Feds question local government’s role
Federated Farmers previous president, William Rolleston, was very supportive of GE and there was a perception that Feds was leading the charge in support of the science — but this could now cost them.
In a hard-hitting address to the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural & Horticultural Science’s ‘Science in a Post-Truth Era’ conference at Lincoln, the former Feds national president said the gap between public perception and scientific evidence is being exploited by activists.
“We’ve watched the war on farmers grow since the coining of the phrase ‘dirty dairying’ by Fish and Game some 15 years ago. Even in the last few days I’ve heard farming leaders talk about the hatred directed at farmers, and that NZ has a ‘cowphobia’ and that this election has created an urban-rural divide as big as it ever has been.”
The gap between public perception and scientific evidence is not unique to NZ farming but exists in many debates where science matters, Rolleston explained.
“Those who work to change public perception in spite of the evidence use a number of tactics,” he says. “They cherry-pick data, they drive fear, they oversimplify, they take data out of context. They deliberately confuse correlation with causation and they undermine trust.”
Rolleston quoted the physicist Stephen Hawking who recently said that it debased scientific culture when public figures cited some studies but suppressed others to justify the policies they wanted to implement. It led ordinary people not to trust science, at a time when scientific research and progress were more important than ever given the challenges facing the human race.
“We have seen activists use this tactic in the debates on fluoride, immunisation, 1080, climate change, genetic modification and water,” he told the audience. “Moreover, in these debates protagonists use fake news and half-truths to influence public perception.”
As an example, Rolleston cited the campaign against recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), which claimed that drinking milk from treated cows could cause cancer, on the rationale that BST caused an increase in the growth factor IGF-1 in milk, and IGF-1 had been shown to facilitate cancer in test-tube studies. But in reality it was at such low concentrations that it would contribute less than 1% of a consumer’s IGF-1 levels, even if it made it through the digestion process at all. It was a claim that required “several leaps of faith,” he said.
Another example was the claim that babies would die of blue baby syndrome because of increasing nitrates in groundwater in the Ashburton region.
“If you extrapolate the data from the US, we could expect to see one baby die from blue-baby syndrome in the Ashburton region every 5000 years,” Rolleston added.
He said fear and simplicity were powerful weapons in driving public perception.
Nothing we do is without risk, yet the demand was often that any new technology should be risk-free.
The conservative regulation in genetic modification, particularly in New Zealand, had been driven more by public perception than by science.
Activists use the precautionary principal as a weapon against scientific progress, arguing against doing anything that entailed any risk at all.
“This is not a useful test, as it ignores the risk of the alternatives. I could have avoided the risk of a car crash by not getting out of bed today, but would have run the risk of bed sores and possibly starvation.”
Rolleston blamed Greenpeace for bringing an international campaign against farming, particularly livestock farming, to NZ. It is an organisation which says farmers should be taxed for water yet it has spent thousands in the courts to avoid paying tax itself, he said.
Greenpeace’s anti-dairy fundraising ad campaign was sensationalist, and they had used the Hastings water contamination to bash dairy farmers when the closest dairy farm was 40km away.
He also criticised the Environmental Defence Society for claiming that Environment Canterbury’s Plan Change 13 would increase dairy intensification in the Mackenzie region when there is not yet one dairy farm in the PC13 area; the media meanwhile “weighed in” with photos of centre pivots, also outside the PC13 area.
Rolleston also noted what he called “the final Selwyn River hurrah before the rains came and ruined all the fun” -- a (Christchurch) Press front-page article on how fishing had been ruined in the Irwell River.
Buried deep in the article, he said, were two small observations: that the nearby Harts Creek had been destitute before local farmers had got together and rehabilitated it; and that South Canterbury’s Opihi River gave good fishing; but it did not acknowledge that the Opihi was supplemented by the farmer-built Opuha Dam.
“My point is that bad news travels fast and can be highly effective in shaping public opinion even if it is not right. The current water debate is a war where perception holds sway over evidence in the short-to-medium term at least.”
An outraged public is demanding farmers pay for their negative effects. “I have to ask, what about the positive [effects]?”
Rolleston said NZ farmers are proud to live without market-distorting subsidies and also stand against the imposition of market-distorting penalties such as carbon charges and water taxes.
“You only need to go to Argentina to see the corrosive effects of export taxes on farm productivity and environmental outcomes.
“We have seen constant ramping up of regulation with costs borne by the farmers. Perhaps society should consider how our positive [effects] such as the ecosystem services farmers provide every day can be recognised.”
Farmers need to take charge of the narrative. It looks like they are behind the game on water quality, when in fact they are ahead. Given ownership of the problems, they would find solutions that were reasonable, practical and affordable, he said.
