Hard News: Climate, money and risk
220 Responses
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Are you “in politics ” Joe? The situation in Canterbury does not seem to differ in any meaningful way from that which prevails in the rest of the country i.e. a RMA Act which has yet to address agriculture in an effective way
I live in Canterbury. Until the Environment Canterbury Regional Council elected members were sacked and replaced with appointed commissioners back in 2010 I was able to vote for the Council's makeup. Now I've lost that right, and there's no firm timetable for when it might ever be restored. Despite your claim this situation is unique to Canterbury, unless you include the much smaller Rodney District Council. If having an ordinary citizen's informed concern about this kind of disenfranchisement places me "in politics" then guilty as charged. I also post here under my own name, so in case you suspect me of having some kind of hidden agenda, Google is your friend.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Despite your claim, this situation is unique to Canterbury,
My contention is that ratepayers/voters have no say in the way the RMA is applied in their area, whether a democratically elected council or a Commissioner is in charge. The actual outcomes are determined by the RMA and any existing regulation that has passed into law.
The point is that the degradation in the Canterbury region (geographical peculiarities aside) can be replicated all over the country under the present state of RMA legislation. Anyone can cut down all their trees, laser -level the terrain, get a water right, install the centre-pivot irrigator, put on 4-5 cows /Ha, and pour on the Nitrogen fertiliser, ship in the PKE and the maize silage etc. etc., and create a gigantic effluent storage pond . . . and Bob's your Uncle, right?Yes , Canterbury is spectacularly unsuited to such a development , but the situation is not really unique. There are other places equally unsuitable, and the presence of a "democratically-elected" council will prove to be no obstacle. So I don't think that your Commissioner is actually the root of the problem.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Anyone can cut down all their trees, laser -level the terrain, get a water right, install the centre-pivot irrigator, put on 4-5 cows /Ha, and pour on the Nitrogen fertiliser, ship in the PKE and the maize silage etc. etc., and create a gigantic effluent storage pond . . . and Bob’s your Uncle, right?
Even under the present ECAN regime, no, they can't. There are still obstacles, even if they happen to be a rival irrigator with whom one must negotiate. As for your dismally defeatist claim that ratepayer representation is some kind of lost cause, I'd accord rather more credibility to someone who's prepared to show the courage of their convictions by posting their conclusions under their own name.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Once again you evaded the point that in regions other than Canterbury,( if you are to be believed and I don’t believe that there are not consents for what I have described being granted ), where councils are in charge , such a development can proceed with the necessary consents. If you , as a ratepayer, object to such developments, it makes no difference who is in charge, a Commissioner or a council; the RMA allows it.
Of course there are obstacles , everywhere , but by and large , intensive dairying continues to expand; the 'obstacles" are surmountable.See what was written:-
“The point is that the degradation in the Canterbury region (geographical peculiarities aside) can be replicated all over the country under the present state of RMA legislation. Anyone can cut down all their trees, laser -level the terrain, get a water right, install the centre-pivot irrigator, put on 4-5 cows /Ha, and pour on the Nitrogen fertiliser, ship in the PKE and the maize silage etc. etc., and create a gigantic effluent storage pond . . . and Bob’s your Uncle, right?”
I’ll concede that in the Mackenzie country , you may have to house the cows as well.
If, as you allege, the ECAN, does not permit this development anywhere in Canterbury, then you are just bitching about the process aren’t you? I’m presuming you are opposed to such development, but you want a council, not a commissioner. Tough. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
your dismally defeatist claim that ratepayer representation is some kind of lost cause,
I'm saying that your ability (or inability) to influence the composition of the regional Council will be over-ridden by the provisions of the RMA , which will allow the development that I presume you object to.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
I’d accord rather more credibility to someone who’s prepared to show the courage of their convictions by posting their conclusions under their own name.
That's interesting. Those in public office tend to use their own names.
In general I'm more inclined to accord some credibility to someone who "walks the talk".
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
That’s interesting.
That's more than I can say for your latest batch of self-absorbed muttering. With a nick like Farmer Green you sound like a refugee from Playschool. Goodbye and good luck with the cognitive disability.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
:-)
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Yes FG, I mean lifestyle. It seems to be relatively hard to get young people who grew up on farms to commit to a rural life, and much harder to get the city-bred interested. I think it's a mixture of lack of techno-luxuries and social circle / entertainment. And yes, I meant perception, not my own view. To me, our off-grid TV-less coal-range lifestyle is great, although Telecom's mobile data caps do suck, and they've just announced a tripling of over-cap data cost, something that seems totally unjustifiable.
To Ian, my comments on Chinese Dao farmers are based on a friend and teacher who has spent months living with them to study their understanding of the flow of water through the land.
There is a big difference between one or two animals working a padi a few times a season and a whole herd spending several weeks on a paddock.
I've been told that the "war" between farmers and nomadic herders was a major reason behind the building of the Great Wall - If the cattle invaded and were ousted it still took generations to get the land back to full productivity. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
I think it’s a mixture of lack of techno-luxuries and social circle / entertainment.
That , and being associated with an industry that is seen by many as totally irresponsible and greedy in its pollution of air and water. In the minds of many , the dairy industry, in particular, seems to be engaged in some sort of environmental vandalism , while claiming to be one of the economic saviours of the NZ lifestyle.
For a young person, that is a bit restricting in terms of the breadth of their social circle. It 's alright being a minority, but few want to be a pariah. -
Lilith __, in reply to
being associated with an industry that is seen by many as totally irresponsible and greedy in its pollution of air and water. In the minds of many , the dairy industry, in particular, seems to be engaged in some sort of environmental vandalism , while claiming to be one of the economic saviours of the NZ lifestyle.
A good summary.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11187073
It’s interesting that this article identifies the real problems in the dairy industry but stops short of proposing any commercial solutions.
" What we would say is the market structures around dairying are what's driving that quest for more cows - a level playing field would sort that and while on-farm investment would become less attractive, downstream investment would take up any slack."
Not like Gareth to not put his money where his mouth is , is it? -
Chris Waugh, in reply to
I’ve been told that the “war” between farmers and nomadic herders was a major reason behind the building of the Great Wall
Not so simple. There was conflict, there were Viking-like raids and full-on war, there was trade, there was intermarriage, there was adoption of aspects of each others' lifestyles. Several of the Chinese states of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods built defensive walls. Yan, which had its capital in what is now Beijing, suffered many raids by the Shanrong people living just over the mountains to the northwest, Qi and Lu still had Dongyi people to their east, and, of course, the states were all at war with each other vying for supremacy. Eventually Qin conquered the other states and established the Qin Dynasty with Qin Shihuangdi became emperor - generally accepted as the first emperor of a united China, I guess because unlike the Xia, Shang and Zhou that preceeded he brought all of China under one central government and united things like the systems of weights and measures and writing. He also set about linking up these various lesser defensive walls into a Great Wall, yes, to keep the nomads out.
However, I'd certainly never heard of it being built to keep cattle off farmland. For one, there does not seem to have been much cattle in north China, let alone the grasslands north of the wall, until the modern demand for infant formula came along. So far as I can tell, Fonterra is doing far more to replace cropland with dairy farms than Genghis Khan. The traditional animals of the area would seem to be sheep, horses and camels. We are talking about a part of the world that has never really had much water, where there is a word for a type of terrain more arid than grassland but not quite proper desert - gobi. Secondly, it was a military defensive measure built to prevent people like the Shanrong raiding the Yan capital and making off with all the treasures and women they could through over the backs of their horses and, far more importantly, the nomad empires like the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Khitan, Jurchen and Mongols threatening the security of the Chinese state (yeah, fat lot of good it did them...).
What your friend and teacher says about Chinese (or Asian, as you originally stated) farmers, as reported by you, simply does not match my experience, and quite frankly, doesn't make any sense. My parents in law are farmers in the mountains northwest of Beijing, so I'll use them as an example. My father in law had a small herd of sheep, just over 50 head when he sold them. They spent their mornings trying to escape from their pen that occupied the western half of the family courtyard. They were fed a mixture of corn, agricultural waste - corn stalks and similar such things from the family plots, "weeds" (not entirely weeds, but "useless" plants growing around the edges of fields and amongst trees in the orchards) harvested by my parents in law, and in the afternoons, they were taken out to graze from those "weeds" around the edges of fields and among trees in the orchards, with my father in law doing his damndest to make sure they didn't eat anybody's crop. This method of animal husbandry seems to my eyes to have a lot more to do with the realities of population density and working within what is still very much a peasant agricultural system - all land belongs to the village and is divvied up amongst the villagers, with each household getting several small plots. There simply isn't anywhere to leave your animals grazing unattended for any length of time. Now, of course, it is always dangerous to argue from "But my in laws do this...", so please let me assure you that what I have seen my in laws doing pretty much matches up with what I've seen in other parts of rural China - adjusted, of course, for local variations in environmental conditions.
More: Historically in China education hasn't really been available to the masses. One needed a certain amount of money for that, or at least, a certain class background or parents able to make the necessary sacrifices to get their kids a leg up. It was only with the founding of the PRC that education became widely available to rural kids regardless of background or means, and even then, what with the 100 flowers and their harvesting, Great Leap Forwards, Cultural Revolution (when my mother in law was bullied out of primary school after only two years because of her father being 8th Route Army, and my father in law spent his time teaching city kids to farm), and what have you, it's probably fairly fair to say that it was only my wife's generation that first got a decent chance at an education. Chinese farmers, in my experience, tend to be an extremely pragmatic, hard-scrabble bunch who are adept at "eating bitterness", as the Chinese put it, and doing whatever it is they need to do to put food on the table. What you report your friend and teacher saying makes it sound like they're mystically in touch with nature, and that, apart from reeking of Orientalism, just does not match anything I have seen or experienced.
Dunno what Ian has to say about that, though.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
So far as I can tell, Fonterra is doing far more to replace cropland with dairy farms than Genghis Khan (ever did)
That observation deserves prominence . . .
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Lilith __, in reply to
Thanks for this interesting and informative post Chris.
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Taking up Gareth Morgan's point about a level playing field in dairying . . .
Here is what Gareth Morgan and Geoff Simmons had to say recently :-” What we would say is (that) the market structures around dairying are . . . driving that quest for more cows – a level playing- field would sort that (out) , and while on-farm investment would become less attractive, downstream investment would take up any slack.”
What would a level playing- field look like?
The repeal of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act might be a necessary precondition to the establishment of the type of alternative dairy manufacturing which avoids the ill effects of the present model.An alternative approach would be to deal with the distortions inherent in the Fonterra Milk Pricing Manual (which is no longer followed by Fonterra anyway).
A removal of the distortions would enable new dairy manufacturers to obtain raw milk at somewhere close to its true value, and would inevitably raise the value of dairy company shares , and also dramatically increase the dividends from ownership of those shares.The whole concept of “added-value” in dairying needs to be re-examined in an open and honest way.
In truth , every thing the industry does , beginning with the refrigeration of the raw milk on the farm , is adding value to a highly perishable product which has no immediate market in this country , or even across the Tasman.The way that “added-value” is currently defined by the Fonterra Milk Pricing Manual is a very long way from reality.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
It’s unusual that the farming press is taking up this issue. On the other hand , the truth will always out.
What chance of either of the main political parties, . . . actually any political parties . . . addressing this issue?
How much longer can we allow economic necessity to override environmental degradation?How much longer must the mainstream dairy industry be protected from both economic and environmental reality?
The social consequences of this industry aren’t too flash either. A lot of social capital has been destroyed in the last 40 years.http://straightfurrow.realviewtechnologies.com/?xml=straight#folio=6
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
It’s unusual that the farming press is taking up this issue. On the other hand , the truth will always out.
Thanks for that very interesting and worrying read. The more I see of Fonterra, the less I like it. I’m sure I don’t understand all the economics of it, but that milk price manual seems dodgy indeed, and something’s seriously wrong when milk is being dumped.
But it’s a little odd to read that cheese earns so little for Fonterra when a 250g block of Mainland cheese goes for 50 yuan (~NZ$10) in supermarkets here in Beijing.
ETA: I also liked that cartoon about the guy who was fired for doing the Harlem Shake (whatever that is) being reinstated:
"That's right mate, I'm proud to be the only Fonterra recall in years that hasn't spooked the Chinese market".
To be honest, I'm still surprised Fonterra has a Chinese market considering last year's scandals.
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and dairy farmers want to make a shedload of cash. they’ll absorb the cost, push it onto consumers, and keep doing it.
the theory goes that consumers will push back and consume less milk. but… like petrol it’s something we just grump about, then pay for. look at the butter/cheese kerfuffle when fonterra starting ramping up international prices. people complained, and now we’ve all adjusted and just keep buying it.
The point of taxing this bad thing isn't just to increase the cost and not affect behaviour. It's to increase the cost and 1. make doing it better have a financial incentive, and 2. make doing other things which aren't as bad look better financially in comparison.
So I don't think we should be looking for 'less milk'. Ideally we want milk produced in a better way (Bart's non-burping grass/cows) is a good example). Making it that way will be taxed less so there's the incentive. So if you resow all your pastures in non-burping grass, you don't get levied.
Whether or not that's possible or effective is another question.
If scientists were some kind of sainted caste whose training required them to maintain a priestly detachment from mundane concerns that might be of more than passing interest. As you’ve made it clear from your postings here, they’re largely barnacles on the economic boat.
Well that's not fair. Most scientists are just trying to do a decent job and make a decent salary. If the government provided a decent funding system for that, many would happily work for them, and follow many scientists who have released their results into the public domain.
If we don't support publicly funded science then we push their work towards Monsanto and other less than savory organisations. If you want scientists to work on solutions to the world's problems such as climate change, fund climate change science and let them come up with a bunch of options and then we can choose which to pursue. Given how crap the world has been at dealing with the problem to date, I'm not sure we can close any GMO doors on principle.
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There's a bit towards the end of this rather worrying story I just don't get:
''I don't know why people think cows and sheep are carbon emitters,'' Mr MacPherson said.
''Thank god the National government had the sense to not include pastoral farming as carbon emitters.''
''Anybody with year 11 science will understand that pastoral farming is a closed carbon cycle,'' he said.
How does that work? All the grass they grow to feed their cows and sheep is enough to soak up the methane produced, the exhaust from their cars, tractors, quad bikes, other machines with internal combustion engines, the emissions from the transport of their products, the petroleum based fertilisers....?
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