Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Farmer fears for future

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Mid Canterbury cropping farmer David Clark has grave concern about the disconnection between food production and urban people. He talked to Annette Scott about his passion for the land and his fear for the future of farming in New Zealand.
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David Clark is a full time, working arable farmer, passionate about the greater industry and its sustainability for future generations.

The Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers vice president says the farming industry has been good to him and his involvement in Feds is one way he can give back to the industry.

If there is an issue to sort, Clark will be there to contribute his bob’s worth for the betterment of farming.

He has been involved with numerous arable industry issues, taking a particular interest in improving biosecurity.

He visited Malaysia in 2012 to check out the controversial palm oil industry and in 2013 pitched in to organise 15,000 bales of ryegrass straw to be shipped to drought-stricken North Island farmers.

That’s just a skiff off the top of his extensive contribution and keenness to get involved in wider farming issues and activities.

But a modest Clark said it was his chance to give back.

“This industry has been good to us and Feds is an opportunity to give back to the wider farming industry where I can.

“I see it as putting my shoulder into the scrum,” he said.

Clark’s farming roots began on the family’s town milk dairy farm at Clevedon, South Auckland.

An inter-generational farmer, his family has been farming in New Zealand for almost 140 years with its beginnings in the 1870s when his great grandfather, Australian-born Joseph Clark, jumped ship as an orphan in Auckland.

He bought farmland in the Thames area and the family had farmed continuously in various parts of NZ since.

On leaving school Clark worked on a sheep and beef farm at Orere.

“I was very fortunate to be employed by the Cashmore family and it was this opportunity that set my course for my farming career.”

While up north Clark also established his own contracting business.

In 1994 he sold up the contracting business, the family farm was sold and the Clark family pooled resources to head south and take on a big, run-down dryland sheep property in Mid Canterbury.

Historically farming in partnership with his parents, Terry and Pam, Clark and his wife Jayne set about developing the property while also starting another contracting business which the couple sold in 2010 to invest in more efficient irrigation.

Their operation crops 400 hectares in cereals, small seeds and vegetables, carries 1000 ewes and normally fattens 8000 store lambs.

While Clark accepts farming will always have its challenges, it’s the upcoming election policies that have him fired up.

“In our business we are challenged to produce food at the lowest price in the world.

“We do so by employing world-leading technology to be some of the most efficient producers on the planet.”

So Labour’s proposed water tax, an Emissions Trading Scheme that would have Kiwi farmers trying to compete in the global marketplace with one hand tied behind their back, the Greens’ proposed $2/kg nitrogen tax, the suggestion of capital gains tax and to top it off, union-dominated industrial relations, “which would take us back to the 70s” had him baffled.

“I am not sure where Labour and Greens think all this money is coming from because it’s certainly not in a tin under the pillow.

“All of the money for these taxes has got to come from somewhere and that somewhere is out of rural business in our rural towns due to reduced farm spending” Clark said.

“Union-dominated labour relations would mean standardised pay rates, work to rule and the unions flexing their muscle by having the (processing) works on strike every January and the ferries on strike every school holidays – behaviour we have not seen for 30 years in NZ.

“Capital gains tax will take us back to the time of death duties and put a major impediment in the way of intergenerational ownership of farmland.”

Farm succession required capital to pay out non-farming siblings to fund the purchase of land for another farming sibling or the purchase of a house for the retiring generation.

“Often families struggle at this point and if you then tax the working life rise in value of the land that money, that would have otherwise funded the settling of family obligations, will be lost to government by way of tax.”

That would lead directly to either greater corporate ownership of the land or the English situation of land held in trust by wider family groups with the farmer just a leasehold tenant and not having land as collateral to raise working capital.

“My real fear is that the culmination of all these policies, as an outright attack on the production sector, has the very real risk of causing the collapse of the economic confidence that has prevailed since the 80s.

“It really saddens me to hear and read the hatred and vitriol that has been brought into this election campaign and I am very concerned at the rift between urban and rural and the disconnection between food production and our population.”

Clark accepted farming had an environmental footprint and farming practices needed to and were changing because of environmental regulation.

But he strongly opposed a tax on water to clean up degraded waterways.

“Water tax is grossly unfair in that it taxes the use of water to fund waterway restoration when the main water degradation is in areas of no irrigation.”

Interestingly, Clark noted, the three key policies Labour proposed to implement were already in place by way of the Canterbury Land and Water Plan.

“But I don’t think that is the end of the debate.

“We regularly swim with our children in the river that bounds our farm – in fact I would happily drink it.

“In comparison, I cannot swim in the Avon or Heathcote (Christchurch city rivers) yet the Left are silent on urban water quality issues.

“We all have a footprint on this planet and poor water quality has many causes and we are all responsible for the many solutions.

“Taxing only one group is not the solution.

“My principle of farming is this is an intergenerational business and we must leave it in better order than when we started.

“I am but a caretaker and would hope that at least one of my children might take our family forward as food producers – that is our turangawaewae.”

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