Showing my age

News stories and blogs commenting on the death of Larry Hagman concentrate on his role as JR Ewing in Dallas.

I’m showing my age, but my strongest memories of the actor are of him playing the major in I Dream of Jeannie which was on TV when I was a child.

Word of the day

Beneficence – practice of doing good; the state or quality of being kind, charitable, or beneficial; active goodness; feeling beneficent; a charitable act or gift.

8/10

8/10 in NBR’s Biz Quiz.

Rural round-up

Water quality’s complex issues – Gerald Piddock:

Improving the environment while simultaneously growing production are the main challenges for those making decisions around water quality, a leading science advisor says.

These two goals are pulling policies in opposite directions, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s principal science advisor Grant Blackwell says.

There is no silver bullet to solve this dilemma, he says, but he suggests that a values-based approach is essential. . .

Some effluent fines ‘unjustified’ – Gerald Piddock:

Some of the fines imposed on farmers have been unnecessary and unjustified, according to a Clutha dairy farmer.

Stephen Korteweg told the New Zealand Association of Resource Management conference in Dunedin that “the big stick approach” in dealing with water quality breaches was fine. “But when you start beating the patient with the big stick you’ve lost the plot,” he said.

Highlighting the economic benefits of better environmental practice was the best way to change farmer behaviour. . .

Pure Oil wants more rape grown – Gerald Piddock:

Central Canterbury consortium Pure Oil New Zealand is the new owner of the agricultural division of Biodiesel New Zealand.

The consortium is owned by Midlands Seed, Washdyke-based potato and onion exporter Southern Packers, agronomist Roger Lasham and BiodieselNZ agribusiness manager Nick Murney.

The sale included Biodiesel New Zealand’s oil seed rape crop production, the oil extraction facility at Rolleston and the marketing of the resultant products – rape seed oil and rape seed meal. . .

Industry needs wool’s help – Alan Williams:

Hawke’s Bay businessman Craig Hickson knows all about the meat industry and that it can’t save sheep farming on its own.

It’s different this time, significantly different, Wools of New Zealand director Hickson says of the call for sheep farmers to invest in wool industry marketing.

A few days into the roadshow promotion of the share issue, the directors are picking up the vibe from farmers that they fear this one is like the controversial WPC co-op plan of 2010. . .

Broader reach sought by dairy industry:

The dairy industry is looking to broaden its academic reach through a new postgraduate programme at the University of Auckland.

The joint graduate school in dairy research is a collaboration between the university and industry-bodies Dairy New Zealand, AgResearch and the Livestock Improvement Corporation. . .

Dairy farms produce record milk levels in year to September; growth expected to slow from here – David Chaston:

As the new dairy season builds, annual milk production has broken through the 20 million tonnes level for the first time ever.

The latest data for the dairy milk production shows the new 2012-13 season starting off with record volumes.

DCANZ is reporting that September 2012 milk production was 2,436,000 tonnes, a rise of 5% over the 2,319,000 tonnes produced in September 2011. (The rise in September 2011 was +12.5%.) . . .

Essential guide for earthworks in tiger country:

Forest owners and farmers now have access to detailed information about carrying out earthworks on steep hills that are often prone to erosion — the tiger country where New Zealand’s plantation forests are increasingly grown.

To harvest those hills, you need highly skilled roading engineers and operators who can construct low-cost, fit-for-purpose, roads, culverts and landings that meet high environmental standards. They in turn need a source of reliable information about what works and what doesn’t work in difficult terrain and across a wide range of soil types.

 Launching the New Zealand Forest Road Engineering Manual and associated Operators Guide, associate minister for primary industries Nathan Guy complimented the Forest Owners Association for taking the lead. Principal editor Brett Gilmore was praised for putting a huge amount of work into the project. . .

Saturday’s smiles

As singles’ ads go, this one goes well:

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant, I’m a very good girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the bush or beach, riding in your ute, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating our of your hand. I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me . . . . Call ** ******* and ask for Annie, I’ll be waiting . . .

 

Greg McGee 2013 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow

Greg McGee has been awarded the 2013 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.

 . . .McGee plans to work on his fourth novel, set in New Zealand and Italy, during his Menton residency.  “I am honoured to be following in the footsteps of many of New Zealand’s finest writers as the Menton Fellow and, like them, I deeply appreciate the time and space the fellowship gives me to concentrate on a major project, particularly since my project requires research in Europe,” he says.

McGee’s first play, Foreskin’s Lament (1981), is one of New Zealand’s most successful and drew on rugby culture of the time to comment on national values. As crime writer Alix Bosco, McKee is the author of the award-winning novel Cut and Run (2009) and Slaughter Falls (2010). He has won several TV awards, including Best Drama Writer for two of his political documentary dramas:  Erebus: the Aftermath (1987), and Fallout (1994).  This year he has produced two new books: a biography of All Black Captain Ritchie McCaw – The Open Side and a novel, Love & Money (2012). . .

McGee was born and brought up in Oamaru.

I was intrigued to read in his memoir Tall Tales (Some True) Memoirs of an Unlikely Writer his reference to social class and the difference between his family and those of his friends who lived on the hill.

He’s a few years older than me but we had very similar upbringings.

Our mothers nursed together and my mother was bridesmaid for his. Our fathers were both tradesmen – his a painter and decorator who owned his own business, mine a carpenter at the freezing works.

Yet he looks back with what appears to be a strong perception of social class and I grew up with no perception of it at all.

That is irrelevant to his writing, which is very good.

He’s a versatile writer and this award is well deserved recognition for a long and accomplished career.

We don’t know how lucky we are

Fred Dagg reckoned we don’t know how lucky we are.

Federated Farmers’ president Bruce Wills  expresses has similar thoughts in a speech entitled the real ‘lucky country’:

In recent days the International Herald Tribune has penned an expose supposedly blowing the lid on New Zealand’s ‘clean green 100% Pure’ brand’.

I wish to recap what I told the journalist.

I said to him New Zealanders don’t do moderation very well. As a people, we tend to be most critical of ourselves. It means we often see ourselves as the very best at something, or the very worst.

International visitors I meet are confounded by the level of self-criticism they read or see.

We call it a ‘tall poppy’ syndrome, but when visitors look at our countryside and our waterways, they are struck by how pristine and clear they are.

I said to the journalist, can we do better? Yes of course we can. But, I strongly believe when you look at what we do and how we do it, we are way up there in terms of environmental performance. . .

Quite.

I must note the coverage of this far exceeds Dr Jeremy Hill becoming the first New Zealander to head the International Dairy Federation in 109 years or indeed the limited coverage of Tim Aitken and Lucy Robertshawe being named Marks & Spencer’s number one farm supplier on earth.

It is an unhealthy part of our psyche that we delight in the negative and ignore the genuinely positive.

Sad but true, bad news sells.

So how do we grow in this self-imposed fishbowl?

New Zealand exports are more likely to grow if successive governments target a population of 15 million by 2060. It is that simple.

That is not my idea but highlights a fundamental discussion we are not having about how big we ought to be and by when. It comes in a recent thought-provoking paper prepared for Business New Zealand by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.

If we want to grow New Zealand into an agricultural superpower we need a larger domestic market to create and exploit the opportunities we create.

This report also recommends considering tax incentives or grants to encourage large, successful New Zealand companies to remain based here, instead of targeting all assistance to companies just starting out as exporters.

I am a little nervous about incentives because that is about picking winners.

I second that.

Yet it does feel as if we are becoming a branch economy. Lion Nathan, which can draw on a lineage back to 1840 is now a Japanese company.

Fisher & Paykel that iconic staple of New Zealand kitchens is to be owned by the Chinese.

Interestingly enough, given the CraFarm saga occupied some of our time at June’s National Conference, Fisher & Paykel’s sale has passed without too much of a whimper. There was no ‘Save our Stoves’ campaign, no petitions, no marches and few editorials.

Fisher & Paykel joins NavMan and a host of successful starts that have left these shores. The biggest arguably being Joseph Nathan’s Glaxo – founded in the Manawatu.

So the NZIER is right to ask questions about how we maintain the economic benefit from New Zealand companies, either bought by foreign investors or moved closer to foreign markets.

Icebreaker is an example of a company which has managed it. Ownership, design and marketing are based here, manufacturing takes place in China.

Can I suggest the immediate answer lies with what we do.

I can confidently say, that in terms of value and in terms of productivity, New Zealand farming is the star turn. Globally New Zealand agriculture is Hollywood and Wellywood all rolled into one.

We are the hot house, the benchmark and the Wall Street of global farming. I must ask why that being the case, some Kiwis delight telling overseas conferences or media what we get wrong, whereas I like to focus on what we get right.

I believe we get more things right than we get wrong and farmers do deserve positive accolades for this.

Bad news stories lead, good ones tend to get lost on the farming pages and rural reports.

One area we lose out is a lack of integration within our meat and wool sector. That, to me, is the hallmark of dairy industries success. If we take Fonterra, it is a global ingredients company rather than a processor of milk.

New Zealand’s core competitive advantage is food and instead of armchair experts thinking finished products, we need to be thinking ingredients. Meshing our ingredients within global supply chains so that it becomes “NZ Inside”.

It works for companies like Intel and Gore-Tex, why not Fonterra?

McDonald’s NZ being a fine example of what I mean, given the value of primary exports it sends is only one third lower than the total export returns from the film and television industry.

ANZ’s latest Insight paper states “strong international demand combined with growing supply constraints are driving an enormous opportunity for agricultural trade.”

Between 2012 and 2050, ANZ expects New Zealand to capture an additional $500 billion to $1.3 trillion in agricultural exports. This is an immense opportunity and the banks are beefing up their agricultural skills as they know this is the once and future secret of New Zealand’s success.

So what is holding us back?

Capital constraint is a major one. Something more Kiwi savings would help with as that lessens our reliance on Belgian dentists and Japanese housewives.

We can also add a poor skills match between those leaving tertiary institutions with what employers actually need. While we have growing urban unemployment we cannot fill vacancies on-farm.

So we have people with the wrong skills in the wrong locations,

We also face land use conflicts.

We have reason to fear councils rushing blindly into setting limits based on flimsy analysis. I must make mention of Horizons One Plan and urge the Council to invite Landcare Research to present its findings.

Agriculture needs land and while it is a finite commodity, we are no where near maximising the full potential of New Zealand’s millions of hectares of pasture.

The only thing we have to fear is our own nagging self-doubt. The market determines best land-use because New Zealand was built by those who believe in the word, can.

We must guard against becoming the country that can’t.

Water is a flashpoint but it is an area where there is too often ignorance with even harsher words spoken about farming.

At least the positives of the Land & Water Forum are that it points towards a better future. We are on the same page and are engaged.

Yet if we have problems with the RMA in trying to generate wealth, while environmentalists complain about the RMA too, maybe we need to have a closer look. We need to ask if the RMA remains the best policy instrument for New Zealand in the 21st century.

The NZIER is in no doubt that it represents a blockage.

We must also question the pantheon of industry good bodies and organisations through to government programmes purporting to assist exporters.

There seems to be a lot of duplication when exporters face similar market and logistical challenges. We need to ask if we, on the industry side, ought to be mirroring the way the Ministry for Primary Industries has consolidated itself. This is flowing through into what the Industry Training Organisations are currently doing as well.

Maybe fewer but better equipped and resourced voices could be a good thing, taking a leaf from Business NZ to form a Primary New Zealand body.

The one thing we know is that the world is going to demand 60 percent more agricultural output than what globally was produced in 2007.

Are we the country of can? I believe we are.

Titled “Scale Up or Die“, that recent NZIER report argues successful exporting nations are not only closer to their markets, but have large home markets as well. It is this that helps to create the scale needed for export success. So how do we shape up?

§ In 1900 New Zealand’s population was just under a million

§ In 1980 New Zealand’s population was just under 3.2 million

§ In 2012 we have just broken the 4.4 million mark.

By anyone’s book our growth has been rapid but not rapid enough. The NZIER argues for 15 million Kiwis by 2060.

The report’s authors, economists John Stephenson and John Ballingal, argue:

“If New Zealand’s biggest impediment to better economic performance is an absence of scale, there is only one way to overcome this over the long term and that is to grow the population through more migrants.”

What the NZIER suggests is the biggest human growth-phase we have ever seen. Statistics NZ projections, even at the most extreme end of migration, places New Zealand with around seven million souls by 2061.

So what the NZIER wants is double Statistics NZ most optimistic projections.

That of course poses a question of where they will live given the recent debate about affordable housing. Not to mention the land this will take.

We know from Landcare Research that we are eating our farmland up at a worrying rate. Current building techniques threaten to eat up the land that creates the basis for future economic prosperity.

If we are to increase our population it demands a move to high-rise, high density housing. It demands the use of brownfield land first and greenfield last; a hierarchy for land use.

Reading the NZIER report it is hard to disagree when the report’s authors suggest New Zealander’s have a low level of financial literacy. We bemoan foreign investment but queue for 30-months interest free terms funded by someone else’s savings.

Some farmers complain about losing on swaps while others have little issue with them.

I don’t believe swaps is the big issue facing farming that some may make it out to be. If we bail people out for poor choices, it just means those who made good choices pay more.

There are plenty of examples of that in the past when governments used to subsidise farmers and give all sorts of drought relief. The good ones made decisions early and survived on their own merits, the bad ones waited for the government to step in and got by on taxpayer largesse.

The big issue is our relationship with the environment.

If we overbalance on economic development, we destroy the environment and that costs us all.

Yet if we overbalance on the environment, we destroy the economy and that equally costs us.

Striking the right balance is important. With good management and good science we can do both, we can continue to improve how we interact with the environment, and we can grow the economy. We can grow more jobs with a lighter footprint.

The solution is not complicated.

It is to trust Kiwis to make their own spending decisions. Government just needs to spend less. It is about focussing on outcomes rather than process. It is about trusting the collective wisdom of a community rather than views of a distant judge.

We produce safe, quality food in a world that is crying out for more.

We have great water nestled among some of the best scenery on earth.

We are an educated and innovative people with an exciting future.

We are the ‘lucky’ country.

It’s more than time we realised how lucky we are and celebrated it.

Let the tall poppies bloom and appreciate the land that lets them.

We could start here with an antidote to negativity:

The prestigious British supermarket chain, Marks & Spencer, has provided the perfect antidote for those feeling downbeat about New Zealand farming. A Kiwi farming couple are in the spotlight as Marks & Spencer’s most sustainable farming supplier on earth.

“Good things take time but Marks & Spencer have recently updated their sustainability pages to reflect the fantastic achievements of Tim Aitken and Lucy Robertshawe,” says Bruce Wills, President of Federated Farmers.

“Although we announced this last month, I think we need to take stock of what Marks & Spencer have said of Tim and Lucy and by extension, the New Zealand farm system,” Mr Wills added.

Farming for the future winner 2012

WINNERS
Tim Aitken & Lucy Robertshawe
Congratulations to Tim Aitken & Lucy Robertshawe who were voted by you as the overall winners of M&S‚ Farming for the Future Awards 2012.

Tim and Lucy farm in the Central Hawkes Bay area of New Zealand and won our International Farming for the Future award this year. They have around 600 breeding hinds on their deer farm and rear the offspring for venison meat, which is sold to M&S.

Farming together since 1994 they have developed their property to provide their livestock with the ideal environment. Native trees and bush have been protected and shelterbelts have been planted. They have developed wetlands for birdlife and to improve the quality of water leaving the farm. They are at the forefront of the venison industry in New Zealand, involved in research and innovation to improve deer farming for New Zealand farmers and deer welfare. Tim and Lucy are actively involved in the farming community, from hosting field days for farmers from all over New Zealand to local schools agricultural classes.

Federated Farmers President, Bruce Wills, feels Tim and Lucy were excellent examples of Kiwi farmers leading the way in sustainable farming.

“The Marks & Spencer Farming for the Future award recognises farmers for how well they treat their livestock, their technical excellence as farmers and their overall environmental performance,” Bruce Wills continued.

“Winning the overall award ahead of the four British finalists is a huge endorsement of Tim and Lucy’s farming system and the esteem New Zealand agriculture is held in overseas.

“Federated Farmers is proud to have this couple as members. We do lead the world in innovative animal welfare and environmental management and sometimes, it takes positive overseas recognition for us to be reminded of this,” Mr Wills concluded.

Anyone want to take a wager on how many people know about the Herald Tribune’s story criticising our environmental record and how many know about Tim and Lucy?

 

NZ Rural (for now) Party

The New Zealand Rural Party is holding its first public meeting this weekend   but it might not be the Rural party at the end of it.

The meeting will establish an executive, approve the draft constitution and discuss the party’s name.

The party was founded by Horeke farmer, forester and Northland regional councillor Joe Carr and Okaihau farmer, contractor and former Far North Holdings director Ken Rintoul, who claim political parties that had traditionally had provincial New Zealand’s interests at heart were now focused on the major urban centres. . .

The party was formed a few months ago but is not yet registered  and its founders are already have second thoughts about its name.

Co-founder Ken Rintoul says . . . the party has attracted around 250 members over the past four months and is about half way to reaching the 500 needed to become a registered political party.

He says it has also become clear that its policies on helping New Zealand’s exporters and manufacturers have struck a chord with far more than just rural communities and the party’s name may well have to change.

Hmm, how does that sit with this statement on its website?:

Your political voice from New Zealand’s rural communities, towns, service sectors and value added manufacturers.

A party ought to work out what and who it stands for before it’s established.

Not having done that, isn’t stopping its founders, though.

. . . In 2014 they will field candidates in the general election but as a relatively small blip on the political horizon can the NZ Rural Party seriously expect to make any impact in Wellington?

”Look at the Maori Party” exclaims Joe Carr.’ Four people holding the balance of power!”. . .

Those four people also hold seats which are designated as Maori seats. Without the seats it is very unlikely they would be in parliament and it would be much harder for a new party to win general seats.

It would be harder still for a rural party when there are so few rural voters.

Statistically farmers make up 6%of the population while the provincial community is 22%. Including forestry and other rural workers the entire rural population is less than 25% of the whole and yet-and this is where the NZ Rural Party believes it can generate political persuasiveness-the rural sector contributes 60% of the country’s export gross domestic product. . .

It’s not easy for a new party to get traction without standing for something which sets it apart from the others and the Rural (for now) Party’s policies don’t do that:

•   NZ Exchange rate is too high

•   Local Government Reforms should continue

•   ETS-No tax on animal emissions

•   Too much bureaucratic RMA

•   The nation owns water

•   Infrastructure-Rural NZ road funding – shafted by Government

•   Full reciprocal land purchasing rights for New Zealanders in foreign countries

•   Productivity and profitability should be encouraged

•   Rural NZ has much to offer

Most of these aren’t even policies, they’re statements of problems and opinions.

The party might be able to work out exactly who it’s trying to represent.

It might be able to find a name which suits those diverse adherents.

It might double its membership to the 500 required for registration.

It might be able to develop policies.

It might even find some poor deluded souls willing to stand as candidates.

But its chances of getting into parliament are about the same as mine of winning Lotto tonight – and I haven’t got a ticket.

November 24 in history

380 – Theodosius I made his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.

1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieged La Charité.

1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: The English army defeated the Scots.

1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks observed the transit of Venus, an event he had predicted.

1642 – Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1806 William Webb Ellis, who is credited with the invention of Rugby, was born (d. 1872).

1815 –  Grace Darling, English heroine, was born (d. 1842).

1849 – Frances Hodgson Burnett, British-born author, was born (d. 1924).

1850 – Danish troops defeated a Schleswig-Holstein force in the Battle of Lottorf.

1859 – Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain – Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain and began to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1864 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter, was born (d. 1901).

1868 Scott Joplin, Ragtime Composer, was born (d. 1917).

1888  Dale Carnegie, American writer, was born (d. 1955).

1894 Herbert Sutcliffe, English cricketer, was born (d. 1978).

1897  Lucky Luciano, American gangster, was born  (d. 1962).

1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers was executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.

1940 – World War II: Slovakia became a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.

1941 – World War II: The United States granted Lend-Lease to the Free French.

1942 Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian, was born.

1943 – World War II: The USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed near Tarawa and sank with nearly 650 men killed.

1944 – World War II: The first bombing raid against Tokyo from the east and by land was carried out by 88 American aircraft.

1959 – All hands were lost when the modern coastal freighter Holmglen foundered off the South Canterbury coast. The cause of the tragedy was never established.

1961 Arundhati Roy, Indian writer, was born.

1962 – The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany formed a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.

1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting was broadcast live on television.

1965 – Joseph Désiré Mobutu seized power in the Congo and becomes President.

1966 – A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashed near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

1966 – New York City experienced the smoggiest day in the city’s history.

1969 – The Apollo 12 command module splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money.

1973 – A national speed limit was imposed on the Autobahn in Germany due to the 1973 oil crisis.

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed “Lucy” (after The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.

1992 – A China Southern Airlines domestic flight crashed, killing all 141 people on-board.

1993 – In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.

2007 – Australians elected the Labor Party at a federal election; outgoing prime minister, John Howard, became the first since 1929 to lose his own seat.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia