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Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
OPINION: No one can doubt the great job that Dr Ashley Bloomfield has done in protecting New Zealanders from COVID-19.
It hasn’t been perfect, but we are one of the luckiest countries in the world thanks to him and his team.
However, in the last few weeks, some cracks have appeared with all sorts of problems in the isolation facilities and the disconnect between the politicians’ expectations and what the Ministry of Health and the others managing the isolation facilities have been doing. The ministry is great when it comes to straight health but is woefully out its depth when it comes to managing things out in the field.
The classic example is their dealing with Auckland’s latest lockdown. It has been an unmitigated shambles of the highest order. Dad’s Army would have done a much better job! Farmers and a whole range of people who work in the rural area around the border of the super city are rightly frustrated, enraged, dumbstruck and in a state of despair at the incompetence of the MoH’s management of the border.
In Auckland it seems a trip to Waiheke Island was okay – no penalty, just the usual slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. But trying to look after your calves or other stock, get a vet to sick animals or move your produce to other parts of the country was taboo. The penalty for trying to do your job – a five hour wait in a queue.
The inconvenience inflicted on the rural sector in Auckland at the border checkpoints was unforgivable. Yet Dr Bloomfield and the PM at the daily Jacinda/Ashley pantomime proclaimed that the exemptions were being processed quickly. Really? So, a farmer who calls a vet has to wait for five days until the vet gets permission to travel! Excuse us, but by the time he arrives the animal will likely be “dead, buried and cremated” – to pinch a phrase coined by former Australia Prime Minister, Tony Abbot.
It seems that agriculture – let’s call it food production – is not a priority for the MoH or the politicians running the COVID campaign. One feels for Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor and MPI who seem to be bystanders in this whole fiasco.
MoH policy wonks are not experts in supply chain and food production. Come on Ashley – take the advice from MPI and the rural community and get it right. Aren’t we all in this together and wasn’t agriculture supposed to lead the economic recovery?
OPINION: Welcome to the second annual NZ Dairy Expo at Matamata – an event created to bring together the best of the New Zealand dairy industry in a focused, grassroots environment where dairy farmers and rural professionals can meet, talk, compare products, and make smart decisions for their farms.
It's a bloody tough year for sheep farmers, but the worst may be over, and the future looks optimistic.
One of the country’s two largest supermarket chains is reporting that for the first time since the disruption of Covid, they have largely full supply on almost all fruit and vegetables grown locally.
Covid-19 took global shipping rates to mind boggling highs, but over the subsequent 12-15 months they returned to more sustainable levels. Fast forward to July 2024 and rates have nearly doubled over three months.
Horticulture New Zealand (HortNZ) chief executive Nadine Tunley says the industry-good body’s support for growers has proven to be multifaceted.
Among the regular exhibitors at last month’s South Island Agricultural Field Days, the one that arguably takes the most intensive preparation every time is the PGG Wrightson Seeds site.
Two high producing Canterbury dairy farmers are moving to blended stockfeed supplements fed in-shed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to boost protein levels, which they can’t achieve through pasture under the region’s nitrogen limit of 190kg/ha.
Buoyed by strong forecasts for milk prices and a renewed demand for dairy assets, the South Island rural real estate market has begun the year with positive momentum, according to Colliers.
The six young cattle breeders participating in the inaugural Holstein Friesian NZ young breeder development programme have completed their first event of the year.
New Zealand feed producers are being encouraged to boost staff training to maintain efficiency and product quality.
OPINION: The world is bracing for a trade war between the two biggest economies.
OPINION: In the same way that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, economists sometimes get it right.
OPINION: The proposed RMA reforms took a while to drop but were well signaled after the election.
