NEWS
ANIMAL HEALTH
NEWS
What makes staff join and stay? PAGE 12
Don’t get ticked off this season – or next!. PAGE 28
Lewis Road Creamery makes inroads into US market. PAGE 16
TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS NOVEMBER 20, 2018: ISSUE 665
www.ruralnews.co.nz
NZ’s Brexit blast! PETER BURKE peterb@ruralnews.co.nz
BEEF + Lamb NZ’s chief executive has made a stinging attack on Britain and the European Union over their plans to introduce inflexible quotas for sheepmeat to the two entities when Brexit occurs. Sam McIvor says they seem to have “conveniently short memories” over a deal struck by the EU, UK and NZ via the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when Britain joined the EU. McIvor, just home from talks in Canada and Europe with farming groups and officials, says the EU and the UK are completely ignoring protests by NZ to honour the original
WTO agreement. They need to understand they have obligations, he says. The WTO agreement specified that NZ would have access for 228,000 tonnes of sheepmeat and 1300 tonnes of beef and that this could be spread flexibly across the whole of the EU. But the UK and EU are saying that the quota will be split 50/50 when Brexit finally takes place. “It seems like the EU and the UK
are just throwing a legal agreement out the window and saying it doesn’t matter,” McIvor told Rural News. “Well it absolutely does matter to us. It is a legally binding deal under WTO rules and both sides made choices at the time and they need to honour that.” McIvor says before Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973, NZ was sending at least 300,000
On show AMBERLEY FARMER Charles Miller-Brown holds his White Dorper ewe as livestock judge Symon Howard, of Lawrence, explains the attributes that won her the top prize in the breed’s ewe with lamb at foot class, on the first day of the New Zealand Agricultural Show in Christchurch. Howard remarked that the ewe had a real nice carcase and looked “a very proud sort of sheep. She looked like she wanted to be here.” “She looked like a real breeder to me, and that’s what you want in your females.” Howard said the standard of the ewes was very good and the class was closely fought. “The ram hoggets were a wee bit mixed but the ones at the top end were two or three very good sheep.” Miller-Brown had brought 18 sheep to this year’s show including Suffolks and Southdowns, and was off to a good start, the win being his second ribbon so far, still early on the first day of judging. The Canterbury Show, renamed this year as the New Zealand Agricultural Show, is the largest in the country and had opened to fine sunny weather with a cooling breeze. As many as 100,000 people were expected through the gates over three days.
tonnes of sheepmeat and 14,000 of beef to Britain – and this was pretty much a UK/NZ free trade agreement. When Britain joined the EU, NZ clearly had to make huge concessions and the other two parties need to remember this, he says. “These people are tending to forget that we have been exporting sheep and beef products to the EU for over 130 TO PAGE 3
ANOTHER ATTACK THE MULTI-NATIONAL environmental activist group Greenpeace is again targeting the New Zealand farming sector, this time calling for a ban on the use of nitrogen fertilisers. The group has spent the last few years blaming the agricultural sector for polluting the country’s waterways and rivers, campaigning against irrigation and criticising agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now in its sights are the two farmer-owned fertiliser co-operatives Ravensdown and Ballance, which Greenpeace claims sell 98% of all fertiliser used in NZ. “Chemical nitrogen fertiliser is the fuel that drives industrial dairying,” claims Greenpeace campaigner Gen Toop. “It is spread onto NZ’s dairy farms in ever-increasing amounts to grow more and more grass for too many cows.” Toop says the use of nitrogen fertiliser has increased seven-fold since 1990. “Chemical nitrogen fertiliser is a double-whammy for the climate and our rivers. It increases the number of cows, which increases greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of rivers. On top of that it directly emits nitrous oxide and leaches nitrate into waterways.” Toop and Greenpeace accuse Ravensdown and Ballance of “profiting off environmental destruction”. “It’s time the Government reigned them in and banned chemical nitrogen fertiliser.”
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