Repeating mistakes of the past?

Between 1982 and 1988, the value of grazing farms fell by 32%. With falling land prices some farmers lost all their equity and, unable to meet the rising interest rates, were forced to sell up. Sheep numbers fell by over 43% from the heights of 1982, to around 40 million in 2002. By 1993 the effective rate of assistance to agriculture had fallen to 3% compared to 52% prior to deregulation. The government viewed pastoral farming as an industry in decline.

Today sheep number fewer than 28 million and - yet again - the sector faces a Labour government hell-bent on reinstating the very regulation and heavy-handed intervention that preceded the economic meltdown of the 1980s.

In He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) - the soon to be adopted mechanism for pricing agricultural emissions - we have the ghost of recessions past come to haunt our already flailing economy. Those of more advanced years will recall the strong arm of government reaching in to guide investment decisions of the past. A little help here, a payout there, some more financial assistance for this - and a handful of subsidies for that. All in all, as mentioned above, the pastoral economy came to rely on as much as 53% of its revenue from taxpayers for adherence with the prevailing view of what 'good' looked like.

Back then, good looked like clearing bush and scrubland, sowing pastures and flying on fertiliser in bulk at heavily subsidised prices. Good looked like cranking up the stock numbers to ensure no blade of grass was safe.

Ultimately 'good' turned out to be bad. As burgeoning financial assistance rates proved impossible to maintain, culminating in the calamitous economic upheaval of the 80s and the long sad trail of human misery that followed in its wake.

'Good' is unfortunately quite subjective, but outcomes tend to be cold hard facts.

He Waka Eke Noa has defined 'good' as reducing our pastoral livestock numbers by between 24 and 47% below 2017 numbers - and applying a pricing penalty in order to drive this outcome. Ironically, this means farmers being penalised for farming the land once subsidised for development and being paid to put the bush back - where generations past were paid to remove it.

The current policy framework models the retirement of land on a scale that will consign much of rural New Zealand into vast pine forests estates for which we have - as yet - no defined market beyond China and the insatiable hunger of carbon offsetting regimes.

As a country - almost 40 years older than the one left wounded by primary sector policy failings in the past - surely, we can imagine a future where we enable our growers to be part of the solution? In a world still reliant on increasing food production to have any hope of feeding the 9 billion people expected to occupy our planet by 2050 - and one where almost everyone else, everywhere else produces food with more emissions than we do here. Surely, there is a more sensible way forward.

Unless farmers, their elected leaders and regulators agree to step up, the future of pasture-based food production systems will remain in serious doubt. Relying on the tenuous hope that those representing us show courage and leadership, both of which seem to have - thus far - been variously lost or traded for short-term environmental hyperbole and headlines.

Farmers can deliver land-based solutions to many of the wicked problems facing the world today. However, to do this they need clear and achievable targets rather than wildly variable aspirations. Finally, they need the focus to remain on outcomes, not ideals. 'Good' must not be subjective this time.

Kerry Worsnop is a Gisborne farmer and former district councillor.