16 minute read
Opinion
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
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. 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.”
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
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 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 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
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
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 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. 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.
Your View
Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
Are you jaded by all the breaking news?
It needs to change.
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.”
Industry doing a superb job
Meaty Matters
Allan Barber
THE return of community transmission underlines the excellent performance of the whole meat industry since covid-19 reached New Zealand nearly six months ago in March.
Farmers, transport and logistics operators, sale yards, exporters and domestic processors have all combined to ensure the health and safety of participants, while meeting the demands of customers, with only a minimal number of temporary plant closures.
This contrasts markedly with experience overseas in countries such as the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Germany with admittedly a much higher incidence of coronavirus outbreaks in the rest of the world than here.
In April seven major American meat facilities shut down with cold storage inventories of beef, pork and poultry equivalent to two weeks of total production and almost half of Canada’s beef processing capacity was halted after Cargill’s closure and a slowdown by JBS in Alberta. DURING the winter months, farmers often have more time for maintenance and planning than they do at other times of the year. Yet they often forget and neglect maintaining the single most important piece of equipment onfarm – themselves.
I must admit to being one of those farmers.
At the beginning of the year, I finally booked myself in to see our family GP after a lump near my glands had been annoying me for a number of months.
I also took with me a blood test script that had been pinned in my office for nearly two years. After having a good poke and prod of my neck, Doc diagnosed that he couldn’t really see any concern about said lump but asked to check out the rest of me while I was corralled in his clinic. It didn’t take long to find something else wrong.
Down on my puku he spotted a reasonably small abdominal hernia which he suggested should get fixed, if I wanted to, as it wasn’t going to get any smaller by itself.
He also reminded me to get my long overdue bloods done so I trundled off next door to get a needle in the arm.
Now, probably like many men my age (mid-40s), I have long held the opinion that my health is pretty good.
I eat pretty well, drink on
A feature of the interruption to processing in the USA was the great difficulty for farmers to get their stock processed, accompanied by a surge in retail pricing which reflected positively in processor margins, while livestock prices plummeted.
Closer to home Melbournebased Cedar Meats, the site of a lockdown back in April, has just gone back into lockdown as a result of a worker testing positive on August 14.
Affco chief executive Nigel Stevens makes the point one of the most pleasing aspects of NZ’s industry’s handling of the pandemic challenge was the way industry competitors, Meat Industry Association and MPI “collaborated to develop and implement covid-related plant operating protocols which gave employees confidence they would be kept safe, and provided assurance to our export markets.”
A major feature of NZ’s covid response has been the wage subsidy payable to those businesses which could demonstrate a 30% reduction in monthly revenues between April and June, subsequently extended to September 1, and again in response to the latest move to level three in Auckland and level two in the rest of the country.
The meat industry clearly split down two sides of the wage subsidy line with, initially, Alliance, Anzco, Silver Fern Farms (SFF) and Blue Sky Meats occasion and lead a very active life on a hill country farm which serves me far better than any gym membership.
So, I was a bit shocked when I got my blood results back and the numbers were not good.
As we all know in farming, the data doesn’t lie and my cholesterol figures in particular were way higher than recommended.
The notes also went on to say I needed to reduce my intake of animal fats if I wanted to reduce my risk of CVD.
Not knowing what CVD was I asked Dr Google and was taken back once again when it told me it meant Cardiovascular Disease.
This was a real wake up call for me and should be a reminder to all farmers. We spend much of our lives dealing with numbers and data in our businesses yet presume that the same figures that correspond to our health are good without actually knowing.
So, I booked myself in for my hernia surgery (which went very smoothly) and set about trying to implement changes in my life so that when I go back for my next blood test, the numbers will be reducing.
Then as part of my newfound awareness of looking after myself I stumbled across Dr Tom.
For those that don’t know, Dr. Tom Mulholland is a former emergency department doctor, applying for the subsidy, although SFF has since repaid the total sum of $42.8 million.
Anzco received $2.7m across five different business units and Blue Sky $2.3m, while Alliance has retained the $33.1m which it originally applied for, although chief executive David Surveyor says it will support MSD in any audit of the application and return any amount that falls outside the scope of the scheme.
Alliance’s justification for the claim is primarily its higher proportion of sheep and lambs processed than other processors more weighted towards beef.
The wage subsidy meant Alliance was able to ensure staff wages were not impacted by the lower volume of livestock through its plants during the lockdown, while also continuing to pay those with underlying health conditions or aged over 70.
On the other side of the divide, processors like Affco took the view they were privileged to be allowed to continue operating during lockdown and decided not to apply for the wage subsidy, although they were equally affected by the processing protocol which affected both throughput and profitability.
However, drought and covidrelated processing delays resulted in higher volumes than usual heading into winter with the eventual outcome expected livestock volumes were processed during the season as a whole, if who decided too many Kiwis were becoming ill from preventable diseases.
He set out to become the ambulance at the top of the cliff, by turning a retro Chevy ambulance into a pop-up medical clinic, and is travelling around New Zealand testing people for pre-diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol.
I watched an incredible video he had filmed about a farming father, husband and son who had passed away suddenly and left huge holes in the lives of those left behind.
Thinking about my own family – and my less than ideal test results – I made contact with Tom and asked if his wellness tour might be heading through the Rangitikei any time soon.
Less than two weeks later he was sitting at our dinner table with my family and some local farmers having a chat about his mission.
He talked about his own story before doing some very lowkey blood pressure testing and introducing us to his brainchild, the KYND app for health and wellness.
This is a risk assessment tool that measures health and wellbeing.
It is constructed by a series of questions, that provides users with scores for their physical (BODY), mental (MIND) and social (LIFE) health. not in the forecast daily or weekly tallies.
This had the advantage for both meat companies and employees of extending the season, although farmers in some regions had to feed stock longer than they ideally wanted.
Although prices have come off their peak and the outlook is uncertain, farmer returns have held up pretty well and generally the 2019-20 season, for all its challenges, will be relatively good for all participants, unlike I fear 2020-21.
Another company which did not apply for the wage subsidy was Wilson Hellaby, owner of Auckland Meat Processors which is the largest processor of meat for the Auckland market.
Located in South Auckland, close to the latest outbreak, the company is sensitive to the risk of any cases on its plant, but Fred Hellaby is hopeful it would be possible to contain any outbreak to one department, because the company is now operating in defined bubbles.
At this stage, the plant is operating normally for the time of year, using holiday rotations to ensure maximum continuity of employment.
Hellaby reports an inevitable change to the company’s sales configuration with food service and exports affected, while the retail and home delivery business is very buoyant.
He confirms the plant
Time to be KYND to yourself
rigorously observes mandatory
KYND measures things such as blood pressure, fatigue, anxiety and stress levels and uses a simple traffic light warning system to identify red (warning), amber (needs work) and green (doing good) areas.
I would recommend all Kiwis need to have the KYND app on at least one device in their lives; Tom’s mission is to get 10,000 farmers to download it.
It is free, it is easy and probably most importantly the information it provides you is accurate and you can’t escape from it. And if you want Tom to come and visit your farm, just give him a call. He is a genuine good bastard that is doing an incredible job raising awareness about the most important aspects of our lives; our health.
As farmers, we are naturally kind in many aspects of our lives.
We are kind to our animals, we are kind to our families and we are kind to our communities.
But sometimes we need to be kind to ourselves.
MORE:
www.kyndwellness.com https://www.drtomonamission.com
NOTABLE: Whether with or without the wage subsidy, the meat industry has served the country extremely well during the global pandemic.
distances between workers and hygiene protocols to minimise the possibility of an outbreak.
As the major supplier of beef, lamb and pork to the Auckland market, Wilson Hellaby is a particularly important component of the domestic supply chain.
Whether with or without the wage subsidy, the meat industry has served the country extremely well during the global pandemic.
Your View
Allan Barber is a meat industry commentator: allan@barberstrategic. co.nz, http://allanbarber.wordpress. com
