Environment Minister labels protest group 'dinosaurs'

The group was founded in 2020 by farmers Bryce McKenzie and Laurie Patterson in response to a series of regulations they says are “unworkable”.

Since then, they have organised three nationwide protests, including the ‘Howl of a Protest’ and the ‘Mother of All Protests’.

However, in a recent interview with Country TV, David Parker claimed the group was not a “widespread representation of farmer opinion”.

“Some of them, I’ve got to say, are dinosaurs,” says Parker. “They refuse to admit that there have been problems with the Intensive Winter Grazing that we’ve seen in Southland.

“Well, they’re just wrong. We know that, done poorly, intensive winter grazing where you have cows deep in mud results in a huge loss of sediment to the waterway and the difference between a 10 degree slope and a 15 degree slope is a two or three times increase in the amount of sediment that washes into the river when you have rain.”

He claims that most farmers were supportive of the Government’s policies on the practice.

“But there are some people who refuse to admit that there was ever a problem and also pretend that it would have cleaned itself up without rules,” says Parker.

Parker is quick to admit that there were valid criticisms of the draft versions of the winter grazing rules.

“The agricultural community complained that some of the rules relating to the depth of mud… was ill-precise, ill-defined and so we worked with DairyNZ, Federated Farmers in particular, and also the Southland Regional Council to do a new iteration of that.”

He says that most farmers have opted not to carry out winter grazing.

“They’ve chosen to do them on their flatter land rather than their sloping land, they’ve chosen to retire the swales, which might be the low point in a paddock, and leave that in a bit of grass to act as a filter for the sediment, and as a consequence the levels of compliance with those rules is much improved,” Parker claims.

“I think great progress has been made,” says Parker.

Get the full story on Country TV, tonight at 7.30pm on sky channel 81, or get 30 days FREE access, online and on demand at www.countrytv.co.nz.