Farm Safety Improves Through 'Incremental Gain', Says Birkett
Improving health and safety is about incremental gain rather than a sudden decision, says Leeston farmer and Federated Farmers health and safety spokesman David Birkett.
This is the first formal meeting of Rolleston and the new board with the national council since the annual conference in July.
Rolleston says they had “two good days of looking quietly inwardly at their strategy”.
“A strategy refresh is always appropriate when you have a new chief executive and chairman. The federation is in good heart, but what we are looking at how we can work better as a team across the provinces. We have many capable people spread across the country and we need to be well coordinated with our messaging and how we service everybody.”
Rolleston says the ‘refresh’ is not a radical shift in the organisation. The present staff structure is appropriate and has been built up over a number of years, he says.
The refresh identified key policies for attention, including water, climate change, health and safety, and science and innovation.
Human capability is a big issue, Rolleston says. “That comes into our science and innovation slot. Is the right training being done, do we have the right capabilities in science and are we producing the right graduates?
“In the schools a lot of teachers don’t understand agriculture or science and where they fit into society.
“We need to up that messaging so that young people can see there are worthwhile careers in farming and agribusiness.”
Agriculture is becoming technical and the sector needs to make sure that it has skills to stay ahead of the world.
More leadership needed
PRIME MINISTER John Key and Labour’s agriculture spokesman Damien O’Connor addressed the national council meeting
O’Connor says the primary sector needs leadership, not leaders. There are many leaders in the agribusiness sector, but overall it lacks leadership and cohesion. NZ needs people to ask the hard questions about what the country is doing, what it needs to do and how to achieve this.
“New Zealand is a small country with valuable but limited resources and huge opportunities for success. But as a society we have become a bit more selfish and have decided to [exploit] our own individual opportunities and have lost sight of the broader vision. The National government is happy to be market led, but not be market leaders.”
O’Connor says traditionally people have looked to governments to show necessary leadership, but he says to be fair this shouldn’t all come from government. He suggested the Feds had a role to play in this.
Meanwhile, John Key warned delegates that a bottom line for the public is that farmers’ can only increase production as long as they don’t harm the environment. He says this is a challenge for farmers and one the public won’t buy excuses on.
“In recent years Federated Farmers have taken a responsible view of that issue. Dairy companies such as Fonterra have been in the forefront of that by encouraging farmers to fence 23,000km of waterways that have dairy cows next to them. It will be compulsory to do that come 2017 and I am confident farmers will get there before then anyway.”
Key believes the public understand the importance of agriculture and for the most part are hugely supportive. But he says they won’t be if they see farmers trashing the environment. However, Key says the public also need to realise that farmers are spending their own money to improve their environmental footprint.
“The people who argue that farmers don’t do their bit in caring about the environment need to get out onfarm and have look at what farmers have to do now compared with what they had to do six years ago. Regulations have toughened up,” he says.
