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FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – January 25, 2021
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Luxton ready for committee role Colin Williscroft colin.williscroft@globalhq.co.nz THE new chair of the Primary Production select committee says she hopes to restore the trust farmers have in the Government. Labour MP for Rangitata Jo Luxton, who spent part of the last parliamentary term as the committee’s deputy chair, says some of that trust has been lost and she wants to help build it back up again. Luxton says she made a conscious effort during her first three years in parliament to build a relationship with the sector in Mid-Canterbury, including visiting local farmers and attending Federated Farmers meetings when possible. Having shifted to the Ashburton area from Bay of Plenty in 1996 when working in the dairy industry, she is more familiar with the dairy sector than she is with sheep and beef and cropping, but is planning to change that. Joining Luxton on the committee are fellow Labour MPs Steph Lewis (Whanganui) and Anna Lorck (Tukituki), National’s David Bennett (list) and Ian
HAPPY: Jo Luxton is pleased to be back on the Primary Production select committee.
McKelvie (Rangitikei) and Act’s Mark Cameron (list). At this stage, the committee members have not sat down to look at what business from the previous committee they want to continue with. She says they will probably wait until Agriculture Minister Damien
O’Connor settles on his agenda first. Luxton is pleased to be back on the Primary Production select committee. After being its deputy chair for the first nine months of last term she was moved to the same role on the Economic Development,
Science and Innovation select committee for about a year and then took on the same role on the Regulations Review select committee for a similar amount of time. She says when she was last on the committee there was a real camaraderie among its members, more so than some other committees. “I missed it (Primary Production). It was one I really enjoyed,” Luxton said. She was very happy when rung by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after the last election and offered the committee’s chair, as it is a good fit for her not only personally because of her previous experience but also because of where she lives in the Rangitata electorate, which contains significant rural areas. If her own polling at the last election is anything to go by, Luxton may be in a good place to bridge any gap between the Government and rural communities. From being more than 6000 votes behind National’s Andrew Falloon at the 2017 election, Luxton was more than 4000 ahead of National candidate Megan
Hands at last year’s election, the first time a Labour candidate had won the seat. She says her first term, as a list MP, was invaluable in terms of fact finding, learning the routines of parliament and the parliamentary cycle.
Nothing can prepare you for being an MP. It can be exciting, challenging and scary. Jo Luxton “Nothing can prepare you for being an MP. It can be exciting, challenging and scary,” she said. “It’s also a privilege. “I’m far more confident now than what I was. “This term is a good opportunity to cement some of the relationships I’ve made.” Luxton is also a member of the Education and Workforce select committee, both areas of interest for the primary sector.
FE spore counts hit 1.2m in Matamata Gerald Piddock gerald.piddock@globalhq.co.nz FARMERS are being warned to make sure they have an adequate facial eczema (FE) management plan in place after the first spore counts of the year topped nearly 1.2 million from one grass sample in Matamata. The maximum spore counts analysed by Hamilton-based Gribbles Veterinary on January 14 also reached 30,000 in Franklin and Tauranga, 120,000 in Waikato, 35,0000 in Waitomo and 150,000 on the East Coast. In the second week of monitoring, samples collected from farms in Waihi, Franklin, Hauraki, Whitianga, Rotorua,
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Whakatane, Tauranga, Hamilton, Morrinsville, Waipa, Waitomo, New Plymouth and Gisborne were all higher than the 30,000 spores/gram threshold at which veterinarians recommend farmers take action against facial eczema. The warm, wet summer has been ideal growing conditions for the fungus Pithomyces chartarum to grow in pastures. The fungus produces toxic spores, which are then eaten by sheep and cattle, causing liver and skin damage, and death if left unprotected. Beef +Lamb NZ’s senior advisor for biosecurity and animal welfare Will Halliday says farmers should be undertaking
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weekly monitoring and putting management strategies in place to prevent stock being affected by this production-limiting disease. “While facial eczema spore monitoring has just begun for the 2021 season, nationally they are nearly twice as high as they were in January in the previous three years, indicating that if these climatic conditions continue, this could be shaping up for a bad year for facial eczema.” DairyNZ general manager of farm performance Sharon Morrell says it appeared at this early stage the high spore counts were in isolated patches only, with some regions receiving zero spore count readings. “It is quite pockety. It’s not
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ADVICE: Beef + Lamb NZ and DairyNZ say farmers should vigilantly monitor and put management strategies in place to prevent stock being affected by facial eczema.
universal,” she said. “The message is though – regardless of whether spore counts are high or not – people should be given the amount of
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debris that’s around on some farms and given how warm and damp it’s been, they should be doing their preventative measures already.”
