Opinion

20 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – May 15, 2022

Opinion

Why take our tools of the trade?

Alternative View

Alan Emerson

I’M SICK of Police Minister Poto Williams telling me that an Arms license is a privilege.

While I accept it isn’t a right, I don’t agree it is a privilege.

According to my dictionary privilege means the advantages or immunities enjoyed by a small, usually powerful, group to the disadvantage of others.

I’m at a loss to figure how the Minister thinks it is a privilege to own a firearm.

I first received a firearms license years ago aged 15 or 16.

My father, who was injured in WW11, told me it was now my job to provide meat for the family and I did with a .303.

Most Fridays I biked through the Greymouth CBD with my rifle slung.

No-one ever questioned me and I don’t accept that providing food for my family was a privilege.

Is the Minister also suggesting that shooting noxious animals is a privilege?

I certainly didn’t encourage them and they’re most destructive not to mention catastrophic for the climate.

I don’t shoot them as a privilege.

Is it a privilege to shoot a dog whose had its back broken by a cow’s kick?

What would Minister Williams have me do, sit it down and give it a talk on co-governance?

Is it a privilege to shoot a steer whose fallen down a bank and broken bones or a bull that’s lost it and threatened to cause mayhem on the road?

Is it a privilege to shoot a wild pig when it has bitten the heads off half a dozen lambs?

It begs the question does anyone in Wellington have any idea what firearms are used for in the provinces?

We now have an inefficient, totally screwed up system of gun licensing and license renewal that is contributing to both hunger in many outlying areas and the explosion of noxious animal numbers in others.

How is that justified?

By telling people they’re enjoying a privilege and can be dicked around on bureaucratic whim?

It further begs the question is it a privilege for a builder to have a hammer or a car driver to have a license?

Both can kill.

I have several issues with the current firearms impasse.

As I’ve said I don’t believe anyone in Wellington has the faintest idea of the practical use of firearms in the provinces.

They’re still thinking toys for boys.

I think Minister Williams is both incompetent and out of touch.

Her so-called Arms Advisory Group is a joke designed to give her the answers she wants.

The police, like the Minister, are incompetent when it comes to firearms.

They have no idea.

Taking eight months to renew a license along with over 30 pages of largely irrelevant garbage is ridiculous and shows that neither the Government nor the police have any regard for legitimate firearms owners.

We have the police wanting feedback from gun clubs with a 130-page document that allowed six weeks for a response, which was a waste of time anyway as the new law is to come into effect in June.

The Police Commissioner tells me that guns aren’t imported into NZ, yet in April the police told the nation that firearms were being imported from the United States.

I sent an Official Information Act request to the police, which was a total waste of time.

I asked how many of confiscated firearms were legal to be told there was no such thing as an illegal firearm.

I then asked how many of the firearms taken were semiautomatic to be told that semiautomatics were ‘prohibited’ – not illegal firearms, which I thought was a cute response.

There were 34.

I wanted to know of the 865 arrests in the recent Operation Tauwhiro how many had current licenses. The answer was 43, around 5%.

My point is that it isn’t legitimate firearms owners who are the problem so why try and marginalize them as both the Government and the Police do?

We keep reading that the arms laws and police actions are all about keeping people safe as a result of the Christchurch mosque shooting.

That’s rubbish.

The mosque shooter was an Australian white supremacist who should never have been given a gun license.

He bears no resemblance to the 250,000 legitimate, licensed gun owners in NZ.

Legitimate gun owners also bear no resemblance to the many nonlicensed gang gun owners who can import guns and get around the system.

In the recent ruckus over gang numbers in Parliament the Minister basically denied that gang numbers had increased.

The police union suggested the Minister talk with police and get the real facts.

The Minister would talk to the police several times a day, which leads me to the conclusion that either the police weren’t giving her the facts, or the Minister wasn’t listening.

Those suffering the fallout are legitimate, honest licensed firearm owners.

ESSENTIAL: Alan Emerson doesn’t accept that providing food for his family was a privilege.

Your View

Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com

We must get the regulations right

Dr John Roche

A RECENT Farmers Weekly article raised issues about the complexity of the regulatory process for approving methane inhibitors, delays and a suggestion that the process appears “to have grown more complicated”.

I love how quotations can be succinct turns of phrase that capture profound insight.

The article I refer to reminded of two such pearls of wisdom: the old Chinese Proverb that “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago … the second-best time is now”, and my father’s line that “laws made in haste, make bad laws”.

The value of New Zealand’s food exports is built on the credibility of our food safety and biosecurity standards.

We are world leading and we are known for that competency.

This reputation is underpinned by our regulations and the fact that their development is evidencebased, with appropriate domestic and international consultation.

We undermine this at our peril.

The Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicine (ACVM) Act came into effect in 2001, and the impetus for its establishment was to regulate inputs used for the management of plants and animals for reasons outlined above.

This was well before methane or nitrous oxide inhibitors were even considered ‘a thing’.

When it was recognised that the ACVM Act did not cover such inhibitors, work began on the best way to overcome this limitation.

Industry strongly supported the work to amending the legislation and making sure it was done right.

To ensure it was done right, a two-step approach was designed.

This involves declaring a list of inhibitor substances to be agricultural compounds using the legal measure as an Order-inCouncil, while a more permanent solution will be achieved through a legislative change to the ACVM Act.

Substances on the list will be subject to the Act and will require registration.

The process has not become more complicated.

Instead, for many people interacting with the process, this is simply their first time doing so.

The regulatory process for these inhibitor substances will be the same as for other agricultural compounds, such as pesticides and veterinary medicines. And it is important to be clear.

No methane inhibitor (or any other type of inhibitor) has been delayed to market due to the regulatory process because available inhibitors can be used without ACVM registration.

Crucially, however, the new registration process will give the primary sector and consumers here and abroad genuine confidence in inhibitor products. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is complex.

We’re battling more that 50 million years of evolution to suppress methane.

This is not easy and the products to do this are new.

We must ensure no negative impacts on animal welfare, food safety, or product integrity, as well as ensure the efficacy of the inhibitor relative to its claims.

It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, that government would require chemical residues and efficacy data to register a product.

Farmers, food processors, and our consumers will want this.

With five million New Zealanders and more than 40 million people overseas depending on our food safety system, not to mention the reputation of more than $40 billion in export revenue, it is vital that we do not cut corners.

We need to work together to achieve our collective aims: he waka eke noa, we are all in this together.

A Californian thistle in my side

From the Ridge

Steve Wyn-Harris

“NATIONAL frontiers have been more of a bane than a boon for mankind,” wrote D.C Thomson, a Scottish newspaper publisher in the 19th century.

It became prophetic with two world wars closely following and yet another example as we watch the pointless destruction and suffering of Ukraine by Russia.

However, it’s the word bane that brought me to this aphorism rather than a desire to delve into world affairs.

A bane is a source of harm or ruin, or even a curse.

The bane of my life in recent years have been Californian thistles.

The Californians call them Canadian thistles and even this is not fair as they came to the Americas from Europe with seeds in the 17th century.

That’s likely how they ended up here as well.

There have always been Californians about but for some reason in the last few years, they have become worse rapidly and now instead of an unsightly inconvenience are beginning to become production-limiting in the areas they are invading.

I wonder if my improved soil fertility levels and the recent droughts reducing any other plant competition have encouraged them.

The worst paddocks for the last two or three decades happened to be a couple of roadside paddocks on peaty soils next to a creek, so I assume they have their extensive root system down into the water table.

Most of us are probably guilty of a spot of window farming and I’ve been no different with these paddocks.

Most years I’d take the old tractor around to these paddocks and give them a good topping, but they would make a comeback later in the season. To be truly effective, one needs to continue to top them each time they make a revival to deplete their root reserves. But I’ve lacked the perseverance.

Then I bought a modest weed wiper and would drag this over them, but with mixed results.

The glyphosate would check but not eradicate them and I’d be back at it each year. Mind you, the wiper with glyphosate was effective against rushes so all was not lost.

I did experiment with hormones through the wiper, but again with variable results and the next year the thistles would come back stronger than ever.

A recommended practice was to hard graze with stock, but I’ve never been keen to thrash my ewes to get them to help me with my thistle problem.

There was an attempt to introduce a beetle for biological control, but it hasn’t been successful, and I do see the rust fungus on the thistles, but it has made little difference to their vigour.

I have double-sprayed glyphosate on bad Californian paddocks with a summer fallow before drilling crops, but that first spray encourages the thistles as they have no other competition. One time I did a third spray and that was effective on those particular paddocks but can’t be a sustainable option, although I’m desperate enough to try anything.

Because I’ve spent my whole pastoral farming career doing everything I can to grow clover, I’ve always been a reluctant broadacre sprayer of hormone herbicides, but have resorted on occasion to get the spraying contractor to spray bad patches of Californians. This because if there was clover among it, no stock was going to battle their way in to eat it and it was probably only supplying nitrogen to the thistles rather than ryegrass as intended.

I had hoped to exterminate the weed from at least these road paddocks before I died or retired but if anything, the thistles were more vigorous than ever.

Finally in desperation, I appealed to my seed supplier and expert James. I said I’d do anything to rid me of these accursed weeds.

He told me in that case, instead of my career’s half-hearted attempts, I needed to knuckle down and commit to the fourspray programme. I signed up on the spot.

The following early December when the thistles got to 10% flowering, the spraying contractor turned up and gave them a dose of herbicide with the usual satisfying unhappy thistle patches. But I knew they’d be back.

This time last year before the cooler weather, the regrowth got another spray.

Last spring, they struggled back to life but didn’t get to 10% flowering until later in January when we sprayed them once more.

Since then, the feed from two large rain events has completely swamped any regrowth to the point they are hard to find so I’m not going to spray them again this season, but will be prepared to do so again if they manage to make a comeback next season.

If it works on these areas, I’ll roll out the programme elsewhere targeting the worst and most annoying areas.

Hopefully, James’ recommendation, the spraying contractor and I become the Californians bane rather than the other way around.

There have always been Californians about, but for some reason in the last few years, they have become worse rapidly and now instead of an unsightly inconvenience are beginning to become production-limiting in the areas they are invading.

PROBLEMATIC: Steve Wyn-Harris has been struggling to keep Californian thistle in-check on his farm and hopes to have finally found the remedy. Photo: Matt Lavin

Your View

Steve Wyn-Harris is a Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer. swyn@xtra.co.nz

Striving for better climate outcomes

Jim van der Poel

DAIRYNZ is fighting for an emissions pricing solution that’s fair and ensures you can continue running profitable and sustainable businesses.

We’re using your feedback now to strengthen two alternative emissions pricing options developed by the Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership (He Waka Eke Noa).

The Government has legislated it will put agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme if we don’t come up with a better alternative.

So, doing nothing is not an option and we fought hard with our industry partners for the opportunity to come up with a better solution.

All 10 primary sector organisations in the 13-member partnership, including DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb NZ, Dairy Companies Association of NZ, Federated Farmers, Horticulture NZ and Irrigation NZ, are speaking up for our own members and seeking a solution that works for everyone.

Following your feedback, we’re doing everything we can to drive down the administration costs of the He Waka Eke Noa options, as far as practically possible.

It’s vital you can continue running successful businesses while we work as a whole sector to reduce emissions, alongside all sectors and Kiwis.

There will be ongoing discussion and debate on this subject because there’s a lot at stake.

Agriculture going into the ETS would not bring positive outcomes for farmers or New Zealand.

The ETS would be a broadbased tax on farmers going up every year and would not reduce emissions.

We believe the options we’re streamlining now, thanks to your feedback, are effective, credible, fair and scientifically robust.

DairyNZ represents farmers with the world’s lowest carbon footprint – that’s down to the hard work of our farmers over many years.

Now, we want to remain internationally competitive – as our biggest customers like Mars, Nestlé and McDonalds increasingly seek sustainability assurances.

Your feedback from the DairyNZ and B+LNZ roadshow is resoundingly clear – 99% don’t want agricultural emissions priced through the ETS.

You want a system that is costeffective, fair and recognises the actions you’re taking to reduce emissions behind the farm gate.

We’ve heard you want control over your farm emissions and farm management.

You’ve expressed a strong preference for the farm-level levy option, so you’re recognised and incentivised for on-farm actions.

We’ve also discussed starting with the processor hybrid levy and transitioning to a farm-level levy as soon as possible.

You want transparency over where the money is going and proof of an effective plan to deliver technology to farmers.

We’ve heard you support the recognition of a wider range of on-farm vegetation not eligible in the NZ ETS.

We’ll keep working to make sure the partnership’s recommendation to Government, due May 31, reflects what you’ve told us.

And we’ll keep sharing dairy farmers’ voice when the Government releases their final proposed agricultural emissions

NO GO: DairyNZ chair Jim van der Poel says agriculture going into the ETS would not bring positive outcomes for farmers or New Zealand.