increase font size
Rob Brazendale.
Mind your negative language to farmers: that’s the message to rural professionals dealing with dairy farmers in the lower North Island.
But this is not a complaint about rural professionals swearing or using abusive language; rather it is about the words they use when talking to farmers about the state of the industry and related issues.
Rural professionals met recently to discuss low morale among dairy farmers in the lower North Island. Rob Brazendale, of DairyNZ, says they were trying to determine the causes of low morale.
“We identified things such as the increasing compliance costs, uncertainty about milk companies, negative rhetoric coming from central government about the industry and the land market being pretty flat; all these are impacting on low farmer morale. A lot of farmers are feeling quite despondent,” he says.
Brazendale says the group asked themselves whether they were adding to the low morale or countering it by their interactions with farmers. They concluded that they should be positive about the future and not put negative connotations on issues.
The group, which includes bankers, retailers, accountants, farm advisors, vets and others, are regularly in touch with farmers and often they pick up things farmers say and this can be negative.
“We have to look at our language and how we use it and how we frame questions. We have to put things in perspective and try to talk about the good things in the industry.”
OPINION: In the 1980s, concern was expressed in West Germany about the falling birth rate. Some simple analysis was performed by Professor Helmut Sies, physician and biochemist at Dusseldorf University. His letter ‘A new parameter for sex education’ was published in Nature in 1988:
OPINION: Dairy farmers know better than anyone that change is constant.
A four year trial has reaffirmed that mixing plantain into dairy pastures can help reduce nitrogen losses to freshwater while maintaining milk production and profitability, say researchers.
OPINION: Today marks Farm Worker Appreciation Day – a day we’re proud to recognise here in New Zealand.
OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight.
Testing confirms H5 bird flu in a single northern giant petrel, found dead on a remote Cape Palliser beach in the Wairarapa, says Dr Mary van Andel, the Ministry for Primary Industries' (MPI) Chief Veterinary Officer.
"What's for dinner?" may sound like a simple question, but for many Kiwi parents, answering it has become a job in itself.
Fifty Eight years ago, on the 16th of August 1968, August Claas, the founder of the harvesting company and father of Helmut Claas, personally presented a Claas Senator combine harvester to Scottish farmer John Steven.
New Zealand consumers are paying more for beef mince than ever before, with the average retail price now sitting above $24 per kilogram, according to Rabobank.
State farmer Pamu has delivered its strongest operating result on record.
Four years since it was first detected in New Zealand, researchers and growers now know much more about management of maize pest fall armyworm (FAW).
