Editorial: Sense at last
OPINION: For the first time in many years, a commonsense approach is emerging to balance environmental issues with the need for the nation's primary producers to be able to operate effectively.
Interesting, you might say, since many of them are shareholders in the two farmer cooperatives in the spotlight
This ‘meatwave’ is fuelled by a group of farmers calling themselves the Meat Industry Excellence group or MIE. Their campaign is based on the word change – a familiar politically charged word. In their view, the meat industry ‘needs to change’ and it probably does have to.
Ideas on what should be done have been floated for years. However, as always the devil will be in the detail. Just how the ‘yes’ votes at meetings up and down the country translates into serious support and agreement at crunch time remains to be seen.
There is also the question about the status of MIE and what makes a group of unhappy farmers especially qualified to lead any change. But give them their due: they are trying and who knows they may succeed where others have failed.
However, it could be argued the ‘meatwave’ is a manifestation of a wider and bigger problem in the overall the primary sector – a lack of high level leadership. The primary sector is a bit like a company with about a dozen good second-tier managers and no chief executive. No one is standing up and staking a claim to lead the primary sector from the front. Everyone is too busy in their own little silos – doing in most cases a very good job.
Someone needs to step up and take a high-level overview, then grab the sector by the scruff of the neck and shake some unity, common sense and above all dynamic leadership into it.
Until that happens, meatwaves, woolwaves, milkwaves, etc, will come and go and nothing will change.
