Burn the village
OPINION: There's an infamous term coined by a US general during the Vietnam war, specifically in reference to the battle of Ben Tre: "We had to burn the village to save it."
OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.
She fears it could be ‘working’, which is against the law.
This must rank as one of the most stupid, incomprehensible utterances of a Minister of the Crown in decades.
Kids love collecting eggs, feeding their pet lambs and rearing calves for school calf days.
This gets them away from screens, they see real life and have fun.
This mutt can hardly imagine what her parliamentary colleagues who have a rural background think.
Surely the focus should be on less trivial things like getting the economy right, hospital waiting lists down and finding more rural doctors!
OPINION: The past few weeks have been tough on farms across the North Island: floods and storms have caused damage and disruption to families and businesses.
European dairy giant Arla Foods celebrated its 25th anniversary as a cross-border, farmer-owned co-operative with a solid half-year result.
The sale of Fonterra’s global consumer and related businesses is expected to be completed within two months.
Fonterra is boosting its butter production capacity to meet growing demand.
For the most part, dairy farmers in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Tairawhiti and the Manawatu appear to have not been too badly affected by recent storms across the upper North Island.
South Island dairy production is up on last year despite an unusually wet, dull and stormy summer, says DairyNZ lower South Island regional manager Jared Stockman.