New Zealand\u2019s biggest earners are\ntourism and agriculture- in particular, livestock agriculture. Nobody needs\nreminding that tourism hasn\u2019t been all that popular \u2013 or easy- for the past 12\nmonths. But agriculture has never been more important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
COVID has highlighted the\nprecariousness of our global economy. Our supply chains are disrupted, and\nglobal food security suddenly seems like quite a good idea. But that doesn\u2019t\nmean that Kiwi farmers are suddenly everybody\u2019s best mate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
As I\u2019ve written before, our farmers are\nthe country\u2019s punchbag. It\u2019s easy to understand how demoralising it must be for\nfarmers getting up early seven days of the week, regardless of the weather,\ndoing what they believe to be good work in feeding people, only to find\nthemselves the subject of daily abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of it is valid \u2013 albeit poorly\ncommunicated. We have<\/em> been guilty of\nnot protecting our waterways in some situations. We have<\/em> been guilty of removing shade and shelter on some farms; or\ncreating monocultures with minimal biodiversity. But in defence of farmers,\nmost of this was done out of ignorance not intent. Environmental sustainability\nis a journey that is both dynamic and evolving- and we know much more now that\nwe did even 10 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Equally of course, many farmers have\nplanted heaps of trees; or re- invigorated lost wetlands; or created dynamic\nand complex local ecosystems on their properties. And most farmers are hugely\nproud of and supportive of their rural communities- they want to do their best\nto protect them and keep them sustainable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But of course ruminants do emit\ngreenhouse gases. And GHGs do warm the planet. Whether you consider biological\nmethane to be important becomes almost a philosophical question. Yes it warms\nthe planet; yes it does so at a much greater rate than CO2<\/sub> (around\n28 times); but it has a much shorter half-life (around a tenth of CO2<\/sub>).\nFor contrast, nitrous oxide has a similar half-life to CO2<\/sub> and 300\ntimes the warming effect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Critically for methane, its life cycle\nis circular, in that as long as we aren\u2019t increasing the population of ruminants,\nwe aren\u2019t increasing CH4<\/sub> in the atmosphere. It\u2019s true of course that\nwe have<\/em> been increasing ruminants-\nand atmospheric methane has doubled in the past 300 years. But in the same time\nperiod, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide also almost doubled. But only about\nhalf of methane emissions are from ruminants- the rest is from fossil fuel\nextraction and wetlands. In fact, CH4<\/sub> emissions plateaued in the\nlate 90s\/early 2000\u2019s: until people discovered fracking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, with stable numbers of\nruminants, the impact of their methane emissions is also stable. Whereas the\nimpact of CO2<\/sub> and N2<\/sub>0 continues to rise. Pretty much the\nonly way to get ruminants to emit less methane is to feed them less- which is\nnot a great strategy in New Zealand where feeding animals less has been an\northodoxy we\u2019ve been challenging for decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So on the one hand, farmers have done\nwhat was asked of them and continued to feed the planet; yet on the other hand\nthey keep on being told what they do is wrong. COVID has given them a brief\nrespite, but it certainly can\u2019t be said that they\u2019re swimming in appreciation\nover here in New Zealand, despite most of them trying their best. In fact,\nthere\u2019s never been so much attention \u2013 or so many acronyms- given to making\nthem farm differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Intensive Winter Grazing (IWG) has been\nlooked at, and in 2019 we were given the Task Force, which then led in 2020 to\nthe IWG Action Group. This group identified 7 \u2018Short Term Outcomes for Animal\nWelfare\u2019, which farmers are expected to address in the next couple of years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In amongst this we\u2019ve also had the\ngovernment\u2019s National Essential Freshwater (NEF) programme, and down where we\nare, Environment Southand\u2019s own interpretation of this; and also the\nestablishment of the Southland Intensive Winter Grazing National Essential Standard\nfor Freshwater Advisory Group (SIWGNESFWAG in case you wondered), who also\ndrafted a report to help farmers. Finally the Climate Change Commission (CCC)\npublished their report and recommendations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike most of the people who draft\nrules and offer advice, farmers\u2019 work is usually their life. It\u2019s intertwined\nwith the communities they live in and the land they live on \u2013 and they\u2019re\ninseparable. They can\u2019t just move to a new job, or retrain. Their job\nencapsulates their sense of self; it\u2019s also their home, and they play out their\ndaily lives at work, and the two are equally threaded through their local rural\ncommunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n COVID gave us all a new appreciation\nfor the fragility of the food chain and the importance of farmers\u2019 role, but it\nhasn\u2019t yet given the commentators and critics the insight of how to help\nfarmers improve what they do without knocking them all down first. And while we\napplaud the return of trans- Tasman flights while ignoring their emissions, we\ndecry the GHGs that farmers produce while keeping everyone fed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For New Zealand there were two key\nlessons from COVID. The first was the fact that every journalist, media or\nsports celebrity is actually an epidemiologist, The second is that although\ntourism has been important- both socially and financially- farming is equally\nimportant. There are moves here to radically change the way tourism operates\npost- Covid, and to support the industry as they make these changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same support and warmth needs to\nwrap around farmers as they are forced to make equally significant changes to\ntheir industry. Both can be sustainable and beneficial to New Zealand Inc, but\nboth need Kiwis to shed their negativity and cynicism and replace them with\nempathy and support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Zealand\u2019s biggest earners are tourism and agriculture- in particular, livestock agriculture. Nobody needs reminding that tourism hasn\u2019t been all that popular \u2013 or easy- for the past 12 months. But agriculture has never been more important. COVID has highlighted the precariousness of our global economy. Our supply chains are disrupted, and global food security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,296],"tags":[381,385,39,1612,85,1798],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-post","tag-kiwi-post","tag-mark-bryan","tag-new-zealand","tag-op-ed","tag-opinion-2","tag-post"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":82,"name":"Opinion","slug":"opinion","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":83,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":94,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":82,"category_count":94,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Opinion","category_nicename":"opinion","category_parent":0},{"term_id":296,"name":"Post","slug":"post","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":297,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":39,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":296,"category_count":39,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Post","category_nicename":"post","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"New Zealand\u2019s biggest earners are tourism and agriculture- in particular, livestock agriculture. Nobody needs reminding that tourism hasn\u2019t been all that popular \u2013 or easy- for the past 12 months. But agriculture has never been more important. COVID has highlighted the precariousness of our global economy. Our supply chains are disrupted, and global food security suddenly seems like quite a..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"82":{"name":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=82"},"296":{"name":"Post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=296"}},"tags_names":{"381":{"name":"Kiwi Post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=kiwi-post"},"385":{"name":"Mark Bryan","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=mark-bryan"},"39":{"name":"New Zealand","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=new-zealand"},"1612":{"name":"op-ed","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=op-ed"},"85":{"name":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=opinion-2"},"1798":{"name":"Post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=post"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2758,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions\/2758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}