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Opinion
FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – April 4, 2022
EDITORIAL
Govt should heed China warnings
F
OR over a year now, government ministers have been urging exporters to reduce their dependence on China. Finance Minister Grant Robertson was the latest, when last week he lauded the contribution primary producers were making to the country’s economic recovery but urged them to do more to diversify their markets. The urgency of this issue was underlined again this week by a global analyst at Rabobank who says New Zealand exporters risk being caught by US sanctions against China if tensions between the two superpowers continue to escalate. Michael Every says NZ must find a way to increase trade with the US and the European Union should the worst happen. So how disappointed must exporters be to hear the Government is finding novel ways to hobble its negotiators in talks for a free trade deal with the EU? As if convincing Europe’s agricultural protectionists to open up their markets to imports from efficient NZ rivals was not difficult enough, the Labourled government looks set to foist new demands on them in the form of protections for Māori data as demanded by a small clique of anti-trade activists. Forcing so-called data localisation rules on European cloud computing or financial services firms wanting to do business here goes against the trend of modern trade agreements, which are all about encouraging the free flow of products and – increasingly – data across borders. Worse still, Labour ministers seem unable to come up with a clear position for NZ trade negotiators to put in front of their European counterparts as extensive consultation with Māori groups drags on. That’s despite the matter of protection for indigenous data rights in trade agreements first being raised as an issue in a complaint to the Waitangi Tribunal in 2016. All of this raises questions about how seriously the Government takes its own China warnings or whether it is merely out of touch with the demands of modern trade agreements.
Nigel Stirling
LETTERS
More letters P26
Make the most of existing pines IT SEEMS to me that the best way to sequester carbon and reduce our carbon footprint is to use the existing plantations of Pinus radiata. We can use the mature trees to make engineered wood, which is suitable for constructing multi-storey buildings, which are inherently earthquake resistant and sequester considerable carbon. We can replant immediately and promote our engineered wood overseas, using our own multi-storey buildings as examples. Then we pyrolyse all the off cuts and saw dust, producing completely green cooking gas, petrol, diesel and airline fuel, plus charcoal. That charcoal can be incorporated into agriculture
fields (it lasts for decades and improves the soil). And note that we also reduce our carbon footprint by all the concrete that is displaced by using engineered wood. William Hughes-Games Waipara
We’re already world leaders WHAT a beaut contribution by Andrew Stewart in the March 7 edition of Farmers Weekly. It sums up the situation perfectly. Had a guts full of sector group leaders, politicians and so-called experts and advisors telling us that farmers need to roll over and accept that they need to be taxed for emissions in some form so that world market
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
acceptance of their products can continue? I have. All the markets need to know is that we already lead the world in sustainable
production. Any further taxing will bring the axe down on the show. Rob McIntosh Thames
Letterof theWeek EDITOR Bryan Gibson 06 323 1519 bryan.gibson@globalhq.co.nz EDITORIAL Carmelita Mentor-Fredericks editorial@globalhq.co.nz Neal Wallace 03 474 9240 neal.wallace@globalhq.co.nz Colin Williscroft 027 298 6127 colin.williscroft@globalhq.co.nz Annette Scott 021 908 400 annette.scott@globalhq.co.nz Hugh Stringleman 09 432 8594 hugh.stringleman@globalhq.co.nz Gerald Piddock 027 486 8346 gerald.piddock@globalhq.co.nz Richard Rennie 07 552 6176 richard.rennie@globalhq.co.nz Nigel Stirling 021 136 5570 nigel.g.stirling@gmail.com
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