KEY POINTS:
The Green Party has launched its agricultural policy with a call to support farmers in maximising their earning potential, while safeguarding the prime assets of land and water.
It is a typically safe political message - success please but not at any cost - but what about the
policy details?
Will it gain support and what are the chances of it becoming law?
* Emissions Trading Scheme: Set baseline year for measuring agricultural emissions to 1990 to more accurately reflect the Kyoto protocol.
* Biosecurity: More precautionary approach with a levy on incoming vessels, passengers and freight to better fund services.
* Overseas Investment Act: Stop people who do not reside here or hold citizenship from buying land.
* Food miles: Support farmers to reduce emissions and educate overseas consumers to move the debate to ecological footprints.
* Organic: Aim for half of production to be certified organic by 2020 with the remainder in the process of conversion.
* Others issues: Resource consent for converting land to ruminants or intensifying stock, strategy to reduce pesticide use by half within five years, keep environment GE free, support development of viable biofuel production and redirect research funding to organic projects.
Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says setting the emissions trading scheme baseline year to 1990 would mean sheep and beef farmers would not be liable for emissions until they exceed that year, which they have not grown beyond.
"The main growth in agricultural emissions has come from dairying and deer, and the Government's plan has sheep and beef farmers subsidising them," Fitzsimons says.
"The Greens would reverse that."
The recognition of agriculture's importance will be welcomed and some Green Party policies may get a nod at the farm gate, if not always in the voting booth.
Some people will vote Green but the rural vote historically tends towards National.
The Greens' big task is to persuade voters that policies many people agree with in principle are attainable and not a fringe party pipe-dream.
In some ways this may be a consequence of a political migration in many democracies during the last 20 years to the centre ground - where elections are won.
With main party ideas concentrated either side of the middle ground, everything else suddenly appears more extreme and therefore less realistic.
Meat & Wool New Zealand chairman Mike Petersen says while there is nothing in the headline Green policy that jumps out as overly menacing, it is the interpretation and extent of individual policies that would cause concern.
"Commercial drivers should be at play here and people will shift to organic production if it is viable to do so," Petersen says.
"There seems to be a desire to push too far towards the organic path, when the reality is that in comparison to the rest of the world our conventional farming systems would qualify as organic in the minds of consumers."
Petersen says on the surface an emissions trading baseline year of 1990 would suit the sheep and beef sector but Meat & Wool do not support a processor point of obligation.
"Importantly we also do not know what the end position will be following what is likely to be a long and intense trade-off period following the election if Labour and the Greens are given the opportunity to form a government."
There have been big changes in the agriculture landscape during the past 20 years.
If for argument's sake, the sheep and beef sector never again reaches the size of 1990, does that mean it should never have to account for its contribution to national emissions, irrespective of whether emissions have increased at an individual farm level?
Depending on your standpoint that too sounds unfair.
The present trading system would include the farm sector from 2013, with a free allocation equivalent to 90 per cent of emissions in 2005, reducing to zero between 2018 and 2030.
Green Party co-leader and agriculture and rural affairs spokesman Russel Norman says the time frame for introduction of the scheme is too slow.
"It's not sending a clear enough signal to the dairy sector that they've got to invest in ways to reduce their emissions," Norman says.
"I think a lot of other parties want to say to the primary sector you can do whatever you like and we're never going to challenge you, whereas what the Green Party's saying is look it's in the long-term interest of primary production that we reduce our pollution and that we reduce our environmental damage that we're causing."
A report in September by Environment Waikato on rural soil and water found that bacteria in rivers and streams made water unsuitable for stock to drink or for people to swim safely in at 75 per cent and 70 per cent of sites respectively.
Meanwhile, the topsoil concentrations of cadmium, which is found in phosphate fertiliser, exceeded a recommended guideline in 11 per cent of the properties sampled.
Environment Waikato chairman Peter Buckley said the trend towards more intensive land use meant changes to farming practice were likely to be needed to protect the region's waterways.
Water quality is likely to get worse before it gets better, Buckley said.
The Herald Digi-Poll of October 8 put the Green Party in third place on 5.4 per cent and if Labour closes the gap on National, they could hold the keys to Government.
But they will want something in return for their support.
"We can get through a few key policies and that's what we'll do and some of those have to be around cleaning up our fresh water because it's a disaster at the moment," Norman says.
DROUGHT FINISHED
Special drought recovery measures put in place by the Government after last summer's dry weather will finish on December 31.
The drought ravaged many parts of the country - Waikato had its driest January in more than 100 years - and cost the dairy industry between $500 million and $1 billion.
The severe dry weather last summer was brought by the La Nina weather pattern, which comes around about every three years.
La Nina years usually bring good rain in the north and east of the North Island and very dry weather for Fiordland. Last summer's variation saw dry weather from Waikato to Otago.
Drought measures which would cease include rural assistance payments and funding to rural support trusts and industry bodies.
Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton says the follow-on effects from the drought such as feed shortages, low pasture cover, poor animal health and financial issues carried through winter and into spring.
However, the National Drought Committee has decided that conditions have shown sufficient recovery to stop special measures, with improving stock conditions, pasture covers and good seasonal rainfall this spring.
Rural support trusts will remain active in all drought-affected regions, Anderton says.
"In some ways, the real cost of this drought won't be fully known for another two years that is, in terms of loss of livestock, decrease in production and cost of recovery," he says.
"We encourage those who may require assistance to visit their local rural support trust to find out what is available to them before the end of this year and also after the special recovery measures cease."
MetService weather ambassador Bob McDavitt says preliminary opinion is this summer will be neither La Nina nor El Nino, but somewhere in between.
"Of course it's really a mixed bag of weather," McDavitt says. "You don't get the dry days and the wet days at the same time but it looks as though every time you get a dry period you'll probably get followed by a wet period."
There is a slightly increased risk of getting a tropical cyclone.
