Rewarding farmers who embrace sustainability
Winners of DairyNZ’s Sustainability and Stewardship awards in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards have their eyes firmly fixed on progressing a positive future for New Zealand dairy.
It looks like the next attack on farming will take the form of a campaign against winter grazing and the negative impact this can have on livestock and water quality.
Done correctly, winter grazing is an effective way to keep animals fed and healthy over winter in a pastoral farming system when grass growth is low or non-existent.
However, farmers in Southland, Otago and Canterbury are bracing for a major animal rights campaign against winter grazing practices, after reports that fixed wing aircraft, helicopters and even drones were used to film stock in mud.
It’s likely that a highly emotive crusade, using these pictures and targeting urban audiences, will be used to throw mud – literally and figuratively – at the farming sector. It will insinuate that the industry does not care about the animals it farms or the land they are on. Watch this space!
Lobby groups Fish & Game and Forest & Bird have denied any link to the campaign, but you can bet they’ll be in boots and all to criticise farmers when it does finally go public.
Despite this being another cheap shot at farming, the industry can only blame itself for allowing it to gather momentum. As during the previous alarms about water quality and animal welfare, the trumpets will be blaring about the public’s lack of tolerance of cattle up to their knees in mud during winter.
Such practices, albeit only by a minority of farmers, are bad for the animals, bad for the land, bad for water quality with the resulting sediment run-off and a very bad look for farming.
As Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s chairman Andrew Morrison rightly says: “Poor winter grazing practices are unacceptable as they are destructive to soils and waterways and can lead to poor animal welfare outcomes.”
Farmers clearly now must have a social licence to operate and this includes correct animal welfare and environmental standards as expected by the public and consumers. Farmers who disregard these standards, such as poor winter grazers, need to be weeded from the sector like other poor performers
Meanwhile, the anti-farming activists must realise that constantly bashing farmers is not the way to get them to do more in sustainability and compliance. ANZ’s Mark Hiddleston believes this is only deterring talented people from entering the industry and farmers from investing in making changes to meet the new sustainability requirements.
South Waikato farm manager Ben Purua’s amazing transformation from gang life to milking cows was rewarded with the Ahuwhenua Young Maori Farmer award last night.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
Family and solidarity shone through at the 75 years of Ferdon sale in Otorohanga last month.