Opinion
26 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – July 27, 2020
EDITORIAL Eradication was the only option
T
HREE years into the programme to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis statistics show progress is being made. Just four farms are known to have the disease now. It’s still early days given it’s year three of a 10-year battle but the signs are positive. M bovis and the eradication programme have taken a massive toll on many farmers. In the past three years Farmers Weekly has covered a number of distraught farmers who’ve seen their herds carted off to slaughter. Others then waited far too long for the promised compensation. Many in rural communties wondered if the effort to eradicate was worth the pain. They argued the production losses the disease would cause if it bedded in here didn’t outweigh the cost of eradication. Studies are still under way to quantify whether that’s the case. Looking to a long horizon, though, it seems like the right decision. M bovis causes mastitis, abortions and other nasty things. For a nation that’s looking to leverage its commitment to animal welfare in an effort to drive up the value of the food it produces being bovis-free is always going to be preferable. Even some of the worstaffected farmers, such as Frank Peters who is quoted in this edition, can see that. To live with M bovis would have been to tell the world we’re okay with a percentage of our animals getting sick, being uncomfortable and maybe dying. We’d be saying that’s just a cost of our food production system. Increasingly, consumers aren’t buying that story. Sure, there are other areas of the system that need work as well. Live exports and bobby calves are a couple that spring to mind. Our industry needs to show it’s committed to continual improvement when it comes to welfare and sustainability. Our record on these issues is already the envy of the rest of the farming world. But that’s no reason to rest on our laurels.
Bryan Gibson
LETTERS
Trees cause irreparable harm READING Mr Field’s response to my letter, I was struck that there was no justification for pouring taxpayers’ money into helping corporations to destroy farmland in New Zealand. I never claimed that pasture is the natural state of the landscape of NZ. It is patently obvious that there are downstream environmental impacts from pastoral agriculture. It is even fair to say that in certain parts of NZ landscape was cleared, which never should have been. I would, however, note that the worst excesses of this kind of behaviour were undertaken when the Government subsidised it through boondoggles such as the Marginal Lands Board.
None of these concessions hide the fact that rampant afforestation is causing irreparable harm to landscapes across NZ. Just yesterday, my Facebook feed featured a video of east coast rivers and beaches choked with forestry waste. Waste from trees that I would bet were planted with all haste and government support following cyclone Bola. More helpful government intervention! Livestock agriculture has some key benefits to NZ society. First, it produces food, unlike Pinus radiata. When, in 1861, there was only 70,000ha of pasture in NZ, there were only one billion people on the planet. There are now north of seven billion of us, and rather
selfishly, we all like to eat. If NZ becomes a forest park, the net result will be deforestation elsewhere in the world. I think it’s a fair bet that burning Brazilian rainforest to produce beef will not feature riparian planting and Environmental Management Plans. Secondly, livestock must be processed regardless of the market return. When prices are low, farmers continue to employ thousands of tanker drivers, freezing workers and other Kiwis. When log prices drop, the corporate forest owners will happily leave their logs standing and watch their workforce wither. This has been graphically illustrated just this year with
the impact of covid-19. If Field thinks that widespread conversion of food production to radiata forest will enhance biodiversity, he is free to plant all the land he likes and see if Moa are brought back from extinction. I just ask that taxpayer dollars are frittered away on the fruitless exercise, and that foresters be held accountable for their environmental degradation in the same way the farmers are. The unfairness of taxing farmers to use the taxes to subsidise their competition is staggering, and the fact that forestry is being subsidised while trashing our rivers is just adding insult to injury. David Skiffington Cheltenham
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