Editorial: All is not well down on the farm as city people will find out today

Farmers feel dumped on as easy targets and an unappreciated minority. Photo / NZME

Editorial

EDITORIAL:

One rule in the long list urged by organisers of today's nationwide "Howl of a Protest" is for participants - and their dogs - not to get into heated arguments with bystanders and thus be thought "a bunch of rednecks".

Most of the protesters - likely to number thousands - will be farmers, coming in force to town because they're fed up with being targeted for spiralling environmental compliance costs and taxes - and as they see it, doing the heavy lifting for New Zealand's climate change response.

The onlookers will be inconvenienced urbanites, who judging by social media responses to the protest, have little patience with rural concerns and even less understanding.

Sparks could fly.

Certainly, farmers are angry.

They feel dumped on as easy targets and an unappreciated minority. They're dismayed at how far Kiwis have strayed from an understanding of their food sources. Particularly galling is to be praised by politicians for being our economic rock in crises such as the global financial crisis and the pandemic, and then slapped by the same people with relentless compliance costs, and idealistic, unworkable rules and regulations that make the job increasingly difficult and potentially unviable.

While a townie might look at a farmer and see unswimmable rivers, compromised eco- systems in Canterbury and Otago and all manner of environmental affronts, a farmer looks back at people who can't use their beaches after a heavy rain, who have raw sewage running through their streets, dodgy freshwater supplies, and choked and deficient roads.

And the farmer knows that's because there has not been the political will to raise rates and taxes to upgrade creaking urban infrastructure.

Environmental vandalism, farmers will probably argue today, is an equal opportunity affair.

They won't be arguing alone.

A big turnout of tradies is expected to support the rural protest throughout the country today.

The "bond" between the two groups will go some way to closing the perceived gap between town and country when drawing attention to inequalities in the cost burden, says protest organiser Groundswell NZ.

However unlike tradies, farmers as price takers not makers, can't pass on the spiralling costs being imposed on them.

Ironically Wellington will miss the flotillas of tractors, vehicles full of working dogs barking on command, and wall-to-wall utes - the new tax on which seems to have been the proverbial last straw for farmers and tradespeople alike.

There'll be no politicians at Molesworth St to see them says Groundswell, and the capital city isn't easy to access.

Elsewhere, while urban folk navigate their way around the spectacle of the country coming in force to city streets and town centres today, they may care to reflect that farmers are not often or easily moved to mobilise.

It's been nearly 18 years since former National MP Shane Ardern drove his tractor "Myrtle'' up the steps of Parliament during a protest against a proposed gas emission tax, or "fart tax" as it became known.

Clearly all is not well down on the farm.