Write Here,Right Now

EXPECT FEDERATED Farmers to place more emphasis on science and be more ‘evidenced based’ when dealing with issues for the next three years.

That’s the message from the new president Dr William Rolleston, successor to Bruce Wills who has retired after three years in the role.

Rolleston, who farms in South Canterbury, told Rural News there are ongoing challenges for the organisation on climate change and the environment – especially water related issues.

He says the previous Feds board had been dealing with these issues well. But he now wants to put a “slightly different flavour” on things by having good science and evidence to back up their arguments.

Rolleston rightly points out that “science underpins the primary sector” and says Feds needs to look at how primary sector R&D is funded and coordinated amongst all the organisations and “make sure farmers get bang for bucks”.

If Feds wants to get good value from government it must act professionally, he says. “We have moved away from that reaction at the end of the process and more into a collaborative process with good communication and having discussions up front so that things don’t just blow up as big issues.”

Rolleston is also planning to take a similar attitude to common adversaries of the farming sector such as green lobbyists. He claims that a better understanding by environmental groups and others who hold views different from the farming sector will pay off.

It is good that Rolleston wants the Federation to be a solution focused organisation that works with whatever government is in power.  But it is important this collaborative and solutions focused approach does not mean appeasement or the Feds’ becoming a toothless watchdog. Farmers still need their lobby to be a strong and powerful advocate.

It is no use having a watchdog that will roll over for its belly to be scratched when its view are not popular with the government of the day or other lobby groups. Farmers need to be assured their new and improved watchdog will fight for them when it really matters.

Let’s hope Rolleston and his new Feds board are prepared to sink their teeth in when necessary.

The 1984 snap election not only saw the end of Rob Muldoon’s prime ministership but also farming support and subsidies

THERE’S A hackneyed saying that if you lived through the 1960s, you won’t remember them. (Attributed to the tendency for people in that era to use mind-altering substances.)

However, for anyone who farmed – or was associated with farming – in New Zealand during the 1980s it’s a time no one will ever forget. For those in the rural sector the election of the fourth Labour Government and the unleashing of its economic agenda would have a major impact, much of it still felt almost 30 years later.

These challenging times of major change are nicely encapsulated in former Otago Daily Times farming editor Neal Wallace’s new book about how Rogernomics changed the face of NZ’s rural sector.  Published by Otago University Press, When the Farm Gates Opened is a fascinating look back at the amazing changes thrust upon the country’s rural sector and farmers when the 1984 Labour Government took power and set about reforming the economy.

The economic reforms launched by the 1984 David Lange-led Labour government changed New Zealand forever. Agriculture bore the brunt of those changes and became an historic reference point for the primary sector: a defining and pivotal moment when financial subsidies abruptly ended and farming learned to live without government influence, interference or protection.
The changes were more sweeping and wide-ranging than anything farmers and farming had expected. Some adjusted, some did not.

Thirty years on, this gripping and moving social history relates the story of a rural sector battered and bruised by rapid change. It traces the period building up to the economic changes by talking to political and sector leaders, and the most important contributions are interviews with those most affected.

All the main players during this time – many of whom have now died – are included: Rob Muldoon, David Lange, Roger Douglas, David Caygill, Jim Sutton, Peter Elworthy, Collis Blake and Jim Bolger, to name a few.

This is a must-read for all who lived through these times, and even more so for those who did not. It’s an amazing reminder of how much the farming sector has changed in the past 30 years and should be a mainstay on bookcases nationwide.

When the Farm Gates Opened: the impact of Rogernomics on rural New Zealand, at major book retailers. RRP $30.

IN CASE you missed it, Fonterra last week released some fantastic figures in its payout announcement.

An opening forecast farmgate price of $7.00/kgMS for the 2014-15 season – a historically high figure that matches the opening forecast 12 months ago at the start of the 2013-14 season.

The forecast 2013-14 payout of $8.40/kgMS, with a forecast dividend of 10c/share, means a record total of $8.50 for a fully shared-up farmer.

And a strong milk supply is forecast for the new season – 1616 million kgMS, up 2% on the current season forecast of 1584 million kgMS.

These figures are a massive boost for dairy farmers, rural communities and the wider economy but if you got your news from the daily print and broadcast media you could be forgiven for missing them.

Our Australian friends at Fairfax led the rush to bad news on their ‘farming’ web page with the headline ‘Fonterra signals $2.2b dairy payout cut.’ Never mind that the $2.2 billion dollars never actually existed or that it is only the difference between a record payout this year and a pre-season, and therefore theoretical, forecast.

Fairfax wasn’t alone, of course. All its metro-based brethren took the low road. The TV One News website lit up with “Fonterra has cut its forecast 2014 milk payout… and expects the payout for the 2015 season to tumble to $7/kgMS.”

At its media conference Fonterra provided ample context so the assembled hacks might see the silver lining, not just the cloud. For example, chairman John Wilson said the new season forecast was historically high, but reflected current market conditions. “Our farmers understand the realities of dairy commodity price cycles, and will exercise caution at this early stage in the season,” he said.

He could have pointed out that the opening forecast of $7.00 is up $1.20 on the 2012-13 season that ended at $5.80/kg, or $6.12/kg including the 32c/share dividend.

Bank economists also did their best to add context to the reportage, although these comments were largely buried as metro media strained to accentuate the negative.

ANZ’s statement was balanced, and consistent with the other banks: “On the face of it the decline in the payout between years is a drag on the economy over the coming year, but that dynamic is exaggerated.” The coming year’s payout will still be the fourth-highest on record, and from a spending point of view farmers will be in a similar cashflow situation.” ANZ also said average farm profitability is still expected to be nearly $3500/ha – nearly three times the seven-year average of $1150/ha.

Plenty of potential for a positive headline then, but Fairfax et al think the only good news is bad news.

‘WE NEED the resources to keep the drive for change moving.’ That’s the plea from meat industry reform lobby group MIE (Meat Industry Excellence) in asking farmers to support its remit for funding from Beef + Lamb NZ (BLNZ).  This and other remits will be voted on at BLNZ’s annual meeting in Feilding on March 14.

MIE is seeking $200,000, on top of the $40,000 it has already been given by BLNZ, to continue its work on “addressing procurement and marketing issues” in the sector. The funds are for travel expenses and the cost of meetings and other activities.

MIE chairman John McCarthy claims this is no gravy train, but a continuing push for reform. Most of the expenses to date have been carried by individual MIE members.

He says MIE is the only group with the mandate and focus to drive meat industry reform, a bold claim, as is the request for $200,000 – you can bet your life it will grow – of red meat levy funds.

There is no doubt MIE and its proponents are passionate drivers of their proposed meat industry reforms, even managing to get aligned directors voted onto the boards of Alliance Group and Silver Fern Farms. But they draw a long bow in claiming an overwhelming mandate for support from red meat producers for their reforms and/or open access to levy funds to further promote these. Such boasts and demands border on arrogant pride, a turn-off to farmers that has hampered past calls for industry reform.

MIE does itself few favours in this regard: notice its insistence that Fonterra director John Monaghan be appointed to the board of Alliance Group without going through the correct constitutional process demanded of other candidates.

It now rests with red meat producers to give MIE proponents the mandate and funds they claim for meat sector reform, or send them back to the farms they come from. Either way it needs to be a clear message. It is your money and your vote: exercise it!

The days of what happens on the the farm stays on the farm are long gone.

KILLING bobby calves with hammer blows to their heads should send shivers down the spine of every Kiwi dairy farmer.

The days of ‘she’ll be right’ are gone, as are the days when ‘what happens on the farm stays on the farm’.

And perceptions held by onlookers are as important as ever. Vast numbers of people now own a camera-cellphone, and social media can spread misinformation at light speed.

Trying to educate the public about farming practices is by-and-large a lost cause because townies, especially in Auckland and Wellington, dwell in another universe.

It may be that farmers now must try to think like an imagined Aucklander — or a Berliner — to try to second-guess their perceptions of how farming is and how it ought to be.

The citizens of Grey Lynn and Karori need to know that farmers see no great sport in bashing their baby charges with hammers, nor, for that matter, having their vets induce calves. We acknowledge the public, with the animal ethicists, want animals killed ‘nicely’. (Sentient beings are to be euthanased humanely, not bashed to death.)

New Zealand agribusiness is vulnerable because it pitches its products to the affluent and educated – the high end of the market. The reward is better prices, the requirement is higher standards.

Farming leaders need to get off the fence and lead from the front, personally showing their farms as examples of best practice in animal welfare. One-time airline owner Sir Reg Ansett once  said “the speed of the boss is the speed of the team”.  Right!

Dairy farmers need to be one step ahead of the consumer and offer new value propositions that show they are leaders not followers of best practice.

It is time for New Zealand’s agribusiness to stand out from the flock and make a united stand

The agriculture sector needs to do more to inform the public about what’s involved and happening in our industry.

Farming’s critics have the industry constantly ‘under the pump’, often using misleading information and ill-informed assertions. Many claims are made about farmers deliberately damaging the environmental, over-charging locals for produce, making huge tax-free profits and inflicting undue pain on animals, to name but a few.

Where such events are happening the sector needs to move quickly to publicly punish those besmirching and risking its reputation; and such actions must be rectified.

Already in 2014 we’ve heard assertions that dairy farmers are profiting while destroying the nation’s waterways at taxpayers’ expense, and that most New Zealand meat exports are shipped in carcase form. Both claims are demonstrably false, but they attracted wide, uncritical news coverage.

As Churchill said, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has even got its pants on.

The rural urban divide is a growing problem in New Zealand. More accounts of the benefits of farming to our economy and society are essential.

Only 15% of New Zealanders are farming or have any contact with farming – and that number is falling, though it’s much lower (1%) in other countries. This carries huge implications: less influence with legislators and poorer global understanding of the agricultural experience.

Less and less is the farming voice influencing policy and that’s not good. Globally there is a challenge in public perception. Activists speak with one voice globally, so should farming.

The best solution for New Zealand is for the industry to connect more with media and the general public by self-promotion and actions. Rural media, though effective in this sphere, are preaching to the converted – our audience is mostly rural and/or industry people. It is time for the general media to pick up more stories about farming and less meaningless drivel about Justin Bieber’s latest tweet!

Industry and lobby groups such as Fed Farmers, DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb NZ and Fonterra all do good work, eg farm open days and Milk in Schools, but more is needed. Government also has a role in ensuring the wider public better understand and appreciate the importance of our agriculture sector.

The time for action is now!

THE LATEST media beat-up on Fonterra’s fresh cream recall cannot go unchallenged.
Everyone, from opposition politicians to a handful of Fonterra’s 10,500 shareholders, has jumped on the bandwagon to bag the dairy co-op. One unsuccessful Fonterra board candidate went as far as calling for board chairman John Wilson to resign.
And all because the co-op voluntarily recalled 8,700 bottles of fresh cream from North Island retail and foodservice outlets. The recall was triggered by quality tests showing there may be the presence of E.coli in some Anchor and Pam’s bottles of cream.
To put this in context, Fonterra produces around 17 million bottles of fresh cream annually in New Zealand. It is recalling fewer than 9000 bottles or about 0.05% of its annual production. In New Zealand there are 100 voluntary food recalls and withdrawals every month. But no other food producer faces this scrutiny from the media and politicians.
We don’t condone the presence of E.coli or any other bacteria in our food products. The bottom line is that all our food products must be safe and of top quality. But let’s give credit where its due – Fonterra has acted decisively in recalling the products.
One would expect the co-op to have learned its lessons from the botulism fiasco. It should have processes in place to manage consumer fallout and should in time shake off any perception issues about its food safety record.
The investigation into the alleged contamination is continuing and everyone will be eagerly waiting to see how this happened. For overseas consumers, still recovering from the false botulism scare and its impact on infant formula trade, publicity around the cream recall will cause some concern.
However, the fresh cream recall is a domestic issue for Fonterra’s brands business. Food recalls come with being a major player in the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector.
Using every minor food safety issue at Fonterra to humiliate the co-op is plain wrong. And using the minor food recall to push political agendas is worse.
The cream recall is a minor issue, but as a global food exporter, Fonterra knows the stakes are high in the international market. The co-op is now operating under scrutiny both at home and abroad.

Another year has passed, yet another busy one for the agribusiness sector. Rural News’ editorial team reviews the 2013 year and its highs and lows…
Bad
‘KICK EM in the guts Trev’ award: AgResearch for the way it handled its relocation strategy. Another crop of good scientists gets dumped on and New Zealand loses again. While the CRI may have a point with its relocation strategy, it seems to many that the company is more interested in paying dividends to the Government than serving farmers’ needs.
‘Missing in action’ award: John Wilson, Fonterra chairman. Happy to front new milk in schools programmes, but he went into hiding when the proverbial hit the fan at Fonterra during the botulism botch-up.
Biggest loser of the year: Gary Romano, after he walked (voluntarily or not) the plank following Fonterra’s botulism saga. Second biggest: New Zealand – or was it the biggest?
Biggest botch-up of the year and the people’s choice: Fonterra for botulism botch-up or was it notulism? Inept in every way, from the first sign of trouble to the appalling communication of the crisis at all levels of the organisation.
Second biggest botch-up: MPI for not changing the old MAF paperwork for meat exports to China. Meat sat on wharves for weeks and exporters lost money while authorities haggled over an acronym. A ‘high performing department’? Yeah right! Not high and not performing. Oh, and what’s in our PKE? A sheep’s foot, a deer’s hoof or a fish?
Worst PR effort in the rural sector: MPI by a country mile. They never failed to underperform. The struggling government department even spent $250,000 on buying-in spin doctors from outside, to no avail! Can anything be ‘Dunne’ about this?
Fonterra is at least trying to change its ways, but still has a fair way to go.
Good
Biggest turnaround: the kiwifruit industry, from survival to revival in the face of Psa destruction.
Best score: Dairy Women’s Network again for attracting DeLaval NZ’s managing director Zelda de Villiers as its new chief executive.
Grace under fire: Nutricia ANZ managing director Corine Tap, facing hysterical mums and massive product recall; but none of it was her fault.
Leading the way: Miraka for notching up a deal with the Chinese this year, while Fonterra was busy apologising to them for its numerous cock-ups.
Top lobbiest: HortNZ who got more dogs, more X ray machines, better biosecurity. Also ran a great conference and vastly improved its relationships with central government.
Runner-up: MIE for trying hard to get reforms in the meat industry. Harder than herding cats.
Politician of the year: Amy Adams for driving the RMA and water reforms and putting regional government on notice for some sub-optimal performance. A very smart politician.
Trying hard award: Nathan Guy for doing his best – despite taking advice from a department (MPI) that has been restructured so many times that too many good people have gone.
Runner-up: Damien O’Connor who did his best despite belonging to a party more interested in the rights of gays than the primary export sector. Right guy, wrong party.
Farming leader: hard to go past Bruce Wills who has turned Feds from a feral, grumpy lobby group to one respected nationwide especially on environmental issues.
Agribusiness person of the year: Kingi Smiler continues to impress by his leadership in Maori agribusiness. Others to watch are Gerard Hickey of Firstlight Foods and Dion Tuuta of PKW.
Ag event of the year: hard to beat the Ahuwhenua Awards for the top Maori farmer. Attracting 850 people to an amazing gala dinner is pretty impressive.
Young person: Lincoln University undergraduate Brigitte Ravera for her brilliant endorsement of the opportunities agriculture offers young people, spoken during a bus tour organised for teachers and careers advisors. The other young people on the bus were equally impressive.
Best PR in rural sector: Feds, if you base it on the number of media releases and their willingness to front people. DairyNZ, Rural Women NZ and Massey University are also very much up there.
Best communication of science: Massey and Lincoln universities and DairyNZ. Always willing to help the media and farmers and innovative in the way they communicate. MPI take note!
Ugly
Knockers of the year: Fish and Game and Massey University’s Mike Joy who seem to forget that moaning in the media doesn’t earn export dollars, nor does it help our export sector.
Greatest hysteria: anti-PKE groups using some media to foulmouth the key supplement feed in the dairy sector. MPI reacts by agreeing on greater screening of PKE.
Idiots of the year: the small minority of dairy farmers who continued to pollute waterways and failed to respect the environment, so tainting New Zealand’s image. It’s time Fonterra and other dairy companies made them walk the plank (a la Gary Romano).
Greatest challenges for 2014: getting unity in the meat industry, making MPI a high performing government department, stopping Mike Joy and his green mob from badmouthing farming, encouraging young people to make a career in agribusiness, and getting Fonterra’s John Wilson to front the bad as well as the good news .
A bouquet: to the big majority of farmers who have met their environmental obligations.
If only
Dr Mike Joy would say one good thing about dairying farming.
Nathan Guy would stop referring to MPI as being a “high performing government department” until it is.
Fish and Game would accept they are not environmentalists; they’re there only to kill and catch fish.
Fonterra would fire some ‘feral’ dairy farmers.
The CRI’s would do some serious ‘technology transfer’ and have regular interactive sessions with farmers.
The meat industry would unite and farmers would fully support that.
Someone would take a real leadership role in the primary sector.
MPI would stop referring to Maori as “having potential”. Maori are already performing well and, yes, they have potential, but so do many non-Maori farmers.

THE DEBATE over foreign investment in agriculture is clouded in politics, ambition and fear. It polarises farmers, political parties, investors and the community.

Yet foreign investment in New Zealand agriculture has been a reality for decades. In fact, New Zealand agriculture was founded on foreign investment.

With former Labour leader and trade minster Phil Goff recently pulling his Rural Land Sales Bill from the parliamentary private members ballot, we are going to hear this issue debated again.

Many in the farming sector may sympathise with the populist intent of Goff’s bill, but they should be careful what they wish for.  Are they saying a farmer who owns the land does not have the right to sell it to the highest bidder, if that happens to be a foreigner? That has severe connotations for his business, income and retirement.

Farmers create income for the country by producing products better than anyone else and allowing that produce to be sold to the world for high prices. Are we now saying New Zealand-produced milk, meat, fruit and wine should not be sold to these overseas buyers because it makes prices to locals too high?

No doubt Goff’s bill will garner support from the xenophobes in NZ First, the economic isolationists in the Greens and the populists in Labour.  Supporters of this bill will claim it is intended to protect New Zealand for New Zealanders, but in reality it is simple dog-whistle politics.

It’s not really about foreign ownership, it’s about Asian ownership. However, the real foreign land owners in this country ironically aren’t Asian – they’re Brits and Australians. Look at the media coverage of the Shanghai Pengxin purchase of the Crafar farms, compared to that of Hollywood director James Cameron buying his growing swath of land in Wairarapa.

What’s the difference? Both are foreign owners. They can’t take the land back to their home countries. They are employing New Zealanders, buying New Zealand inputs and investing back into New Zealand.  Surely this is all good for our economy?

New Zealand is a player in the global market and a strong proponent of free trade. Is it not more than a little ironic – even hypocritical – that the great free trader now wants to restrict who we will sell our farmland to? We can’t expect to play in a global market with free trade deals and open access if we’re going to slam the door on foreign investment.