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OPINION: Your canine crusader was impressed to see that Beef + Lamb levypayers gave their farmer organisation a strong message at last month's annual meeting when they rejected the board's move for a big jump in director fees.
Farmers were so enraged by the move that they not only rejected the fee hike, but also voted out one director and just re-elected the other incumbent by a very slim margin.
However, despite all of this, BLNZ chair Andrew Morrison still had the chutzpah to say that the board "stood by its decision" to propose the big increase in director fees.
This old mate wonders if Morrison's off-farm life as a company director - as he is also a director of fertiliser co-op Ballance - and the $175,000-plus he pulls in annual remuneration between BLNZ and Ballance alone is putting him out-of-touch with the economic realities that farmers are currently facing?
OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.
OPINION: There's an infamous term coined by a US general during the Vietnam war, specifically in reference to the battle of Ben Tre: "We had to burn the village to save it."
OPINION: The sudden departure of Jim Ward, manager of Molesworth Station for 24 years, highlighted some major dysfunction in the way conservation estate is managed in this country - the biggest problem, as the Hound sees it, being idealogues who harp on about "taonga" and use all means possible to block sensible commercial operations on conservation land.
OPINION: While the destruction of NZ's oil and gas industry by Jacinda Ardern's band of merry vandals was virtue signalling on a heroic scale - producing no environmental benefit whatsoever - the politician vowing to make that industry whole again, Shane Jones, is not above a bit of virtue signalling of his own.
OPINION: Your old mate's ear has been chewed off recently by farmers voicing their displeasure with the National Party, particularly relating to how they're treating their farmer base.
'Common sense' cuts to government red tape will make it easier for New Zealand to deliver safe food to more markets.
Balclutha farmer Renae Martin remembers the moment she fell in love with cows.
Academic freedom is a privilege and it's put at risk when people abuse it.
All eyes are on milk production in New Zealand and its impact on global dairy prices in the coming months.
Claims that some Southland farmers were invoiced up to $4000 for winter grazing compliance checks despite not breaching rules are being rejected by Environment Southland.
According to the most recent Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey, farmer confidence has inched higher, reaching its second highest reading in the last decade.
