, according to the Tourism Export Council of New Zealand. At least 35% of international visitors come here primarily to experience our natural landscapes and other values, and most of these are associated with the public conservation estate managed by the Department of Conservation. Our natural heritage shapes the Kiwi identity, and underpins much of the rest of our economy, such as primary production. However, lack of infrastructure and Department of Conservation funding deficits threaten to kill the golden tourism goose and to trample on its eggs.
Our biodiversity is already declining and visitor pressures exceed capacity, and when this is set in the context of wider environmental damage and enclosure of the commons, it’s hard to see how the tourism growth model can be environmentally or economically sustainable.
…our clean green myth is driven by LOTR cinematography that is at risk of being degraded by the huge influx of visitors.
The Tourist Tax is a start, it needs to be higher and this targeted funding most be used to upgrade tourism infrastructure while we ponder how many tourists are too many tourists.
With almost our entire population visiting us and our ever groaning infrastructure. Tourism NZ has been allowed to move ahead without much forward thinking, something we’ve allowed Dairy and the International Education Industry to do as well…
International education: A blessing or a curse?
Opening the floodgates to students from India led to their exploitation both at home and in New Zealand.
…our international education fraud industry is built upon exploiting student migrant labour and the worthless courses they pay for are a giant scam.
It’s time to start rethinking our support for Dairy, Tourism and the fraud that is international education. Unfortunately the political power each of those industries have mean any Government is too frightened to challenge them.
Our future can’t be dairy, tourism or selling expensive junk education to desperate foreign students.
While we are amputating one sunset industry, how about Tourism as well?
Martyn also add the trucking industry to that llist oplease as trucks are responsible for droppinng somuch effluent on thr roads from stock trucks so use of rail would lower this spreading of discease from trucks to private vehicles that folllow behind stock trucks and often are washed in effluent that winds up in residential areas drains aferwards as being washed off the cars and into our aqifers and into our drinking water.
How much is enough?
Havelock North water pollution poisoning was suggested as being cased by this stock pollution, as was the heavy poisoning pollution found in the nearby once prisitine ‘Clive river’ which now has warning signs on it’s banks warning of not to swim in it now.
@Cleangreen, Trucking is a great example of an industry that has been heavily skewed by a combination of lobbying and subsidising so that it has become dysfunctional while rail which NZ should have spent the money on, has been neglected.
Aka huge labour scams for trucking and cowboy industry for WOF which has meant that from four such crashes in 2014, where the truck or bus did not have a six-monthly Certificate of Fitness (COF), the heavy vehicle number has shot up to about 60 crashes per year. Who knows how many crashed in total!
Environmental costs being met by ratepayers and taxpayers as trucks rip up the roads, add congestion and air pollution.
Trucking is a third world sunset industry which has burgeoned in NZ instead of rail because the government has subsidised it to the point that our roads are full of trucks of every description from small goods to massively heavy tankers.
Trucks are everywhere and being driven by people who may or may not have a legitimate drivers license and being paid the laughable $18 – $30 p/h which surprise surprise does not keep experienced people in that industry!
Meanwhile we have not invested in rail competently and the people in that industry do not seem intelligent (by bringing in asbestos rail) or proactive!
Bloody good research there Martyn!!
I am suitably impressed.
Wut? There is literally zero “research” to be found in this post. Indeed, you could argue the exact opposite is true. Tourism, especially, “a twilight industry”? Really?
Here’s some actual research I conducted in < 15 seconds for you to mull over:
https://i2.wp.com/www.greaterauckland.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/International-Visitor-Numbers-in-New-Zealand-1.png?resize=1024%2C649&ssl=1
https://www.interest.co.nz/business/99710/mbie-forecasting-overseas-visitor-numbers-increase-4-year-spending-increase-somewhat
There are also to many exceptions to the tourist taxes! For a start, they should have had it added to anybody coming into NZ as just the emissions alone of their travel should evoke the tourist tax!
Who doesn’t need NZeTA
You do not need NZeTA to travel to New Zealand if you:
Must apply for a New Zealand visa before travelling
You already have a valid visa for New Zealand
Do New Zealand citizens travel on:
– A New Zealand passport or
– A foreign passport with a note – for example, to indicate that you are a permanent or New Zealand citizen.
Are Australian citizens travelling on an Australian passport.
Australian citizens who can continue to enter New Zealand without a visa are exceptions. Australian residents must apply for an eTA to enter New Zealand, but they are exempt from paying tourist tax.
The following persons are also not authorized to apply for an eTA to travel to New Zealand:
The crew and passengers of a cruise ship.
Crew of a foreign ship with cargo.
Guests of the New Zealand government.
Foreign citizens travelling under the Antarctic Treaty.
Members of a group of visitors and associated crew members.
https://www.newzealand-visa.org/nz-visa-requirements/
I can agree with plenty of that, the trouble is how does NZ pay its bills without its top earners.
Converting dairy to forestry would just destroy our most productive farmland though, and we need less exotic pines not more.
How about simply a law that dairy farms have to plant x percent of their land in native forest per cow or per year or whatever?
My vision for dairy would be smaller farms, less intensive (decrease nitrogen fert use massively and control/charge for irrigation), local processing of dairy product to high value cheeses and so on, branded on environmental sustainability and superior grass fed produce. Be the France if the pacific for fine food, similar for meats.
Sad the dairy managers seem to have zero innovation for environment.
Even simple things like the link below is a good idea, but you would think the dairy managers might have thought of this first about 20 years ago!
Beer-inspired milk kegs save Dunedin cafe thousands of plastic milk bottles
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/beer-inspired-milk-kegs-save-dunedin-cafe-thousands-plastic-bottles?fbclid=IwAR1oYQkpnFUFu4N01rugJS8OY6pflaK6rji6EtwYQqkB-Tv5Wnp4E_K4MG4
Apparently the farmers from Fonterra pay money to Fonterra to ‘innovate’ but a Fonterra insider was saying it has become a slushy fund and the money wasted, because those running it, are not interested in any type of change, and of course the management under Springs, had been so broken and overseas focused they have lost focus on the domestic market which is now in trouble too, while also losing money on bad overseas deals that even kill kids like Sanlu! Pathetic and negligent!
If the price of cheese in NZ is nearly the same as minimum wages per hour while RTD liquor is cheaper than milk, that is part of the problem. The other issue is the government allowing so many harmful drinks into NZ like sugar filled juices and the public is completely unaware of both the pollution and the health effects from bad food which in NZ imported drinks are worse than overseas due to NZ’s lack of regulation of food quality. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/100581810/sugary-drinks–nz-worse-than-usa-uk-and-australia-study-finds?rm=a
Fake international education is not just the issue but the growing use of criminal activity operating here which unbelievably seems encouraged by the courts so we can have more criminally minded people getting citizenship here!
Woman discharged without conviction for laundering money for international drug ring
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115157974/woman-discharged-without-conviction-for-laundering-money-for-international-drug-ring
We don’t just have scam education for foreign students but also fake jobs. If anybody has ever wondered why jobseekers is up 10+% this year during a supposed employment shortage, is could be, because the jobs themselves are not real but the a fake front to get points for visas! This has been extensively reported but still our government has allowed the temporary visas to explode so much now the migrants are eating dog food and living on charity hand outs while still hoping for residency here.
Here is an example of the caliber of employment for visas, aka a “bakery” job and the quality of the applicants.
Bakery owner to pay back $33,800 illegally deducted from worker’s wages
“Singh worked as a baker from 2011 till February 2017, when he left the job. About four months later, Singh was arrested in Henderson on three charges of assault and one charge of a threat to kill.
A psychiatric assessment revealed Singh was a regular user of methamphetamine and had experienced a psychotic episode. Singh also served a sentenced of ten weeks in prison.
The Employment Relations Authority said the circumstances in which Singh made his complaint to the Labour Inspectorate, well after leaving EMA’s employment and only after being advised of liability to deportation due to criminal activity, cast doubt on the reliability of his evidence. ”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/112128450/bakery-owner-to-pay-back-33800-illegally-deducted-from-workers-wages
The Big Scam: $5000 cash buys you a job
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/108356004/the-big-scam-5000-cash-buys-you-a-job
The Big Scam: Our immigration system is broken
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/108921008/the-big-scam-our-immigration-system-is-broken
The Big Scam: How our immigration system is being rorted
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/107212250/the-big-scam-how-our-immigration-system-is-being-rorted
The Big Scam: Bad eggs ‘rife’ in hospitality industry
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/107073415/the-big-scam-bad-eggs-rife-in-hospitality-industry
The Big Scam: 17 granted residency through alleged ‘paper’ company
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/107454068/the-big-scam-17-granted-residency-through-alleged-paper-company
Ding a ling a ling, modern importing business are pretty much becoming a front for drugs or visas while being a food / retail / tourism worker is a fake job that pays so poorly that the people live in poverty and are competing against NZ working poor and unemployed for housing and other resources while they struggle to get food on the table, oh, like the Kiwi’s!! Just swapping out the nationality does nothing to solve the problem, it is just making it worse as NZ has hundreds of thousands of poorer people becoming citizens and residents and having children here or serving time in prison.
Even if the migrants are in a completely legitimate job, they still compete for accommodation and jobs with NZ poor!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114986493/queenstowns-abandoned-migrant-workers-fear-for-future
So everyone knows about the impossible burger. Well Burger King America marketed and sold out of the impossible whooper. If it’s as good as the reviews claim it tastes I just might convert. But I will always find an excuse to have a steak. Most I’ll pay for a steak is $400 per serve.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/1/20750704/burger-king-nationwide-rollout-impossible-whopper-august-8
You have to be super, super smart to pay $400 for a steak, the waiter said
That’s just for a 450gram portion. It costs extra if you want some one who’s trained to cook it with the correct extras and what not plus the $10 beer from my favourite teppanyaki restaurant. Think I might go along wearing shorts and jandles next time.
Hear hear. We should also start dismantling any local industries behind real estate speculation, private prisons, WoMD manufacturers, plastic water bottling, pharmaceutical advertising, pop-up education academies, reality TV, those using non-recyclables (within reason), and industries not placing the welfare, growth and interests of New Zealanders first.
Whoa Mr Bradbury don’t hold back. Farming a sunset industry, I remember this was spouted back in the 80’s by labour which also coincided with the start of dairy farm expansion (remember the dairy board swap milk for Soviet built Ladas) also worth noting is the biggest expansion in dairy farming happened under the last labour led government with the start of forest to farms in the north island and dairy farming in the McKenzie basin in the South Island another point worth noting is animal protein production (milk and meat) is still New Zealand’s biggest export earner more than tourism which you did raise some good points/issues in increasing the tourist tax, an observation….all great third world countries have a thriving tourism industry.
Everything you said about National is correct. But our sides in power now, what are we doing about it?
Corporate NZ is ruinng our economy, as Corporationns dont have long term committments to any counurty they go where the money is and ditch anyone else at their whim.
Time to dismantle big Corporations now or face ruin.
We definitely need to control tourism 🙂 Look at these numbers!
The domestics are ruining the country! SHOCKER!! LET’S TAX THE LOCALS!
Domestic tourism expenditure: $23.0 billion.
International tourism expenditure: $16.2 billion
Source: https://www.tourismnewzealand.com/about/about-the-tourism-industry/
Let’s also target the biggest offenders, the largest international visitor group:
AUSTRALIA!
Dirty Aussies. Trampling NZ’s beautiful scenery.
“Australia is New Zealand’s largest international visitor market, accounting for almost half of all international visitor arrivals.”
Source: https://www.tourismnewzealand.com/markets-stats/markets/australia/
Tourism has been a total gift to the hotel industry. They get a billion dollar government tourism advertisement, cheap loans for new infrastructure, tax breaks, and tourists don’t pay any taxes while they’re here. So a small levy on the future increase in tourism that would raise about 7 million so we could expand public toilets and service the ones we already have would solve a huge problem for many reasons. A seven million dollar levy compared to the forecasted doubling of tourists in the next 10 or 20 years, Y’know to secure the industries long game is a small price to pay.
Crazy stuff from Bomber. Basically “Let’s destroy the economy”.
Although it is the same sort of extreme rhetoric that has him seeing National running a scorched earth policy platform.
Anyone would think NZ was on the verge of civil war or existential failure. Though it does seem that Martyn does wants a Ukrainian style progrom against kulak dairy farmers. In democracies the only way to stop farmers growing things is to pay them. Basically the same as if they grew the things. Last time NZ tried to subsidise farmers, it sent the country broke.
Anyway Martyn’s articles are always good for a smile, it is well written polemic.
The agri industry as it exists now won’t survive once synthetic mean and milk are the norm. It will be destroyed by reality. NZ does need to become more like France, Switzerland etc and produce high-end goods, not milk powder for China. Tourism can’t expand any more without nixing the environment and overwhelming struggling infrastructure. Farmers are burying their heads in the sand – there’s an idea – ostrich farming
The fake foreign student education game is one thing – a fraud. But the big universities also depend on the huge fees legit foreign students pay. In my current PostGrad class at Uni of A, around half the students are from China, Hong Kong or Japan.
That is because postGrad study for local student is unaffordable with student fees, especially as we are producing more low skill wage jobs (aka retail assistants) and not high value jobs that people keep getting made redundant from. (aka Fonterra laid off their R&D staff during Thiering).
NZ skills shortages and low productivity are a direct consequence of student loans and fees and the ongoing lowering of wages and opportunities for local people who are discriminated against in employment now at every turn.
Look at the rise of foreign CEO’s and executive teams in NZ business, many wreck what is left of any NZ owned businesses because they have zero understanding of the local climate, while up coming local talent are passed on, again and again or expected to be paid ‘local’ rates that never move, so talent goes overseas.
I recall in Cambodia they had a regime that did away with all of the education and industry and return to a basic life . That did not turn out well . To be enviromental you need to be wealth enough to afford to choose.