OPINION
Peter Allan Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
The Maori proverb goes “he tangata, he tangata, he tangata – it is the people, it is the people, it is the people.”
But farmers around the country don’t believe that. They say bureaucrats and regional council officials are putting the health of freshwater ahead of their ability to make a living from the land and to produce food for the world.
Now they’re waiting anxiously to see if the incoming government can do something to make their industry less stressful.
A combination of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management and the insistence from politicians and bureaucrats that methane emissions must be reduced has led to a plethora of farming regulations, the implementation of which are time consuming and expensive.
The latest group to feel the heat are farmers in Northland. There the regional council has released its draft freshwater plan change which threatens 40 percent of the province’s productive land.
According to the latest Farmer’s Weekly, more than 250,000 hectares of land with more than a 25 degree slope will not be allowed to have grazing animals on it unless farmers get a consent to permit the activity.
All dairy effluent discharges to land will also need a resource consent.
Northland generates about a billion dollars worth of agricultural export income annually. Farmer groups suggest these proposals would reduce that by up to thirty percent.
According to the council, these plans will improve freshwater quality and lower the amount of sediment flowing in rivers to the sea.
But the most staggering thing about these proposals is that the Northland Regional Council has told farmers that freshwater quality comes before people.
The same message has been given to Central Otago famers in the Manuherikia Valley who face a dwindling supply of water as the regional council there looks to reduce the irrigation take in order to improve the flow of the river.
Back to Northland. The threat to production and to farmer’s incomes is real. The need to put in fences, riparian planting and reduce stock numbers is predicted to mean a profit reduction per farm of between 8 and 21 percent, before tax.
The regional council acknowledges that the threat to farm incomes is significant. But in keeping with putting the health of the water ahead of the well-being of the people who live in the region, council staff are suggesting farmers plant permanent forests and claim carbon credits with full offset at 35 dollars a tonne.
In other words, the regional council doesn’t want farms, and doesn’t want farming communities. It just wants scruffy trees to sequester carbon.
Northland has two farmer MPs – the new National Party man for the Northland electorate Grant McCallum and Act’s Mark Cameron.
It’s likely their phone and email lines will be running hot with disgruntled local farmers wanting an end to the madness.
Yes, clean water is important and we can’t survive without it. But there must be a better way to improve the health of Northland’s waterways than to put hardworking farmers out of business.
It’s time the Northland Regional Council came into the real world where people matter more than anything else.