We saw well fed cattle standing in clean conditions but SAFE saw animal cruelty.
If you burrow down into the SAFE website you find its real agenda is veganism.
They should come clean on what their actual motivations are.
Veganism is a personal lifestyle choice folk are more than entitled to choose but I object to that organisation trying to ram it down other people’s throats.
Then, two weeks ago, the report put out by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton again emphasised the impact methane from livestock is having on this country’s contribution to global warming.
It seems the report took a pragmatic approach to the problem facing us but still signals big cuts and changes will be required.
Last week’s stick was the release of a report by the Productivity Commission.
Murray Sherwin is the chairman with an economics background and many of us came across him when he was director-general of MAF so, he knows our sector well and hopefully has an affinity for it.
Given its name, one might think it would be holding the sheep and beef sector up as poster boys and girls given we have had some of the best productivity gains of any sector in the country.
But its name is somewhat misleading.
The commission considers whether laws, policies, regulations and institutions best support the wellbeing of New Zealanders, which is quite a different matter.
Its principal purpose is to provide advice to the Government on improving productivity in a way that is directed to supporting the overall well-being of New Zealanders, having regard to a wide range of communities of interest and population groups in NZ society.
It’s not hard to see there is a degree of tension when considering how it might view what we do.
We strive hard to be productive and profitable, generating exports to allow this country to remain a first-world country but in doing so, given we work within nature, we have environmental impacts.
A main driver of wellbeing, though, is being comfortably off and able to provide food, shelter and some fun for your family so being economically viable and robust should remain a high priority for the commission.
Its report looks at how we will get to become a low-emission economy by 2050.
Not surprisingly, it recommends a shift away from using fossil fuels to electricity to power the transport fleet and industry. If much of this extra electricity is to come from new hydro sources, good luck on getting the dams in place.
It recommends substantial afforestation rates for the next 30 years, like what we were planting at our peak in 1994 – 100,000 hectares a year.
It points the finger at sheep and beef land for this.
Two million hectares going into trees is a quarter of the land farmed by sheep and beef.
It is asking our sector to do the heavy lifting on behalf of other sectors with some significant social and economic impacts and disruptions.
It overlooks the record profitability of the sector and that we have already cut our own emissions by nearly half while dairy has doubled.
Recent modelling has shown that sheep and beef farms with 20-25 hectares of forestry and other plantings for every 1000 stock units offset their emissions.
Many are already doing this and maybe this approach at farm level will offset our own outputs but won’t assist other sectors mitigating theirs.
However, the commission is recommending changes to the ETS and forecasting a large lift in the carbon market prices and afforestation on harder country might become attractive.
In fact, it is already happening.
We will have to get used to the scrutiny we are under and get our heads around the big changes ahead of us.
But there will be opportunities for us as well so we need to dwell on those aspects.
