Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Barking up the wrong tree

Avatar photo
Dear Steve, As someone who’s taken action with Oxfam to tackle poverty before, we thought you’d be interested in a new campaign we’ve just launched today. Will you join us in calling on the New Zealand government to step up our climate action by helping farming reduce pollution?
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The unfortunate reality is that large-scale, intensive agriculture is responsible for 48% of NZ’s climate pollution.

In hope and determination,

Alex on behalf of Oxfam Aotearoa

Dear Alex,

I’ve always respected and supported Oxfam in the past, but you are way out of your mandate here buddy.

You are ignorant of my sector if you believe “the unfortunate reality is that large-scale, intensive agriculture is responsible for 48% of New Zealand’s climate pollution”.

The majority of farming in this country is not large-scale and intensive but are family businesses producing high-quality, sustainably grown products and those exports are what has got this country through a very difficult time given tourism is on its knees. The export dollars farming earns pays for the covid-19 vaccines, the PP gear and countless imports that you and your fellow city dwellers require to live a good life.

Why haven’t you sent out an email getting stuck into the other 52% of NZ’s climate pollution? Namely, transport, energy and the like?

And how about a call for the tourism sector not to be brought back to life, given we are currently not emitting 10 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere because no one is flying in or out?

I’m currently planting 7500 native trees around yet another retired waterway. What are you doing to cut your own emissions?

This is an appalling tub-thumping exercise by Oxfam to get donations and exposure and you should be bloody embarrassed about this campaign.

In frustration and disappointment,

Steve

PS: In answer to your question, no.

A lot of life is about luck. Oxfam was particularly unlucky to send their appeal asking for support to pressure the Government to “help farming reduce pollution” out not only to a farmer, but a farmer with a weekly column to fill.

Give them their due, after I followed up with another email asking if they were going to reply and that I was going to write a piece on this, their media person replied immediately and that was later followed up by an email from my mate Alex.

He was personable and at pains to point out that they wanted to help farmers to transition to non-polluting forms of farming and made all the right noises about agriculture’s importance to the economy and food supply.

He supplied links to their past campaigns and to be fair, they have been lobbying and pressuring governments to do more about climate change for quite some years. This is because the effects of climate change have a big impact on the people where they work. That mollified me to an extent as they weren’t just jumping on the latest bandwagon of let’s get stuck into agriculture.

My beef – pun intended – is their language implying our whole sector is large-scale and intensive. He might be surprised that many farms like my own are so well-planted that the plantings are more than offsetting the emissions. Hardly intensive. And, most sheep and beef farms are offsetting most of their emissions. These sort of facts are not recognised in their call for action as it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Oxfam does good work and their compassion and empathy for people in countries a lot less fortunate than ours is admirable.

Their business model based on the email I got appears to be based on funding from people they have helped find something to get outraged about.

They got me a little outraged, but not in the way they were hoping.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading