Voting for a better future
Released 25 Oct 2011
James Houghton is Federated Farmers Waikato provincial president
The clowns are already entering the ring with Labour releasing its agricultural policies last week. The only surprises for farmers really were how far they were willing to ransom the future prosperity of New Zealand to take a few cheap political points right now. Then there is that party with grass coloured principles who want to kill agriculture. What are they thinking? Do we want to become another Greece? We could all become vegetarians and kill the environment with our back end gas emissions.
We don't like it, but farmers are getting used to getting a bashing from the political parties who don't seem to believe agriculture should be a profitable business. As a minority within a very urbanised population, we are easy targets. Our combined voting power is too small for political parties to worry about trying to attract it.
I just want to point out that when politicians are spouting their "farmers bad, city good" rhetoric to attract urban voters, people need to seriously stop and think about if this attitude will help New Zealand, going forward.
What these politicians chose to ignore is we farmers are doing our damnedest to keep New Zealand's economy afloat. We are a fraction of the population, but last year agriculture brought in 66 percent of this country's export earnings. Due to international demand for our high quality food, the value of agriculture to our economy is only going to grow.
Like all businesses, when we are profitable we pay more tax. This money is used to keep our health and education services going and, if we are doing well enough, we can also help pay for those added extras, such as hosting Rugby World Cups.
Who people vote for is up to them, but I hope on 26 November people put aside their emotions, look past the rhetoric and really think about what the consequences are for the country.
New Zealand is poised on the brink of a new trade based golden age, with some analysts predicting our economy could outperform the rest of the world over the next 15 years.
This is a time when we need to work together as a community to make the changes which are needed to take us into a new era of prosperity.
Working together is made more difficult by the seemingly increasing gulf between rural and urban. This is not helped by the perception that rural people are polluters which is put forward in many reports and media statements on an almost weekly basis. A recent report issued by the Office of the Auditor-General on water quality is the latest in a line of studies which zero in on agriculture and dairying in particular as major polluters. Meanwhile, the situation in urban environments is left unaddressed.
I predict the state of urban New Zealand will become a problem which the entire community will have to address. Doing so sooner rather than later would be a sensible, although politically more difficult, idea.
Urban streams are consistently shown to be more polluted than rural ones, suggesting there is a lot of work to be done in towns to improve our rivers.
Councils also have a largely unreported dirty secret. While they will prosecute dairy farmers if their effluent systems are not performing, their own human effluent management systems also fail, allowing thousands of litres of effluent into the environment. Some councils around the country even have consents to discharge their effluent straight into streams, something no dairy farmer has been doing for decades.
There are no comprehensive studies into the damage caused by human effluent either accidentally or legally discharged into our waterways each year by councils, but the few figures available suggest this is a fairly common occurrence.
Rather than constantly pointing the finger at farmers as the culprits behind environmental degradation, councils should look at what farmers are doing and learn some lessons on how not to pollute streams, rivers and lakes themselves. We are happy to work with authorities and share information.
Cleaning up the environment is something which everyone in the community, both across Waikato and the country, has to take a part in. While everyone has been focussed on rugby and now the upcoming election, we should also not be afraid to tell our regional councillors what we want. Contact your regional councillor if you would like to improve your urban streams.
It is time everyone started working together to make some real change.
