Farmers provide our food, not trees, writes Helen Craig. Photo / unsplash
Farmers provide our food, not trees, writes Helen Craig. Photo / unsplash
OPINION:
Government has lost sight of the importance of farming to New Zealand’s wider economy and the fact we actually need food to survive. Farmers are now a threatened species, except foresters and mānuka conversions for honey. Funnily enough, Government legislation is now the biggest risk to farming, even comparedto natural disasters.
Provincial local government has also lost sight of their heavy reliance on the farming economy as they focus on towns and services for people. There will be few people and towns if our farmers disappear – we are too reliant on the services and products they buy, the products they supply for further manufacturing and the profits they spend. We fool ourselves if we think art galleries, museums, tourists, events and niche manufacturers keep our provincial towns alive.
Laws and taxes are being passed by Wellington-based politicians who do not understand this and don’t think beyond the growing urban populations. The Carbon Credits scheme managed by the Government is making forestry far more profitable than any other farming industry. A new tax on animal emissions adds to growing costs on-farm. Government approvals for the sale of land to overseas forestry firms have accelerated, not reduced, and it’s harder and harder to get water rights approvals for not only stock, but also cropping, creating growing uncertainty and risk for farmers.
Overdone fencing and riparian planting requirements for anything that might possibly be considered a waterway, tighter regulations on private drinking water schemes, tighter health and safety laws, tighter regulations on chicken and egg farms, and now the possibility of a five-fold increase in firearms licence fees will make pest control and recreational shooting too expensive for most except the most frequent shooters.
Traditionally, the biggest risk to farmers were droughts, floods and pestilence, plus low demand for their products. Those risks continue, but this Government wants to save the planet by planting New Zealand in trees.
New Zealand is facing a crisis of identity, and I see a bleak future for our way of life without a radical and urgent U-turn by Government.
Helen Craig is deputy mayor of Whanganui, a heritage, art and town centre advocate, and she owns a family farm.
