Hard News: Climate, money and risk
220 Responses
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Christopher Dempsey, in reply to
As for what Lilith’s saying about water, surely we should be pricing water smarter to encourage dairying in areas like Waikato, Taranaki and Westland that are fairly well suited to it and discourage dairying in areas like Canterbury which are not? And shouldn’t we also be putting a cost on pollution of water supplies – both ground water and lakes and rivers – to encourage farmers to clean up their act? I have no idea how to do that, though.
Something was done: in 2009 the Land and Water Forum was set up. A wider body of 62 different stakeholders across Aotearoa contributes to a smaller body of 21 members who do research, and write up reports. The idea was to seek consensus across a number of different stakeholders (Fed Farmers/Forest and Bird/Regional Councils etc) about the (ab)use of water for different purposes. Surprisingly I believe some kind of consensus was achieved.
Three reports were done, the final being a report about the use of 'limits' to managing water resources i.e. how much nitrogen a community could accept in the local streams.
The third report went up to Government for action. But when you get Forest and Bird saying "Forest & Bird hopes that the Government will adopt all of the forum’s recommendations." it doesn't leave one at all hopeful. This is echoed by Fish and Game.
Which is disappointing but not surprising in the context of (equally a Labour-led or National-led) governmental dynamics (I suspect a run-around has been done with some powerful stakeholders directly lobbying the various Ministers personally).
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Thanks, Christopher, I'd heard about the Land and Water Forum, but hadn't realised it had progressed to the point where the government was shuffling its feet and making up excuses to not act.
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Spotted on my morning walk. And because the Chinese, as is so often the case with this kind of thing, is clearer than the English - the EV definitely means electric vehicle, as in electric car (电动汽车/diàndòng qìchē). A sign of progress? Preparation for the couple of hundred thousand electric cars that are supposed to go on sale to the general public this year? We shall see...
Meanwhile, business as usual on the East 4th Ring Road... And a light noreaster meaning all that exhaust is just sitting over Beijing. Well, it has been a fairly mild winter here so far this year.
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Andrew Geddis on the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust and its attempt to walk away from the costs of a mindless legal challenge.
Looks like a half-arsed attempt at plausible deniability.
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Why don't climate change deniers publish in the scientific literature. http://pocket.co/s2_HM
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Richard Grevers, in reply to
How viable is it to talk about replacing pastures with grasses (GM or otherwise) which will reduce the emissions of our ruminants? And if not now, at some point?
Coming very late to this interesting discussion...
There's a base assumption right there, Russell - that cows eat grass. They can eat and enjoy a large range of fodders. What farmers don't like is that some involve work - they need to be brought to the animals from the field where they are grown.
Asian farmers - truly sustainable ones who have worked the same land for 5,000 years with no degradation and no external inputs - know that hoofed animals destroy soil structure and significantly reduce the productivity of the land. So they restrict the animals to a very small percentage of the land - housing them, essentially, and achieve outputs per acre far above anything seen in the Western world. The system doesn't support animal products as the primary output, but animals are an intrinsic and essential part of the system. The amount of land needed to support a family to a decent standard of living is an acre or two. (We bought 1.5 acres and hope to become that productive on it)I don't know of a dairying example in NZ, but a mixed farm in inland Taranaki produces premium quality beef, lamb, poultry and bacon plus many other products. Pastures, with a wider than usual plant diversity are successively grazed by all the different animals. Animals self-medicate from the many medicinal plants in living fences. 170 acres produces the same income as the neighbouring 4000 acre block.
Basically it's a myth that organic methods produce lower outputs. They are more labour intensive. So we could have a future where a lot more people work on a lot less land, leaving unsuitable land to be reforested, fixing many erosion problems. The stumbling blocks being that too many people see rural life as a low standard of living, and that the financial system values investment in land far above investment in people. -
Wandering back towards the original theme, the Avon river red zone in Christchurch looks remarkably similar to the (then somewhat secret) 0.5m sea level rise map that I saw in the 1980s. So regardless of foundation suitability, CERA has substantially avoided a future problem by halting redevelopment in an area where it was doomed to be temporary.
I wonder if insurers will ever bite the bullet and say to customers in vulnerable areas "You have 15 years, after which this location becomes uninsurable" - or do they profit more by upping premiums and hoping to avoid a payout? -
Sacha, in reply to
I suspect a run-around has been done with some powerful stakeholders directly lobbying the various Ministers personally
or a reach-around
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Farmer Green, in reply to
The stumbling blocks being that too many people see rural life as a low standard of living,
and . . .
Yet there are commenters in this thread alleging that dairy farming is very profitable.
FG didn't read all the comments but it would be surprising if there was not the obligatory accusation that dairy farmers pay little or no tax ; only possible if either there is no profit or the farmers efforts are unpaid i.e. there are no drawings.Maybe by the phrase "low standard of living" you meant something of a less pecuniary nature?
Perhaps getting out of bed at sunrise nearly every day , including weekends and public holidays, and being unable to charge more for the production on those holidays?
But you cannot argue with the health benefits of such a life-style.So then maybe , getting fairly soiled on a routine basis?
Then again, immunity to tuberculosis , smallpox and asthma don't seem like significant negative side -effects of rusticity. More like positives , one would have thought.Working outside , come rain, hail or shine ?
Nah , that's got to be healthy.Come on all you townies; what is it that you think is so "high " about your standard of living?
Farmer Green doesn't know. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
that hoofed animals destroy soil structure and significantly reduce the productivity of the land.
Tens of millions of bison , were they still with us , would disagree strongly with that contention!
The big destroyers of the soil structure and immense fertility and productivity of the Great Plains were the squadrons of 2-cylinder 40 horsepower John Deere tractors and the like.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Come on all you townies; what is it that you think is so “high ” about your standard of living?
Farmer Green doesn’t know.With about eight percent of employees on New Zealand dairy farms originally from the Philippines, perhaps you’re addressing the ‘townies’ of Metro Manila? One thing I’ve noticed about the Filipino farm workers I’ve met here, they certainly lack your old-school squealing cocky chip on the shoulder.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
your old-school squealing cocky chip on the shoulder.
What’s that about Joe? Are you talking about the foot-dragging on environmental issues?
Just for the sake of clarity, I should explain that I'm addressing those urban dwellers who think that farmers have a "low standard of living".
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
What’s that about Joe? Are you talking about the foot-dragging on environmental issues?
Can you make your case without the silly "townies" stereotype? I think the readership here is a little more nuanced than that.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Of course you're right. I was being deliberately provocative on an old and stale thread in the hope that someone might engage on what seems to me to be a critical topic for the future of Godzone.
I was hoping for engagement on the substantive issues . . .
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Asian farmers – truly sustainable ones who have worked the same land for 5,000 years with no degradation and no external inputs – know that hoofed animals destroy soil structure and significantly reduce the productivity of the land. So they restrict the animals to a very small percentage of the land – housing them, essentially, and achieve outputs per acre far above anything seen in the Western world.
What Farmer Green said about bison, and:
It is my experience, admittedly limited to a small corner of northern China and a few places in southern China, that population density rather than soil destruction that causes them to restrict their animals to a small percentage of the land. There simply isn't room for NZ-style large paddocks. Also, water buffalo are used by rice farmers in their paddies. And historically people living north of a line the Great Wall roughly follows historically were nomadic herders - I believe some still are.
And:
Asian farmers
Essentialising, much? Asia is rather large and quite diverse.
truly sustainable ones who have worked the same land for 5,000 years with no degradation and no external inputs
Utter nonsense. First, because of that old "5,000 years" meme that always gets trotted out, second because you somehow seem to ignore the massive impact of human activity on the environment right across Asia. Please explain China's massive problem with desertification or why the mountain range at the back of my in-laws' village is a reforestation area? Or why in many places the bed of the Yellow River is higher than the surrounding farmland? Or China's massive reliance on agricultural chemicals? Just a couple of China-centric examples, I'm sure others familiar with other parts of Asia can chip in their two cents' worth.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
re: 'your old-school squealing cocky chip on the shoulder."
It looks like you may have mis -read FG’s comment.
As a highly profitable dairy farmer, Farmer Green has absolutely no cause to complain about anything, so if you were suggesting that it is he who has the chip on his shoulder then it is not clear why you would think that.
Farming seems to Farmer Green to be the best of all possible worlds ; the idea that it entails a “low standard of living” , as Richard Grevers suggested to be a widely held view, does not tally with FG’s experience.
That is not to say that everyone is suited to the rural life. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
And Chris you , quite diplomatically, did not even mention the methane output associated with the growing of paddy rice :-)
Still , the effects of the cloven hooves of rice-paddy water buffalo, on what is really just swamp-land, are probably relatively minor. You have to go to the Queensland outback if you want to see serious water-buffalo damage.It could be that it is well nigh impossible to explain the concept of "Wu wei" as it applies to the rural way of life, especially to those who have neither experience of the philosophy , nor the lifestyle.
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Those who think that conventional , large-scale dairy farming is a guaranteed path to riches might like to take a look at point #12 in the following link:-
Plenty of risks here:-
http://www.dairynz.co.nz/file/fileid/29371 -
Sacha, in reply to
the idea that it entails a “low standard of living” , as Richard Grevers suggested to be a widely held view
May have been talking about the difficulty of persuading young New Zealanders to join that life nowadays. Think lifestyle rather than income.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Those who think that conventional , large-scale dairy farming is a guaranteed path to riches …
Aren’t you playing to a straw man audience? Thanks to the hijacking of ECAN, around half a million of those stereotypically ignorant ‘townies’ have been indefinitely disenfranchised from having any input into how Canterbury’s resources should be allocated. A number of, rather ironically, democratically-elected regional mayors appear to believe that this is a good thing. Perhaps your concerns about perceptions of dairying profitability should be directed to Shanghai Pengxin.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Actually, I hadn't thought of the methane emissions of growing paddy rice.
As for water buffalos, my point was they can't be so destructive if they're still used in agriculture. I guess Queensland is a great example of putting something where it's not supposed to be and doing nothing about controlling it - Australia and New Zealand seem to have plenty examples of that kind of thing. If only those early settlers had read their Daodejing... So water buffalos, cloven hoved, but in the right place doing the right thing, not a problem.
I think "wu wei" is hard enough to grasp even if you have read the Taoist classics in the original.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
If it was you Sacha ,what aspect, if any , of the rural lifestyle would you find problematic?
Bear in mind that hours of work /roster is currently a hot topic .
We have operated a 9 on/5 off roster for some years - i.e a five day weekend - off every second week. But we have never had to advertise for staff anyway ; there is always a list of people looking for employment here.
Most dairy farms do not offer year-round employment either; the work is somewhat seasonal. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
Are you "in politics " Joe? The situation in Canterbury does not seem to differ in any meaningful way from that which prevails in the rest of the country i.e. a RMA Act which has yet to address agriculture in an effective way. The requirement of the Act is to act sustainably ; that doesn't require public input. It is a question for science. In practice it is about avoiding, reducing or mitigating undesirable effects of one's operations; what used to be called nuisance in law.
There is little case law surrounding the allocation of water in N.Z., but it will come in time. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
I think “wu wei” is hard enough to grasp even if you have read the Taoist classics in the original.
Yes but much easier to experience the closer one lives to the natural world, where every day is a different length , and no two days are the same.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Perhaps your concerns about perceptions of dairying profitability should be directed to Shanghai Pengxin.
What do you mean? It seems that Shanghai Pengxin has no intentions of following the accepted NZ dairy model which is the root cause of the relative unprofitability of conventional NZ dairying. The first thing being dumped is the co-operative model.
But Shanghai Pengxin may well fall flat on their faces ; without the involvement of Landcorp in operating the farms , that might have occurred already. Time will tell if it was a good investment ; it didn’t work for Allan Crafar, and he wasn’t inexperienced, or lacking in skills or innovation. Maybe Allan should have built his own factory , and added some value to his milk.
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