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OPINION: Your canine crusader shakes his head at the complete lack of practical and real-world knowledge in both government and the bureaucracy.
Even blind Freddy could have seen that the impact of Covid on getting foreign workers would be a major problem for the horticulture sector and lazy locals would not do the job.
However, instead of making plans to fast-track ways for international workers to come into the country, government – in their infinite wisdom – decided unemployed New Zealanders would fill the gap.
They developed a scheme, available to anyone who moved off a benefit, offering up to $200 a week for accommodation costs and a $1,000 incentive payment for workers, who completed jobs of six weeks or longer.
Guess how many unemployed locals took up the scheme? A staggering 54! Not so much unemployed, but unemployable!
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.
A landmark New Zealand trial has confirmed what many farmers have long suspected - that strategic spring nitrogen use not only boosts pasture growth but delivers measurable gains in lamb growth and ewe condition.
It was recently announced that former MP and Southland farmer Eric Roy has stepped down of New Zealand Pork after seven years. Leo Argent talks with Eric about his time at the organisation and what the future may hold.
It's critical that the horticulture sector works together as part of a goal to double the sector’s exports by 2035.
RaboResearch, the research arm of specialist agriculture industry banker Rabobank, sees positives for the Alliance Group in its proposed majority-stake sale to Ireland's Dawn Meats.
The ACT Party's call for a better deal on the Paris Agreement on climate change is being backed by farmer organisations.
A 50% tariff slapped by the US on goods from India last month has opened an opportunity for New Zealand wool carpets exports to North America.
