We felt if farmers could show they were willing to address our effects on the environment then that despised possum might be able to morph to a much loved kiwi icon.
I was wrong.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much we do to address our effects on the environment, we’re still the despised pest.
The message is clear this Government has every intention of running us over and would have done so already had it not been for NZ First who’ve caused the truck to swerve a couple of times.
However, from what Environment Minister David Parker and his colleagues are saying we are their prime target in their quest to save the world.
They have lots of proposals.
Under the banner of climate change the Government is intent on introducing taxes on nitrogen fertiliser and livestock emissions.
That is justified by the Government repeating the lie we are responsible for 48% of New Zealand’s emissions.
It is simply not true because that calculation doesn’t take into account the carbon dioxide our pastures and crops take out of the atmosphere in the first place.
The equation is simple. Every kilogram of drymatter we grow in plant material takes roughly a kilogram of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The more productive the land the more carbon dioxide we remove.
The Government’s numbers give no credit to agriculture for this nor for our shelter belts, riparian plantings and other non-productive areas growing vegetation but, instead, refer only to our gross emissions.
An agricultural science degree is not needed to understand if you are serious about global warming then the carbon dioxide we take out of the atmosphere is as important as the gases we emit.
Most of this carbon is exported from our farms as food, fibre and leather where it has been deemed unacceptable to tax people for eating and wearing it.
Instead, our Government is proposing to tax food producers.
No other country is even considering this simply because what is proposed in NZ has nothing to do with stopping climate change.
This Government is proposing Resource Management Act changes to further limit rural development while enabling and expediting urban expansion, though not now on our elite soils.
It proposes changes to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater, which it has signalled will require rural catchments to comply to higher water-quality standards in rivers and lakes, meaning less nitrates and a swimming standard for E coli.
In doing so it is likely to have to introduce an exceptions regime.
The existing policy has a no-exceptions rule other than for naturally occurring events such as lahars. It means all New Zealanders have to accept they are part of the problem and they cannot just blame farmers.
The so-called bottom lines or minimum standards for our water bodies were set at a level that are achievable in most cases for all water bodies polluted below those standards. The policy requires regional councils to plan to bring all those polluted water bodies up to standard – urban and rural.
Our most severely polluted water bodies are nearly all in urban catchments.
Changes to the minimum standards for water quality will make it almost impossible for urban authorities to comply with the policy, hence the need for an exceptions regime.
If the Government is serious about addressing the health of water bodies then having standards that apply to all water bodies is imperative.
Encouraging this hate-a-farmer mania might appeal to its supporters because it lets it off the hook but it does nothing to help the environment.
If these proposals are not enough to scare away farmers, the Government is also proposing to slow down traffic in rural areas, supposedly for safety reasons, rather than investing in upgrading our arterial roading networks to cope with the increases in traffic volumes.
Instead it is going to invest in mass transit projects to allow the continued expansion of urban areas.
It has excluded farmers from the targeted use of GM technology to enable the development of potential solutions and pulled any assistance for infrastructure projects such as water storage to help cope with population growth and giving the country some resilience to climate change.
It is subsidising overseas investors to buy our farms for forestry conversion and has even proposed a tax on my farm truck to subsidise townies to buy electric cars.
All this comes when we farmers are already struggling to pay for riparian fencing and planting, effluent systems upgrades, farm environmental plans, consents, auditing and compliance, nutrient allocation and biosecurity levies to pay for controlling exotic diseases, pests and weeds.
Don’t get me started on the Primary Industries Ministry’s incompetence in dealing with Mycoplasma bovis and then there’s the threat of taxes on emissions and fertiliser.
The list goes on and it is too much.
It is sapping the fun, excitement and morale out of farming.
I’ve recently been made chairman of a Landcare Trust/Environment Canterbury project promoting the asset value of having wetlands on farms.
We’ve been overwhelmed with offers of wetlands for the project.
All these wetlands have been preserved, enhanced and nurtured by enthusiastic farmers at their own expense without regulations, policy statements, rules or overburdening bureaucracy.
We, as farmers, want to play our part in saving the planet but central and regional governments have to target the actual problem and not just look for expedient possums to run over.
A sceptical, broken, bitter and sullen farmer is not going to be a co-operative participant in saving the planet.
