Words Matter -- September 2018

How you say something is just as important as what you’re saying, and sometimes it can even be more important. Your tone and the words you use frame the narrative, subtly bringing the reader to your point of view even as you maintain you’re just impartially relaying the facts.

If you’ve read a major newspaper recently you could be forgiven for thinking New Zealand farmers have a drug problem: we’re addicted to palm kernel, we’re addicted to phosphate and we’re addicted to nitrogen.

 Addicted.  It’s a nasty little word than conjures up images of no self-control and utter reliance.

It’s funny because when I was feeding maize silage as a supplement I wasn’t addicted to corn, pasture makes up 90% of my cow’s annual diet and I’m not addicted to grass and when I graze my cows on oats during winter I’m not addicted to porridge.

A little less than 5% of my cow’s diet is made up of vegetable waste, because that’s what palm kernel is, and I use it for a variety of reasons: it’s significantly cheaper than other supplements by about 5c per kilogram, it’s energy dense and provides a greater milk solids response than silage and there’s almost no waste when I feed it out. Give me a comparable feed, preferably one where I don’t have to closely monitor intakes, and I’ll ditch PK in a heartbeat. That’s how addicted I am.

And why is palm kernel so readily available to me? Because the world is addicted to palm oil: almost every product you use from shampoo to infant formula, from soap to perfume contains palm oil. Next time you’re at the supermarket check the ingredients label, there’s a secret code for palm oil: vegetable oil. That’s right, there’s no requirement for manufacturers to disclose the use of palm oil in their products, which makes it far simpler to yell at farmers who don’t hide behind the euphemism of “vegetable waste”.

Omission is another trick to sway the reader; you’ll hardly ever see the world’s appetite for palm oil mentioned in an article deriding PK. A classic example of omission some months back was a story on our waterways with this frightening sentence: “If every stretch of river in the country deemed unsafe for swimming was linked into one long chain, it would be 14,000km long”. While that may be true, the author omitted to mention we have over 175,000km of rivers, but 92% unpolluted doesn’t have quite the same dramatic ring.

I’m not for a minute suggesting these issues shouldn’t be discussed and our shortcomings held up for inspection, we need to reflect on our practices and sunlight is a great disinfectant.

However when I read several hundred words in a major paper about nitrate levels in Hinds, Mid Canterbury, and see the author has interviewed only Dr Mike Joy and a recreational fisherman I do begin to wonder.

And when I read further and see no mention of ECan, no mention of farm environment plans or nitrogen baselines I begin to get suspicious.

And when I reach the end of the article and see the author seems unaware of the Hinds Managed Aquifer Recharge Scheme, the scheme that reduced groundwater nitrate levels by 75% in 6 months, I have to conclude that his bias is showing.

As the saying goes, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you!

The Effects Of M. Bovis -- August 2018

The effects of mycoplasma bovis continue to ripple through communities, making itself felt far beyond the farm gates of the unfortunate few whose herds have tested positive. These people quite rightly attract the bulk of the media attention for, through no fault of their own, they are facing huge stress levels, devastating stock losses and an uncertain financial future.

One of the side effects of M. bovis is that here in the South Island 4-day old Friesian calf prices have taken a tumble. Calf buyers have backed out of the market, their reluctance to rear calves this season fuelled by a number of factors: fewer contracts available for 100kg calves, milk powder is expensive, cheap penicillin milk is off limits and there is the fear that the person you buy from could test positive for the disease.

Calf club days and fund raisers, community events and the life blood of some clubs, have been cancelled up and down the country. Some smaller ventures like the one run by Mid Canterbury Rugby Union have found a way to go ahead, ensuring the annual injection of some $25,000 into junior rugby continues. Larger ones however, like that run by IHC, have been put on hold at a cost of well over a million dollars to the organisation.

I had the opportunity to speak to the IHC Calf Scheme organisers before they made their decision public and was blown away by their compassion, decency and sheer desire to do the right thing. During that conversation I kept focusing on the money they were missing out on, but that never factored into their decision to suspend the event this season. Farmers, they reasoned, had been backing them for 30 years now and it was only right that IHC did what they could to protect the industry that had shown them unwavering support for so long. Yes it was a big financial blow, but a bigger blow would be to facilitate the spread of the disease.

I tweeted about IHC’s decision and said I’d still rear the two calves I’d pledged and donate the proceeds, urging other farmers to do the same. The response from the farming community was universally positive with some continuing to rear calves and others pledging a “virtual calf”, a $300 donation.

It wasn’t just the farming community that was moved by IHC’s selfless call, North Island teacher Jacky Braid saw my tweet and resolved that twitter should pitch in and help, so she set up a bank account and a goal of buying a virtual calf and asked for donations.

With the first virtual calf easily bought Jacky kept the ball rolling and donations poured in from Kiwis all over the world. Soon she had her second, third, fourth and fifth virtual calves.

She didn’t stop though and set her sights on seven virtual calves, a total of $2100 for IHC, and she fittingly reached that goal on her birthday (which also happens to be mine).

I like to think that with support like this the financial impact of IHC’s decision will be negligible and maybe, just maybe, that urban/rural divide isn’t quite as big as I thought it was.

Industrial Farming -- July 2018

Greenpeace have been running a series of TV advertisements lately in which they oppose the development of land in the McKenzie Basin for dairying. It’s dystopian, dramatically shot in black and white and it pisses me off every time I see it.

It doesn’t annoy me because of their opposition, after all a fair chunk of dairy farmers find themselves in agreement with Greenpeace on this issue, even Fonterra have said they’d rather the conversion didn’t go ahead. As an aside, Fonterra are legally obliged to pick up the milk from these new farms because of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act, despite their market share in the South Island dipping below 80% some years ago. Maybe that’s a topic for another column.

No, the advertisement irritates with its use of the phrase “industrial farming”, a term that is never defined yet seems to have found its way into almost every discussion about dairy farming in New Zealand. I personally think its disingenuous and lazy language unsuitable for describing New Zealand’s pastoral dairying, but I was curious to see what Twitter thought.

“I move”, I tweeted, “the term ‘industrial farming’ be struck from use until the people using it can provide a clear, concise definition. It’s hyperbole, pure and simple.”

The response was immediate. “I move”, replied Amanda, the less funny half of the comedy duo The Fan Brigade, “the term ‘DairyMan’ be struck from use indefinitely.”

The other responses I got ranged from Wikipedia definitions (high density farming in sheds or feedlots) to outright pearl clutching (the practice of farming where the operator is not entirely contained within its boundaries and can no longer be run solely by one or two people).

No two people could agree on a definition and the replies were characterised by a worrying lack of knowledge about how we actually farm. Irrigation was a common theme despite most dairy farms in New Zealand not being irrigated, as was scale. When I asked if a one hundred cow farm stocked at 5 cows per hectare was more or less industrial than a thousand cow farm stocked at 3 cows per hectare I didn’t receive a single reply.

Megan Hands, a Canterbury based consultant, chimed in with some facts and figures that were met with disbelief. People simply couldn’t accept that the average stocking rate in this country is 2.9 cows/ha.

The replies came in for several days, it transpires the terms industrial farming and factory farming have been used to great effect in the USA to demonise the agricultural sector there and it saddens me to see it being so eagerly adopted here.

I know Greenpeace saw my tweet, they liked several of the more negative replies I received, but they didn’t see fit to provide their own definition. As farmers all we can do is engage politely and try to educate others while understanding where they’re coming from, but it’s getting harder by the day.