Quite a change, I imagine, for main streets and retailers in towns and cities.
Less so for those of us in rural communities.
In fact this covid-19 lockdown has not felt greatly different except the tennis coach is now a constant presence at home and has used only a quarter of a tank of petrol in a month. The drought remains a far greater difficulty than the effects of the virus and control measures.
The coming weeks feel like they might be a reversal of what we experienced in the mid 1980s with rural areas relatively unaffected and urban ones severely so.
Perhaps a repositioning of the economy given the sudden acknowledgment of the importance of food production.D
The day I started farming in my own right in 1985 coincided with the removal of subsidies. Ironically, the day I bought a radio station a few weeks ago on April Fool’s Day coincided with the biggest fall in media advertising in history. Timing is everything.
But what I learned in that first event long ago is helping with the current purchase.
And maybe it’s a template to assist what other industries and places are likely to go through now.
During Sir Robert Muldoon’s reign farm income from subsidies climbed to 40% of the total. The worst drought I have witnessed was the El Nino one from 1982-83. It started blowing terrible winds in September and never stopped till the following May. It evaporated all the water out of Lake Hatuma and I walked across it in April because I could.
The subsidies meant you did not make rational decisions.
Farmers kept more stock on through that terrible drought so they were there at balance date to collect the subsidy cheque. The animals were there but they looked terrible.
I imagine if you are a business in a port city where there has been an endless number of cruise ships rocking up or a resort town where masses of tourists flock you have never planned or expected for a time when the music stops.
But when it does you better be fleet of foot.
I am surprised by the stories coming out of these places of businesses already in serious financial trouble after just a month of no income and that is with the wage subsidy meaning their major cost is covered.
What has happened to the decent profits they have made for years and why are their balance sheets in such a poor state?
Questions that could have been asked of farmers in 1985, I guess.
The predictions of widescale and sudden farm walk-offs did not occur but there was a steady movement of folk leaving the industry over the next decade or so.
Those of us who hung on changed dramatically the way we ran our businesses.
Jane and I survived by putting off having kids and she continued her dental nurse career as the outside income was the difference between keeping or losing the farm. I worked bloody hard and slowly worked smarter. We lived very frugally and that habit continued until only recently.
Every time we had a spare dollar, we paid off debt.
Farming businesses, more so sheep and beef than dairy, mostly have strong balance sheets, which create a buffer for difficult times. We have become accustomed to adversity. And the nature of seasonal income is that we are used to long periods without income and plan accordingly.
These traits suddenly make us the darlings of the banking industry.
These are the sort of strategies our urban business friends are going to have to learn quickly if they wish to survive.
The hubris of our situation where we had such smugness in our economies, way of living and civilisation reminds me of Percy Shelly’s excellent poem, Ozymandias.
Shelley’s inspiration was likely the British Museum’s purchase in 1817 of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the 13th century BC out of Egypt. Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramesses.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
