Friday, March 29, 2024

PULPIT: Food producers vital to NZ

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New Zealand has always had poor native biodiversity.  What a contrast to Africa with 1150 species of mammals, 68 species of snakes, 431 species of birds and 1279 species of freshwater fish. 
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NZ one mammal, no snakes, 196 birds (but 48 extinct, 32 during Maori civilisation) and 58 freshwater fish.

In Africa the waters are always muddied by the large population of hippos. Elephants, estimated at 26 million 200 years ago, have dwindled to 400,000 so there are fewer of them to make the water dirty. But it’s obvious these huge mammals and lots of other species bring nutrients to freshwater habitat and have allowed a proliferation and abundance of species.

By contrast, NZ has such clean water that feed supply for fish is very limited. 

In North America it is common practice to spread fertiliser on fishing lakes to improve plant growth to boost the food chain and promote the growth of fish. 

In NZ the Fish and Game lobby group has an ongoing campaign to berate farmers for allowing stock to walk through streams and to fence waterways. Fish and Game is slow to admit the Opuha dam has allowed a better summer flow down the Opuha River, resulting in a twelvefold increase in the trout population. That has to be a win-win for both farming and fishing. 

The harshest man made impact on our freshwater environment has come from Fish and Game introducing trout, salmon, Canada geese and mallard ducks. But like all lobby groups, sustainability is of utmost importance for the organisation itself, and the people working for it. 

The global funding for Greenpeace in 2018 was US$650 million. Two other global environmental groups had funding of more than US$400m last year. 

The key to obtaining that funding is to think up campaigns that leave people in a constant state of anxiety about the future of the world. 

Given the wealth of these lobby groups it is very difficult to get air time for a common sense, balanced view that takes account of economic and social implications of policy as well as environmental. 

Government policy is full of contradictions, double standards and symbolic gestures.

Contradictions include allowing NZ’s population to swell by 95,000 a year over the past five years with each extra person adding to gas emissions. 

By contrast, ruminant numbers have declined and the pastoral farming area has shrunk. 

The Government is also promoting long-distance tourism as a better business than farming despite the risk world governments might decide to impose a heavy tax on air travel, though that is unlikely given the tenfold growth in global air travel since 1995. 

Double standards include the Queenstown Lakes District Council has had more than 200 transgressions of sewage and storm water spillages with total fines of $62,000 or $310 a time. 

A dairy farmer will pay up to $100,000 for a single transgression. 

Has the Auckland City Council had to pay fines for polluting the beaches with raw sewage?

Among symbolic gestures banning oil and gas exploration has to be a stupid move in a remote country reliant on an oil tanker steaming into the Whangarei refinery every six days. It would make much more sense to be self sufficient. 

Bicycle lanes have been painted on city streets but no increase in cyclists has resulted. 

Climate emergency hysteria has been created despite NZ’s primary sector exports rising 19% over the past two years. 

Allowing wealthy investors from anywhere in the world to buy food-producing farmland, in contravention of the stated intent of the Paris Accord, as a carbon sink then using taxpayers to fund social welfare for those investors is a crazy idea. 

Has it not struck the idealists that our food-producing area is shrinking fast and our population is growing by 2% a year and one day we might go hungry? 

Allowing good food producing land to be planted in pines is a policy that should be abandoned.

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