Agriculture will be having to think there may be alternatives to our traditional approach to farming.
Recently I wrote a response to an article, ‘Dirty Dairying’
in our local paper. It was another episode in the barrage against dairying led
by the Fish & Game Council. In the response I questioned the integrity of
the urban based critics noting that whilst they wanted diary companies to take
responsibility for all of the organisations they deal with, we weren’t told
what responsibility those critics were taking for their environment.
How many of them went out to clean up the rubbish in their
street, or recycled their grey water instead of using high quality drinking
water to water their garden, wash their car and flush their toilet? Did any of
them collect water from their roof? How much recycling did they do? Were they
putting out less rubbish bags? Did they only buy items in their supermarket
that are packaged in recyclable material? How often did they drive when there were
public transport options available? How many of them are subject to similar
standards and penalties on water management and emissions as are demanded of
farmers?
The waterways of urban Auckland
illustrate my point well – there are many, many ‘dirty’ waterways which have
nothing to do with farming.An agricultural commentator wondered after an encounter with a Greens Party supporter recruiter, why anyone would consider there is a world without science, logic and where economic and social realities are irrelevant. You could be forgiven for thinking there might be given the nature of main stream media on dairying, associating water issues solely with that industry.
Of course there is no reasoned,
scientific or logical debate about water in the main stream media. In
constructing my response to the dirty dairying article, all of my information
came readily via the rural/farming papers including the revelations about the
pollution of Lake Wakatipu and Auckland Harbour.
Queenstown, the poster town for New
Zealand’s 100% Pure campaign, has been responsible for repeated sewage spills
into pristine Lake Wakatipu. Apparently in the past 12 months there have been
spills on average once every 6 weeks and twice in January of this year.
And the ferry operator in Auckland
who was emptying ferry sewage tanks in the harbour. They dodged prosecution and
claimed ignorance about the law. What makes matters worse, the operator had
failed to use a $400,000 rate-payer funded pumping station to handle their
sewage.
I have suggested, the defensive and
name calling counter attacks on the Fish & Game Council in the rural media
were not the answer because whilst it may make the farming community feel
better, no one else sees that, let alone cares.
A better tactic would be to render
Fish & Game irrelevant in the debate. Another tactic would be to get a
wider debate going on water and its quality as it is affected by urbanisation,
especially in areas with fast growing urban populations, and more especially in
areas where that growth is at the expense of first class productive agricultural
land.
In short, rather than reacting, all
of us advocating for agriculture should be working collaboratively from a
strategy to (a) change the fundamental platform of the debate away from
dairying to water quality and availability generally; (b) break Fish &
Game’s throttle hold on the debate in the media and relegate their engagement
from prime authority to that of minor stakeholder; and (c) urbanise the debate
in the mainstream media.
Whilst the time might be right to ‘engage
positively’, the farming sector need’s to set the plan and direction. Set it in
a world where science, and logic apply and ‘where economic and social realities
are relevant’. I would place a caveat on that
philosophy of course.
What we learn from successful entrepreneurs
is they ‘believed’ or had a vision long before there was any proof solid. If we
relied solely on scientific proof, nothing could or would change quickly. Excitement
and daring vanishing. So we might need to consider alternative views and ideas
with open minds.
However, that will not be about
cementing our traditional view of farming. The other side of this coin for
agriculture will be having to think there may be alternatives to our
traditional approach to farming.
And in my opinion, I suspect that might just be the real issue
here.
