Wednesday, 15 July 2020 09:40

All sizzle, no sausage — Editorial

Written by  Staff Reporters

OPINION: Despite all the hype and political theatre surrounding last week’s release of the Primary Sector Council’s report, the document seems more like a horoscope than a clear guide to anywhere.

Unfortunately, we are in election mode and it seems the Government has hijacked the PSC report, named Fit for a Better World Roadmap – Accelerating our Economic Potential, and turned it into a bunch of slogans, rather than any meaningful strategy.

The report claims to want to lift primary sector exports by $44 billion in the next decade. In 2019 the sector’s exports hit $46.5b – so the report’s target requires a doubling of current primary sector returns. 

The report is padded with pages of case studies – the likes of Allbirds shoes, First Light Wagyu beef and proponents of regenerative agriculture extolling its virtues. All the while, merging existing plans for spending, already announced, on tree planting and water improvements in the Budget. 

It groups the goals of the action plan under three titles: Productive (changes to what and how we produce food), Sustainable (regenerative agriculture, the Government’s existing emissions targets) and Inclusive (wellbeing, jobs, communities).

However, one can’t help but agree with the view of one commentator who described it as: “long on generalities and light on any real detail”.

When you look for the ‘how’, as in how is this going to happen, it appears the answer is a reliance on the Maori concept of Taiao – in keeping with the Māori natural world – and regenerative agriculture!

Really? That’s where the sector is going to magic up an extra $10 billion per annum in earnings for the next decade?

As for attracting 10,000 people to work in the sector – again, how? There has been little interest from New Zealanders in careers in the sector for the past 30 years – hence its reliance on migrant workers. Now, all of a sudden, the good and great are going to be flocking to jobs milking cows and driving tractors? Yeah, right!

Meanwhile, the report states that NZ should not be a volume producer – and we should stop acting like one. “Selling commodities in undiversified markets is a race to the bottom.”

All this on the back of the latest GDT auction result, which saw prices for the big-volume dairy category, wholemilk powder (an evil commodity), leap by 14%.

Clearly this Fit for a Better World Roadmap is not even fit for the paper it was written on!

More like this

Cunning plan!

OPINION: Leader of the Labour Party and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Chris Hipkins, has formulated a bold strategy to regain power that his rivals won't have predicted.

Full-court press

OPINION: After a testy six years between Labour and farming, followed by a sound trouncing in all the rural electorates in the last election, Labour has been doing a full-court charm offensive, trying to build relationships with the various agri leadership groups – rebuilding bridges burned to the waterline during their term in power, when they and the Greens were extremely antagonistic towards farmers.

Editorial: Building Bridges

OPINION: After Jacinda Ardern and Labour were asked to form the government following the 2017 elections, Federated Farmers sent an email out to its executives asking if any of them had a working relationship with any Labour MPs. The answer was no one did.

Code Red for National?

OPINION: Recently several Labour MPs, including leader Chris Hipkins and deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni spent two days in Waikato with representatives of DairyNZ, Beef+Lamb NZ, Federated Farmers, Groundswell and Rural Women NZ among others.

Featured

New UHT plant construction starts

Construction is underway at Fonterra’s new UHT cream plant at Edendale, Southland following a groundbreaking ceremony recently.

National

Machinery & Products

GEA launches robotic milkers

Milking technology provider GEA Farm Technologies is introducing its first automatic milking system (AMS) in New Zealand.

More front hoppers

German seeding specialists Horsch have announced a new 1600- litre double-tank option that will join its current Partner FT single…

Origin Ag clocks up 20 years

With roots dating back to 2004, Origin Ag was formed as a co-operative business model that removed the traditional distributor,…

» Latest Print Issues Online

The Hound

Dark ages

OPINION: Before we all let The Green Party have at it with their 'bold' emissions reduction plan, the Hound thought…

Rhymes with?

OPINION: The Feds' latest banking survey shows that bankers are even less popular with farmers than they used to be,…

» Connect with Rural News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter