The politics of climate change
OPINION: The Financial Times, a major international newspaper, featured New Zealand on its front page at the beginning of June. It wasn't for the right reasons.
OPINION: Media bias against farming isn’t new in this country, but the level of ignorance among journalists is off the charts these days.
The recent release of the ICCC’s recommendations on how to tackle climate change -- including taxing agriculture -- brought all that bias and ignorance bubbling to the surface.
Stuff, which last year abandoned rural publishing, showed its true colours with the pejorative intro, “Agriculture, the most polluting sector of the economy…”.
TV One basically turned its report into an attack ad for Greenpeace, going off on a tangent that led to the “evils” of PKE, complete with images of destroyed rainforest and sad orangutans. The link with the ICCC report was tenuous at best.
And our old mate Jack Tame couldn’t suppress his disappointment, lecturing Minister James Shaw about going too easy on farmers.
Questions are being raised about just how good the state of the dairy industry is - especially given that the average farmgate payout for the coming season is set to exceed $10/kgMS.
A leading financial and banking advisor says he doubts if most dairy farmers fully understand the dynamics of banking.
Dairy farmers are shoring up their balance sheets, with almost $1.7 billion of debt repaid in the six months to March 2025.
Virtual fencing company Halter is going global but for founder Craig Piggott, New Zealand farmers will always remain their main partners.
A former Fonterra executive is the new chair of the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand (DCANZ).
New Federated Farmers national dairy chair Karl Dean is looking forward to tackling the issues facing the sector.