With all due respect to Dr. Curtis, sheep and beef farmers certainly haven't been receiving "corporate welfare," and certainly have been struggling with increased regulations under the previous Labour governments and to make ends meet. Pastoral farms being sold off with pine forests being planted? Dramatically declining sheep numbers? Seems we're on a different planet down here in the King Country! It is true that the rural sector usually saves the day for the NZ economy, but that should be a good thing, right?
Farming of course continues to be essential to the economy, but it isn't enough, particularly with a shift to urban culture. Farming successes buy some time to diversify into other primary industries, which if we fail to do we will be increasingly poor.
The New Zealand agricultural industry is riddled, literally riddled, with marketing myopia. The four pre-conditions for that diagnosis are: 1.) a belief in forever population growth. 2.)a belief that there are no competitive substitutes. 3.) a belief in lower costs through scale. 4.)a focus on the product itself versus the needs of the customer. For example, technology to reduce emissions in cattle feed.
On the corporate welfare side, the sector does not account for or pay for a myriad of externalities. Profits are mostly privatised and costs, particularly ecosystem damaging costs, are socialised. Look at Canterbury’s fresh water issues and they still want to expand dairying. FFS, wake up.
Most of the nation’s primary production is commoditised with most of the upside value bled off through poor marketing and a lack of innovation. Many in the agriculture industry are also stuck in the status quo, trapped by debt, and subservient to politically powerful lobby groups. The NZ Red meat industry typifies this worn out approach and many of its enterprises have turned in poor results for decades. The industry is highly politicised, operating a ‘chumocracy’ at the ‘C’ suite level.
Sorry, it is what it is. Facts are facts. There are opportunities out there but they will remain out of reach until a revolution sweeps the old guard away.
Dr Curtis may be too young to know that in the late 80s, the pastoral sector was weaned off the massive subsidies it had had (Dairy Board borrowing was 1% for yonks, all gone too) and was identified as the least 'subsidised' agriculture sector in the OECD - it was hard indeed to find a meaningful cash subsidy by the 1990s. I think if one wanted to be effective in claiming 'integrity breaches' in any industry, it would be sensible to know quite a lot about it, and to recognise facts about it too, where relevant. This is not how Dr Curtis has proceeded. He might have focused, in complaining, on footdragging in dealing with NO4 from dairy, a climate change contaminant as 'powerful/long-lived' as C02, and nitrogen's impact on water quality. But we have instead a catchphrase of 'dirty dairying', relevant to a very small sector of dairy. One major dirtying of environments is in urban sewage leaking into beaches etc, and blindness to their dirty laundry as urban critics attack the rural sector. Climate change charges here are a classic of the genre - would that we had seen more (fact-based) effort put into our massive urban C02 failures, and billions of Government money directed to incoherent climate policy, vs $400 million mentioned here for very targeted action for agriculture.
KPMG will be chuffed to know their Agribusiness review is 'prestigious' (!!). This year, agribusiness has reprioritised v 2024 simply because some action has been taken on some of last year's concerns, so it has sensibly re-arranged priorities - there is truly nothing to see here. And I for one am glad we have a Minister for Agriculture with farming experience, just as I am glad the Attorney General has legal experience. There is simply no mileage in claiming 'integrity' is gone because an informed Minister is able to challenge narrow interest groups like public health officials on labelling of baby milk powder. Or that he is willing to acknowledge the absurdity that while NZ's CO2 levels charge on up every year, generating more warming for a hundred years or more, but recognises that methane from NZ pastoral farming is falling now and will continue to do so, with industry commitment signed up for faster reductions. Urban hypocrisy is attacking dairying's methane impact, looking for a quick 'NZ fix' on the back of our dairy farmers, who have less than 3% of the world's dairy cows and are leading global research to cut cow methane.
Give up on the carbon emissions drama. Most sensible people have started realise it's a big con. That's why farmers are trying not to get caught up in it's noose. There are real problems with pollution and contaminates coming off farms that need addressing before we worry about the nonsense that is supposed climate change.
What the article doesn't address is how we can get farmers/ politicians to accept and do something about their pollution of waterways, aquifers, etc. And maori farmers are no better than anybody else in this regard, eg Ngai Tahu.
I think there has been strong capture of the public policy by many industries including agriculture. Perhaps especially agriculture. I also perceive exactly what this article is about - that here is an imbalance with the profits being privatized, and the costs are picked up by the public at large. It means my support for farmers, as much as I admire their skills and what they have to offer, has been declining for a long time. There are some great farm leaders, but as a lobby it seems to be all take and no give. There needs to be better balance of the public interests and a fair sharing of the costs, including the environmental costs of farming. The thin attempts to do only enough aren't cutting it.
There are undoubtedly plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise New Zealand's agribusiness but this commentary lost me with its major focus on emissions, which this country would do well to set to one side as of major concern generally, as well as apparent outrage that farmers should be so obsessed with the bottom line. Well hello, that is how businesses survive. Governments of course should ensure that there is legislation in place to avoid untenable pollution particularly of water for which the current situation in the country is appalling. However my main concern is a more general one that there is far too much reliance on farming for NZ to make a decent living, with failure to scale up our "intellectual" industries sufficiently to lead primary exports. Also I don't see automation on the list of agribusiness priorities, where if we don't get our act together it won't be too long before we can no longer compete. Indeed NZ should surely be in the business of selling agribusiness robotic designs.
With all due respect to Dr. Curtis, sheep and beef farmers certainly haven't been receiving "corporate welfare," and certainly have been struggling with increased regulations under the previous Labour governments and to make ends meet. Pastoral farms being sold off with pine forests being planted? Dramatically declining sheep numbers? Seems we're on a different planet down here in the King Country! It is true that the rural sector usually saves the day for the NZ economy, but that should be a good thing, right?
Farming of course continues to be essential to the economy, but it isn't enough, particularly with a shift to urban culture. Farming successes buy some time to diversify into other primary industries, which if we fail to do we will be increasingly poor.
The New Zealand agricultural industry is riddled, literally riddled, with marketing myopia. The four pre-conditions for that diagnosis are: 1.) a belief in forever population growth. 2.)a belief that there are no competitive substitutes. 3.) a belief in lower costs through scale. 4.)a focus on the product itself versus the needs of the customer. For example, technology to reduce emissions in cattle feed.
On the corporate welfare side, the sector does not account for or pay for a myriad of externalities. Profits are mostly privatised and costs, particularly ecosystem damaging costs, are socialised. Look at Canterbury’s fresh water issues and they still want to expand dairying. FFS, wake up.
Most of the nation’s primary production is commoditised with most of the upside value bled off through poor marketing and a lack of innovation. Many in the agriculture industry are also stuck in the status quo, trapped by debt, and subservient to politically powerful lobby groups. The NZ Red meat industry typifies this worn out approach and many of its enterprises have turned in poor results for decades. The industry is highly politicised, operating a ‘chumocracy’ at the ‘C’ suite level.
Sorry, it is what it is. Facts are facts. There are opportunities out there but they will remain out of reach until a revolution sweeps the old guard away.
Dr Curtis may be too young to know that in the late 80s, the pastoral sector was weaned off the massive subsidies it had had (Dairy Board borrowing was 1% for yonks, all gone too) and was identified as the least 'subsidised' agriculture sector in the OECD - it was hard indeed to find a meaningful cash subsidy by the 1990s. I think if one wanted to be effective in claiming 'integrity breaches' in any industry, it would be sensible to know quite a lot about it, and to recognise facts about it too, where relevant. This is not how Dr Curtis has proceeded. He might have focused, in complaining, on footdragging in dealing with NO4 from dairy, a climate change contaminant as 'powerful/long-lived' as C02, and nitrogen's impact on water quality. But we have instead a catchphrase of 'dirty dairying', relevant to a very small sector of dairy. One major dirtying of environments is in urban sewage leaking into beaches etc, and blindness to their dirty laundry as urban critics attack the rural sector. Climate change charges here are a classic of the genre - would that we had seen more (fact-based) effort put into our massive urban C02 failures, and billions of Government money directed to incoherent climate policy, vs $400 million mentioned here for very targeted action for agriculture.
KPMG will be chuffed to know their Agribusiness review is 'prestigious' (!!). This year, agribusiness has reprioritised v 2024 simply because some action has been taken on some of last year's concerns, so it has sensibly re-arranged priorities - there is truly nothing to see here. And I for one am glad we have a Minister for Agriculture with farming experience, just as I am glad the Attorney General has legal experience. There is simply no mileage in claiming 'integrity' is gone because an informed Minister is able to challenge narrow interest groups like public health officials on labelling of baby milk powder. Or that he is willing to acknowledge the absurdity that while NZ's CO2 levels charge on up every year, generating more warming for a hundred years or more, but recognises that methane from NZ pastoral farming is falling now and will continue to do so, with industry commitment signed up for faster reductions. Urban hypocrisy is attacking dairying's methane impact, looking for a quick 'NZ fix' on the back of our dairy farmers, who have less than 3% of the world's dairy cows and are leading global research to cut cow methane.
Give up on the carbon emissions drama. Most sensible people have started realise it's a big con. That's why farmers are trying not to get caught up in it's noose. There are real problems with pollution and contaminates coming off farms that need addressing before we worry about the nonsense that is supposed climate change.
What the article doesn't address is how we can get farmers/ politicians to accept and do something about their pollution of waterways, aquifers, etc. And maori farmers are no better than anybody else in this regard, eg Ngai Tahu.
I think there has been strong capture of the public policy by many industries including agriculture. Perhaps especially agriculture. I also perceive exactly what this article is about - that here is an imbalance with the profits being privatized, and the costs are picked up by the public at large. It means my support for farmers, as much as I admire their skills and what they have to offer, has been declining for a long time. There are some great farm leaders, but as a lobby it seems to be all take and no give. There needs to be better balance of the public interests and a fair sharing of the costs, including the environmental costs of farming. The thin attempts to do only enough aren't cutting it.
There are undoubtedly plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise New Zealand's agribusiness but this commentary lost me with its major focus on emissions, which this country would do well to set to one side as of major concern generally, as well as apparent outrage that farmers should be so obsessed with the bottom line. Well hello, that is how businesses survive. Governments of course should ensure that there is legislation in place to avoid untenable pollution particularly of water for which the current situation in the country is appalling. However my main concern is a more general one that there is far too much reliance on farming for NZ to make a decent living, with failure to scale up our "intellectual" industries sufficiently to lead primary exports. Also I don't see automation on the list of agribusiness priorities, where if we don't get our act together it won't be too long before we can no longer compete. Indeed NZ should surely be in the business of selling agribusiness robotic designs.