Editorial

Feel the Pulse of the farming world

THERE’S a lot of noise in the modern world.

The flow of information is endless and everyone has an opinion on it, whether it’s informed or not.

It can make conversations difficult – rage often trumps curiosity and thoughtfulness in our online world.

Water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, animal welfare – everyone seems to have an opinion but not everyone knows what those things mean to the people who actually work on the land every day.

Here at GlobalHQ, for two decades we’ve distilled the noise into a weekly newspaper – a place where farmers and those that support them can get the news they need.

It’s a great way to get the news you need to help run a better business and that won’t change. Farmers Weekly will continue to turn up in the letterbox, for free, each week.

But we think we can create an online space that fosters innovation and creativity too.

The first step on that journey is Pulse, a daily email newsletter that delivers the day’s most important news stories along with weather, the best from our commentators and other links we reckon you’ll love.

The online world can seem like a battle. It encourages bulk of information, but not quality of information.

We think New Zealand farmers deserve better.

For our industry to flourish we need to be able to share ideas, reflect on our past and talk critically, yet respectfully, about the things that will shape our futures.

Pulse is the place where that conversation starts.

It costs a little bit, but we think it’s a small investment that will more than pay its own way in the modern farming world.

The world is changing quickly and tomorrow’s farmer needs today’s best information. Pulse has that for you, every day. https://www.agripreneur.com/pulse

Bryan Gibson

LETTERS Another potential outbreak looms

I LIKED the term “living laboratory” Farmers Weekly’s editor used to praise the $5 million profit the state-owned enterprise Pāmu has just announced.

State-owned are the key words which drove us boffins from the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station, when 50 years ago we developed the large-scale Angus and Romney breeding schemes on the Waihora Lands and Survey (L&S) block near Rotorua, goaded on by the late superintendent Eric Gibson.

This used taxpayers’ money to breed sires for the young settler farmers and the stud industry never forgave us for taking their business away. But we also saw this as a major opportunity to store the genes from these top animals at the end of their productive lives for the day when, and not if, Foot-and-mouth Disease (FMD) arrived in Aotearoa.

But our proposal got nowhere, as science got buried by politics and business as L&S was morphed into Landcorp and the shiny suits in our MAF head office assured us that ‘systems were in place’ to deal with FMD if it ever arrived.

So over the past 40 years this reassurance got set in concrete and nobody is interested any more in the question of if FMD did wipe out the livestock in great swathes of the country, where would we replace our hardearned top genetics to get back in business?

There’s dairy semen in the bank, but what would it be put into? Which sheep breeders have top genetic semen or embryos on ice?

The arrival of the covid-19 Delta variant provides a dire warning because the ‘systems’ would have to deal with a critter that is so rapidly aerosol spread.

It looks as if we don’t have a Plan B to deal with it yet.

In the last UK outbreak, there were 50 new FMD outbreaks a day with the virus spreading on the wind, as well as being carried by veterinarians.

If the handling of M bovis didn’t get MPI a five-star rating, and it’s a bacterial disease, what are their chances of handling a massive virus disease disaster?

The directors of Pāmu’s state-owned ‘living laboratory’ need to demand MPI invest some of their government tax return to protect their top genetic resources as a matter of urgency, having seen the damage of Delta.

Clive Dalton

Waikato

Letters to the Editor

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Farmers Weekly is published by GlobalHQ, PO Box 529, Feilding 4740. New Zealand Phone: 0800 85 25 80 Website: www.farmersweekly.co.nz EDITOR Bryan Gibson bryan.gibson@globalhq.co.nz EDITORIAL Carmelita Mentor-Fredericks editorial@globalhq.co.nz Neal Wallace 06 323 1519

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 PUBLISHER Dean Williamson 027 323 9407 dean.williamson@globalhq.co.nz ADVERTISING Andy Whitson 027 626 2269 New Media & Business Development Lead andy.whitson@globalhq.co.nz Steve McLaren 027 205 1456 Auckland/Northland advertising steve.mclaren@globalhq.co.nz Jody Anderson 027 474 6094 Waikato/Bay of Plenty advertising jody.anderson@globalhq.co.nz Donna Hirst 027 474 6095 Lower North Island/international advertising donna.hirst@globalhq.co.nz Ernest Nieuwoudt 027 474 6091 South Island advertising ernest.nieuwoudt@globalhq.co.nz Real Estate 06 323 0760 realestate@globalhq.co.nz Ella Holland 06 323 0761 Livestock advertising 027 602 4925 livestock@globalhq.co.nz ISSN 2463-6002 (Print) ISSN 2463-6010 (Online) Debbie Brown 06 323 0765 Classifi eds/Employment advertising classifi eds@globalhq.co.nz Grant Marshall 027 887 5568 AgriHQ Partnership Manager grant.marshall@globalhq.co.nz Andrea Mansfi eld 027 446 6002 Salesforce director andrea.mansfi eld@globalhq.co.nz Steph Holloway 06 323 0142 AgriHQ Commercial Leader steph.holloway@globalhq.co.nz PRODUCTION Lana Kieselbach 027 739 4295 production@globalhq.co.nz Advertising material adcopy@globalhq.co.nz SUBSCRIPTIONS 0800 85 25 80 subs@globalhq.co.nz Printed by Ovato NZ Ltd Delivered by Reach Media Ltd