Wait, what? Corporate Farmers are scaremongering about water???
Well, well, well…
Farmers ‘scaremongering’ about the impacts of Government’s freshwater changes – Fish and Game
Fish and Game say farmers have been ‘scaremongering’ about the effects of the Government’s proposed freshwater changes.
It follows a report by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research that found the contribution of dairy farming to the economy is small and any impacts are unlikely to be felt for many years.
Farmers reacted with fury to the Government’s plans to improve water quality – but a new report casts doubt on just how worried farmers should be.
“Federated Farmers has come out [saying], ‘this is the end of the world’. This report clearly says there is no impact or very little impact on the economy from the Government’s freshwater proposals,” said Fish and Game chief executive Martin Taylor.
New Zealand Institute for Economic Research has argued that the proposal has little overall effect because dairy is worth just 3 percent of the country’s GDP.
“It will have a small effect overall, because the dairy sector is not a massive part of the economy,” said Peter Wilson, NZIER’s principal economist and head of Auckland business.
Fish and Game say farmers have plenty of time to make changes.
…the hysteria being generated by the bloody Farmers over the Governments limp water policy shows how much of a joke the debate has become because the bloody Farmers have had it too good for too long!
National have allowed Farmers to steal and pollute water with impunity and sold our hydro assets so that they could create an irrigation slush fund for the bloody farmers, so being told to do the minimum should be the least they are prepared to do, and this water policy is the least.
It goes no where to ensuring water quality and it certainly doesn’t put the brakes on intensive farming the way the brakes should go on.
The simple truth is that the Dairy Industry is a sunset industry, synthetic milk powder into mass produced food ingredients will easily overtake real milk powder.
For those delusional Dairy apologists who scream that there will always be a market for organic dairy, you are seriously telling us with a straight face that the vast majority of our milk powder which is used as a base ingredient for mass produced food will still be in demand despite those mass food producers not giving two shits about anything other than the bottom line for their salt and sugar drenched products?
When synthetic milk powder can be made cheaper than organic milk powder, those mass food producers will turn on us in a millisecond. Listening to Farmers scream about timid water changes while all this is happening is like hearing Trump complain about his coverage by the media.
Yes national under key got away with murder literally selling our hydro assets that was paid for by the tax payer and too many dumb Kiwis sat back and still kept voting for those national fuckers
Yes national under key got away with murder literally selling our hydro assets that was paid for by the tax payer and too many dumb Kiwis sat back and still kept voting for those national fuckers. As for the farmers there time is up they have been getting away with environmental murder and to hear them moan about everything when they have just costs us millions tidying up their m bovis mess now they are asking for us to lower our water nitrate standards as they are set too high i thought we were a country that prided itself on high standards or when the farmers cry out we all have to jump cause they are the main food producers and they are the second biggest GDP earners its like being blackmailed and it sucks.
I really do hope that all NZ dairy and sheep and cattle farmers plant their land in forrest and go on holiday for thirty years.
The rest of New Zealand richly deserve to have that happen.
The whole bloody lot of them would be on the dole.
D J S
My son and I have been working our trees for a few years some we mill some we send to the wharf. Export has up to end of last summer been netting us $100 per to on the truck. In 30 years 600 tons per hectare can be expected with no work between planting and harvest. You can prune if you like but the clears market is right dodgy locally and small premium for export. This nets roughly $100×600 = $ 60 000 / ha in 30 yrs or $2000 per annum without doing anything till harvest. Not many farming operations can do that above costs. You guys out there should think about it. But beware the carbon credits. Ok if you keep them all till harvest but remember you have to give most of them back at harvest ( or if they blow over or burn) and god knows what they might cost to buy back in 30 years. If the climate change story has died a natural death by then it will be fine, but if not buying them back will ruin you.
D J S
Maybe convert the dairy to soy or cannabis, or just bottle water from the cowshed and earn as much as milk solids without producing the effluent? I wondered about the current situation with dairy farming and found the following stats (looking at cows in NZ only):
There are about 10 million cows in NZ (dairy milkers and beef) each one producing at least 10 litres urine each day = 37 billion litres urine / year
There are 11590 dairy herds (over half of cows) with an average of 431 cows per herd. The total cowshed effluent wash = 67 billion litres effluent / year
Combined cow liquid waste is then around 100 billion litres per year, and this is not just going to sit on farms (even if it dries/evaporates the waste product constituents must remains in situ, to be transferred eventually by say rain), it has to run off to waterways and to the ocean eventually. There are 425,000 km of rivers and streams in NZ offering up potentially 145 million litres of water per person annually (only 2% is taken). With 5 million people the waterways then offer us =
7 * (10^14) litres of fresh water / year
i.e. 7 followed by 14 zeroes
It seems that any farm waste from cows would be diluted by this volume of river water but a calculation shows this amount of effluent per year would be like pouring 340 litres of urine and shed waste (paddock cowpats and fertiliser are not included) into an Olympic swimming pool (2.5M litres). Would you swim in it, let alone drink it untreated?
We have to help farmers and protect ourselves and the environment.
The biggest threat to coastal waterway is sewerage…. unless people look at the total causes to the environment as a whole and not cheery pick stuff that suits their agenda, the water issues will not be solved as everyone will be fighting over whose fault it is. The reality is, it is everyone’s fault. Humans are the worst polluters of all, followed by cows. We are increasing both of them, so that will increase pollution a huge amount, while hiding the underlying issues and increasing growth, without solving the existing pollution issues BEFORE they expand more people and more cows.
“Sewage pollution of the inner Waitemata harbour is a direct consequence of Auckland’s disproportionate growth. The failure to provide for sufficient basic sanitation infrastructure is something the Auckland Council and the government driving these growth policies would rather the public know as little as possible about. It’s an inconvenient truth also for the Unitary Plan-urban growth acolytes and despite their stated mission to save the planet, they won’t be talking much about this either. The shocking scale of the problem was finally outed by the NZ Herald in December and January and came as a shock to most Aucklanders.”
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/03/02/guest-blog-mike-lee-aucklands-dirty-secret-can-we-handle-the-truth/
Cruise ships are increasing 18% per year in NZ and are one of the biggest polluters with raw pollution discharged 3km out to sea. While that might be ok for the woke to stomach, not so good for the sea ecosystem with many new viruses, and bacteria starting to wipe out marine species.
Cruise ships generate about 15 gallons of hazardous chemical waste every day, according to environmental group Friends of the Earth. The passengers and crew aboard the biggest ships can produce 210,000 gallons of sewage and almost five times as much graywater—from sinks, showers, laundry, and so on—in a single week. And, in a year, 100 million gallons of petroleum products from cruise ships seep into our oceans. Then there’s the air pollution.
“These ships burn as much fuel as whole towns,” Bill Hemmings, the director of aviation and shipping at Transport & Environment, told the Guardian earlier this year. “They use a lot more power than container ships and even when they burn low sulphur fuel, it’s 100 times worse than road diesel.”
https://psmag.com/news/how-cruise-ships-are-polluting-our-oceans
Too much cheery picking on what is causing pollution and environmental degradation, there needs to be a mature approach including looking at human activity and growth and how sustainable that is, because humans still poop and burn oil and travel, even if they are woke, vegans….