Black week for Greens

Last week was a black one for the Green Party.

One of its former MPs, Golriz Ghahraman, was in court where she entered a guilty plea to shoplifting and one of its new MPs, Darleen Tana, has been accused of migrant exploitation.

The party isn’t responsible for the actions of either woman but it is responsible for the way it handled both cases, and that’s badly.

This is twice that the party knew about the allegations weeks before they became public and twice it said nothing.

The Greens are vocal to the point of sanctimony about migrant exploitation. They say they took the allegations against Tana seriously but it looks like they are doing that only now the allegations have become public.

Ghahraman’s shoplifting didn’t dent the party’s popularity in the polls, perhaps the fact that the victims were upmarket shops influenced that.

But standing up against migrant exploitation – albeit still alleged, not proven – is part of the Greens’ brand and the way the party has handled damages that brand.

Standing a new opposition MP down from portfolios privately is in effect doing nothing.

Had the party leadership gone public about the allegations, and standing Tana down from her portfolios, they might have been able to maintain the high ground.

But they’ve lost that with another cover up.

To do that once was bad enough, doing it twice shows they didn’t learn from their earlier mistake.

This is serious political mismanagement and raises serious questions of integrity.

Tipping point

Tipping isn’t the norm in New Zealand but the introduction of EFTPOS machines that prompt customers to add 5, 10 or 15 percent to their bill might change that.

In some countries where wages are very low tips are expected.

One argument for that is it encourages, and rewards, better service, but if it’s added to an electronic payment does it go to the staff who serve you and wouldn’t it complicate GST returns and PAYE?

And what if the service isn’t good?

I read of a restaurant reviewer who always started with the expectation of tipping 10% and added or subtracted from that depending on how well wait staff performed. He said sometimes he finished a meal with the staff owing him.

We haven’t reached the tipping point where tipping is the norm, but if it does, would it encourage employers to pay staff less?

I prefer staff to be paid a decent wage and leave it to me to decide if they’ve earned a bit more for exceptional service rather than feel forced to tip to compensate for poor wages.

Return to moderation

Steep increases in the minimum wage were among the burdens the previous government inflicted on businesses.

Yesterday’s announcement of a cautious increase is a welcome return to moderation:

The adult minimum wage rate will increase by 2 per cent to $23.15 an hour from 1 April 2024, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden announced today.

“This Government is committed to striking the right balance between protecting the incomes of our lowest paid workers and maintaining labour market settings that encourage employment,” says Ms van Velden.

“The economic context has changed significantly over the past year. While unemployment is currently low, the labour market is softening due to high net migration rates, constrained consumer spending and subdued economic growth. Given these economic headwinds, a cautious approach to the minimum wage is required this year.

“New Zealand’s minimum wage is one of the most generous in the OECD in terms of relativity with the median wage. As a ratio to the median wage, the minimum wage has increased from 62 per cent of the median wage in June 2017 to 72 per cent in June 2023. This has made it harder for businesses to issue pay rises or take on more staff.

“An increase to $23.15 will benefit between 80,000 and 145,000 workers and will give our lowest paid workers more money in their pockets, without hindering job growth or imposing unreasonable costs on businesses.

“Increases to the minimum wage under Labour far outstripped CPI. Between June 2016 and June 2023, overall, the minimum wage increased at nearly twice the rate of inflation, with a 48.8 per cent increase in the minimum wage and a 25.1 per cent increase in CPI. This Government’s approach sets the balance right. 

“Moderate annual increases to the minimum wage reflect this Government’s commitment to growing the economy, boosting incomes and supporting job growth throughout New Zealand.

“The increase announced today takes into consideration the current economic conditions and the historically large increases to the minimum wage that have distorted relativities with other wage-earners. . . 

Business New Zealand has welcomed the moderation:

 . . . BusinessNZ Chief Executive Kirk Hope said the Government’s cautious approach to minimum wage-setting takes into account the inflationary pressures and general economic conditions that businesses are grappling with.

“Minimum wage increases coming too hard and too fast tend to impact very heavily on business, especially if they are unable to pass on their increased costs,” Mr Hope said.

“Small businesses in particular will be relieved to see the moderation in this latest rise.

“The significant increases introduced since 2017 have brought the minimum wage very close to the level of the median wage, at significant stress to small businesses.”

BusinessNZ’s briefing to the incoming government called for minimum wage-setting to be moderate, stable and predictable.

Retail New Zealand is relieved that the icnrease is moderate:

Retailers are relieved that the minimum wage increase has been limited to 2%, Retail NZ Chief Executive Carolyn Young says.

“Our latest Retail Radar quarterly survey of Retail NZ members, released yesterday, shows that wage increases are one of the major concerns for retailers right now,” Ms Young says.

“During these challenging economic times, every cost increase has to be passed on to consumers. So it is a relief that the Government has announced the adult minimum wage rate will increase by only 2% to $23.15 an hour from 1 April 2024.” . . 

Some excellent charts in the Cabinet Paper accompanying the relatively restrained minimum wage increase. pic.twitter.com/z8P8q8v80c

— Eric Crampton (@EricCrampton) February 1, 2024

The steep increases to the minimum wage over the past six years helped fuel inflation.

The irony in that is that the people the government was attempting to help were hurt by much higher costs and less jog security.

Moderate increases to the minimum wage can be managed, steep increases caused more problems than they solved.

 

 

Where have good manners gone?

The sign beside the security line at the airport pictured a pair of ankle boots and told wearers they had to remove them.

The man in front of me hadn’t done that when it was his turn to go through and was asked politely to take his footwear off.

He gave an angry response to the worker and grudgingly obliged.

She retained her composure and carried on with her work.

He went through the first check and was asked by another worker to step aside to be scanned. He made another angry response and continued to berate the workers.

Security checks can be frustrating but if you want to fly you have to comply with them.

Frustrated or not there is no excuse to take your anger out on staff who have a job to do and, in my experience, almost always do it efficiently and with good humour.

What I saw and heard isn’t an isolated incident and such behaviour isn’t confined to airport security checks.

I’ve noticed signs at shops and restaurants asking customers to be considerate of staff.

Where have self control and good manners gone?

New Zealanders have a reputation for being easy going and good natured.

Does the behaviour at the airport and whatever persuaded restaurant and shop owners that signs beseeching consideration mean that reputation no longer applies?

Work works for mental health

While some businesses and services operate every day, and some all day and night, many use this time of year to shut down for holidays.

Most people look forward to a break, many also look forward to returning to work and many continue to work long past retirement age, from choice rather than necessity.

People need a purpose and work provides that, doing much more than providing an income.

Dr Gena Gorlin says work works for helping mental health :

There’s a phenomenon most therapists have been confronted with, but few explicitly identify or discuss (partly because it’s hard to know what to say about it): the patient who is financially disincentivized from working. Often it’s because the patient receives some form of disability benefits contingent on demonstrating their continued incapacity to work; other times it is the patient’s parents or other family members who, with the best of intentions, fall into playing the role of the “disability office.” Regardless, the observed effect is the same: an arrested development that makes it impossible to achieve any but the most superficial and transient gains in therapy—until and unless the anti-work incentive gets explicitly addressed and challenged.

To be clear, my experience of working with such patients was not that they were “lazy” or that they lacked motivation for treatment. Many were combat veterans injured in the line of duty, having risked their lives to protect their brothers and sisters in arms. Whatever the reason for their prolonged non-working status, they were often highly motivated to “do the work” of therapy, and they put significant time and effort into that work. They diligently tracked their thoughts and feelings, they courageously faced and re-processed traumatic memories that had haunted them for years, they put into practice the distress tolerance strategies I had taught them, and so on. . .

Empirical research has quietly but inexorably borne out my observations: those engaged in some form of productive work—be it via school, employment, training, or caregiving—consistently demonstrate better therapy outcomes than those who aren’t. This finding remains even after controlling for confounds like socioeconomic status, chronic physical illness, severity of mental health problems at the onset of therapy, and so on. Even individuals with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia show remarkable gains in functioning and quality of life when they are supported in finding gainful employment—far more so than when they are supported in obtaining disability insurance to obviate the need to work.

You might think there’s something counterintuitive in these findings: shouldn’t patients be able to make more progress toward their mental health goals when they don’t need to worry about showing up to work each day? But what this intuition misses is that doing productive work—bringing something valuable into the world by one’s own focused efforts—forms the essential basis of a person’s mental health.

I’d even go so far as to say it forms the essential basis of a person.

Work, as I’m using it here, refers to any effortful activity purposefully directed toward the achievement of some valued outcome in the world.

Our choice of the particular work we do depends on the whole context of our life and society and current needs, of course; but there is also just a general orientation that emerges out of almost any set of accumulated experiences of doing something useful, particularly as part of a coordinated exchange with others. And there is profound, life-giving value in even the seemingly mundane ways we apply our minds and direct our focused efforts toward purposeful ends that matter to us. This could be as complex as building an entire company, or it could be as simple as flipping burgers at a restaurant. It could also be volunteering at a shelter, if we make a serious and sustained project of it.

All this assumes, of course, that we do our work, not under a drill sergeant’s whip or with a Zen master’s detachment, but with a builder’s loving care. Simply “having a job” is not enough; if we approach our work as soulless drudgery or as somehow “beneath us”, it will not serve this soul-building function for us. To forge our better selves through the work we do, we need to consciously respect that work and ourselves for doing it, enough to do it thoughtfully and well. . .

Hat tip: Not PC

 

Whose work’s worth more?

Teachers used to get a similar rate of pay to that of backbench MPs.

The latter have had much steeper salary than most teachers now.

Whose work is worth more?

Neither role is easy but teaching requires tertiary education which almost always results in a student loan. Some MPs have tertiary qualifications, have had high powered jobs and take a pay cut to enter parliament. Some have no qualifications and get a substantial pay rise when they become MPs.

I don’t begrudge the best MPs their pay – they’re the ones who work hard to represent their constituents and make better laws. But surely the best teachers work at least as hard, if not harder, and deserve similar rates of pay.

Cabinet Ministers get substantially more than backbench MPs in recognition of the extra responsibilities and demands on them. But is their work worth more than senior doctors who have undergone more than 12 years of training and who have the responsibility for people’s lives in their hands?

We’ve got a health crisis with a shortage of hundreds of doctors and the government is refusing to give them a pay increase that takes account of inflation and could help both flow the outward flow of doctors and attract more from overseas.

For the first time ever they went on strike yesterday and my sympathy is with them rather than the government that’s wasted so much on restructuring the health system instead of improving the pay and conditions of the professionals on the frontline.

Kerre Woodham says:

. . . The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists say Te Whatu Ora and the Government are the target of these strikes, not the patients. They say doctors care about their patients, but they’ve decided the failure to protect the value of their work will only result in more doctors leaving New Zealand or declining to apply for jobs here. Te Whatu Ora already acknowledges we are 1700 senior doctors short across the country. And the Association thinks that’s an extremely conservative estimate, they say it’s much, much worse. Already, hospitals are critically short staffed, with senior doctors increasingly trying to run services with insufficient senior and junior doctors, nurses and allied health staff. And they say overseas doctors have largely stopped applying for jobs due to pay and the working condition issues.

Anyone who spent any time at all in the public health service recently knows just how tough it is for these professionals to do their jobs. Mike made reference this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast to the number of code greys that hospital staff are dealing with, where security has to be called because the patients lost the plot.  

Nurses and doctors are not just dealing with the lack of staff and a shortage of resources, they’re dealing with increasingly physically and mentally ill people, who are packed together in a small space for hours while staff do their very, very best.  

Now you might think that doctors earn quite enough. Well, quite frankly, when I’m lying unconscious on an operating table while skilled surgeons have spent 15 to 20 years honing their skills to do their best to improve my quality of life, or even save my life, they can earn what they like.  

Cabinet ministers get more than our senior surgeons and I know who gives a better return on my taxpayer dollar.  

Senior doctors could get better paying work almost anywhere in the world.

Running the country is a demanding job but how many Ministers would get the same, or better pay, if they weren’t in Cabinet?

The answer to that questions shows whose work is worth more and who deserves much better pay than they’re being offered.

There’s got to be a better way

The right to strike is a fundamental one for workers but strikes are a bit like war – a lot of innocent people get hurt.

With all strikes some people are inconvenienced, with some the consequences are worse and among the worst are those when those striking are health professionals.

About 5000 senior doctors and dentists will go on strike as union members vote to “send a strong message to [Te Whatu Ora] it needs to improve its current substandard offer”.

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists’ (ASMS) chief executive Sarah Dalton told the Herald it was the first time the union had gone on a national strike.

Dalton said members wanted pay rates to increase with the Consumer Price Index, and she was hopeful the strike action would encourage Te Whatu Ora to “think again”.

“[The vote] is a significant endorsement of collective action and reflects the extreme frustration of members over Te Whatu Ora and the Government’s refusal to value our workforce, address staff shortages and ensure that salaries maintain their real value against inflation,” Dalton said. . . 

“You know, [Te Whatu Ora] had said we’re short 1700 doctors across New Zealand. We think that’s an undercount,” she said.

“Cementing in a third or fourth year of real pay cuts [not inflation adjusted] is not the way to go about retaining and recruiting sorely needed specialist doctors and dentists.”

She said union members’ decision to strike represented a wider frustration from workers about how hard it was to adequately care for patients.

“We’ve had a lot of correspondence from members saying they’re really disheartened, for example, by having to say to one patient, ‘You need an operation but you can’t have it’.

“Patients have to wait too long to be seen by specialists, and they have to wait far longer than they should because our system is not resourced to cope,” she said.

“The workforce gaps and resourcing shortfalls are so significant and ingrained.”

These concerns are valid.

The health workforce is overworked and under paid.

It must have been galling for those skilled and dedicated workers to see the millions of dollars being wasted on restructuring the system without doing anything to address the many problems on the frontline.

But patients are already waiting too long for appointments and treatment.

There’s got to be a better way than strikes to settle disputes between health professionals and their employers.

Not business’s, nor state’s business

A business was going for a rainbow tick.

Part of the criteria required staff training during which each had to declare their sexuality – hetero, homo,  bi, or whichever of the letters in the alphabet soup they claimed.

A business has a right to require staff to display good manners and tolerance to their colleagues and clients.

A business ought to require staff to keep sex out of the workplace.

And whether staff are attracted to people of the same or different sex, both or neither is not a business’s business.

Nor is it the business of the public service:

A friend who recently applied for a job at the Commerce Commission was startled to find the application process included being asked to state her sexuality and gender identity, with no “prefer not to say” option on the menu. A job applicant’s sexuality might once have been considered private information, but these days public servants are required to bring their whole selves to work whether they like it or not, even to the Commerce Commission.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) appears to have spent both terms of this Labour government embedding gender identity ideology across our public services. It’s worth noting that Chris Hipkins became Minister for the Public Service in 2017 and retained the portfolio until a few months ago. That same year, the PSC established a public service-wide diversity and inclusion programme. The programme is Rainbow Tick certified and includes a section on how to snitch to HR on colleagues who don’t want to use pronouns. No other group appears to have been consulted, let alone given benchmarking authority.

What is Rainbow Tick? It is a service of Kāhui Tū Kaha, a subsidiary of Ngāti Whātua and a not-for-profit provider of housing and mental health services, with a grand total of two dedicated (nameless) Rainbow Tick employees as a sort of side hustle. And PSC sought guidance and validation for a massive culture change across the public service from a couple of persons in a tiny subset of an NGO subset of an iwi authority, whose credentials are not given.

Just in case anyone doubts the agenda of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programme, there is no dedicated section for any identity group other than LGBTQ+, not even Māori. Let alone the disabled or those uterus havers – what are they called again? And nowhere is gender identity actually explained – what it is, what it means – which is just as well because anyone who has taken more than a cursory look knows that it falls apart at the slightest touch. That’s why our rainbow friends are so fragile and basic questions are transphobic hate speech.

What was our most powerful central government agency thinking? With no disrespect to Kāhui Tū Kaha, who clearly spotted a gap in the market and lucked in, this kind of transformation needs policy, legal, and ethical expertise and debate, not to mention transparency. How could the agency that literally sets the standards for the rest of the public service be so amateurish, so half-pie?

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that our government is not run by serious people. These leaders give every indication of being an expensively credentialed herd of group-thinkers, desperate to relinquish their critical thinking for cool points. And through the mechanism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, they have schooled public servants in the new orthodoxy with the threat of disciplinary action if they don’t comply. . . 

It’s not that long ago that the government stopped sticking its nose into people’s bedrooms.

The draconian law that made homosexuality illegal was replaced, then came civil unions and not long after that gay marriage was legalised. Since then it is no longer the state’s business who did what with whom, providing minors weren’t involved.

As too often happens, the pendulum then swung from one extreme where the state was acting as a censor of sexual preference to the other where the state is now invading people’s privacy in demanding to know their sexual preferences.

Worse the public service has gone further than minding employee’s private business to what looks suspiciously like political activism and promoting trans ideology which definitely ought not to be the business of the state.

Rural round-up

Minimum wage rise ‘could have unwelcome knock-on effect’ for horticulture and dairy –  Gerhard Uys :

April’s minimum wage increase may have an unwelcome knock-on effect in the dairy and horticulture sector, industry participants are warning.

Employment relations spokesperson at Federated Farmers Richard McIntyre said the minimum wage increase itself was not a big concern in his sector because most farmers paid more than that.

But he said a bigger problem would be the increase’s effect on the median wage.

Employers who bring in immigrant workers under an Accredited Employer Work Visa must pay at least the median wage – currently $29.66 an hour. . .

A slice of Te Kupe: hairy sheep and drone mustering – Leah Tebbutt :

Taranaki sheep farmer Murray Jackson is looking forward to retiring his woolshed in a couple of years.

He’s phasing his family farm out of wool production to rear hardy and hairy Australian White sheep.

With their coarse hair coat, Australian White sheep don’t need shearing, crutching, dagging, or flystrike prevention – which currently costs around $6000 a year, Jackson says.

The fresh lambs also tend to have a faster growth and survival rate. . .

Let the foggy days commence… pic.twitter.com/OqmirHHqDG

— Anieka Templer (@AniekaNick) March 30, 2023

Stock walks 45km to be sold after N Canterbury roads washed out – Annette Scott :

After being postponed in February because of a major weather event, the Lakes Station on-farm sheep sale was eventually held last week.

Located near Hawarden in North Canterbury, Lakes Station had 20,000 sheep in holding paddocks waiting to be weaned for the annual sale when the access road was washed out the day before.

“It couldn’t have been worse timing,” Hazlett Rural livestock agent Alby Orchard said.

“It has taken six weeks to get the road back to allow truck and trailer units to navigate the washout area of the road, and finally we have held the sale.” . .

Acland ‘optimistic’ as she assumes BLNZ chair :

Northern South Island farmer director Kate Acland has been elected chair of the Beef + Lamb New Zealand board.

Acland, who is BLNZ’s first female chair, was elected by the board at the conclusion of BLNZ’s annual meeting in New Plymouth.

Previous chair Andrew Morrison’s term as a BLNZ director concluded at the end of the meeting, following the election of Geoffrey Young as the new Southern South Island farmer director.

Acland said she’s humbled to be appointed chair. . .

https://twitter.com/andrew_hoggard/status/1641879089262002176

 

Small scale wood lot owners have their say in Tairāwhiti land use inquiry :

The outgoing President of the Farm Forestry Association says it has been vital for farm foresters to directly address the Ministerial Inquiry into forestry and other land use in Tairāwhiti.

Graham West has told the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association annual conference, now underway in Timaru, that the Inquiry Panel was keen to hear verbal submissions from him and particularly the Gisborne East Coast Branch of Farm Forestry Association.

“All the media attention since the cyclones hit the region has been on harvest residue and the role of the larger forest growers . But there are farmers in the region, and also small institutional investors, who will want their local forest interests represented as well,” Graham West said.

“These would range from wanting to be consulted about any regulations which might be introduced, through to compensation for managed retreat.” . . 

Expected consequences

Some policies result in unexpected consequences. Several policies the government has introduced has resulted in expected consequences.

Centralising polytechnics and health have produced the inevitable higher costs and poorer services.

Wasting millions on expensive advertising and PR gimmickry has been at the expense of road maintenance and improvements.

Increasing compliance requirements and costs for landlords, and the removal of tax deductibility on interest,  has led to higher rents – now at record levels – and fewer houses available for tenants.

Giving more rights to tenants than landlords has also resulted in the expected consequence of fewer rental properties.

This is particularly obvious in places like Wanaka where out-of-town owners used to rent their cribs to people for months providing they moved out for the owners for a few weeks. Law changes have given tenants far greater rights so crib owners either opt for short term rents through the likes of Airbnb or leave their houses empty when they’re not occupying them.

Another glaring and expected consequence of bad policy is that the steep increase in the minimum wage – 44% since 2017 – has decreased the gap between rewards for skilled and unskilled work.

A clear example of this is teaching – a beginner teacher with a degree, and the thousands of dollars of debt that most accumulate while gaining it, earns only about $3,000 a year more than someone on the minimum wage.

The government was warned about these inevitable consequences of their bad policies but didn’t listen then and the threatened strike by teachers in protest about inadequate pay offers shows its still not listening.

Teaching has never been easy and it’s much harder now with the more demanding social and behavioural problems teachers have to deal with in addition to educating their pupils.

Teaching ought to be regarded as one of the most important professions and rewarded appropriately to recognise the skill and hard work it requires from the start.

And a new teacher must be paid far more than an unskilled worker on the minimum wage.

In increasing the minimum wage so steeply the government has imposed higher costs on the private sector. Most teachers are paid from the public purse and it’s up to the government to ensure they are paid not just well but far better than unskilled workers.

Different rules for rule makers

Many employers will be envious over how easy it was for the government to sack Rob Campbell from his job heading Te Whatu Ora.

Any other employer with good grounds for dismissal would have had to go through a tortuous process of verbal and written warnings, and given the employee at least one opportunity to defend the behaviour – with a support person.

At the end of the process, the employer is still at risk of having a case taken against them and, even if the dismissal was justified, could be liable for payment for hurt feelings should every i not have been dotted and t crossed in the correct manner.

When it comes to employment, there is one rule for the rule makers and another for the rest of us.

How much more do you want to pay for food?

The annual increase in food inflation is 10.3%.

. . . In January 2023, the annual increase was due to rises across all the broad food categories we measure. Compared with January 2022:

• • grocery food prices increased by 11 percent
  • restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food increased by 8.3 percent
  • fruit and vegetable prices increased by 16 percent
  • meat, poultry, and fish prices increased by 9.2 percent
  • non-alcoholic beverage prices increased by 7.1 percent.

“Increasing prices for cheddar cheese, barn or cage-raised eggs, and potato chips were the largest drivers within grocery food,” consumer prices manager James Mitchell said. . . 

The floods that have caused so much damage in the North Island will cause shortages of fruit and vegetables will challenge the fight against food price inflation:

“The impacts of January’s historic flooding across the upper North Island will likely add further challenges to the inflation fight at the checkout,” says Foodstuffs NZ Managing Director Chris Quin.

Commenting on the latest food price inflation figures released by Stats NZ today, Quin says as predicted adverse weather events are proving to be the wild card for growers, manufacturers and retailers of food in New Zealand.

“The recent devastating floods have hit Auckland’s vegetable growing regions hard at a critical time of the growing season and are making things challenging for our whole food ecosystem from paddock to plate. . . 

“We are also facing ongoing flood-related logistical challenges and longer transport times, because of road closures and significant repairs required from Coromandel through to Northland. Damage to infrastructure is meaning longer routes and driver hours and this is exacerbating the already chronic shortage of experienced drivers.” . . 

The government isn’t responsible for the floods but its immigration policy is a major cause for the driver shortage.

“Domestic price pressures remain high, including the tight labour market, pressure on wages and salaries, persistently high fuel (diesel) costs, and high feed and fertiliser costs for suppliers,” says Quin. . . 

 The impact from the increase to the minimum wage, which comes into effect on 1 April, is still being assessed but will add to wage cost pressures across the food sector this year. . . 

The steep increase in the minimum wage and the flow-on affect it will have on other wages is entirely due to the government and other policies will put further pressure on food prices.

The replacement to the RMA has been widely criticised for very good reasons, among them the added compliance and costs it will impose on food production.

Its UnFair Pay Agreements (UFPA), will add to wage pressure and labour costs.

The incentivising of forestry is replacing productive pastoral farming with pines and whatever it does to tax animal emissions will lead to higher prices for meat and milk while reducing export income and almost certainly making global emissions worse when less efficient farmers in other countries increase their production.

How much more do you want to pay for food? The sensible answer is no more and most want to pay a lot less.

There’s nothing we can do about the damage mother nature has done to food production and the pressure that will put on prices but we can get a government that understands the importance of farming and whose policies don’t discourage it.

That won’t automatically bring the price of food down but it will reduce the costs that are pushing it up.

U-turn, parks and more tax

Did Chris Hipkins oppose several measures the cabinet of which he was a member under the previous Prime Minister promoted, or have the polls persuaded him to change his mind?

Whichever it is, he has announced a couple of u-turns.

The expensive and unnecessary media merger of RNZ and TVNZ is off.

That’s a good u turn but the waste of the millions already spent on the scheme is not.

The biofuel mandate is stopped. That is a u-turn and a welcome one.

The compulsory income insurance scheme is stalled.

That’s not  a u turn it’s a temporary park and it’s not good. It means that if Labour wins the election it will be back.

Hate speech law has been passed to the Law Commission. That’s not a u turn, it’s diverting traffic and it’s not good either. It too will be back on Labour’s agenda should they get another term.

What is not welcome is the steep increase in the minimum wage – another $1.50.

It looks like a small amount but it’s not just $1.50 and hour, it’s the added cost of Kiwisaver and holiday pay, and multiplied over multiple employees adds a big cost to business. It will also put pressure on wages of other workers on higher wages who will want to retain the gap between what they earn and the minimum wage.

It will also push anyone who works more than a 40 hour week into the 30% tax bracket. No-one on a minimum wage should be in that bracket.

It won’t help people with children. Any increase will be offset by a decrease in Working for Families payments.

It looks like it will help the majority of people on the minimum wage who are young mostly part-timers like students or entry-level workers, but it will be inflationary and inflation erodes the real value of wages.

The government is spinning the line it’s helping the strugglers.

What it’s doing is forcing employers to pay more, fuelling inflation as a result of which it will be collecting more tax through PAYE and GST.

If it was serious about helping people it would have cut taxes, allowing people to keep a little more of their own money; and it would be taking a far more serious approach to cutting its own spending.

Rural round-up

Southland contractors see ‘bumper season’ while parts of North Island suffer from wet season  – Sally Murphy :

Rural contractors in Southland cannot keep up with bumper grass growth, while those in parts of the North Island are having problems from the recent wet weather.

Southland has had a warm summer with consistent rain providing the perfect conditions for strong growth.

Southland Federated Farmers arable chair Sonya Dillon said farmers were happy to be out in the fields harvesting solid crops after a dry summer last year.

“We’ve been really lucky we’ve had a bumper season. It was a bit dull in November, which probably stole a bit of the yield, and now we are starting to get some dry patches, which has stolen some of the weight. . . 

Farm leaders are watching whether O’Connor keeps Agriculture as the climate lobby presses for methane action – Point of Order :

Farming leaders  are watching  closely  whether  Damien O’Connor keeps the key portfolios of Agriculture and Trade when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins  restructures his Cabinet.

O’Connor  has been one of the  few ministers during Labour’s term in office who has  won broad support for what he has done as minister, but  he  is now in his 65^th year   and  the  heavy  load  he  has  carried  as minister  would have exhausted  any  but  the  fittest.

Hipkins  could be  under  pressure  from climate change lobby groups to put  a  new minister into  the Agriculture  role  to enforce tougher policies on reducing methane emissions from livestock  which make up nearly 40% of NZ’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Only this week  lobby group Greenpeace said polling showed 61% of New Zealanders  favoured regulating the dairy industry to reduce  water contamination and greenhouse gas emissions.  Greenpeace spokesman Steve Abel said this is a significant increase from 48% in a similar poll only a year ago, in December 2021. . . 

Morning New Zealand pic.twitter.com/WdfAYuOjHg

— Donald Martin (@DonaldGrassCo) January 22, 2023

Farming without a road – Joanna Grigg:

Farmers in parts of the Marlborough Sounds have been cut off from truck access for months and now rely on service by sea. Joanna Grigg reports.

Farms in the Marlborough sounds carry about 35,000 stock units, with six large farm businesses carrying a fair chunk.

Emma Hopkinson and her husband ‘Hoppy’ run 6000 stock units over three farms: the home farm at Kenepuru, a 20-year lease block at Titirangi and a smaller lease block at Waitaria Bay. She wants those making roading decisions to know these farms are productive and earn export dollars for New Zealand.

“Without truck access, our business is hugely affected,” Emma says. . . 

Biosecurity NZ launches campaign to stamp out wallaby populations –

Wallaby populations continue to grow in New Zealand, something which has prompted the launch of the first national awareness campaign.

The Tipu Mātoro: Wallaby-free Aotearoa is designed to shine a light on the extensive damage wallabies can wreak on the environment, asking Kiwis to report wallaby sightings.

John Walsh, Biosecurity New Zealand’s director of response says wallabies silently prey on the futures of forests and farms.

“We are working in partnership with regional councils, local iwi, farmers and landowners through Tipu Mātoro to manage and reduce populations, but we need everyone’s help.”

Leading US scientist to clear the air on methane and livestock – Sheep Central :

LIVESTOCK producers will have the air cleared on the measurement of methane in agriculture in a special lecture in Perth next month.

‘How well is methane calculated to determine livestock emissions?’ will be the topic for discussion at a public lecture in Perth and online next month by leading United States animal scientist and air quality specialist Professor Frank Mitloehner.

The professor from the University of California at Davis will speak on new methane accounting methods for agriculture and the and the climate neutral challenge.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and the Western Australia Livestock Research Council are hosting Professor Mitloehner, who is director of the Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Centre. . . 

Mornin. pic.twitter.com/pkUqy1q5A3

— Ben Dooley 🧢 (@BenDooley8) January 26, 2023

Take your pick from Seeka’s seasonal job variety :

Over 400 jobs are up grabs as this year’s Kiwifruit season takes off in Taitokerau, and there’s something for everyone.

Horticulture employer Seeka has collaborated with Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to deliver a series of job expos for the upcoming 2023 kiwifruit season.

Expo attendees will have the opportunity to speed interview for any one of these roles next month and walk away with a job, and a kete of information to support their employment.

New Zealand’s premier produce company has positions for forklift operators, graders, packers, and supervisors for the 2023 season. . . 

How is this fair?

The so-call Fair Pay Act took affect yesterday and hospitality workers are expected to be the first to seek a so-called Fair Pay Agreement:

How on earth can it be fair to impose pay and conditions of thousands of different workplaces in different places with different requirements of their staff?

How can it be fair to treat staff in fine dining restaurants the same as those serving fast-food takeaways?

How can it be fair to treat businesses in big cities or tourists hotspots where costs including land and buildings are higher the same as businesses in small towns where costs are lower?

Friends own and run a hospitality business.

That has never been easy, the Covid lockdowns and restrictions made it harder and the past year has been a nightmare.

They can’t get enough local staff and although they are accredited to employ immigrants, getting visas for potential staff is like swimming through syrup in gumboots.

Their costs have gone up – wages, food, gas, power.

If they put up prices they will be fuelling inflation and get customer resistance. If they don’t, their business will no longer be viable.

Their story is not unique.

Staff wanted signs are in almost every café and restaurant in Wanaka.

When we ate at one recently we piled our dishes at the end of the table to help our waiter.

He thanked us and said, “you’ve passed your trial, the kitchen is through there you can start now.”

We asked how hard business was and he told us it was brutal.

The last thing these small businesses need is unfair pay agreements which can’t take into account local differences.

Why is Labour so unkind to immigrants?

Why is the party that purports to be kind so unkind to immigrants?:

A change to work rights for partners of migrants is going ahead next month in the face of concerns from immigration experts.

Until now, a partner could get an open work visa – but in the future only partners of green list workers will be able to do that.

Migrant couples will instead have to find accredited employers to sponsor applications for each of them – or have a partner who is able to visit but not work.

Immigration adviser Borey Chum wants the government to rethink the policy, saying it could lead to families choosing other countries to work in.

“I would like to see government doing a U-turn on their decision for some of the partners to get visitor visas instead of work visas. New Zealand is competing internationally for skilled migrants. If you’re a family you want the right to work for both of you when you arrive. You’re swamped with a lot of bureaucracy coming to New Zealand and to have more bureaucracy involved is not settling at all.

“And again, with another [visa] process means issues of resourcing. So the government are potentially hitting themselves with a stick in terms of being able to process the right for partners to have work visas so that they can work as a family and put food on the table.”

Immigration is already overwhelmed by visa applications, this will add to the workload and make the delays in processing worse.

Massey University Professor Paul Spoonley, who is co-chair of the International Metropolis Project looking at migration and integration, said Government immigration policy was focused on individuals, not families. . . 

The government kept hundreds of families apart for more than two years because of Covid border closures, now they’ve taken away partners’ rights to work without having to go through the protracted and cumbersome process of getting work visas.

A whole variety of businesses and service providers, including hospitals and rest homes, are desperately short of workers.

Farms are too. Until now farmers who employed immigrants were able to offer work to their partners. They will no longer be able to do so without the would-be workers getting visas which takes time and money.

Not allowing partners of immigrants to get open work visas will deter immigrants and and their partners who could be filling at least some of the many vacancies, from coming to New Zealand and make life harder for those who do come.

This policy is economically damaging and comes with a high social cost for immigrants and would-be employers.

That brings me back to my introductory question – why is the party that purports to be kind so unkind to immigrants?

Could it be that they just don’t like them?

Rural round-up

HWEN wants govt review of methane targets – Neal Wallace:

The primary sector has asked the government to review its methane targets and the method by which it sets those targets before it starts pricing agricultural greenhouse gases.

In its submission in response to government proposals on pricing emissions, the He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) partnership is asking for the Climate Change Commission to take another look at the 2050 emission reduction targets to reset methane levels using the GWP* calculation.

HWEN chair Sarah Paterson said this reflects feedback from farmers and growers during consultation on the government’s proposals.

HWEN chief executive Kelly Forster said it “really is a call to ensure the [commission’s] review takes into account the latest science”. . . 

Setting a standard: How our beef and lamb footprint measures up against the world avatar – Liam Rātana :

New research has found that the carbon footprint of Aotearoa-produced beef and lamb is among the lowest in the world. We took a deeper look at what the report says, and why it matters.

So what is this research?

Commissioned by Beef + Lamb New Zealand and the Meat Industry Association, and conducted by AgResearch, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study looked at on-farm emissions – which allowed for direct comparisons with other countries – but also went further, looking at the full “cradle to grave” footprint (ie including on-farm, processing and post-processing emissions). The report’s findings showed that despite the additional emissions involved with exporting product, our total footprint was still lower than the majority of countries – even those who had domestically produced meat.

While the report acknowledges that differences in methodologies make it difficult to accurately compare countries’ footprints across the entire process, particularly notable is the difference in the liveweight footprint of our stock. This metric, used to measure emissions before an animal is processed, shows that New Zealand’s average carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) per kilogram of sheep meat is less than half the international average, and about 30% lower than the international average for beef. . .

Immigration red tape frustrates short-staffed farmers  – Robin Martin :

A Northland farmer fears immigration red tape will see an experienced German dairy hand walk away from a job vacancy that she desperately needs to fill.

Katrina Pearson said applying for a work visa under the Accredited Employer Scheme had been a bureaucratic nightmare.

She runs a 250-hectare dairy farm west of Whangārei, milking nearly 500 cows.

Pearson needs two full-time staff, but she is struggling to recruit. . . 

Father and son named national ambassadors :

Ashburton father and son, Phillip and Paul Everest have been named as the new National Ambassadors for Sustainable Farming and Growing and the recipients of the Gordon Stephenson Trophy.

The announcement was made earlier this week at the National Sustainability Showcase at Te Pae in Christchurch.

The event was attended by all the regional supreme winners from the 2022 Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA). The BFEA is an annual celebration and promotion of sustainable farming and growing practices hosted by the New Zealand Environment Farm Trust (NZEFT) where regional supreme winners come together to share ideas and information.

The Everest family run Flemington Farm in Ashburton where they’ve expanded the255ha property into a sustainable dairy and beef farm. They were named the 2022 Regional Supreme winners in the Canterbury Ballance Farm Environment awards in July this year. . .

Fonterra confirms timeline for Capital Structure implementation :

Fonterra can today confirm that its new Flexible Shareholding capital structure is set to be implemented in late March 2023, subject to the Board being satisfied that the relevant preparations are completed before then.

The structure, which is laid out in a step-by-step tool for shareholders as well as this Guide to Flexible Shareholding, is intended to make it easier for new farmers to join the Co-operative and for existing farmers to remain, by allowing greater flexibility in the level of investment required.

Chairman Peter McBride says Flexible Shareholding will support Fonterra’s strategy by helping to maintain a sustainable milk supply, protecting farmer ownership and control, and supporting a stable balance sheet.

“Our Co-operative is already making good progress towards our 2030 strategic goals, and we believe moving to our Flexible Shareholding structure will help ensure that we stay on track,” says Mr McBride. . .

#farming pic.twitter.com/BeNqeu7czl

— Ben Dooley 🧢 (@BenDooley8) November 22, 2022

 

Innovative uses of forestry and wood products unveiled at Fieldays :

New and innovative uses of forestry and wood products will be on display at 35 stands in the Fieldays Forestry Hub near Hamilton between 30 November and 3 December, including a revolutionary treatment for radiata pine, a super carbon-storer – biochar – and cutting-edge research exploring using woody biomass for aviation fuel.

Planted trees are the raw material for more than 5,000 products we use every day. They also form the foundation of New Zealand’s next-generation bioeconomy, with the demand for new biomaterials only set to grow as fossil fuel-based products are replaced with renewable alternatives.

The revolutionary treatment for radiata pine allows it to be used in place of imported hardwood timber for decking, interior bench tops and as a fortified exterior cladding.

Called Sicaro, this timber treatment technology is being distributed by Motueka-based architectural company Genia. It uses a fortification process that replaces water within the cell structure with a water-borne solution that cures to a resin. . . 

Rural round-up

Dairy producers gain fresh momentum so how sensible is it to impose a new levy on them – Point of Order?

After a slow start to the season, the NZ dairy industry has perked up,as at  the latest Fonterra  GDT auction prices firmed, after three successive falls.

That rise came on the heel of reports NZ dairy earnings from Australia have ballooned because processors there are short of milk and lining up to buy NZ dairy products.

Open Country Dairy, NZ’s second-biggest dairy processor and exporter, said it has had a 40% lift in demand for product from its Australian customers. South Island-based Westland Milk Products said it had been turning away approaches from across the Tasman.

Industry leader Fonterra, one of the world’s biggest dairy companies, said it was continuing to see strong demand from Australia. Fonterra had earlier earmarked for sale a stake in its Australian business,but only  last month announced it was not going ahead with that,a decision on which the board will be  congratulating itself. . . 

Alliance Group casts net for 400 seasonal workers – Luisa Girao:

The Alliance Group will look to the North Island and beyond to bring in 400 seasonal workers to cope with its employee shortfall.

Some of the imported staff may live on site due to the Southland accommodation squeeze.

Alliance manufacturing general manager Willie Wiese confirmed yesterday the company was recruiting up to 400 seasonal staff from across the country as well as from overseas for its Lorneville and Mataura plants.

They would help make up the shortfall in numbers Alliance could not recruit locally in Southland, he said. . . 

A 45mm deluge of rain and the peas are drowned again. pic.twitter.com/TeWJusAfb0

— Blocka 🧢 (@blairdrysdale77) November 17, 2022

 

Agri commodity markets research outlook 2023: tightening the belt – Rabobank:

Agricultural commodities reached record nominal prices in May 2022, on the back of adverse weather, falling stockpiles, the war in Ukraine, the container shortage and various protectionist measures restricting food commodity exports. Between May and October, prices dropped 18% due to the USD strength, weak demand, a better container shipping situation, the temporary establishment of the Black Sea grain corridor and select bumper harvests. Presently, there are growing expectations for Brazil’s upcoming harvests of soy, sugar and coffee, as La Niña wanes and the wet season there has begun in a timely manner. Still, prices of agricultural commodities remain high, at about 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels, which is when we last saw some sense of ‘normalcy’ in agricultural markets.

Report summary

High prices would normally stimulate supply, but production is currently relatively inelastic to prices: area availability is limited as swaths of very fertile land are lost in Ukraine, farm input costs are high, La Niña is active and the cost of finance has increased. So there is more pressure on demand to balance the equation. Here we start to see some weakness that might continue through much of 2023. Global inflation has resulted in a loss of purchasing power globally, and subsequent hikes in interest rates could result in some major economies going into recession. A global recession would limit demand on a number of fronts, from feed and energy-related commodities to non-essential commodities like cotton, coffee and cocoa. . . .

Fonterra announces divestment of Chile business :

Fonterra is pleased to announce the divestment of its Chilean Soprole business. The divestment comprises a number of transactions that result in aggregate consideration of 591.07 billion Chilean Pesos (approximately NZD1.055 billion).

Fonterra CEO, Miles Hurrell, says that the divestment process for the Soprole business formally commenced in April 2022, following the launch of Fonterra’s strategy to 2030.

“A key pillar of our strategy is to focus on New Zealand milk. Soprole is a very good business but does not rely on New Zealand milk or expertise. We are now at the end of the divestment process and have agreed to sell Soprole to Gloria Foods – JORB S.A. (Gloria Foods).”

Gloria Foods is a consumer dairy market leader in Peru, with operations in Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay.  Fonterra and Gloria Foods have a long-standing commercial relationship in South America. . .

Pig farmer tickled pink by top ham award :

 North Island farmer Jim Mather takes great pride in “growing fantastic animals” on his farm near Foxton – but he was still surprised to find a ham from one of his pigs had won the highly coveted Supreme Award in the 2022 100% New Zealand Bacon and Ham Awards.

Auckland’s Westmere Butchery won New Zealand’s best ham award for their bone-in leg ham, but a journey back along the supply chain to discover the provenance of the champion ham, leads to Jim Mather’s family farm.

“We know it’s fantastic pork – because our pigs want for nothing,” says Jim.

“But you don’t usually get a lot of validation for your product as a farmer. We really appreciate that the winner made a point of making sure we knew it was one of ours – we’re absolutely delighted.” . . 

Four revolutions of plant breeding by Dr. Brad Ringeisen, of Innovative Genomics Institute, UC Berkeley at @blrtechsummit pic.twitter.com/3YpoWJD9hq

— Channa Prakash (@AgBioWorld) November 16, 2022

The promise of seagrass pastures – Mel Silva :

In Lau Group in Fiji, seagrass meadows play a special and vital role for the environment, marine life and community. These underwater pastures help to maintain water quality, provide a habitat for diverse flora and fauna – while also supporting local industries and cultural practices.

On a broader scale, these marine environments are critical to the health of our global climate. Similar to forests on land, seagrass can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grows – storing it through a process called carbon sequestration. Seagrass is one of the world’s most effective carbon storage powerhouses, and it can store carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforests.

Measuring the carbon capacity of ecosystems allows nations to participate in climate discussions, evaluate their contributions and better manage their ecosystems’ vitality. However, gathering this information is much more complex in an underwater environment than it is on land. Traditional methods for carbon assessment of coastal and marine ecosystems have relied on remote geospatial and aerial sensing technology that can be affected by cloud cover, angle of the sun and weather – and getting results from this imagery relies on costly and time consuming manual image analysis.

Under the Digital Future Initiative, we’re launching a new ‘blue carbon’ project in partnership with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Tidal (an ocean health project within X) to address these barriers. Together, we’re exploring novel applications of artificial intelligence to measure, with greater efficiency and accuracy, the capacity of seagrass ecosystems to absorb and sequester carbon. . . 

 

Rural round-up

No workers to harvest, so farmer sacrifices 300,000 heads of lettuce – Gerhard Uys:

A farmer has been forced to plough more than 300,000 heads of fresh lettuce into the ground because he cannot find enough workers to manually harvest them.

Farm labour woes come on the back of the Government announcement that the official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.3% in the three months to the end of September.

Alan Fong, a Waikato vegetable grower, said ploughing produce back into the ground was sad, especially because of high vegetable prices. In October, vegetable prices were up 17% on the year before.

In October, the average price of 1kg of lettuce was $6.43, Stats NZ said, up from $5.39 a year earlier and $3.64 the year before that. . . 

Lamb processing delays expected due to labour shortage – Sally Murphy :

Farmers are being told to expect delays for this years peak lamb kill, with the season expected to be longer due to labour shortages.

Processors have been struggling with staff shortages for the past two years due to the border closure and staff being off sick with Covid-19.

AgriHQs latest market update said staff shortages had been a major problem for some processing plants and in some cases lambs were sent back to the farm as there were not enough staff to process them all.

Alliance Group, which operates five meatworks in the South Island and two in the lower North Island, had not had to send lambs back, but farmers were experiencing wait times of 10 to 14 days. . . 

🦌 what a great place we live in 🤩😍 @BenDooley8 pic.twitter.com/kdsFNdhTmm

— Sarah Dooley (@cobb808) November 15, 2022

Lifecycle study challenges methane measurement – Richard Rennie:

A carbon lifecycle study on New Zealand red meat has been welcomed as a good start, with provisos, by climate change (āhuarangi panoni) researcher Professor David Frame.

Released by Beef + Lamb NZ, the lifecycle assessment (LCA) study has determined NZ’s red meat is among the most efficiently produced in the world. 

Per kilogram, sheepmeat produces 15kg of carbon dioxide, while beef produces 22kg per kilo of meat.

The report determined the outcome is largely driven by farm-level efficiencies, representing 95% of the products’ carbon footprint. . . 

Dairy land being lost at 1 percent a year, Fonterra – Nikki Mandow :

Fonterra says declining annual milk production will likely continue in the foreseeable future, as dairy farmers sell their properties or switch to alternative land use. But forests aren’t to blame.

Dairy farmers are converting their land away from cows and milk at about 1 percent a year, Fonterra chair Peter McBride says. And that’s something the company is going to have to live with. 

Speaking at the Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund annual general meeting, McBride said land use change could even go faster, as a variety of factors – from ageing demographics and farmer lifestyle choices to stricter regulation around greenhouse gas emissions and water quality – put further pressure on farmers.

The trend is despite record farm gate dairy prices, which rose from $6.35 per kilo of milk solids in the 2018/19 season to $7.14 in 2019/20, $7.54 in 2020/21 and $9.30 last season. . . 

EastPack announces $30 million notes issue to meet growth in kiwifruit demand :

EastPack, the largest post-harvest operator in the New Zealand kiwifruit industry and one of the country’s largest cooperatives, today announced that it intends to raise $30 million via an issue of five-year subordinated Notes to New Zealand investors. EastPack will have the ability to take oversubscriptions of up to $10 million.

The amount raised will help expand packing capacity at EastPack including processing and packing efficiency.

The minimum interest rate for the Notes will be 8.5% per annum, paid quarterly in arrears. The interest rate is set annually and will be set at the higher of the minimum rate or the five-year government bond plus 4.5%. The initial interest rate is 8.9% per annum.

In its discretion, EastPack may redeem the Notes any time after 3 years. There is no intention to list the Notes on the NZX debt market but the notes will be tradeable via Syndex. . .

It's not just the cars now that have problems, with the cracks in the road. pic.twitter.com/aY8xpkQ4ex

— Brian Leahy (@BrianLeahy11) November 15, 2022

Livestock is a form of climate justice in the global south – Simplice Nouala:

As the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) proceeds in Egypt, few seem to be acknowledging that the elephant in the room is actually a cow. The livestock sector has faced global scrutiny for its contribution to climate change, but is reducing livestock production actually a fair, or even an honest, climate outcome?

The answer is less than straightforward when considering the billions of people living in the Global South. As counterintuitive as it might seem at a first glance to people living in the “Global North”, there is a strong case to invest more in sustainable livestock systems across the developing world as a matter of climate justice. Let me explain.

Having been widely recognised as the “African COP”, this year’s negotiations are emphasising the need to support the most vulnerable in adapting to climate change by requiring the wealthiest historic emitters of greenhouse gases to pay for the loss and damage that has already occurred. Livestock actually offers a compelling case for both of these priorities.

If COP27 is to truly deliver for Africa, this should start with recognising the vast differences between livestock in the Global North and South. Viewing livestock and its climate impact in developing countries through the same lens as livestock in the Global North is, at best, inaccurate, and at worst, actively harmful. . . 

 

Submission on Ag emissions and pricing

Submissions on the government’s proposals to impose a tax on farm emissions close today.

You can submit here .

This is my submission:

• We oppose the government’s proposals for pricing agricultural emissions

1.3. The Paris Accord agrees: ”to decrease global warming through: . . .  Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.”

1.4 Until there are affordable, practical and safe ways to reduce emissions any costs imposed on farmers will reduce food production and lead to job losses on farms, in businesses that service and support farmers and process their produce; and in the wider communities.

1.5 New Zealand has a well-deserved reputation for producing nutritious and safe food, efficiently with high standards of animal welfare. We have strict requirements about the use of chemicals and drugs. Any tools that reduce emissions must not have any adverse impact on stock, meat quality and nutrient value and human health.

1.6 We oppose the use of the ETS to encourage on-farm emissions reductions. Unless, and until, there are safe measures to reduce emissions it would simply be a tax on production.

1.7 We do not support the pricing of emissions until there are safe measures to reduce them. However, if one is imposed, a farm level system would be less bad than the proposed interim processor level system as a backstop.

1.8 If the government persists in imposing costs, any approach to reducing emissions must maintain the viability of New Zealand’s farming sector and rural communities.

1.9 It must not encourage practices that would lead to poor economic, environmental and social outcomes, for example large scale job losses on farms and rural communities or replacing pastoral farms with pine plantations.

1.10 It must recognise the good work that many farmers and rural communities have already done to mitigate climate change through establishing vegetation and that is fair across all sectors and New Zealand industries and communities.

1.11 The Governments proposal does not do this.

 

2 He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) did not have universal support but the government has succeeded in uniting farmers against its proposals.

2.1 The He Wake Eke Noa approach aimed to create a mitigation package that included recognition of technologies used and progress already made, the adoption of mitigating technologies only when they had been proved safe and were readily available, recognition of the agri sector’s contribution to the economy, care for rural communities, recognition of progress against goals and recognition of our competitive position in markets.

2.2 The government’s proposal is primarily focussed on emissions pricing to achieve arbitrary targets that have no relation to what is possible, practical and proven.

2.3 The proposal is overly simplistic, would destroy rural communities and come at a huge economic cost. Taking out 20% of sheep and beef farms would cripple small rural towns and take multi millions of dollars from export earnings.

2.4 Primary industries in general and pastoral industries in particular are fundamental to New Zealand’s economic wellbeing.

2.5 They comprise more than 80 percent of New Zealand’s physical export earning and make up about 50 percent of these total export earnings. There is no other way to pay for all the imports the country needs.

2.6 New Zealand has international commitments to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions. That does not mean that New Zealand has to be the first country to destroy its most important export-earning industries.

2.7 No other country in the world is considering going down a self-destruction path for mainstream industries that underpin that nation’s fundamental economic well-being. It is not happening and it is not going to happen elsewhere in the world.

2.8 Sabotaging farming, which the government’s proposal would do, would at best have a minimal environmental impact, at worst it will increase global emissions through carbon leakage and degrade New Zealand soil and waterways when pine plantations replace pastoral farms.

 

3 The government’s proposed emissions accounting system will add unaffordable costs to the dairy sector and have an even worse impact on the deer, sheep and beef sectors.

3.1 The assumption that tools and technologies will be available to assist with reducing or mitigating emissions is putting the green cart well in front of the scientific horses.

3.2 There are no options available now and there is a risk that some proposed tools would impact the quality of meat and milk, and possibly human health.

3.4 Professor Keith Woodford points out:

. . . The problem is that nature’s ruminant nutritional system was designed for a purpose over millions of years by trial and error. That is how evolution works. And nature does not necessarily take kindly when humans want to interfere with the basics of that ruminant system. Change part of the system and there is always a good chance that the overall system will fall apart.

One way or another, the excess hydrogen has to be removed from the rumen. Otherwise, the rumen will turn from a fermentation vat to an acid vat. The animal will not be impressed and will get very sick.

Accordingly, it is not just a case of killing the methanogens. Something else has to take over the job that the methanogens do naturally. If there was an easy solution that was energetically better than producing methane, then nature would in all likelihood have figured that out itself.

So, what are the technologies that humans have been exploring?

One of the most fascinating technologies is to feed some bromoform-releasing seaweed to ruminants. These trials have been going on both in New Zealand and overseas. The bromoforms are particularly good at killing off the methanogens, but unfortunately, they tend to also mess up other parts of the rumen system. Particularly important is the finding in a recent scientific paper that bromoforms pass from the rumen into milk.

Alas, bromoforms are a suspected carcinogen and certainly have the ability to interfere with many human processes. My own assessment is that, despite some ongoing hype, there is close to zero chance of this technology being acceptable to food-safety authorities. Indeed bromoforms, which are similar in their action to chloroform, are already widely banned in foodstuffs.

The second feed additive that has generated considerable hype is a chemical called 3-NOP. This has been developed through to early-stage commerciality by Dutch firm DSM with the trade name Bovaer.

This technology appears to be much safer than bromoforms and does reduce methane production in feedlot situations for dairy and beef cattle. However, the evidence to date is that it does not work under pastoral conditions because it needs to be evenly distributed throughout the feed. . . .

3.5 There is not yet anything that can safely reduce methane emissions in stock and there are very real questions about food safety with what is being trialled.

3.6 We must not risk our hard-earned reputation for safe food in an attempt to reduce emissions.

 

4 Relying on forestry to make the ETS work is a temporary band-aid. It does not address the carbon problem and it is creating an artificial market that incentivises planting trees on good pastoral land.

4.1 This increases the risk of fires, provides shelter for pests which threaten native species and carry diseases which could infect farm animals; takes up large amounts of water which compromises waterways and water life and would be hard to reverse.

4.2 It also takes jobs from farms and the local community and reduces export income.

4.3 The government’s approach to emissions accounting is inequitable by proposing to levy farmers for methane emissions but not give any credit for the sequestration from on-farm vegetation.

4.4 Unless farms are able to offset emission through sequestration, some will become unviable and the damaging conversion from farmland to forestry will be exacerbated.

4.5 A broader range of sequestration is critical to achieving a balance in the system that will make it work for both extensive and intensive farmers. If the government insists on levying farmers it must adopt the HWEN recommendations and recognise a broad range of vegetation categories.

4.6 The government’s excuses exluding on-farm sequestration on the basis of the complexity of measuring sequestration. That is wrong.

4.7 Hyperspectral photography using LIDAR technology is available to measure both biomass and species composition of vegetation over a large scale. This technology could be adapted to measure vegetation to account for sequestration.

4.8 If the government insists on levying farmers for emissions based on hypothetical models it must accept sequestration credits based on accepted and standardised measurement.

 

5 We oppose the Government’s proposal for taxing emissions altogether and its proposal for price setting through the Climate Change Commission.

5.1 If the government does impose costs on emissions, the agricultural sector must be represented on any body that sets prices to ensure it is fair and manageable.

5.2 The CCC’s brief to reduce GHG emissions is a conflict of interest with price setting that could risk it using agriculture to cross-subsidise a wider reduction in warming

5.3 Criteria that must be taken into account when setting the price must include equity, economic impacts and what other countries, in particular those with which we compete in exports.

5.4 Agriculture’s contribution to reducing emission must not be the expense of any of our major exporting sectors and rural communities.

 

6 We oppose linking the price of nitrous oxide to the carbon price.

6.1 Linking nitrous oxide and CO2 reduction targets doesn’t make sense if there are different targets for them.

6.2 If the nitrous oxide price is linked to the carbon price and the carbon price rises rapidly this will become a significant cost to farms and their profitability.

 

7 We have grave concerns about the impacts the government’s proposal will have on on production, income and costs on farms, rural communities and the wider economy.

7.2 During the ag-sag of the 1980s it was feared farmers would be driven from their farms in their thousands. Some did lose their land but the worst impacts were further downstream in the businesses which serviced and supplied them, schools, and provincial towns. Farmers retrenched and businesses and service providers they used to frequent had too few alternative customers and clients.

7.3 The impact the government’s emissions reduction proposal would have would be far worse for job losses and business failures.

7.4 The modelling shows that a very cautious approach needs to be taken to pricing and the government must recalculate the methane targets.

7.5 High targets require a higher price with the proposed system. No other country is planning to put a price on agricultural emissions. It is foolhardy to sabotage the agricultural sector and the whole New Zealand economy for no benefit except being able to claim a first.

7.6 The government’s claim that customers will take emissions into account and pay more for produce if the country’s agricultural emissions is unproven.

7.7 Until and unless there are affordable, practical and safe tools for reducing emissions, the country’s emissions might reduce but the emissions per animal and therefore per kilo of milk and meat won’t.

 

8 The government’s proposal will have a disproportionate impact on sheep, beef and deer farmers.

8.1 The impact will be even worse if there is not proper recognition of sequestration.

8.2 No single sector should disproportionately carry the burden of meeting New Zealand’s targets.

 

9 If a levy is imposed, if must be at a level that delivers only on the scheme’s intended purpose and not to collect excess funds or charge farmers more than absolutely necessary.

9.2 The use of any revenue collected must be under farmer control and they must have the say on how it is used for reinvesting into agriculture for example for research or supporting the uptake of technology.

 

10 We oppose the processor levy backstop.

10.1 This is inequitable because it would only be imposed on those who slaughter stock.

10.2 A processor levy would treat the best, most efficient producers the same as the worst and least efficient with no reward or incentive for improving on-farm practices.