Building trust
OPINION: The war of words between Southland farmers and Environment Southland over winter grazing inspections reflects a deep lack of trust among farmers for the regional council.
OPINION: Federated Farmers' latest farmer confidence survey results won’t surprise too many people.
Falling interest rates, rising incomes, stabilising farm input prices and more favourable farming ‘rules’ have all played a major role in that improvement.
It’s incredibly satisfying to see farmer confidence rebounding so strongly – to its highest point in over a decade and the largest one-off lift in farmer confidence seen to date. This is a cause for celebration.
However, the results are coming off a pretty low base. And as Federated Farmers points out, farmer confidence is now in positive territory, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
Farmers can’t control either interest rates or the farmgate milk price, so Federated Farmers and other industry organisations are using energy on what they can influence – making sure farming regulations are practical, affordable and fair. This means keeping the Government honest.
Not all decisions made by the Government help farmer confidence. For example, the recent Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) announcement by the Government hasn’t gone down well with farmers as it would mean more pine trees on productive land. The Feds’ survey was carried out before the latest NDC announcement and one can bet that this almost certainly would have taken some of the gloss off the results.
Government rules and regulations have a significant impact on farmers’ costs and these costs really can make or break a season and have a significant impact on a farmer’s confidence to keep investing in their busi-ness.
Farmers have a simple message to the Government: “As a country, we’re never going be able to regulate our way to prosperity, but with the right policy settings, we might just be able to farm our way there”.
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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.
OPINION: The war of words between Southland farmers and Environment Southland over winter grazing inspections reflects a deep lack of trust…
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