Opinion
22 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – August 24, 2020
Freshwater issues are everyone’s problem Alternative View
Alan Emerson
THE agriculture people at Massey must get annoyed at some of the anti-farmer vitriol coming out of its hallowed halls. I’m talking about a report on drinking water quality released earlier this month. The headline Drinking Water Study Raises Fresh Concern Over Intensive Farming was bad enough but that pales in insignificance when it comes to the commentary. Mind you they did use “machine learning algorithms to determine contributions of land use, geology, topography and vegetation.” Put simply, that tells me that the research relied heavily on constraints and assumptions. I’m reminded of the quote that says, “all models are flawed but some are useful.” Basically the research told us the situation with water is all doom and gloom in the dairy areas, and then they tell us that it’s fine in some other areas because the streams run through native bush. That was counter to the Ministry for the Environment Report, Our Freshwater 2020, released earlier this year. It said, amongst other things
that “pollution of our freshwater is not the result of single land use but comes from a mosaic of cities, farms and plantation forests.” Pointing the proverbial bone in just one direction is, at best, counter productive. Getting back to the Massey brains trust you can read that “water supplies coming from catchments of predominantly native vegetation will have water with less or no pathogens. Water supplies coming from catchments dominated by agriculture will have more pathogens.”
It’s also important to remember that nearly half the nation’s wastewater plants discharge into rivers and lakes, the rest go into the sea or on land. That statement alone would knock your socks off. Water running through native vegetation is likely to be in the high country or at the source of streams and rivers. Water in dairying areas has obviously run through farms but also towns and villages. In the MfE study we can read that 99% of the rivers running through urban areas exceeded the guidelines for nutrient or turbidity levels. It’s also important to remember that nearly half the nation’s
wastewater plants discharge into rivers and lakes, the rest go into the sea or on land. Pollution, yes, but it has nothing to do with dairying. We are then told that “Havelock North is a warning we should not take lightly.” That annoyed me. The pollution at Havelock North had nothing to do with dairying although the Massey types at the time suggested it did. There’s little dairying in Hawke’s Bay and it’s not around Havelock North. The pollution there was caused by faulty equipment. It was human error pure and simple. Further to blame E-coli presence on cows is simplistic. A large source of pollution is our duck population. The Massey report talked about water before it had been treated. I’d suggest that is simplistic. We treat water, we pasteurise milk, we disinfect and heat treat. To be harmful, the treated water needs to be polluted and that inevitably won’t be the fault of cows. The MfE report also says when it comes to water quality “we’re all in this together.” Someone should tell Massey that. What I found interesting is that the media showed indecent haste in promoting the Massey bandwagon when I felt there was a far more important dairy story out there. There was a recent UK study that found that cow’s milk from grass-based systems is environmentally more friendly
SUPERFICIAL: To blame E-coli presence on cows is simplistic. A large source of pollution is our duck population.
than plant-based alternatives. It showed vegans and others who buy milk substitutes made from soya for their latte and cappuccino or breakfast cereal are harming the planet. The study was published in the UK Journal of Applied Animal Nutrition. It is a reputable publication. It claimed that consumers’ ever increasing demand for soy and palm kernel is “fuelling the destruction of rainforest.” Strangely, it received no media coverage that I was aware of here in New Zealand yet it is a major story supportive of our NZ farming systems. My simple point is everything we do will have some polluting effect. Picking on one area, in the Massey case of dairying is both facile and, I’d suggest, dishonest. With water quality everyone is involved. What I found depressing is that we’re in a world dominated by covid-19. NZ is most fortunate having a sustainable, grass-fed, reputable
food production sector. We need to be celebrating that. Without it as a nation we’d be well and truly stuffed. The primary sector can help put our economy back together. I’m unaware of any other area that can. I would sincerely hope the media can figure it out. Continuously bashing our sector and encouraging restrictions and regulations will hit them in the pocket the same as everyone else. With parts of academia, I despair. The simple fact is that highlighting what I would call a very average anti-farming report based on modelling while ignoring a major breakthrough on the benefits of grass-fed milk production shows either ignorance or bias amongst our mainstream media. It needs to change.
Your View Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
Are you jaded by all the breaking news? From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
BREAKING news! Just joking, there is no breaking news at this moment. I just wanted to test you. But did your eyes open, your pupils dilate, your throat constrict just a little? Did your pulse and respiration increase, your attention focus and your adrenal gland give a small squirt of adrenaline? Or perhaps you have become immune to the alert of imminent breaking news? Can we take any more breaking news? Perhaps we have now passed peak breaking news. However, it would appear that 2020 will be the year of breaking news.
First, there was that news report in early January that I heard on the radio of the death of a bloke in a city in China I’d never heard of from a mystery disease. I said to Jane that it was odd they were reporting this single death when 27,000 die in that country every day. Who said one man can’t change the world? Tell that to the guy who ate an undercooked bat. We watched events unfold overseas as the virus spread and the pandemic took hold. Breaking news after breaking news told us the increasing infection rates and death rates country by country. Then on February 28, we had our own first case. The breaking news on March 23 from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was that we were now in level three and would be at level four – and total lockdown – within two days. I got a plaintive text from a son whose birthday it was complaining that the day was meant to be about him. Just last week the breaking
news was about the election being postponed for a month. We may have held elections during the two World Wars but have delayed elections on three previous occasions. The first time was at the end of WW1 in 1917 and was held in 1919 instead.
It would have suited Labour to stick with the original date, but they have made a good compromise call in terms of working towards a free, fair and safe election.
The Government of the day postponed the 1934 election because of the Great Depression. It hoped that the economic situation would improve but the ploy didn’t work. Labour was elected in 1935 for the first time and Michael Joseph Savage
became prime minister. The third time was the 1941 election, which was postponed until 1943 and saw Labour reelected. It’s possible that this latest cluster of the virus could be cleaned up by September 19 and, if things worsen further out, it might prove to have been as good a time to hold an election as any time but now we have a new date. I was disappointed on a purely personal level because September 19 is also Talk Like a Pirate Day, and the word is Jacinda Ardern sounds good when talking like a pirate as does Simon Bridges but Judith Collins with its lack of an r just doesn’t work, so I guess she will be pleased about the change. It would have suited Labour to stick with the original date, but they have made a good compromise call in terms of working towards a free, fair and safe election. Both National and NZ First have grabbed the extra four weeks with both hands as it’s unlikely they could poll worse and unfolding events may assist their chances.
The surprising thing about the news of the election date postponement was how quick it dropped out of the news cycle. It’s a big deal but within a day it was buried by breaking news of the new cluster slowly growing and the impacts on Auckland being at level three. The usual arms race leading up to an election is the law and order debate, and who can be the toughest on crime and criminals. This time it’s looking like who is going to be toughest on shoring up the border and who will do what to the miscreants who break the rules and put us all at risk. From this we can see that all parties have signed up to the eradication policy and appear to have minor differences on how to maintain it. Perhaps sometime in the future we will see the media declare, “Today we have no breaking news.”
Your View Steve Wyn-Harris is a Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer. swyn@xtra.co.nz
