Bridging New Zealand’s Urban-Rural Divide
Released 14 Jan 2011
By Stew Wadey, Federated Farmers Waikato Provincial President
One of the key social challenges in the modern world as populations grow is urbanisation. In New Zealand 86 percent of us now live in cities and with that comes a cultural rural-urban divide.
We are now reaching a point where we are into the second and third generation of Kiwis that have no connection to the countryside, which causes problems with the representation of agricultural issues. Let me explain.
In 1960's New Zealand the vast majority of townies had some connection to the rural world through family, friends or rural business connections. Farms were an everyday part of most people's lives through house calls and even holidays.
With this came an appreciation of the importance of the rural sector which fed into the mind-set of MPs and ministers.
The population has now nearly doubled to 4.4 million through growth and immigration and most now live in cities, work in cities and have friends only in cities. This is now where the democratic critical mass is, and modern politics reflects this.
In 1988 we saw David Lange claim "Farming is a sunset industry and manufacturing and tourism will take its place."
Generations of political leaders have blindly followed this assumption despite the fact that the rural economy produces 66 percent of New Zealand's total merchandisable exports.
New Zealand's economic future doesn't depend on developing new industries to compete with the agricultural sector; it needs to look at meshing new enterprises to it to grow our economy. There are vast commercial opportunities to mix technological innovation, scientific research and banking around it. Where is New Zealand's Monsanto? Where is our Rabobank? Where is our Novartis?
New Zealand governance under MMP cements this negative urban based mind-set in to voters - minority parties and their niche interest politics now have excessive influence, while the main political parties focus on mass policy appeal and skip the long term economic planning we need.
Unfortunately, the upcoming referendum on the status of MMP looks set to preserve this status quo.
There has been a call for a farmers' party and it wouldn't surprise me if it happens. The perception amongst farmers is that National and Labour have both ignored us on issues such as NAIT, the Emissions Trading Scheme and nationwide broadband.
Federated Farmers is an apolitical organisation and will not be involved. However if the 14 percent of rural residents voted it would easily pass the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament - especially if some high profile dissenters from the other parties decide to join in.
Whatever the result of this election, Federated Farmers would like to see agriculture get its just dessert in terms of parliamentary representation. It is bizarre that the National government has our Minister for Agriculture, David Carter, at number 10 on the list - that's not even a front bench position. Given agriculture's importance to our economy, the minister should be at least in the top five. The last Labour government had Jim Anderton as minister at number two, which was great for agricultural representation.
But on a smaller scale the issue is changing attitudes to the country, which is why Federated Farmers is running its annual Farm Days in March. This is a great opportunity for families, students and visitors to spend the day on a farm reconnecting with grass roots farming communities.
Most townies experience of the country now is through tourism. This then allows mischief makers such as the Greens to get into parliament and get plenty of media airtime to paint agriculture as the destroyer of all things beautiful in our country.
Small measures like this reduce the culture clash and remind everyone of the importance of agriculture to the national economy.
I invite anyone who is interested to come along to farm day on March 13 and see the industry that New Zealand was built around.
