Thornton Blackmore
A recent article published by Cantabrian farmer David Clark on The BFD has highlighted the plight of the agricultural sector if the far-left radicals occupying Parliament are to be re-elected this month.
To say that the primary industries are under siege by the state is no exaggeration.
Clark, who has calculated a net profit reduction of 105% for his farm after budgeting for the treasonous tariffs proposed by the Green Party, has advised the country to “enjoy and savour the standard of living that you currently enjoy, make diary notes and take photographs so that you can look back on the “good ole days” as we embark on our journey to becoming a Zimbabwe or Venezuela of the South Pacific.”
In a similar plea for clemency, Morrinsville farmer Lloyd Downing recently told Newshub, “It’s wrong, wrong, they’re completely on another planet,” and “we’ve got the lowest carbon footprint of any farmers in the world and our rivers and streams are the cleanest in the developed world”.
What our farmers need to understand, is that no matter how good their intentions are, and no matter how much they are willing to comply and cooperate with the system they can never win against this government.
To put it simply, ‘sustainability’ is meant to break them.
At the core of the issue are the United Nations ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, which are part of the Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 programmes. Progress toward achieving these SDGs was stipulated in a confidence and supply agreement made between the Labour Party and the Green Party as part of their 2017 coalition memorandum.
Farmers will be familiar with GLOBAL G.A.P. compliance, which has become commonplace in order to achieve and retain various industry certifications. The standards for ‘good agricultural practice’ being measured by GLOBAL G.A.P. are based on outcomes derived from these United Nations programmes.
Speaking at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event in New York last year, Jacinda Ardern stated that “When it comes to a set of rules for a country to live by, you would struggle to do better than the SDGs.”
The Prime Minister also informed the assembly that “We have incorporated the principles of the 2030 Agenda into our domestic policy making in a way that we hope will drive system-level actions.”
The revelation that a self-appointed global council have been presiding over our government’s policy making without our consent raises serious concerns about our national sovereignty.
These concerns have also been shared by the US Republican Party, who declared in the 2012 Republican National Convention Platform that “We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty, and we oppose any form of U.N. Global Tax.”
Meanwhile, the State of Tennessee’s General Assembly has also declared in a House Joint Resolution that Agenda 21 is “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control” and that “Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local communities”.
The General Assembly also declared that “this United Nations Agenda 21 plan of radical so-called “sustainable development” views the American way of life of private property ownership, single-family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms all as destructive to the environment”.
The Joint Resolution also cited a “socialist/communist redistribution of wealth”, as well as concerns that “national sovereignty is deemed a social injustice” by the Agenda, and stated that “the General Assembly recognizes the destructive and insidious nature of United Nations Agenda 21”.
Several American states have attempted to pass legislation obstructing the implementation and funding of these programmes, such as the Alabama Senate Bill 477, which recognises that “the United Nations has accredited and enlisted numerous non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations to assist in the implementation of its policies relative to Agenda 21 around the world”.
Indeed, the reach of these programmes is global in nature, and they are being implemented locally in our own neighbourhoods at this very moment.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently pledged to the United Nations that an additional 400,000 hectares of English countryside will be ‘protected’, bringing the amount of protected land to 30% by 2030 – on target for the 2030 Agenda.
Meanwhile, private farmland and rural estates are already being claimed as ‘Significant Nature Areas’ – or SNAs, by the New Zealand government.
West Coast Regional Council chairman Allan Birchfield has remarked, “That’s effectively put the land into the DOC estate because the landowners will need DOC input – and approval as an affected party if they want to develop it. So the Crown is gaining land without paying for it, and that is theft”.
According to Westland Mayor Bruce Smith, “As iwi put it, it’s the biggest land grab on South Islanders since the colonial purchases. Regional New Zealand will not sit by and watch the land being stolen.”
Affected property owners on the West Coast have reportedly been denied compensation for land use restrictions by Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, who has stated: “However, there is support through the sustainable land use package from budget 2019 to support landowners with fencing and riparian planting.”
In the case of Tony Barrett, 70% of his 607-hectare block near Greymouth was classified as an SNA despite officials not even stepping foot onto his land.
Indeed, these ‘de facto’ property seizures, which have been described by Greymouth deputy mayor Allan Gibson as “communism” seem hard to justify given the amount of land on the West Coast which is already owned and managed by the Crown.
It is important to recognise that the same chokehold being felt by farmers, is also plaguing our cities. Indeed, one has only to cast their eyes upon the Christchurch red zone land reclamation or wander by one of Auckland’s many high-density housing developments, to see the effects of ‘sustainable development’ at work.
The move toward high-density housing on a smaller land footprint – known as ‘smart growth’ in sustainability jargon, along with the reclamation of ‘wild-lands’ is well documented by Rosa Koire in her book Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21.
Koire – a forensic commercial real estate appraiser who has specialised in eminent domain valuation, is regarded as the world’s foremost expert on and adversary for all things masquerading as sustainable development.
The book exposes everything from the engineering of ‘blight’ in suburban areas by city officials, to the Delphi technique used to solicit public agreement in the name of ‘consultation’. The book is the best friend of anyone facing eminent domain troubles.
However, these negative outcomes for property ownership in New Zealand are just one of a plethora of perils neatly packaged within the United Nations sustainable development initiatives.
Ian Wishart of Climategate fame, who is widely regarded as New Zealand’s most influential journalist, has documented the ideology of modern environmentalism in his book ‘Air Con’ as follows:
Part of the reason is that environmental politics was long ago captured by the hard left, who saw it as an opportunity to change the world in the name of a warm, fuzzy cause.
“I think if we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically,” Earth First! Member Judi Bari said in a 1992 interview.
“I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.”
“The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now,” Columbia University’s self-titled ‘Unrepentant Marxist’ Louis Proyect has said.
Yet you can’t exactly sneak socialism in the front door, or can you?
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism,” wrote the head of the US Socialist Party Norman Thomas fifty years ago. “But under the name of Liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened.”
Indeed, while legitimate environmentalism exists and is certainly wholesome, we must be bold enough to recognise when otherwise noble causes have been commandeered for political gain.
Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace is one such champion, who has stated that “After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective.”
The stark reality is, that until we burn out the root of this disease, then we will continue to be haunted by the spectre of the ‘sustainable development’ ruse.
While Judith Collins, of dairying stock, has rallied to the cause of the farming community in their darkest hour, it is important to consider that the National Party are yet to condemn New Zealand’s involvement with these United Nations programmes – despite leading a succession of governments in the years since Agenda 21 was ratified into effect by world leaders in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Although the Act Party have been the only political party to oppose the Zero Carbon Act, Advance New Zealand are so far the only political contender to campaign on the basis of withdrawing from the UN’s Agenda 21/2030 and Sustainable Development Goals altogether.
Make no mistake – if we allow our farmers to fall, then we all go with them.
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