Word of the day

Matatika – be right, straight, ethical, fair, equitable, honest, impartial, unbiased, upright; right, straight, ethical, fair, equitable, honest, impartial, unbiased, upright, moral; right, ethic.

From the Maori Dictionary for te wiki o te reo Māori – Maori Language Week.

Rural round-up

Hey government let’s K.I.S.S. – Rowena Duncum:

The Essential Freshwater Package has Rowena Duncum wishing the Government would stick to the Keep It Simple Stupid method.

Look, I usually steer clear of voicing political opinions, but to be honest, I’ve lost a lot of sleep this past week.

Here we are one week on from the big water policy announcement and I don’t see that abating anytime soon.

In the last seven days, we’ve heard a range of opinions. Some good, balanced and considered. Some in the extreme for opposing sides of the spectrum. . .

Big processors pursuing staged transition – Brent Melville:

Weaning New Zealand’s primary sector off fossil fuels could cost the industry and the agri-sector hundreds of millions of dollars.

Alliance Group, the country’s second-largest meat exporter and largest lamb processor, confirmed it would be ending the use of coal at all of its seven plants within 10 years and was at present examining other fuel options across its network.

It had budgeted capital expenditure of $60 million-$70 million for the transition, it told a select committee hearing on the Zero Carbon Bill in Dunedin yesterday.

David Surveyor, chief executive of Alliance Group, said energy requirements were sourced across a range of fuels. “Levin and Dannevirke operate on natural gas, Nelson utilises diesel, while Smithfield in Timaru, Pukeuri in Oamaru and Mataura and Lorneville in Southland use coal.” . . .

#farmingwithpictures Positive day on the farm today. Big list of jobs completed ✔️✅ This Bull mob, putting on big weight gain.@goaheadfarms @rmcintyre007 @MooreBnmoore @Jacquel14087021 @KarenWi71 @andrew_hoggard @bushypark8 @ktmilne6 #happydays 😁😀 pic.twitter.com/Qewq5dw42p

— Chris🥛Proud Food Producer 🐄🐂 (@Lewisridge_Farm) September 11, 2019

They’re fishing for the future – Neal Wallace:

The desire to remove the ticket-clipping middlemen is not confined to dairy and meat farmers wanting to get closer to their markets and earn higher prices. It is a path being followed by Bluff fisherman Nate Smith but, he tells Neal Wallace, he has another motive for supplying fish direct to customers.

Did I want to go fishing, Nate Smith asked from the wheelhouse of his boat Gravity. 

He was catching only enough blue cod to fill a small order and the at-times turbulent Foveaux Strait was flat, he added reassuringly.

That brief exchange revealed plenty about Smith and his business, Gravity Fishing. . . 

New life-members for North Otago A&P – Sally Brooker:

The North Otago A&P Association has two new life members.

At its recent annual meeting, the association acknowledged the years of service given by John Dodd and Murray Isbister.

Mr Dodd, who farms at Tapui, has been involved with the organisation since the late 1980s. He was its president in 2000 and nowadays is convener of the sheep section.

He said there were still people who were willing to go along to judge the sheep at each A&P show. They seemed to enjoy the camaraderie that went with the role, often meeting up with sheep farming colleagues from across the country who also did the rounds of the shows. . .

 

New Zealand Wood Industry – Zero Carbon – And We Can Prove It:

If New Zealand’s ambition is to be a zero carbon economy by 2050 then it must nurture its wood industry. Many industries claim to be driving towards lower emissions but none have the low carbon profile of the wood sector. The WPMA Chair, Brian Stanley, says; “no other major industry in New Zealand can deliver carbon sequestration, carbon storage and emissions reduction like the wood industry”. Mr Stanley adds, “….and the industry now has independent, third-party certification extending right from the forest to the marketplace to prove that our wood-based packaging and construction products do the right thing by the environment. Our customers in New Zealand and overseas expect no less”.

Last night in Rotorua, WPMA highlighted that both major international certification programmes for forestry: Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification and Forest Stewardship Council guarantee that wood products from New Zealand come from sustainably-managed forests. In addition to this, WPMA has just launched its Environmental Product Declarations for wood products.  . . 

New fungicide approved for use on cereal crops –

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has approved an application to import a new fungicide, Vimoy Iblon, into New Zealand, for use on cereal crops.

The applicant, Bayer, intends to market the fungicide to farmers as a means of controlling a range of diseases including scald and net blotch in barley, leaf rust in barley and wheat, stripe rust in wheat and wheat-rye hybrid triticale, speckled leaf blotch in wheat and stem rust in ryegrass crops.

New Zealand is the first country to approve the use of a new active ingredient contained in Vimoy Iblon – isoflucypram. . . 

8/10

8/10 in the Herald’s history quiz.

BakerAg open letter on water policy

Chris Garland, a director of BakerAG has penned an open letter to government:

The Prime Minister:   Jacinda Ardern

Minister for the Environment:   David Parker

Minister of Primary Industries:   Damien O’Connor

Minister of Health:   David Clark

Dear Ministers

BakerAg NZ Ltd has been providing business consultancy to the rural sector for over 35 years. Morale among our farming clients is now as low now as it was in the Rogernomics years of the late 80s and during the GFC. The difference in those earlier years, is that farmers still felt valued by the NZ public.

This government’s approach to environmental policy is undermining the mental health and well-being of the pastoral sector. Government has contributed strongly toward turning the NZ public against farming, which has had a severe impact on farmers’ self-esteem and on their ability to cope with a rapidly changing policy environment.

As examples, the Zero Carbon Bill and the National Freshwater Policy Statement are having a profound impact on the pastoral industry, which has compounded over a short period of time.

The terms of trade in the sheep and beef sector are some of the most buoyant seen for the last 20 years, yet there is a malaise among these farmers that emanates from a sense of worthlessness. The dairy industry is struggling to recover from a three-year downturn, it’s had the M. Bovis outbreak to deal with and is now seeing a withdrawal of support from the finance sector.

How does the government expect to achieve behaviour change from constituents who are dejected and feel alienated from society? Ministry of Health statistics confirm that mental health in the rural sector has deteriorated significantly over the last five years. The government must understand that its own actions are exacerbating this decline.

It’s a sad situation that some of the governments $1.9 B investment into NZ’s mental health will be needed to counter the impact that this government has had on farmers’ mental state. One of the leading initiatives of the Wellbeing Budget is to “Take Mental Health Seriously.” This Government’s actions are having a negative effect on the mental health of a large section of the community.

Farmers are not environmental vandals. They are a business sector that has found itself at the centre of a maelstrom of environmental concern. Most of these concerns around water quality and greenhouse gas emissions are legitimate. But farmers didn’t set out to deliberately degrade water quality or to produce GHGs. These are unintended consequences of their business activity, which until recent years, had been wholly endorsed by the nation. It took 150 years to get to this position. It will take more than five years to achieve environmental sustainability.

One of farmers’ greatest attributes is that they are problem solvers. Give them a problem and some tools, and they will find a way to fix that problem. It’s this ingenuity that has made NZ farming some of the most efficient in the world. The food they produce is regarded as being of the highest quality throughout the world.

Farmers now recognise that there is a problem with the environmental impact of their activities. They want to fix this. But they are not being given an opportunity to find their own solutions. Instead they have been subject to a relentless dialogue of rhetoric, regulation and rejection.

The farming community has not been recognised for the positive efforts that a great many land owners have gone to mitigate their environmental impact. The negative public view of the sector has been influenced by government dialogue. This is not the way to change behaviour or effect policy.

If this government is genuine about improving mental health and genuine about motivating farmers to address environmental issues in their industry, it should:

• Give landowners credit for the progress that has already been achieved in environmental management (exemplified by Ballance Environmental Awards competition, the Ahuwhenua Trophy, QE II and Nga Whenua Rahui covenants, and Country Calendar subjects).
• Acknowledge that there is an environmental conscience in the farming sector.
• Provide balance in the accountability message: urban, industrial, domestic, pastoral.
• Acknowledge that the pastoral sector makes a valuable contribution to the NZ economy.
• Ask the sector how it believes environmental expectations should be met?
• Give the sector an opportunity to develop and implement its own solutions.
• Assist in developing tools and methodology.
• Work with them.

CHRIS GARLAND

Director

On behalf of BakerAg NZ Ltd

www.bakerag.co.nz      

References to the ag-sag of the 80s is not hyperbole.

Our local, The Fort at Enfield, hosted a lunch to raise funds for prostate cancer on Wednesday

. Around 100 people were gathered and conversation kept coming back to how hard it was in the 80s and how much worse what’s being imposed on farming is now.

The changes of the 80s were tough, but necessary and based on economics.

The changes the government is threatening to impose on farming now are tougher and based on emotion not science.

Reports from consultation meetings are making matters worse. MfE has underestimated turnouts so venues are too small and those fronting them aren’t able to answer technical questions.

Comments like this from the Minister for Agriculture don’t help either.

Govt is doing all that you say. If farm advisors and rural media weren’t so keen to repeat negative political rhetoric farmers might feel appreciated https://t.co/Wij5DLjoKc

— Damien O'Connor (@DamienOConnorMP) September 11, 2019

Rather than blaming the messenger he should be listening to the message and trying to understand the very real concerns that farmers and those who service and supply them have.

P.S.

BakerAg produce the weekly AgLetter. You can subscribe to it here.

Jamie Mackay interviewed Chris Garland on The Country yesterday.

Quote of the day

The trouble with human beings is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they don’t love others enough.  – Mary Midgley who was born on this day in 1919.

September 13 in history

509 BC – The temple of Jupiter on Rome’s Capitoline Hill was dedicated on the ides of September.

122 The building of Hadrian’s Wall began.

533 General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeated Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium.

1213  Ending of Battle of Muret, during the Albigensian Crusade to destroy the Cathar heresy.

1475 – Cesare Borgia, Italian cardinal, was born (d. 1507).

1503 Michelangelo began work on his statue of David.

1504 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issued a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built.

1584   San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid was finished.

1601 – Jan Brueghel the Younger, Flemish painter, was born (d. 1678).

1743  Great Britain, Austria and Savoy-Sardinia signed the Treaty of Worms.

1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham: British defeated French near Quebec City in the Seven Years’ War.

1775 – Laura Secord, American-Canadian war heroine, was born(d. 1868).

1808 Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians.

1812  War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison was ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows.

1814 – Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner.

1847  Mexican-American War: Six teenage military cadets, Niños Héroes, died defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec.

1848  Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage  survived a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulated thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions.

1850 First ascent of Piz Bernina, the highest summit of the eastern Swiss Alps.

1857  Milton S. Hershey, American confectioner, was born (d. 1945).

1877 Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian the night of the Titanic disaster, was born (d. 1962).

1882  The Battle of Tel el-Kebir  in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War.

1894 J.B. Priestley, English playwright and novelist, was born (d. 1984).

1898  Hannibal Goodwin patented celluloid photographic film.

1899 Henry Bliss was the first person in the United States to be killed in a car accident.

1899  Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya.

1900 Filipino resistance fighters defeated a small American column in theBattle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine-American War.

1906 First fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe.

1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne began between Germany and France.

1916 Roald Dahl, British writer, was born (d. 1990).

1918 – Ray Charles, American singer-songwriter and conductor, was born (d. 2015).

1919 – Mary Midgley, English philosopher and author, was born.

1922 The temperature (in the shade) at Al ‘Aziziyah, Libya reached a world record 57.8°C (136.04°F).

1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commenced.

1923  Military coup in Spain – Miguel Primo de Rivera took over, setting up a dictatorship.

1927 – Tzannis Tzannetakis, Greek politician, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 2010)

1933 Elizabeth McCombs became the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament.

1935  Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ended the International Railway (New York – Ontario).

1941 David Clayton-Thomas, Canadian singer (Blood, Sweat & Tears), was born.

1943  Chiang Kai-shek elected president of the Republic of China.

1943 – The Municipal Theatre of Corfu was destroyed during an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe.

1944 –  Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (نور عنایت خان) (2  British heroine of World War II renowned for her service in the Special Operations Executive was executed.

1944 Peter Cetera, American musician (Chicago), was born.

1946 – SS-Sturmbannführer Amon Göth, former commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp was executed in Kraków.

1948  Margaret Chase Smith was elected senator, and became the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

1952 Randy Jones, American musician (The Village People), was born.

1953 Nikita Khrushchev appointed secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1956 Anne Geddes, Australian photographer, was born.

1956 The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland was closed.

1956 – IBM introduced the first computer disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305.

1964  South Vietnamese Generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc failed in a coup attempt against General Nguyen Khanh.

1967 Michael Johnson, American athlete, was born.

1969 – Shane Warne, Australian cricketer, coach, and sportscaster, was born.

1971 Chairman Mao Zedong‘s second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao fled China after the failure of alleged coup against the supreme leader, the plane crashed in Mongolia, killing all aboard.

1976 Craig McMillan, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1987  Goiânia accident: A radioactive object was stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and leading some to die from radiation poisoning.

1988  Hurricane Gilbert, the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere to that date.

1989  Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu.

1993 – Public unveiling of the Oslo Accords, an Israeli-Palestinian agreement initiated by Norway.

1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

2007 The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted.

2008  Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas.

2013 – Taliban insurgents attacked the United States consulate in Herat,Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured.

2018 – The Merrimack Valley gas explosions: One person was killed, 25  were injured, and 40 homes were destroyed when excessive natural gas pressure caused fires and explosions.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia