The Wairarapa water use project group working on a large-scale irrigation project says it has narrowed the number of potential water storage sites in the region down to 30.
Large-scale irrigation is music to the ears of farmers and others who realise the environmental. economic and social costs of droughts.
It is also a red rag to the green bulls who think water should flow from its source to the sea untouched by human hand or enterprise.
However, the people who oppose irrigation, like many who oppose mining, often the same people who keep asking the government where are the jobs?
In North Otago we are benefitting from the jobs which have come with irrigation.
Two of our neighbours are in the process of completing dairy sheds and two houses. We built a new dairy shed and house last year and are about to start building another house.
That’s jobs for everyone involved in the building and for the people who will be living in the houses.
These are just on our farm and two neighbouring properties, other farms in the district have or are building too. There are also more jobs in supplying and servicing farms and the people who work on them.
None of that work would have been available if it had not been for irrigation.
The economic and social gains are obvious and thanks to strict conditions on water takes by the irrigation company which strictly monitors the impact on soil and water, they haven’t come at the cost of environmental degradation.
Homepaddock 
“However, the people who oppose irrigation, like many who oppose mining, often the same people who keep asking the government where are the jobs?”
Ele, everyone is asking the government, “Where are the jobs”!!!
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I recall the parched brown hills of North Otago from my youth when the climate conspired to prevent grass growing on the fertile soils that only required water to flourish.
Of course the largest body of the jobless army do not want to work and the socialists don’t want them to escape to a situation where they might not want to vote for the luddites.
Hence the emergence of Chris Trotter’s Waitakare man”.
The water you and your neighbours employ to improve productivity and expand work opportunities comes at a cost amongst the highest per liter of any in our nation but thank every thing that is precious you, your farmer and your neighbors have taken up the challenge.
Farmers just as generators do, do not own water they merely make good use of it as it passes by on its way to the sea in the enduring cycle of nature.
If only Robert and his friends could envision New Zealand without the quantum growth dairying has provided from what were regarded as marginal or impossible lands they might learn to live with it and improve where necessary. That however would require a similar change in their blinkered mindset that labels every attempt to make a new initiative will be savaged and the resulting press release will be faithfully repeated by an unquestioning and compliant media.
Green jobs? they would not recognise them if they were tied to a railway line when the train of progress, in this case dairying, ran over them.
Now that could be a positive use for our very expensive and completely inappropriate train set.
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What a charmer you are, Gravedodger – encouraging the murder of me and my friends. It’s your ‘Michael Laws’ moment and that’s not praise, in case you’re a fan of his.
The water me and my neighbours use (presuming your missive, like your imaginary train, is aimed at me), comes from the sky and is applied direct. Some of my neighbours receive reticulated water for drinking, but I’m not sure how ‘my farmer’ has been instrumental in providing that in any particular way. Farmers ‘make good use’ of the water that passes by, do they? They make bad use of it also, contaminating it with nitrates, phosphates, dung and urine, before letting it seep away to the sea.
You cite dairying on ‘marginal or impossible’ lands as being a star in the dairy farmers crown. Some would think it irresponsible to subject fragile land to the hooves and effluent of big hooved animals, but you clearly, do not. Have you heard the term ‘cumulative effects’, Gravedodger. It’s a doozy.
‘Green jobs’, btw, does not refer to FDE. They are jobs that contribute to the economy and the environment in equal measure, where the environment and its health are the measure for suitability, not the other way around. We need more such jobs. This government fails to understand what they are and can’t bring themselves to commit to them, even when wisely advised to do so.
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Ele,. how about a “Here are the jobs #3” focussing on the state sector – i.e what govt can do about job creation – in wellington.
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Dave – why do you want to increase the number of state sector jobs? The growth in the burden of the state, particularly from 2005 – 2008 is one of the things hampering economic growth. Economic recovery and more jobs come from increases in the private sector and the export/import substitution sector.
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‘Economic recovery and more jobs come from increases in the private sector and the export/import substitution sector.’
I smell mantra.
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As an ex banker I appreciate that irrigation gives certianty to the agriculture sector. I am also aware that the only way irrigation schemes can be justified economically is by conversion to intensive dairying. The challenge here is how do we stop dairying polluting our waterways, such as what has happened to the Manawatu River?
Also, here in the Hawkes Bay the additional dairying processing jobs will be exported to Harewa and be of little benefit to the HB, yet through the Regional Council we are expected to take on the financial risk?
Irrigation, like a lot of other big think ideas which pick winners is not all it’s cracked up to be.
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Paul – Follow the North Otago Irrigation Company’s policy of requiring all shareholders to have independently audited environmental farm plans to protect soil and water and work with the regional council to monitor waterways.
Milk isn’t processed in North Otago but there is no doubt that Oamaru and the hinterland have benefited from extra jobs and business.
With the Hawkes Bay climate it’s possible horticulture or crops could equal or better returns from dairying.
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What about the 10% non-compliant ‘tail’, Ele?
They’ll still pollute and the environment suffers. Paul’s right – irrigation begets dairying, dairying, by the admission of it’s best people has a failure rate that’s damaging to the environment.
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Robert I had intended to ask you to list 10 but in the interests of fairness lets make it five.
Please list five areas that will create employment opportunities in wealth creation that will fit with your ideas on “Green Jobs” on a scale that the dairy industry has and please not work created by extending government “make work schemes” but opportunities that will increase our wealth creation without subsidy largely financed by net tax payers.
In answer to my poor choice of wording re land being able to support dairy production you may wish to comment on the ” Shed” zero grazing now abandoned in the McKenzie Basin which involved removing fodder to the shed and spreading the processed manure on the “fragile” soils that have that classification due to the lack of rainfall.
The soils under the pivotsthere, seem pretty stable and productive to me just as the soils of North Otago that often had a look of desert about them 50 years ago
My first year farming on my own account in the heart of Waipara grape district suffered from a 12 month rainfall of just under 13 inches or 317mm. That level of precipitation resulted in high humus tarry limestone soils totally unproductive but only “fragile” from drought and that was before Climate change had been discovered.
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“On the scale that the dairy industry has”
Weighting the argument a bit there, aren’t you, Gravedodger?
Certainly Key and National, who are responsible for managing the well being of New Zealanders through ensuring there are jobs available, haven’t created employment opportunities on the scale of the dairy industry. In fact, they haven’t created employment opportunities on any scale other than one deserving derision (cycle trail jobs from John Key – how impressed were you by that initiative, Gravedodger?)
If you were really wanting to hear how ‘job opportunities’ might be created, you’d have to look at the number of jobs that have been lost since National came into power. Those were jobs that existed and now don’t. There’s part of your solution, but that’s by the by. If I was charged with job creation, I’d look to the farmland and see the most significant opportunities there. The number of people working per hectare is small, to my mind. Such a lot of productive soil, so few people out there making a living from it. Industrial farming methods replace people with machines and systems that take opportunities away from New Zealanders. If full employment was the aim, that’s where I’d be developing opportunities for employment. That would necessitate a change in farming practice and a move away from intensively stocked, monocultural hoofed-stock raising and a whole range of other substantial changes to agriculture. In saying all this, bear in mind, these are my own thoughts and not those of the Greens, who, despite my championing for, care not one whit for my witterings and don’t seek my advice on anything at all. I’d want to see people producing food for local consumption and for export as well as growing/farming fibres of various sorts for all manner of industrial processes. I’d like those activities and the expertise that we’d bring to their management being part of what we ‘export’ as well – training and researching best practice ways to manage the land. The world needs our input on these issues and we have everything we need to lead sustainable development here and overseas. I’d like to see rural communities regain their strength and identity and the opportunities they used to offer there people, etc etc.
I have a lot of ideas, Gravedodger, none so grand as ‘the dairy industry’ but then, I’m not in a position to call the shots. Key is and he’s coming up with bugger all.
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Robert – any jobs governments create add to the burden of the state. What good governments do is reduce that burden and provide an environment which enables the private sector to create jobs.
As for jobs lost, the global financial crisis and the unsustainable growth in the public sector and tax, borrow, spend policies from 2005 – 2008 are largely responsible for that.
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Elle – the North Otago Irrigation Company appears to be owned by the users ie the farmers, which means they have control of the tap and take all the financail risk of the scheme failing or otherwise.
In HB the proposed water storage schemes will be owned by the Regional Council, the Government and ‘private investors’.
The expected cost of the scheme makes the econnomic return to any thing but dairying dubious and that includes specialist high value crops such as grass seed etc.
If the Regional Council is going to invest $80m in a scheme as a rate payer I would expect the HB to benefit and not the Taranaki. It is, after all, our money.
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“Robert – any jobs governments create add to the burden of the state.”
Including those in the newly-created Primary Industries Ministry.
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Around four hundred words and it comes down to strips of land for peasants to produce vegies for local consumption, sounds a bit like the feudal system but you and your support base seem to be pretty well fixated on returning NZ to that level of productivity.
Sheesh we are importing labour already because the unemployed wont work.
Robert, it seems a wind farm at Riverton is your best bet so long as you keep blowing you might just run a couple of LED lights for night life.
What part of the last Labour Governments expansion of the consumptive sector at the cost to the productive sector did you miss.
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That’s right, Gravedodger, a waste of words. There’s no value in yearning for the hearty communities of yesteryear. It’s full steam ahead with the National Party’s aspirational vision and damn the torpedoes! Southland, says Mr Key, the engine room of the country! All aboard!
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Robert – how many of the jobs you suggest will earn export income?
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I’d like to see, Ele, a greater local production of essentials, like food, and a greater emphasis on high-end exports, rather than bulk ‘raw’ materials. Rod Oram described this balance well many times in the past, so I’ll not rerun those ideas here. My wish is for strengthened communities, higher number of New Zealanders living in the countryside (best place to be) and exports that have been processed to a degree that’s greater than just drying it or stripping off its bark. So in answer to your question, most of them. Exporting things increases options for everybody. Done intelligently, in a way that doesn’t displace those qualities that we cherish most, exporting’s the buzz.
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Robert,
Ele “how many of the jobs you suggest will earn export income?”
A: “Most of them”
Q: “How?”
You are full of what you think is wrong but can never seem to articulate what you think is right or how to do it
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robertguyton, in another post you quoted “Exploitation: use or utilization, especially for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields”. But any kind of production from resources in our country that is exported fits this definition, even your own suggestion of “high-end exports”. Your chosen quote emphasizes oil, but it could just as well refer to minerals from the soil that make their way into high-end products that end up overseas rather than rotting back down for future use in this land. You might say that we can replace those minerals, but replacing them takes away (exploits) from somewhere else, either in the form of organic matter which grew on soil in some other place, or synthetically produced nutrients that in their production have produced environmental consequences somewhere else. Do you not care what happens beyond your own back yard?
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Richard – I am. That’s what opposition ‘parties’ do, point out the faults. Looking back a few years, when the party you don’t support was in Government, did you ever criticise their actions? Did Ele, I wonder ever write a post that criticised Labour’s direction, philosophy, actions, statements? (The answer is surely, yes, Richard.)
As for describing in any detail what I think is right or how to do it, I’m mindful of the refrain I hear from supporters of the Right who, when reacting in the same way to the Green’s suggestions about anything at all, say, “they have never been in Government and so their views are nothing more than wishful thinking”. Presumably you can see the connundrum for me. Any suggestion I make will be met by arrogant dismissal and ideological slighting – witness Gravedodger’s reply to my “400 words” at the top of this thread –
“sounds a bit like the feudal system but you and your support base seem to be pretty well fixated on returning NZ to that level of productivity.”
Best I just continue to point out that your Emperor has no clothes.
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Tracey – you are conflating two seperate issues. My objection to exporting fossil fuels relates to climate change and the release of carbon from where it is presently safely sequestered, into the atmosphere, following our excavation of it. It’s not the fact of it being an export that I object to, it’s that it’ll hasten the extreme weather events that will cause our farmers especially, great distress. Therefore, non-carboniferous minerals are not in the same category and your charge is wrong: “Your chosen quote emphasizes oil, but it could just as well refer to minerals from the soil that make their way into high-end products that end up overseas…”, unless they are carbon. The high-end products I’m referring to might include silica, for example, mined here in Southland and processed before being exported. Intellectual exports too, are what I was referring to. Fonterra say they are doing this with their farming expertise. Good thing too. I would use the example of plants that can be exported without ‘breaking the resource bank’ here in NZ. Plants largely consist of what the extract from the air. Trace minerals do come from the soil, it’s true, but in tiny amounts and replecing those is not an unreasonable thing to do, as the scale is small and reserves large, provided suitable systems are employed – the bulk application of phosphorus from Nauru island here is an example of doing this badly, the use of biodynamic techniques, a good one.
Gotta go. Shop’s closing. I take up too much space here on Homepaddock anyway. I’ll give Ele a break now.
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robertguyton, yes I did, and deliberately so. One of your responses to Ele implied that all takers are exploiters. And further, these are issues which get lumped together as far as the processes to be worked through under the laws of this country – something which needs to be changed. But I do like your example given above. Some of your discussion reminds me of an interview featured in NewScientist (i think it was with french molecular gastronomist Herve This). In it was the suggestion that carrot farmers, for example, should not only grow carrots, but also learn how to make beta-carotene from their produce. But factories to process carrots and silica will have emissions and discharges and will face all the same hurdles under the RMA as oil mining for example. Having been through the process myself, I can understand why they just wouldn’t bother!
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“My wish is for strengthened communities, higher number of New Zealanders living in the countryside (best place to be) . . . ” Yes Robert – here’s something on which we agree.
I stopped the quote before your comment on processing because while I think more processing here could be good – it would provide more jobs – it isn’t necessarily bad to process goods overseas if it provides better quality and/or value goods than if it was done here.
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Implied, TraceyS? I was simply alerting Ele to the true meaning of the word ‘exploit’ which she was misunderstanding. I don’t understand your ‘all takers are exploiters’ statement.
Your beta-carotene example is the kind of thing I’m thinking of and there are thousands of permutations that we should explore. However, your belief that the discharges from factories that process carrots, for example, will ‘face the same hurdles as oil mining’ is wrong. “Oil mining’ will be dealt with by the EPA and the public will have no input. Carrot processing will come under the RMA as applied by Councils. Significant difference.
All that said, we are not being ‘smart’ enough with our plans to thrive economically. Lignite mining is stupid, full-stop, as is deep-sea oil drilling.. Carrot-based industries sound far more sustainable and smart. I hope you’ll keep promoting such direction.
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My point was that it’s difficult and costly to get permission to do ordinary things that provide jobs for people. Take a local business that “uses” a resource so abundant in the local area as to be sustainable for hundreds of years. Furthermore, all of the raw material is processed onsite. There is very little waste. The processed product is all used within a 30km radius. It is purchased by local companies employing local people. Most product goes on community projects. None of it goes offshore, but it supports (is vital to) many other industries. All the people who work at the site live within a 50km radius at most. Actual impacts on the environment are either minimal or can be mitigated successfully. Where are the jobs? They are in small operations such as this. Make the processes easier for no-brainer projects and the business operators in this country will produce jobs. Yet they often have to go through commonly expensive and prohibitive processes. The hurdles I was referring to are the NIMBY philosophies that developers have to deal with no matter what the merits of their proposal. The anti-development message through the media is smeared far and wide to the detriment of many people. That puts people off doing the developments we need to provide more job opportunities such as those described in the original blog post. I’d like to see a more positive spirit towards all proposals, even if there are some significant environmental issues to work through and address. It’s better than giving up on there being any solutions to problems, be they environmental, cultural or social.
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