Simon Upton urges cross-party consensus on New Zealand environmental goals
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton is calling for cross-party consensus on the country's overarching environmental goals.
BLNZ spends a lot more than just on promotion and is constantly revising priorities.
“Environment has definitely been a big area where sheep and beef farmers have needed a lot more support as they engage in environmental discussions on water quality in particular,” says Parsons. “We have upped the investment there and as a consequence the investment in promotional money has been reduced over time.
“Pressures around the environment are not going away. There are a whole lot of licence-to-farm type activities that farmers need a stronger voice on. We are looking at how we balance our requirements. We need to look at getting more people into agriculture through promoting farming as a career path so there are a lot of significant areas we could invest in and need to invest in.”
But that needs to be balanced with requirements in the market as well. $2m a year is invested in market access activities to try to reduce some of the $318m a year in tariffs that farmers pay.
