Saturday, March 30, 2024

PULPIT: Greenpeace dairy ads don’t add up

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My thoughts are definitely with people in North Canterbury and Marlborough as they recover from the quake damage. 
Reading Time: 3 minutes

For many, getting back to where they were will take months, if not longer. It’s no easy task to rebuild things, especially farms.

However, while I was watching the earthquakes coverage, for the first time I noticed an ad from Greenpeace, which effectively pinned the blame for all water pollution in New Zealand on the dairy industry or, as they like to call it, Industrial Dairy.

I have made mention in the past about this absurd Industrial Dairy term so I won’t cover old ground.

What frustrates me about this television advertisement and the attitude from Greenpeace NZ is that they seem to view only dairy as the problem when it comes to our waterways.

Yes, dairy farming has an impact without a doubt.

But so do other sectors of NZ society.

The ad shows footage of some very red looking water.

I’m scratching my head trying to work out what the hell that actually is because last time I looked cow shit is green not red. So it’s not dairy effluent.

To me that looks more like tannin extract and I wonder if perhaps we are seeing discharge from a sawmill or something similar.

As for the shot of the dirty river mixing with the other river, that looks like the confluence of the Waipa and Waikato Rivers at Ngaruawahia.

According to locals there are accounts from early missionaries in the 1800s who said the Waipa was one of the dirtiest rivers they’d seen.

Sediment in waterways principally isn’t an issue created by dairy farming.

Certainly, the fencing off of 96% of waterways on NZ dairy farms that has already been done will have reduced a large amount of what sediment there was coming from dairy farms.

However, most sediment has in the past and continues now to come from hill country erosion.

But even there, if you look at my region, Manawatu-Wanganui, which is home to the greatest amount of hill country farming in the nation, the Sustainable Land Use Initiative is having good results in reducing sediment loss from hill country farms.

So, both dairy and drystock are doing their bit to reduce their impacts.

Greenpeace also points the finger at irrigation as a cause of all this so-called industrial dairy pollution.

They seem fixated on the concept irrigation is used only for dairy.

On my farm I have some of the best soils you can get. I could grow a huge range of products. In fact, during last year’s cauliflower shortage I was calculating how much I could have made by taking a paddock or two out of dairy.

The problem is I don’t have reliable moisture. Many times I have had fodder crops fail for lack of rain. With irrigation I would have options.

The thing that annoys farmers like me the most about this Greenpeace campaign is that they give zero credit to farmers for the work they have already done, which is a hell of a lot.

Greenpeace might want it to be more.

That’s fine but at least give the industry some credit for the fact our people have made huge strides already and that we are serious about doing more.

That 25,000km of fencing isn’t imaginary, it’s real.

Times have been very tough over the last two seasons and with this television ad coming on top of the candid camera vegans, my worry is that it creates a siege mentality for farmers, that nothing they do will be good enough for these people, so why bother.

That is not the attitude we want.

Finally, two points.

If you’re upset about the conversion of drystock land to dairy and your house has synthetic carpet not woollen then you’re part of the problem.

Secondly, I would say to anyone who feels the need to support people getting stuck into the dairy industry about water quality, give your money to Forest and Bird.

They participate in forums and planning and are actually involved.

Greenpeace just seem to dress up gullible idiots in onesies to make noise on street corners and send a truckload of money back to the corporate HQ offshore.

Or, if you really want to make a difference, you might just ask a farmer if they want some help planting more trees.

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