Wayne Langford, Federated Farmers of New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
In many ways it’s been a long time since farmers have had it so good.
Prices for dairy and meat are as good, if not better, than they have ever been.
On top of that, farmers have a sympathetic government in the Beehive.
But if you listen to farmer politicians, it would sometimes seem the culture of complaint remains alive and well in rural New Zealand.
The most reactionary and vocal is the Groundswell movement.
Its leaders are currently running a high-profile campaign, calling for New Zealand to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Accord.
This is despite Fonterra committing to being net zero by 2050 and this season introducing incentive payments for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But Groundswell has found support in the Beehive with both Act and NZ First, with the latter’s leader, Winston Peters, supporting the call to pull out from Paris.
Act has targeted rural New Zealand - and it has paid off.
In the 2023 election, its top three party vote percentages were in Kaikōura, Rangitikei and Southland: all usually National Party rural fortresses.
Waikato, Waitaki, Tukituki and Taranaki were all in Act’s top 10 party vote electorates.
National knew this was happening - not surprising given that the party could not find a working farmer to be their agricultural spokesperson in Opposition between 2020 and 2023.
So, the party deliberately set out to select farmer candidates for the 2023 election. Four of them, Grant McCallum, Suze Redmayne, Mike Butterick and Miles Anderson, are now in the caucus.
Last year the MPs launched a new National Party special interest group, Rural Nats to rank alongside the Blue Greens and Super Blues as influencers within the party.
And in Government, National set out very deliberately to implement the Federated Farmers 12-point 2023 election manifesto.
This has been most obvious with the moves it has made in reforming the Resource Management Act to accommodate rural interests.
Thus, the current consultations on proposals to amend the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. The policy statement was the target of the original Groundswell “Howl of a Protest” tractor protest four years ago.
There have been other moves like enabling more water storage, abolishing the ute-tax, restricting carbon farming and reviewing the methane targets, which were all part of the Feds’ manifesto.
National has had to concede to Act the requirement that councils must compensate landowners when they designate part of a farm a Significant Natural Area.
But apart from that, it was all National’s work. It showed up in a Federated Farmers Curia poll released at Fieldays, which showed 54% support for National farmers against 19% for Act.
Nevertheless, there was one Feds’ manifesto proposal that is causing some concern, not for the Government, but for the Feds themselves.
The manifesto called for the Government to embrace new technology, including gene editing “that could solve many of the challenges we face as farmers”.
The Government obliged with the Gene Technology Bill, which would liberalise the approval process for crops like the Ag Research-developed genetically edited ryegrass, which is currently being tested in the United States to determine its ability to lower methane production in cows.
Under present regulations it cannot be grown here.
In a surprise move in April, Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford told the Health Select Committee that even if the law was changed, it might not be possible to approve the grass because it could spread to neighbouring properties that were marketing their produce as GE-free.
“Our members’ views on issues are as diverse as their farming systems,” he said.
“Most farmers are in support, some are neutral, and some are opposed.
“Federated Farmers’ job is to navigate those differences in opinion, to present a credible and consistent view, which we try to do.”
Langford’s comments reflected the dilemma his organisation constantly faces, that there is no universal consensus among farmers on most major policy decisions.
Nowhere has this been more evident than on climate change.
Farming as a whole has always been concerned about the 2050 methane targets requiring a reduction of between 24 and 47 per cent on 2017 emission levels.
They are thought to be difficult to achieve whereas the 2030 target of a 10 per cent reduction is thought likely to be met.
A Government-initiated review by a science panel last year suggested that a smaller 2050 target reduction, potentially 14%-15%, could be consistent with “no added warming” from methane emissions.
The Government has given itself until the end of this year to respond to this but now Groundswell has stepped up its campaign, not to change the target, but to completely pull out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Meanwhile, Fonterra has taken the issue into its own hands. Through agreements with Nestlé and Mars, two of its biggest customers, it has committed to being responsible for net zero emissions by 2050 and this season has begun paying a bonus to farmers who meet the emission reduction targets it has set.
This has not topped Groundswell, which has been closely aligned with the Taxpayers’ Union and whose Facebook site is now a reservoir of conspiracy theories and wild claims about climate change and other favourite ultra-right causes like UN Agenda 2030 and the WHO.
Groundswell has broadened their campaign to now answer questions about how to restrain farms being converted to forestry for carbon farming by simply saying we should pull out of Paris.
Unlike Act and New Zealand First, National is standing well clear of them and its spokespeople have used the argument that reducing emissions is simply a requirement from our markets.
Wairarapa MP Mike Butterick clashed with Groundswell Environment spokesperson Jamie McFadden.
Butterick reminded McFadden about the economic situation facing farmers.
“In terms of some of the pressures on sheep and beef farming, number one has been profitability,” he said.
“We’re in a really good spot right now; record product prices all on the back of those lucrative markets that do have those (climate change) agreements, that profitability would be at risk.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been similarly emphatic.
“Do not be naive and think there will not be implications if we leave a global commitment,” he told farmers at Fieldays last month.
Though Federated Farmers did an online poll earlier this year and found that 69 per cent of respondents favoured pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
But a remit calling for NZ to withdraw from Paris at the Feds’ annual meeting last month was defeated.
It marked a new sense of realism within the Feds, in part inspired by more contacts with experts like our trade negotiators.
An example was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade deputy secretary, Vangelis Vitalis, the country’s lead trade negotiator, speaking at the DairyNZ Farmers’ Forum at the end of May. He said more than 85% of the discussions on trade agreements have climate at their heart.
Langford, obviously took messages like this to heart.
Speaking after the remit defeat, he said the Government had been very clear, as had our trade negotiators and largest exporters, that it would be total economic sabotage to withdraw and farmers would pay the price.
That is not stopping Groundswell or Act’s Climate Change spokesperson, Simon Court.
Groundswell are now encouraging farmers to erect highly professional billboards saying “The Paris Agreement is Destroying Us” on their farms.
Court used his every question opportunity at a recent Select Committee hearing on limiting afforestation on farmland for carbon farming to try and get the submitter to agree that the obvious answer would be to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
National must press ahead with complying with Paris - in part because that is what Fonterra’s customers and the country’s trade agreements are increasingly demanding, and in part because its campaigners have looked across at Australia and know that the easiest way to lose the centrist urban female vote is to be soft on climate change.
Whether Groundswell can persuade Act to make withdrawal a bottom line at the next election may well become one of the big political stories of the next 18 months.