All my early arriving ancestors to New Zealand were farmers, except for my father’s grandparents on his mother’s side, who were miners from Scotland.
They came in 1840, 1852, 1862 and 1864. Alexander Love managed the Whau Valley mine in Whangarei.
I was brought up rurally, just north of Whangarei, but have lived most of my life in Auckland City. All four of my sons are city born and bred. They know nothing about farming.
At a time of desperate climate devastation world-wide, farmers, especially dairy farmers are under attack from city-slickers.
I spoke with a Northland dairy farmer, a remote cousin who farms 750 cows on 800 acres on the Hikurangi Swamp near Whangarei and I asked him: “If The Greens were let loose on the environment would they ruin farming in New Zealand?”
He said they would. They are unrealistic, he told me - talking farm composting as if it was a domestic house issue. He poo-pooed the trend to almond or soy milk in coffee, telling me that almonds were a worse environmental threat in California than the majority of New Zealand dairy farmers.
My cousin agrees there are maverick farmers, like in any industry, but told me about his farming out of bobby calves, no longer sending any to the works. Furthermore, he retains all his effluent and discharges it suitably.
Ken still enjoys farming, but the uncertainties of cash flow and weather patterns make life difficult. Lawyers’ incomes continue to grow whatever the weather, he said - not halve over night as milk returns did in 2013. They’ve climbed now, but there is tax, and increased expenditure farm-wide. He mentioned Speiring’s eight million dollar farewell from Fonterra, sarcastically. No one person is worth that, Ken reckoned. And he believes Aucklanders, with their huge traffic conjestion and polluted beaches, are out of sync with rural life.
The Hikurangi Swamp, where Ken’s family have farmed for three generations, was a huge swamp until remediation some years ago when Ken’s father, Ross, farmed it. It still floods, especially as climate change hits it. They get a one-in-five year flood every year now.
Ken also told me about a subdivision of a farm I know well, up Three Mile Bush Road where a beautiful stand of native taraire trees has been devastated in the process. Most farmers look after their land, and bush remnants very well; they add more trees rather than cutting down existing ones.
Still there are far too many New Zealanders not taking climate change seriously enough. Most are just trying to cope with the threat of Covid-19 and earn a living.
The government needs to address desperate urban problems and not just pick on farmers. Housing affordability is connected to taxation. Why not a capital gains tax?
Sewerage floating free at many of our beaches is a Third World issue. If council can’t or won’t fix it, then the government’s Three Waters Plan may be part of the answer.
The Prime Minister has talked up the team of five million - and quite rightly - but we are now facing a serious group of divides; rural/urban, poverty and the one percent, the obscene growth in inequality.
I totally accept the government’s priority has been the pandemic, and I admire Ardern’s promise that she would not sacrifice the health and well-being of New Zealanders on the altar of GDP. But now is the time to balance the waka for all Kiwis. If a centre-left government can’t do that, who can? Certainly not National led by Luxon, who appears to have no philosophy or principles which would guide him in government, and would govern by polls and focus groups, telling him the most popular routes to take. (JOHN ELLIOTT)
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Published 4 March 2022