Opinion

Reactions fail science test

Alternative View

Alan Emerson

I SPENT the weekend ploughing through the Statistics New Zealand/Ministry for the Environment (MfE) document Our Land 21 and the various reactions to it.

For a variety of reasons, I was unimpressed.

My immediate thought was that MfE’s naïvety when it comes to rural goings on is palpable. Reading the document, political correctness seemed to be more important than scientific rigour.

Having said that, there was good work on the amount of rural land being taken up for housing and lifestyle blocks.

The figures are horrific and an indictment on local government.

Since 2002 there has been 1.9 million hectares of good land being taken out of agricultural and horticultural production.

From 2002, the amount of good productive land lost to urban sprawl jumped 54% from 69,920ha to 107,444ha in 2019. Putting that in perspective, the equivalent of 100,000 rugby fields have been lost to food production.

In addition, local government has approved the subdivision of 5800 lifestyle blocks each year since 1998.

There is no need for the encroachment.

Driving round our main centres there is a considerable amount of bare land that could be developed.

Fewer people are playing golf, so there are underutilised golf courses ripe for housing.

The Government, to its credit, has said we should be building multi-storey apartments, much to the hysteria of the NIMBYs in Auckland and Christchurch.

There are additional problems with urban encroachment onto farmland. Issues like the smell of silage, which some of the Carterton residents found offensive.

There was the noise of tractors early in the morning and late at night. In rural NZ it’s a way of life. To townies, it’s unacceptable. Finally, there are the increased rules and increasing rates.

The report talks about growing our population to 6.8m by 2073. Why should we go there?

Greater population increases our carbon footprint and the need for more houses, schools, hospitals and the like.

What is interesting is that farmers are producing more with 14% less land. Our rural export receipts have almost doubled in just nine years, up from $23 billion in 2010 to $44b in 2019.

Take a bow folks, no one will give you a medal for your sterling work keeping NZ surviving during and after covid-19.

Climate change is discussed in the report and my answer to the problem is simple, we need irrigation. Only 5% of our land is irrigated, 95% isn’t – and that needs to change. We know the east of both Islands will get drier because of climate change and that means we need more water storage and irrigation starting now.

The anti-farming fringe cry that irrigation causes pollution isn’t true.

Foundation for Arable Research chief executive Alison Stewart told me that “cropping under irrigation has both economic and environmental benefits”. Also “sediment run-off and fertiliser pollution are considerably less under irrigation”.

The StatsNZ MfE report doesn’t acknowledge that.

The report mentioned covid-19 and the high risk of introduced farm animals spreading diseases to humans citing campylobacter.

Interestingly, in my view, they ignored the campylobacter pollution from ducks, geese and swans.

The reaction to the report was interesting.

In the opportunistic corner was the Forest Owners Association who said the report “scored exotic forestry highly for its low impact on soils”. It got better saying “MfE analysis found only 11% of exotic forests were below the microporosity target range, whereas 75% of lifestyle blocks had the problem”.

My response to that would be to respectfully and humbly suggest that farms aren’t lifestyle blocks.

They went on “all forests prevent erosion, filter water and reduce flood damage”. I’m sure I could get a second opinion in Tasman, Wairoa or Tolaga Bay. Also, if they read the full report, they’d have found out about the horrors of slash.

Nitrogen fertilisers take a hit with Greenpeace waxing shrilly on state radio. “The price of decades of inaction is that rivers are sick, soil is depleted, our drinking water is full of nitrate nitrogen and we’re spewing heaps of climate pollution out into the atmosphere that’s driving more extreme weather” was the cacophonous cry.

The facts are that the rivers aren’t sick. More than 72% of the sites measured had N levels within the target range.

The soil isn’t depleted, as the report acknowledges.

If drinking water is full of nitrate nitrogen, it is the fault of the water supplier not farmers, and spewing pollution into the air is more a problem for synthetic clothing and carpets than agriculture but as usual, facts and Greenpeace don’t mix.

My final issue is that the environmental report was “based on themes such as air, marine fresh water and climate”.

Surprisingly, there was no mention I could see of the massive volumes of raw sewage from local government regularly going into waterways and the sea.

They can’t have thought it important.

VIEW: Climate change is discussed in the Our Land 21 report and the answer to the problem is simple, we need irrigation, Alan Emerson says.

Your View

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

A little help goes a long way

From the Ridge

Steve Wyn-Harris

FROM our vantage point here in 2025, the story behind New Zealand’s successful covid-19 vaccination programme during 2021 completely changed how international pandemic vaccination programmes are now run.

And yet, this success happened by chance.

As the country began to vaccinate its populace, nagging doubts remained as to whether the system run by the Ministry of Health (MoH) was up for the challenge. The previous year’s influenza roll-out had been anything less than a success. A few years earlier, the ministry had botched the measles vaccination roll-outs.

But luck or happenstance can often bring about welcome outcomes, and this is what happened in this case in a small rural backwater in an island nation at the end of the earth.

A sheep and beef farmer went into the Central Hawke’s Bay health centre for his annual influenza shot.

The receptionist told him that unfortunately all the doctors were away sick, and the nurses weren’t allowed to administer the flu shot and of more concern, the perishable covid-19 vaccine shipment that had just arrived.

The farmer said that he wouldn’t be able to come in again for a few weeks and asked if it would be okay if he just gave himself the vaccination. He explained that he was an experienced vaccinator after a 40year career, and had done tens of thousands without any difficulty.

The receptionist didn’t think this would be allowed and asked others, but no one had heard that it was illegal. They looked up the protocols and then did some googling, but nowhere did it say people weren’t allowed to vaccinate themselves.

So, they said they would allow him to do so, but he would still have to stay for 10 minutes so that the nurse could ensure there were no adverse reactions.

He agreed, so they provided him with the syringe which he plunged into his arm and then sat out his time reading a Woman’s Weekly with an interesting article of a woman called Markle.

He watched the waiting room fill with expectant folk hoping to get their pandemic vaccination.

He once again approached the desk and said he’d be happy to administer the vaccination to these people given the vaccine was perishable and about to expire. He said it wasn’t a tricky operation putting a needle into the middle of a bicep and pushing in the plunger.

The staff didn’t think this was a good idea, but again he pointed out his experience and that in all those years, he’d never lost an animal or had an adverse reaction.

This was a national crisis he told them and in times like these, one couldn’t be too rule bound.

This was a pragmatic rural practice, so they finally agreed and set the farmer up in a small room where he administered several hundred vaccinations over the rest of the afternoon.

Over a beer with the staff at the end of the day, they asked him how many he thought he could do in a day. He said he’d done 2500 sheep, but he didn’t think people would be that happy if he brought his Prattley Yards into town, so assuming they would prefer to be sitting on a chair, probably 1000 if those preparing the syringes could keep up.

A decision was made, and the staff got onto the phones.

By the end of a fortnight, the farmer had vaccinated all of Central Hawke’s Bay and moved on down to Tararua.

News began to spread around the country and the Farmy Army was remobilised, and farmers and vets took up the challenge and volunteered their services throughout the land in towns and cities.

They were averaging 55,000 vaccinations a day and within three months the country was vaccinated and safe from the ravages of the plague.

The urban population were incredibly grateful to their rural counterparts for picking up the gauntlet and running with it.

Other countries took notice and began to use their practical rural dwellers to exponentially increase their vaccination rates and by the end of the year, enough herd immunity existed that this particular pandemic fizzled out.

When the next large-scale vaccination programme is required, farmers and vets will be the first to be called.

A2 moves from brand to category

The Braided Trail

Keith Woodford

A NOTABLE change has been occurring recently, with A2 milk products now available from multiple manufacturers. That includes at least three brands of A2 infant formula available here in New Zealand. These offerings are the original a2 Platinum from The a2 Milk Company (a2MC), plus relative newcomers Karicare A2 from Danone and Haven A2, linked to Zuru.

There are also now at least three A2 fresh milk brands in NZ, these being Fonterra, Fresha Valley, and a strangely named “organic A3” product which, according to its owners, is also produced exclusively from A2 cows.

Internationally, there are multiple A2 brands of both A2 milk and A2 infant formula now available, particularly in Asia, to a lesser extent in the Americas, but with Europe still lagging.

Most of the big international brands now have A2 projects. Including niche marketers, there are probably more than 20 brands spread across the globe.

One of the ironies is that it all started in NZ with the late medical scientist Professor Sir Bob Elliott in the late 1990s. He was the person who first identified the relationship across the globe between consumption of A1 betacasein and childhood incidence of Type-1 diabetes.

Subsequently, Corran McLachlan discovered similar relationships for heart disease. The solution was to breed cows that produced the alternative A2 beta-casein.

The reason I refer to it as an irony is that the NZ dairy industry has never been the major beneficiary of the A2 movement. This is despite the biggest global marketer of A2 products still being NZ-registered a2MC.

Despite the NZ registration, most shareholders of a2MC live outside NZ. The accounts are recorded in NZ dollars, and much of the a2MC milk is sourced from NZ, but the head office managers are domiciled in Australia, together with key regional teams in China and the US. To complete the international picture, the chair is domiciled in England.

It is also ironic that going back 20 years, NZ had potential for a big A2 advantage over most countries. This was because, quite by chance, NZ had a higher proportion of A2 cows than other Western countries.

However, the mainstream industry, led by Fonterra, fought the A2 movement right through until 2018, seeing it as a threat rather than an opportunity. Although Fonterra now has some A2 offerings, they have yet to grasp the opportunity in a significant way. Most Fonterra farmers cannot currently obtain an A2 premium and many lack insight as to where the global A2 movement is heading.

Given that a2MC has recently purchased Mataura Milk, there will be new A2 opportunities for Southland and South Otago farmers. This should also increase the market value of A2 cows as farmers seek out these animals to finish the conversion process.

Some of my readers will know that I have been involved with the A2 movement for more than 15 years, both in science and outreach capacities. But most of my A2 work these days is offshore. My interest is in the category rather than particular brands, but I do work with brand owners when brand and category interests align.

Currently, I have projects in Indonesia, Japan and Russia, albeit relying on Zoom in this covidafflicted world. I also network with niche A2 marketers in other countries.

This past year has been particularly challenging for a2MC. The company hit a big pothole with covid disrupting its supply chains to China. Accordingly, a2MC has fallen from being a market darling that could do no wrong, to losing more than half its value in the last eight months. A year ago, the a2MC capital value was more than double that of Fonterra, but now, at only $6.4 billion, it sits a little below Fonterra.

Whether covid is the only pothole for a2MC is a moot point. About five years ago the company decided to focus on its own brands rather than further developing the category. At that point, they stepped back from major research funding.

Even before that, the company was managed primarily by marketers rather than scientists, but then they pivoted even further towards marketing. I think they were dazzled by their own success. They lost sight of fundamental issues relating to the need to further build the science foundations.

Among the new A2 brands, the owners fit into two broad groups. The large-scale marketers apart from a2MC have existing brands to protect based on ‘ordinary milk’ that contains A1 beta-casein. Typically, these brand owners would shed no tears if the A2 movement disappeared. The reason they have A2 projects is because they recognise the risks of not being involved. It’s all about risk management.

Then there are the niche marketers who have made a big commitment to A2. These people tend to be passionate about their products related to health matters. They have no ordinary milk brands to protect.

A consequence of this situation is that most of the big companies have no wish to fund research and the niche companies cannot afford it. Human trials are very expensive and typically for even a modest trial there is no change out of at least $US500,000 and usually much more.

Although the companies are not spending money on new science, there is an increasing level of activity from sciencebased organisations around the globe. I see that from my own science-based A2 publications, which had low journal citation counts initially, but now have multiple citations coming through each month via ResearchGate. Unfortunately, science-based organisations are seldom good at communicating results to the public. They leave that to others.

One of the new research papers published in recent months comes from a leading American group from Purdue University led by Professor Savaiano. This work was supported by a2MC. It confirms prior work coming mainly from China that people with a tendency to lactose intolerance can benefit from A2 milk despite A2 milk still containing lactose. Although some of us have been confident of this for quite some time, and we understand why this interaction occurs, it is particularly valuable in the public arena to have it confirmed from a top American group of researchers.

A key insight that currently has my attention is understanding why the opioid beta-casomorphin-7 (BCM7) released from A1 betacasein can have such a wide range of effects on so many different organs of the body. The insight comes from bringing together research from the past 15 years identifying mu-opioid receptors in all of the brain, heart, lungs, bronchi, pancreas, kidneys and liver. BCM7 latches to these receptors. Individual genetics then determines how that plays out in terms of inflammation and autoimmune responses.

Sometimes I get asked by farmers as to how long I think it will be before the A2 premium disappears. My response is that they are asking the wrong question. In the long-term, the question is when will the A1 milk sell only at a discount. That situation may still be a long way distant, but it is coming.

The starting point of herd conversion is to focus on bulls classified as A2/A2. It only takes one bull carrying the A1 variant of the gene to negate several years of progress.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: While there are at least three A2 fresh milk brands in New Zealand, Keith Woodford believes NZ has a long way to go.

Your View

Keith Woodford was Professor of Farm Management and Agribusiness at Lincoln University for 15 years through to 2015. He is now Principal Consultant at AgriFood Systems Ltd. He can be contacted at kbwoodford@ gmail.com Previous articles can be found at https://keithwoodford. wordpress.com