Thursday, March 28, 2024

Horticulture attacks farming

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The steady release of research on the state of New Zealand’s waterways presents new opportunities for businesses and politicians promote their own interests.
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The Royal NZ Institute of Horticulture Education Trust made a push for young New Zealanders considering career options to help save the environment and waterways by expanding horticulture as the higher-value land use activity of choice.

This openly competitive tactic in pursuit of trainees reflected recent statements by the Primary ITO, which reiterated the difficulty being experienced in attracting people into primary sector training.

Primary ITO chairman Mark Darrow said the old image of farming meant it was still difficult to get people’s heads around going into the industry.

But the trust’s intervention was effectively pitching sector against sector and using adverse coverage of another primary industry to its advantage.

Clearly the trust believed there were gains to be had by promoting the positive role horticulture could make in improving environmental outcomes.

Trust chairwoman Elle Anderson hoped the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s warning that NZ’s economic growth model was approaching its environmental limits would make more young people choose to make a difference with a career in horticulture.

“We know that millennials as a generation want to make a difference in the world.

“They want work that is meaningful and that is motivated by a strong reason-why. They are also high-tech, high-touch focused – all of which are demands and expectations that horticulture can amply deliver on.”

Meanwhile, the Green Party used the research to further back its call for a moratorium on new dairy farms as a means to halt water pollution.

The Greens primary industries spokeswoman Eugine Sage said “Even Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy has now admitted that there’s no room for more cows because of the impact they have on our rivers, lakes and aquifers.

“The Government has all the reports it needs to show the dire state of our waterways, now it just needs to take action,” she said.

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