Opinion
30 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – June 21, 2021
Utes vital to sector Alternative View
Alan Emerson
LAST weekend saw Old Timers Day at Wairarapa’s mighty East Coast rugby club. The club is based at Whareama, 30 minutes east of Masterton. There’s a church, school, hall and playing fields. That’s it. Old Timers Day was a superb rural sporting event, and a great catch-up for the local community. The rugby was state-of-the-art, as was the crayfish, ham and the cups of brown tea. The utes were three deep on one side of the paddock and two on the other. I’ve seen less spectators at NPC games. Mind you, I’d seen worse rugby as well. The utes were young and old, predominantly diesel and without exception they were covered in dust and mud. I didn’t see a clean vehicle. That’s par for the course in the rural hinterland. A ute is a tool and a valuable one. It is there to do a job. It is not there to look pretty.
Someone should tell the clowns in Wellington. Before I go there, I must mention the country club; East Coast did lose by the slimmest of margins (13-10) to the team from the rustic rural hamlet of Carterton. More importantly, it was a game of two halves and rugby was the winner. The match moved at a fast pace, with the referee not consulting the video ref once. It’s as it should be. Getting back to utes. There has got to be something in the water in Wellington that eliminates any vestige of practicality and common sense when people get there. The latest stupidity is to tax utes and subsidise electric vehicles (EVs). EVs, even with the subsidy, are incredibly expensive and their range is limited. The Government’s website proudly tells us that’s not a problem because the “average” round trip in NZ is only 90km. From the farm to Masterton, the return is somewhat longer than that. There are six reasons to buy an EV, they tell us. The first is to slash emissions. That’s true, but an EV has a higher carbon footprint to construct. The second point is that EVs have lower lifestyle emissions which is true, but you then must
dispose of the toxic batteries. There is no queueing at petrol stations which is correct, but you can take two hours to charge an EV. We are also told that EVs are “cheap to run” – if you can afford the purchase price. They’re a “quiet, zippy ride” if that’s what you want. Having a ‘zippy’ ride in the roads round here would probably promote a crash, but an accident can’t affect our GHG emissions. Transport Minister Michael Wood tells us that the Government initiatives, all $302 million of them, should promote 190,000 extra EVs. Considering the NZ fleet has 4.1 million vehicles, that’s not a lot. My point is that if Wood wants to promote EVs that’s fine, but don’t do it at the expense of the productive sector. For a start, no one is currently manufacturing electric utes. If it happens, it won’t be for years. And while I’ve an open mind, I cannot imagine hauling the trailer, complete with a load of fence posts out from Masterton, by driving a Prius, a Suzuki Swift or a Nissan Leaf. I can’t imagine putting half a dozen rams in the back of one either. So why are we doing this? Subsidising EVs is a sop to the wealthy as even with the subsidy,
WRONG APPROACH: Alan Emerson says there’s nothing wrong with the Government promoting electric vehicles, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a productive sector. the average person can’t afford one. I’d also like to see an independent analysis of the claim that the increase in electric vehicles will result in a reduction in our CO2 emissions of 9.2 million tonnes. The average car produces 4.6t of CO2 a year. If you multiply that figure by the 190,000 new EVs the Government is hoping for, the figure is 879,000t. Conversely, increasing the tax on a workhorse in the form of a ute is little more than a bloody-minded impost on the productive sector be they farmers or trades people. It’s important to remember that EVs for the wealthy are already being subsidised. They don’t pay a cent in Road User Charges or petrol tax. Those driving petrol and diesel vehicles pay for all the road construction and maintenance.
EVs get a free ride. What irritates me is that farmers have little choice over the vehicle that they drive. In most cases it needs to be four-wheel drive. Farms in this part of the country aren’t flat. In addition, the vehicles need to be diesel. I did have a petrol ute, which didn’t cut it. From a safety perspective a fourwheel drive diesel ute is the best vehicle for the farm. So why tax a ute, especially when a Remuera family, with their two tractors, can look forward to a government subsidy to change to EVs? It is all a complete shower.
Your View Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
Nurturing NZ’s future farmers From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
I WANT to tell you about a great initiative out there because it’s a good idea and it’s an uplifting story. Like many industries, the sheep and beef sector has struggled to get enough quality young folk
to enter the industry as a career choice. Near here we have Smedley Station, which has a two-year cadet training programme and has 13 cadets graduate from the course each year. Up in Gisborne is the Waipaoa Station Farm Cadet Training Trust, which sees five young people graduate from their course annually. And there are other worthy cadet courses scattered around the country too. They offer high-quality accredited farming courses and provide hands-on agricultural skills training for these young farmers.
SKILLSHARING: Steve Wyn-Harris shares his experience as a farmer trainer who recently enlisted the services of a school-leaver as part of a farm cadet programme.
The demand to get into these well-regarded institutions far exceeds the number of places available. But combined, they are not able to train enough young sheep and beef shepherds to meet the need that is out there. Tam and Dan Jex-Blake in Gisborne have been training young folk for many years and developed a model based on the training institutions mentioned above, but where the students live out on-farm. This model has grown into what is now called Growing Future Farmers (GFF). Last year, GFF ran a pilot programme with a small number of students and then later in the year went live, looking to build a good intake for the year we are in. There are now 60 farming students out there on farms around the country. Stuart Ellingham, who is managing director of Horizon Farming and a board member of GFF, got in touch with me and asked if we could do an interview on my rural radio show The Cockies Hour. I of course said no problem, as championing our sector is a primary driver of the show. We had a good chat about GFF, its goals and that to be successful it needed a good complement of young school-leavers to apply and equally critical, enough farmers prepared to be farm trainers to provide a farm and to nurture these young people.
He told me they were looking for trainers who would be good, patient listeners, encourage engagement, know the subject matter, be organised, be able to communicate well and value lifelong learning. The students would end up with top skillsets and qualifications, two trained dogs and assistance moving on into good shepherding jobs. We gave out the details of the open days and I moved onto other interviews. Later in the day, I chanced into Nick who works across the road on the neighbouring farm and asked him how Lochy his son was getting on. Lochy had been particularly useful for my docking in the past few years. Nick told me he was good but determined to leave school, which they would allow as long as he had a job and his driver’s licence, which is pretty much the advice most parents hand out to their school-leaving children. Later that evening I had a chat with Jane and the next day went over to see Lochy and his parents. I told them about GFF, suggested they have a look at the website and if interested I reckoned, we might be able to do something together that would be in everyone’s interests. Lochy would have a purposeful two-year structured training course, Nick and Amy would have young Lochy under their roof for two more formative years and I’d have a great young fellow helping
me run 3500 stock units, which I’ve found more taxing in my sixties than in the carefree days of past years. Lochy and his mum Amy went along to an open day and the decision was made for us to apply. Our joint application was successful and for the past five months Lochy and I have worked together. It has been a genuine win-win relationship and he has performed and grown admirably. I’ve been able to download much of the learnings from a 40-year farming career. And I’ve really appreciated the reduction of the physical load that farming requires. Coming up are the farm trainer and student open days over the next six weeks, designed to show another potential intake of what GFF has to offer. Regions such as Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, King Country, Taihape, Winton and Kurow are hosting these days. This is your chance to encourage young people into a wellconstructed training programme and to become a farm trainer yourself, and perhaps have a profound positive influence on a young person’s life. Go to the Growing Future Farmers website to get the details and dates.
Your View Steve Wyn-Harris is a Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer. swyn@xtra.co.nz
