Friday, March 29, 2024

PULPIT: Failure won’t be farmers’ fault

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Farmers, like any business people, always look to keep costs down and make a profit. 
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Farming, however, is an industry with a unique set of variables. Droughts can severely affect crop and livestock growth, floods and storms damage crops and infrastructure, unexpected disease outbreaks and wavering demands in certain products can all have wide-ranging impacts completely out of farmers’ hands. 

In addition, farmers are now expected to be conscious about their environmental impact. 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently announced Kiwi farmers have a five-year window to reduce their carbon emissions before the Government introduces financial penalties – potentially adding further stress to already overworked farmers.

One area in which farming is having a significant impact on the environment is waterways pollution as a result of phosphorus and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. 

An Environment Ministry report in 2014 revealed roughly 60% of New Zealand’s waterways are unfit for swimming and experts say water quality has deteriorated further since. 

A recent Colmar Brunton survey found 82% of respondents are extremely or very concerned about the pollution of rivers and lakes, more than any other issue including living costs, child poverty and climate change. 

Furthermore, more than 13,000 people signed a #toomanycows Greenpeace campaign launched on Twitter earlier this year calling for a ban on synthetic fertiliser. 

You’d think that consumer sentiment might vary from that of farmers but that isn’t the case – farmers are onboard, too. 

A recent survey by Nielsen Research, commissioned by the Ministry for Primary Industries through the Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change Research programme, revealed  92% of farmers are focused on making their farm more environmentally sustainable, up from 78% in the last survey, in 2009.

Making amendments to your farm to ensure it’s environmentally friendly isn’t an overnight fix. 

It takes knowledge and investment to ensure you’re investing in the right tools and practices. There isn’t, unfortunately, a certified playbook farmers can follow but it’s about the Government and organisations pulling together to give farmers the power to be environmentally friendly without it affecting their bottom line. 

We’ve spoken about NZ’s polluted waterways being a major concern and that’s something the fertiliser industry is trying to address. Granulated dicalcic fertiliser is a product being offered by several players. It can decrease the excessive run-off of phosphorus that happens with powdered fertilisers. It’s profitable too, because its slow-release qualities increase the volume of phosphorus, a key nutrient for plant-growth, released into the soil over time, growing bigger crops. 

That innovation and the healthy competition among companies wanting to build sustainable and profitable solutions for farmers is just one example. 

There is plenty of innovation happening across the agricultural sector but we’re in a unique position now where the threat to our climate is evident and farmers need to be supported with tools that are not only more efficient than the ones they’re already being offered but also help them make a profit and reduce the impact their practice is having on the environment. 

But we can’t just point at farmers and say fix this. 

We have to come together to make life as easy as possible for them. 

The alternative products, equipment and practices need to not only address the environmental problem but also be superior to ones they’re already using, make financial sense and be more beneficial in terms of profit and loss. 

It’s no good telling them to be more environmentally friendly but be prepared for their business to take a hit.  

There are some solid initiatives happening across the Tasman, where bodies such as the Environmental Farmers Network, formed by a group of farmers with a wide environmental experience, provide industry professionals with the support and information they need and bridge the gap between industry and government. 

We need more of that in NZ and more companies innovating to solve the problem, not looking at farmers to solve it themselves. 

Some 92% of kiwi farmers are focused on making their farm more environmentally sustainable, a higher percentage than ever before. 

Therefore, it won’t be resistance or a want of trying that leads farmers to fall short of the Government’s climate emissions reform expectations, it’ll be that they haven’t been sufficiently supported.   

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