Fonterra Finds An Ally -- December 2019

I recently found myself in a pub with a group of people I’d only just met, and for reasons that still remain unclear found myself waxing lyrical about the myriad shortcomings of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA). I was as eloquent and convincing as only a man on his fifth pint can be, and when I finally paused for breath to consider whether I’d missed any crucial points, the woman next to me fixed me with a cool stare and asked “Is that your opinion or Fonterra’s?”

Less than a week later I was online watching DIRA submissions to the Primary Production Select Committee and saw National MP Amy Adams ask Federated Farmer’s Dairy Chair Chris Lewis almost exactly the same question. Why, Adams wanted to know, should the Select Committee take any notice of a Federated Farmers submission. “I’m just trying to understand,” Adams said, “how you ensure that it isn’t effectively the Fonterra Shareholders’ Council by another name.”
Was Lewis voicing Fed’s opinion or that of the Fonterra Shareholders’ Council’s?

Therein lies the problem for the Committee of MPs, how do they cut through the obviously self-serving nature of every submission and arrive at the decision of what’s best?

Fonterra, their Shareholders’ Council and Federated Farmers all spoke strongly in support of amending the legislation and, among other things, halting the subsidisation of new competition. Competition can set up shop in New Zealand, they said, but make them compete on a level playing field and stop making Fonterra, a co-operative, subsidise it.

While I fully support their submission and truly believe it’s in the best interests of farmers, the industry and the country, there’s no escaping the fact it’s also what’s best for Fonterra. The importance of changing this legislation was clear when both Fonterra’s CEO Miles Hurrell and Chair John Monaghan turned up and pushed the Co-op’s case to the committee.

The other processors and their advocates put forward arguments as to why DIRA should be retained as is, and it was pretty hard to watch: Goodman Fielder believe they shouldn’t have to pay a nominal fee to Fonterra for piggy backing off Fonterra’s supply chain, even though they have had 18 years to set up their own. Miraka voiced a complaint that is shared by most independent processors; that Fonterra pays farmers too much and uses this as a tactic to squeeze the competition. As Fonterra now has 10 competitors and their market share has dramatically decreased since the legislation was first passed, this isn’t a compelling argument, and under questioning Miraka admitted that they actually pay their suppliers more than Fonterra does.

Open Country Dairy, who is in the middle of a High Court battle with the Commerce Commission over milk price calculations, made the bold move of opening their submission by insulting the Select Committee chair. Even veteran Fonterra critic Peter Fraser, an ex-economist, failed to make any convincing arguments for the retention of DIRA.

The problem the independent processors all faced is they were arguing for legislation that clearly hamstrings Fonterra and the only beneficiaries are themselves, and it’s difficult to come across as the underdog when that’s all you’ve got. Given the lacklustre arguments from those who submitted in favour of retaining DIRA unchanged, it’s little wonder that Synlait, who have recently won the South Island contract for fresh milk supply from Goodman Fielder, decided not to front. Writing a submission is one thing but defending it in the face of tough questioning is another.

Things got better when actual farmers spoke; Don and Jess Moore were passionate about improving their farm and aspired to supply Fonterra when they could afford shares. They were passionate advocates of the cooperative model and, like so many other farmers who submitted, firmly believed that Fonterra keeps the independents honest. Fonterra is required to pay the maximum sustainable milk price; private companies by their very nature want to keep the cost of their raw product as low as possible.

Leighton Pye, a large scale vegetable grower and dairy farmer in the South Island, told a cautionary tale of how vegetable growers are paid for carrots and potatoes; the processors calculate the grower’s costs and pitch their price just high enough to ensure a 5% margin. This, he warned, was the future for New Zealand farmers should the cooperative model be replaced with private companies.

The Select Committee hearings showed two clear sides to the DIRA debate -- on the side arguing for reform were Fonterra and farmers, even farmers who supplied other processors, and on the other side were the independent processors who want to maintain the status quo. What this discussion needed was a submitter with either interests that encompassed the whole industry or no vested interests at all. At the eleventh hour that submitter came forward in the form of the Dairy Worker’s Union (DWU).

The DWU view the debate from a unique position as they have relationships with all the processors and their interest is in the wellbeing of the workforce. The DWU want what’s best for their members in terms of pay, benefits and health and safety. During their submission it became clear that Fonterra sets the standard for worker conditions. While the number of jobs in the industry may remain static as the milk flows from one processor to another, the DWU reminded the Select Committee that not all jobs are created equal. “We have a huge fear from our members inside Fonterra at the moment that they are seeing direct loss of roles while just down the road more and more operations are establishing who aren’t meeting industry standards.”

The DWU didn’t hold back when it came to naming names: “Fonterra is required to set and pay the milk price, and you have competitors such as Open Country that do not meet the industry standards, do not pay the appropriate wages to workers, and I could go into the health and safety record of the Talley’s family, but I won’t.”

It wasn’t just worker’s rights, the DWU obviously shared my concerns with Fonterra being required to supply milk at cost to new competitors and said: “It is hard to imagine, apart from trying to hamstring your opponent, why you would predicate a business case on three years’ worth of supply. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

To have one of the country’s biggest unions and one of the Labour Party’s biggest donors speak so strongly in support of Fonterra’s submission, and to publicly hold Fonterra up as the company that sets the standard for working conditions, is huge. I would like to think it’s a game changer, but sadly that’s not how this game is played.

Compelling evidence, facts and logical arguments are only enough to win you some concessions, but politics will always have the final say.

I hope Fonterra’s Board aren’t expecting to get everything they wanted; they’ll get some changes, their team has fought hard and deserve them, but there’s a long way to go and there will be another review before DIRA is consigned to its rightful place in the history books.

I Thought I Knew My Pork, The Country -- December 2019

I thought I knew a lot about pork: I know it’s a red meat, I know how to get perfect crackling on a pork roast and I know the destruction of three barbecues due to fat induced conflagration mean I should never be trusted with a pork chop again.

I’ve bought pork from a butcher, I’ve raised my own pork and I’ve eaten wild pork. I’ve had so much pork delivered to my house in a single day I seriously thought I’d need to buy a third freezer. I know my pork, or at least I thought I did.

I recently walked into a restaurant in Austin, Texas, and ordered a pork chop. It’s a meal I don’t cook often due to the high risk of catastrophic barbecue loss and it was a dish where I felt confident I knew what I’d be getting: a large pale slab of firm meat, possibly slightly greasy but delicious and filling.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, what appeared before me was definitely delicious and filling, but it was so dark I thought they’d mistakenly served me beef.  My waiter told me I was eating free-range Mangalitsa, a Hungarian breed of pig with a thick woolly coat like a sheep and marbled muscles like wagyu cattle. The meat quite simply dissolved in my mouth with a burst of flavour and just a hint of smoke from the oak fired grill it had been cooked on.

That single pork chop was so indelibly seared into my memory that on my return home I contacted Naya Brangenberg who, along with her partner Jeremy Wilhelm, has spent 10 years breeding free-range Duroc pigs on their Wairarapa farm, Longbush Pork. Naya gently broke the news to me that Mangalitsa genetics weren’t available in New Zealand and probably never would be, but she spoke with such passion about her Duroc, Hampshire and Large Black pigs that I felt I had to try some.

Since it was clear from my Austin experience that I knew far less about pork than I originally thought, and having been paralysed by the range on offer through their online retailer Woody’s Farm, I gave Naya my budget and asked her to make the selection for me.

Two days later I was excited to open the refrigerated box the courier had dropped off, and the first thing that struck me was the deep rosy pink hue of the meat, these pigs had obviously been getting a healthy dose of iron from rooting in the soil. The second thing I noticed was the heft of the cuts; the chops were thickly cut but felt way heavier than they had any right to. I’ve watched enough of Jeremy’s (@Longbushpork) videos online to know the pigs are well exercised and appear very happy. The density of the chops was testament to their free-range life.

Finally I noticed that Naya must have cheerfully ignored my budgetary constraints because not only did the pack contain four loin chops and four shoulder chops, but also two racks of competition St.  Louis-style pork ribs. Unlike spare ribs, St. Louis-style is basically the middle of the pig, the pork belly stays attached which makes it a very meaty but expensive cut in New Zealand: the belly is generally worth far more to the butcher as bacon than left attached to ribs. To get St. Louis-style you often have to buy imported pork, usually from Canada or Spain, and while I’m all for consumer choice and keeping prices down you have to weigh that up against the much lower animal welfare standards Spanish producers are required to adhere to.

I set the ribs aside because I was nervous about tackling such a majestic cut and told Naya I was going to cook the pork chops first. Nice, she replied, what brine recipe are you going to use?

Brine!? I had never brined anything in my life but the link Naya shared with me claimed it was the secret to juicy and tender pork chops, so into a tub of salt water and rosemary leaves they went for a relaxing overnight bath.

Given my propensity for destroying barbecues with pork chops I decided to cook these ones over charcoal. Not only was it a prudent safety measure, it also allowed me to tweet that I was cooking over charcoal made from sustainably harvested organic heritage apple wood, in reality I’d picked up a couple of dead branches from the orchard.

There’s no point comparing the Duroc to the Mangalitsa, they’re bred to produce vastly different types of meat, but those Longbush pork chops were the best I have ever cooked: meaty and flavoursome, tender and juicy, big and bold. Far better than anything I’ve bought from a supermarket and better than any pork I’ve raised myself. I brined some of my own chops a little later and cooked them the same way; it was a vast improvement over my normal scorched earth method but still didn’t elevate them to the level of those Duroc chops.

YouTube was my saviour when it came to cooking the ribs; the process was almost as much fun as eating them. I broke out some of the rubs I’d brought back from Texas and liberally coated both racks before placing them in my home built smoker for a couple of hours. Then I wrapped them in tinfoil with brown sugar and half a block of butter each and a liberal application of espresso barbecue sauce from Franklin’s in Austin. Back into the smoker they went for another hour before being unwrapped and cooked some more to allow the glaze to set.

I don’t know what to tell you except those ribs have ruined my sons and me for all other ribs. They were so meaty they did us for dinner that night and lunch the next day and induced a request to buy more before the boys head back to university.

With Christmas just around the corner and free-range hams available on the Woody’s Farm website, I strongly suspect that a Longbush ham may turn my family against all other hams, but it’s a risk I’m happily willing to take.

National and Freshwater -- November 2019

I was less than enthusiastic at the thought of attending National MP Todd Muller’s water meeting in Ashburton last month. This wasn’t through any fault of Muller, National’s spokesperson for agriculture, but rather his party’s approach to the raft of challenges farmers are currently facing.

National’s proxies have been advocating for public protest both openly on social media and behind closed doors with industry groups. Protest was a disaster for farmers at the last election and, no matter how good it may have been for the National Party, I still don’t see it as a constructive or useful tool.

Another reason for my antipathy was the recent policy announcement coming from the National Party leaders; the dog whistling has been so loud my Labradors are in a constant state of confusion. Even if there was evidence unvaccinated children of solo mums had caused the measles outbreak in Auckland, and there isn’t, cutting the benefits of those parents still wouldn’t have prevented it.

Of course dog whistle politics isn’t confined to the Nats, at the last election Labour plumbed new depths with their “Chinese-sounding names” housing attack and immigration policies across the spectrum seemed to be a race to see who could be most xenophobic (the Greens, to their credit, pulled out of that race and Labour won by a nose).

I did attend the meeting though. The fact that Muller had drawn a line in the sand and committed to ending DIRA played almost as big a part in my decision to go as the message from a twitter friend saying they’d be there and were looking forward to meeting me.

I’m glad I went. I was expecting a partisan call to arms and an exhortation to drive my tractor to Parliament in protest at the oncoming new regulations. Instead I got reason, pragmatism and encouragement to respectfully engage with the process.

It was obvious Muller had been giving it his all, fresh off a North Island tour he was in Ashburton after speaking in Timaru earlier in the day and Oxford the day before. Barely able to speak above a hoarse whisper he regularly sipped from a glass of water, joking at one point that it was a delicious 2.5% nitrate. I couldn’t imagine David Parker getting away with a comment like that, let alone getting a laugh from the 70 or so people that had come to hear him speak.

The meeting wasn’t strictly about water, it was meant to address the many issues facing rural New Zealand today, but if a politician is going to address a crowd of Mid-Canterbury farmers there’s little doubt it will become a meeting about water.

Muller set the scene by harking back to Helen Clark’s statement some 20 years ago that agriculture was a sunset industry and built on this theme the idea that the current Labour Government does not like farming and want to see it gone. Whether that’s accurate or not, it was an idea the crowd was receptive to.

He lamented that the progress made by farmers had not been acknowledged and congratulated the room on the way farmers around the country had engaged on the proposed freshwater regulations in a respectful and informed manner. This, he said, was the way forward; engaging with facts and science, not pitchforks. Leaning in, he called it.

My friend and I looked at each other when he said this because this was astounding. This is a radical departure from what I had been seeing in public until very recently and it is a philosophy that I could get behind.

National, Muller said, would not be put in a position where they oppose the freshwater proposals simply because of their economic impact. This would be just as wrong as the situation we currently find ourselves in where targets are being set with no regard for their social OR economic consequences. A balanced solution must be found that takes everything into account.

He’s right of course, I just hadn’t heard National say it out loud until now. ECan currently have a nitrate target of 6.9mg/litre, and shifting that target to 1mg has a diminishing positive effect on the environment while the economic and social costs increase exponentially and potentially catastrophically.

I’ve said before that farmers just want to be left alone, but barring that we want certainty which is why a bipartisan agreement on water policy must be reached. I’m very glad to see National are taking this approach and are there fighting for the economic and mental wellbeing of farming communities.

I look forward to seeing them apply this approach to all communities.

Texas Barbecue, The Country -- November 2019

If you’re ever in Texas you owe it to yourself and your taste buds to try Texas barbecue, this isn’t Kiwi style barbecue, there’s no gas and no hotplate, this is charcoal, mesquite, smoke and hours and hours of cook time.

There’s a whole culture attached to Texan barbecue; it’s about friends and family coming together, welcoming people into your home and taking the time to get to know what’s happening in people’s lives, it’s about friendship and community.

The most well-known barbecue place in Austin is Franklin’s, established in 2009, Franklin’s have sold out of brisket every single day since they opened.  While they’re famous for brisket and ribs, they’re more famous for their queue; think Queenstown’s Fergburger on steroids.

By happy coincidence my accommodation was only a 5-minute walk from Franklin’s, so I arrived at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning, half an hour after they opened, and joined the line. As we waited and shuffled forward I eavesdropped on my neighbours; the family in front of me were excitedly deciding how many pounds of brisket and how many sausages they would buy and fretting over whether the ribs would be sold out before they reached the counter. The two young men behind me were in an earnest and highly technical discussion about the dimensions of their RV’s cooler which, they finally concluded, would hold 3 pounds of brisket.

By the time I reached the counter I was relieved the ribs hadn’t sold out so I added a pound of them to my original order of a pound of brisket and 2 sausages. It was then I learned a valuable barbecue lesson: just because they sell it by the pound doesn’t mean you have to buy it by the pound.

Everything was delicious, as you’d expect. The pork ribs had a nice hit with their spice rub, the sausages were dense and heavy with just a hint of smokiness and the brisket was amazingly succulent and tender. All the meat stood alone without the need of additional flavour, but I helped myself to their famous coffee infused barbecue sauce just the same.

Was it worth the $60? I don’t think you’re paying for just the meal; you’re paying for the whole experience. I walked past a few days later and there were over 200 people waiting their turn. They had lawn chairs and chilly bins, umbrellas and sunhats. Kids were running in and out of the line and everyone was thrilled to be part of the experience. I know the British like to queue, but this was the first time I’d ever seen standing in line elevated to entertainment.

The day before I left Austin I went to a totally different barbecue joint, and only then because the one I’d set my sights on was closed on Mondays. As I walked further east into an area where gentrification only just had a toehold, past colourful murals of local African American heroes, I came across a weatherboard building with peeling white paint and a faded Pepsi sign on a precarious lean bearing the legend “Sam’s BBQ”.

I joked that it looked sketchy, but as soon as I stepped through the door I was in love; the walls were covered in photos of long past local events, there were booths with sagging vinyl benches and a pedestal wash basin next to the counter for the very necessary post-barbecue ablutions. Above all I loved it because it was welcoming, it felt comfortable and friendly.

I was greeted warmly by a tall, rangy African American gentleman in his late 60’s. His wide smile was full of gaps and when I asked him what was good he laughed like I had made the best joke in the world. Everything at Sam’s is good, he told me. Having learned my lesson from earlier barbecue experiences I opted for a mixed plate which let me choose two sides and two meats. The sign out front proclaimed that Sam’s sold Austin’s best hot sausage, so how could I resist? I rounded the order off with mutton and potato salad and green beans as sides. You should always get the potato salad, it’s unlike anything I’ve tried before, cold mashed potato with a creamy consistency and bursting with flavour.

The sausage was excellent, and the mutton was all I could have asked for -- a rich, deep flavour and not at all greasy or fatty which is no mean feat when you’re cooking mutton flaps. For the first time in my life I enjoyed green beans, I don’t know what he did to them but they were crisp and delicious.

It wasn’t until later when I was sent a news article about Sam’s that I realised the man who served me was David Mays.  His family bought Sam’s BBQ in 1976, and every morning Mays now struggles with the dilemma of whether to keep serving barbecue to the community he loves or takes the five million dollars developers have offered him so they can build apartments where his building now stands.

Of the barbecue places I tried in Austin; Franklin’s, The Salt Lick, Stubb’s – it’s Sam’s to which I’d return. Honest, delicious and with such a deep sense of history and genuine warmth that I didn’t want to leave.

While Sam’s was my favourite barbecue shop in Texas it wasn’t the most memorable experience.
Katy Kemp, a twitter friend, invited me to visit her family ranch: Kemp Angus Farm.

I knew I was going for lunch and a farm tour, but I was expecting maybe some sandwiches and a coffee. Katy’s father and her brother Kurt had prepared a home grown Angus chuck roast in the smoker they’d built out of an old propane tank, a truly impressive wheeled contraption that could be towed anywhere you felt the need.

Oh Lord! The smoke ring on that roast was perfect, the meat was tender and juicy and the famous Kreuz sausage was thick and dense and absolutely did not need the mustard that Kurt liberally applied to his plate. The delicious meat was served with a corn bake and stem to tip roast carrot, and I sipped my iced tea while listening to Mr Kemp talk about the trials of farming in Texas. Lunch was topped off with Bluebell ice cream, another Texas institution, and followed with a guided tour of the Angus stud.

At the end of the day, no matter how good a barbecue place is, nothing beats being welcomed into a person’s home and sitting down to a home cooked meal. I hope to return the favour one day

Time To Effect Meaningful Change -- October 2019

Bashing Fonterra in the media is so prevalent it’s almost a national pastime; farmer shareholders keen to share that phone call they got from the chairman, commentators sticking the boot in at the behest of their dairy processor clients and any politician looking for some airtime will happily have a crack.

If the payout is low it’s due to the incompetence of directors and management, if the payout is high it’s because Fonterra is screwing the scrum and forcing their competitors to pay more for milk than it’s worth.

While there are legitimate criticisms to be levelled at the Co-op, and they’re not above scoring own goals in that department, it’s so easy that writing a column panning them is almost lazy. I make no secret that I’m a fan of Fonterra’s new direction; the honesty that is largely on display at shareholder meetings, the way they now engage with the government instead of the ‘Fortress Fonterra’ mentality of old and their willingness to show leadership and vision in areas that affect their farmers.

When this newfound engagement and sense of purpose draws praise, who ever thought we’d see headlines from a Green MP commending Fonterra for their leadership, it also draws a barrage of criticism: bloody Fonterra is cosying up to the Government!

An agricultural journalist recently tweeted that Tatua “… will pay out $8.50, $2.15 more than Fonterra”. While I’m a huge Tatua fan and am happy to celebrate their success, that sort of linear and uncritical comparison is pretty unhelpful.

“Imagine,” I replied, “if Tatua had the same regulatory constraints as Fonterra and had to accept milk from everyone who wanted to supply them.” Unfortunately it seemed the journalist couldn’t imagine this scenario and the point I was making was somewhat lost on him.

I think the point has been lost on a lot of people, with all the noise about fresh water and emissions and Zero Carbon, the fact there is a very important issue under consideration by parliament at this very moment has slipped under the radar.

The continuation of the Dairy Industry restructuring Act (DIRA) in its current form runs the very real risk seeing New Zealand with too much milk processing capacity. Fonterra is obligated to supply new processors with at-cost raw milk, essentially subsidising the competition and allowing them to enter the market with almost no risk. This subsidised supply doesn’t benefit domestic consumers; the processed product is shipped offshore along with the profits.

In the face of a static or declining milk pool, excess processing capacity can only lead to one thing: plant closures like those we are seeing across the Tasman.

I don’t understand the reticence of successive governments to radically reform DIRA; after nine years in power and a bit of tinkering, National have finally promised to repeal DIRA. They did this after realising that Labour were more proactive with deregulation than they had ever been, but that doesn’t do us any good while they’re in opposition.

The Greens should support the wholesale reform of DIRA; it has had the unintended consequence of being the single biggest factor in driving land use to dairy by compelling Fonterra to take all of the new milk. Labour should support the reform of DIRA if only  because Fonterra has a highly unionised and happy workforce whom they look after very well, and a strong Fonterra means a strong dairy worker’s union. Of all the parties New Zealand First should be leading the charge, subsidised foreign companies coming into New Zealand and exporting the profits is anathema to them.

Legend has it that Shane Jones once quipped every time he attacked Fonterra he went up in the polls, and he’s not the only politician to have had a crack in recent times. It’s time for the politicians to take a serious look at what’s holding Fonterra back and do something about it.

Taking action is not as easy as snide remarks and soundbites, but it’s their job, they can effect meaningful change and it’s time they did.

My Nemesis, The Country -- October 2019

Roast beef has always been my nemesis; no matter how hard I tried it was either overcooked and chewy or an undercooked lump mocking me from its bed of crispy roasted potatoes.

Not for me the perfectly pink, tender slices of succulent goodness that the online recipes promised, my roasts of beef were garnished with sadness and regret and served with a side of wistful unfulfilled promise.

This was the case until one day a few years back I was watching a TV show where the host visited people’s houses and had dinner with them, and after he’d had dinner with them he cooked the meal they had served but he did it better. On this day it was roast beef and I watched intently. Reader, I even took notes.

The trick, he said, was a meat probe. A thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the roast, a device without which most roast beef is doomed to abject failure. A scenario with which I was all too familiar.

I rushed out and bought one. I defrosted a bolar roast, I pierced it and poked bits of garlic and rosemary inside, I massaged it with oil, I seared it, I preheated my oven and I inserted my meat probe. When the probe told me we had hit perfection I removed the roast and let it rest, it had been quite a journey and the poor thing deserved a wee lie down before the moment of truth.

Then I cut into it and OH LORDY! Faultlessly medium-rare! Instagramable af.

I instantly tweeted that I had finally mastered the dark art of roasting beef, part science and part black magic, I was finally in the club.

“Oh,” replied Trudi Bennett in the truly annoying way that only Trudi can, “I do mine in the crockpot. Never fails, perfect every time.”

What the actual what!? You can’t cook roast beef in a crockpot, it’s an abomination. It’ll never work, it’ll be horrible. Of course I had to try it.

The recipe is so simple it makes me cry. You take your crockpot, you empty a sachet of onion soup into the bottom and place your roast beef on top. Then you smear some cranberry jelly on top of the beef, put the lid on and set it on low for 9 hours. That’s it. Seriously. I weep.

Somehow when you lift the lid the meat has miraculously browned, it smells distractingly delicious while it rests and you make gravy from the large amount of liquid that has accumulated in the pot. Trudi just stirs in the onion soup, but I add butter and flour to thicken my gravy because I’m fancy like that. The meat is pink and tender, slightly sweet from the cranberry. I’ve taken to adding garlic as well, but the beauty of the original recipe is its simplicity.

If you’re on Twitter you should check Trudi out on @WardrobeFlair, she’s a personal stylist and fashion blogger, she may be annoying but she knows her way around a crockpot.

Water, Protest and Engaging with the Process -- September 2019

The Ministry for the Environment is holding a series of meetings around the country as part of their consultation process for the discussion document Action for Healthy Waterways.

Once the consultation has finished and all the submissions have been summarised, the Ministry will pass their advice on to Cabinet who will then issue a National Policy Statement for Freshwater.

That’s it. There’s no select committee hearing and no need for a law change, the NPS will provide direction to regional and district councils as to how they should carry out their responsibilities under the Resource Management Act.

Realising I needed to learn a lot more about the proposals I attended the Ashburton meeting along with some three hundred other concerned locals, and I’m very glad I did because I learned a lot. Not from the officials giving the presentation, as you might expect, but from the well informed members of the audience.

From people like Ian McKenzie and Colin Glass I learned that the current NPS nitrate target of 6.9mg/litre represents a reduction of roughly one third for Canterbury, and setting a new target of 1mg/l DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen, which includes nitrate, nitrite and ammonium) is physically impossible if you want to continue farming.

I learned that the science behind the 1mg DIN target hasn’t been made public; I learned that the economic impact of trying to reach that target hadn’t been modelled, and I learned that the inclusion of that target had not been warmly welcomed by the Freshwater Leader’s Group.

Getting any kind of useful information from the panel was a frustrating endeavour: one person asked if Canterbury’s 3,000-odd kilometres of stock water races would be treated as rivers and therefore subject to a 5m fencing setback. The answer was “I don’t know.”
An industry representative stood up and, citing the definition of a river, said they would indeed be subject to the setback. I tweeted his opinion and was contacted the next day by a freshwater scientist who contradicted this assessment.

Getting information from the people who wrote the proposal shouldn’t be this difficult.

Above all I learned that farmers are annoyed. The crowd were polite and respectful but the underlying tension in the room was palpable. Freshwater, agricultural emissions, reducing waste, hazardous substance assessment and more are all happening at once, it’s little wonder that calls for farmer protest have been growing on social media. As one lady in the audience put it, “when is it time to start acting like the French?”

The obvious answer is never, it’s never time to act like the French.

People fondly recall Shane Ardern driving his tractor up the steps of Parliament in 2003 to defeat the proposed “Fart Tax”, and ask why we’re not doing it again. Apart from the security bollards and the high likelihood of the tractor falling through Parliament’s forecourt into the new subterranean carpark, there’s the small issue that the protest didn’t actually work. Sure farmers weren’t asked to pay for emissions research via taxation, but our industry bodies agreed to pay for it via levies instead, with the government reserving the right to reconsider the tax should payments ever stop.

Protest is most successful when you’ve got something the Government wants, which is why teachers and other unionised bodies protest and go on strike when Labour are in power, they know the Government is scared of losing their votes. A successful farmer protest would be one that happened when National are in power, Labour don’t have the rural vote and aren’t scared of losing it.

Protest can be harmful too, just look at the disastrous water protest in Morrinsville leading up to the 2017 election. I don’t know who organised it but they should be ashamed, it was pure muppetry in motion.

The protest drove a wedge deeper into the urban/rural divide and lifted Labour’s urban vote. NZ First got an easy win when they used the policy as a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations, and Labour were more than happy to drop the proposal because they knew charging for water was buying a war over water ownership that they weren’t prepared to fight.

Farmers were the losers from that fiasco, painted as greedy buggers who wanted to make a profit from resources taken for free, and forever remembered as misogynistic dinosaurs who thought the Leader of the Opposition was a “pretty little socialist”.

Forget the idea of organised marches, who wants to protest against protecting the environment anyway? Attend the meetings and fill the venues to overflowing, more than a hundred people sat outside the full bridge hall in Winton, and engage intelligently and respectfully with the process.

The consultation period has already been extended by two weeks, extra meetings are being scheduled and bigger venues found. Ministers are aware of how intently this is being watched and DairyNZ and Beef & Lamb are presenting a united front for the farming sector.

We can all agree with the high level objectives being proposed, and we’ve certainly let the Ministry know their first attempt at a plan to get there is sadly lacking. This is our only chance to mould the proposals into something we can all live with, and you only get to do that by talking to people, not shouting at them. Let’s not waste our opportunity.

F@#k Haloumi, The Country -- September 2019

Food is a great flashpoint on Twitter, a lightning rod attracting people holding passionate views that they are willing to defend in the face of all opposition. Unlikely alliances have been formed on the basis of whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza (it most definitely does), and I will assert it as my Kiwi birth right that putting a slice of pineapple on anything makes it Hawaiian.

Christmas mince pies are another source of great division both online and in real life: I still vividly recall the sense of utter betrayal when, as a small child, my mother offered me a mince pie. I eagerly took the proffered treat, not noticing the tell-tale dusting of white on its crust, bit deeply and immediately spat the offending pastry on the floor. I have tried to like them, sampling them again as a teen and as an adult, but they continue to be a blight on the taste buds of any right thinking person.

I think we can all agree that sponge cakes are pretty good and custard is sometimes the only thing that hits the spot, fruit is universally loved and who has ever turned down jelly? But some people insist on combining these four things and end up with trifle – the only dessert in the world where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Despite these deeply held beliefs of mine, I can still accept there are divergent opinions; some people have the stomach for minced up fruit in inedible pastry, others  cannot appreciate the sweet delight of cooked pineapple, and some even unpatriotically choose Vegemite over Marmite! While I can bring myself to accept all of these differing views, I have to draw the line at my friend who keeps their Vegemite in the fridge, that’s just weird.

While I can understand these differences and accept people might have an opinion that doesn’t match mine, there is one food that I simply don’t understand: Halloumi, the pointless cheese.

For those of you fortunate enough to have never come across halloumi, it’s a cheese with a high melting point that’s made to be grilled or fried. Presumably the next logical step is to put it in the bin, but if you do decide to bite into it, it squeaks. I’m not even kidding, it squeaks at you in pitiful protest as if to say “haven’t we all suffered enough already?”

Apart from the fact you shouldn’t be putting anything described as “semi-hard” in your mouth in the first place, it just seems so senseless; there are plenty of bland, rubbery foods out there already without introducing one that yelps as you eat it.

“But you haven’t tried the original cheese from Cyprus,” defenders of halloumi will tell me. Well, no, I live in Ashburton. “It’s a great carrier of flavour! Try the chilli one!”, they cry. You know what else is a great carrier of flavour? Steak, that’s what.

It’s not as though I haven’t given halloumi a chance: I’ve put it in salads, eaten it in restaurants, I even ordered halloumi from a street vendor in Germany and at all times the reason for this most pointless of cheeses eluded me.

I can only conclude that halloumi is an ancient Cypriot practical joke that the modern world has fallen for, and all I can ask is that if you’re going to insist on eating it then please buy the one that Fonterra makes. At least that way I can have the last laugh.

Watching My Meat Rotate, The Country -- August 2019

Last summer my friend Wayne helped me build a deck. When I say “helped” I mean I provided the concept and Wayne made sure everything was straight, level and square. And then he built it. Turns out I’m more of an ideas man than a handyman.

I flooded Twitter with progress reports of the build and everybody loved Wayne and my #DeckPics. The project was finished just in time for the farm’s Christmas dinner and, with a brand new deck complete with a paved barbecue area, I really had no choice but to buy myself a new barbecue.

Buying a new barbecue is a serious business, I’m not one of those “it’s summer let’s dust off the barbie” type of people. No, barbecue is a year round event no matter the season or weather. In fact I go through so much LPG I took Labour’s ban of offshore gas exploration as a personal attack.

If there was one thing I knew about my new barbecue it was that it wasn’t going to be a Weber. I’m pretty sure the Venn diagram of Weber owners and iPhone users is a perfect circle and I wasn’t going to be the one to upset that delicate balance.

Obviously I bought a Masport, a good Kiwi brand that’s been around for over a hundred years, and of course I bought a stainless steel model, the hardest known substance to keep clean when you live in the country on a gravel road. More importantly, dear reader, my stainless steel Masport barbecue has a hood, and in that hood there is a window, and through that window I can watch my meat rotate and sizzle on the rotisserie that came as an added extra.

“Put it on Trade Me,” my father said,”you’ll never use it.”

Never use it!? That rotisserie is my go to method for cooking 24-hour marinated rolled roast beef. I’ve cooked pork belly on that thing, I’ve cooked chicken, I’ve cooked lamb and I’ve even googled “what can I rotisserie next?”

There’s just something about impaling a couple of chooks on that stainless steel skewer, tying them up with butcher’s string while making the obligatory dad joke (trussed me, I know what I’m doing) and forcing garlic butter up under the chicken’s skin that is so satisfying.

Of course we can’t stop there, all that juicy garlicky chicken-y goodness that’s going to drip down from the slowly spinning meat must be caught, and what better way to catch it than with a tray of cubed and par boiled potatoes? A tray of cubed and parboiled potatoes that have been coated with garlic seasoning, that’s what!

My cheap little rotisserie groans under the weight of two stuffed chickens (if they’re not stuffed I recommend putting whole lemons inside to give the skewer purchase), but the three hour cook time on the lowest setting gives me plenty of time to post progress videos to social media.

I’m not saying a rotisserie is the battery operated appliance in your house that’s going to bring you the most joy, but it’s surely got to be in the top five and I think you should give it a crack.

I hear you can pick them up quite cheap on Trade Me.

Not Just A Southland Issue -- August 2019

Last week the Minister of Agriculture announced the members of his taskforce that will investigate the practice of wintering cow on crop in Southland, their brief being to “do a stocktake of the multiple initiatives that are already underway to promote good winter grazing practices and identify why those are not currently working for all.”

The issue has of course been brought to a head by environmental campaigners in Southland releasing drone footage of cows up to their hocks in mud along with pictures of cows calving in similar conditions.

The reaction from farmers on twitter has been starkly divided; Southland farmers believe it is an issue for their region to tackle without interference from central government or advice from outside experts, let alone from the lone environmentalist appointed to the taskforce. They are not interested in the opinions of non-farming urbanites whose only experience with wet weather grazing was that one time they got caught in the rain during a picnic. They seem surprised by the swift reaction from the government after such a brief spell of negative publicity and feel as though they haven’t had time to address the issues before having conditions, presumable unreasonable, forced upon them.

Famers from outside the region, of which I am one, expressed surprise too. Our astonishment was that anyone could be surprised by the announcement and that it was Minister O’Connor taking the lead under the Agriculture portfolio rather than Parker leading the charge as Minister for the Environment.

David Parker travelled the length of the country prior to the election talking about water quality, during which he showed pictures of cows in Southland collapsing river banks as they crowded to drink, and mourning the lack of willingness from Regional Councils around the country to use the considerable powers at their disposal.

This is far from a Southland issue, it’s a farming issue. If the public perceive an issue with winter grazing practices then we all come under scrutiny. When irrigation was under the spotlight the public didn’t differentiate between irrigated and non-irrigated farms, every farmer was tarred with the same brush, and the same is true now.

If I knew prior to the election that winter grazing in Southland was a fight waiting to happen, then the Southland Regional Council must have known well in advance of that. David Parker is not the kind of man to keep quiet when something is annoying him.

The whole point of Regional Councils is to use their local knowledge and expertise to develop guidelines specific to their unique environmental conditions, and when they do that there is no need for central government to get involved.

That it has now escalated into an animal welfare issue as well as an environmental one is not just the fault of a drone flying busy body, nor is it the fault of the public for forming opinions without all the facts, the blame lies largely with the Regional Council for not taking steps to address issues that had been clearly signalled to them for a very long time, failing all their constituents in the process, farmers and urban dwellers alike.

I know too well the frustrations of wet weather wintering and calving, but the farmers who think it’s acceptable to keep cows in those conditions must also shoulder their share of the blame.

Putting aside the futility of convening a taskforce to look into a practice that is ending just as they start their investigation, I hope the people of Southland work with the team to get the best possible outcome for them, the environment and their animals.

Meat Column, The Country -- July 2019

Is there a cut of meat more polarising than corned silverside? Whenever I tweet about corned beef, and to be fair I tweet about it quite a lot, I’m greeted with either nods of approval or disturbingly graphic approximations of people retching. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.

Some people don’t like the smell, others find it too bland or too salty and the detractors are universal in their disapproval of “boiled meat”.

If you’re fortunate enough to occasionally fill your freezer with an entire cattle beast, you’ll be familiar with struggle of utilising the least favoured cuts. For some it’s schnitzel and for others it’s stewing steak, but in my household it’s always been corned beef, possibly because I’m the only one who will eat it.

Even I have to admit that corned beef gets a bit boring after you’ve cooked your sixth or seventh for the year and there’s still more sitting in the freezer. I swear my butcher sometimes gives me other people’s just to mess with me.

In order to liven things up I started experimenting, adding chilli powder to the recipe for a bit of zing, substituting jam for the sugar component in a quest for fruitiness, even adding whole oranges to the crockpot when I thought nobody was looking.

My biggest corned beef breakthrough came when, after a party, we had a surplus of wine cluttering up the pantry. What the hell I thought as I tipped a whole bottle of sauvignon blanc into the crockpot, thus doing my bit to conserve water.

The result was amazing: rich, tender and fruity. I tweeted my discovery and twitter was soon abuzz with people experimenting with different wines, thank goodness for the $7 clean skin! If you’re thinking of giving it a go I highly recommend trying it with a cabernet sauvignon.

All these were merely variations on the same boiled beef theme and I wanted to try something really different, so the obvious solution was to build myself a smoker.

Most smoking recipes you find on the internet are American, and I soon learned that corned beef in America is made from the brisket, not silverside, but I’ve never been one to let details like that get in my way. Through twitter I also learned that American recipes calling for the use of chilli powder actually mean a chilli seasoning mix, this is not something you want to learn through trial and error!

The recipe itself is dead simple:
First, build your smoker
Defrost and soak your corned silverside in water for 2 hours
Mix together two tablespoons of ground black peppercorns, half a tablespoon of ground coriander seeds, half a tablespoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of dried thyme, one teaspoon of paprika and one teaspoon of garlic powder.

Remove the beef from its bath and pat it dry. I smeared the meat with mild American mustard as a binder, but that’s purely optional. Cover the meat with the rub and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning allow the meat to come up to room temperature as you fire up the smoker, I aimed for a temperature of 120 degrees C. Remember that smoking is inexact, my corned beef would be ready when the internal temperature hit 90 degrees, which in this case was about 7 hours.

Once off the smoker I wrapped it in foil and let it rest for another hour.
I couldn’t resist trying it hot and it was truly glorious. The fat had rendered out, there was a chewy smoky exterior and wow, aren’t coriander seeds a true spice revelation?

The true delight came the next day after the meat had spent the night in the fridge and the flavours had matured and set. The keen eyed amongst you may have recognised the rub as essentially a pastrami mix minus the sugar, I’m not claiming that’s what I made, but it’s close enough that I’ll never have to buy pastrami again.

It's Time To Be Pragmatic -- July 2019

I was visiting family in Sydney recently and, having thoroughly annoyed everyone with my lack of enthusiasm for shopping, was sent packing to the pub where I’d arranged to meet a couple of Twitter friends from Wellington.

Over the course of a few pints Hadyn, who was there for a Sony product launch, asked me how my politics had changed since I’d been on Twitter. He asked me this because I am a white, middle-aged male who votes to the right and the majority of people who follow and interact with me tend to vote to the left.

Maybe the third pint is the charm because I didn’t even hesitate with my answer, “I’ve become far more pragmatic” I replied. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s being exposed to other people’s points of view, or maybe it’s plain old cynicism, but I no longer reflexively defend the blue team.

I’m more inclined to acknowledge when the Right does something silly or just plain dumb, though I’m far more likely to tweet about it when the Left mucks up because the reactions I get from the partisan lefties on twitter are hilarious.

I’m also far likelier to praise the red (and green and black) team if they get something right, or accept that they’re committed to doing something I don’t like and I just have to do the best I can to work with it.

As farmers we don’t like being told what to do with our land, our animals, and our businesses. We get grumpy and we tend to stick our toes in and fight, to let the people telling us what to do that we don’t like it and they can just bugger off. It’s part of who we are and, since Fonterra is a farmer owned and farmer run co-operative, it’s also who Fonterra have been since its inception.

Submissions have just closed on the Zero Carbon Bill and, like it or not, it will pass into law. We knew this government was committed to this legislation when the Prime Minister stood up and declared that climate change was her generation’s nuclear free moment. You don’t have to agree with her, but you do have to accept that she’s got the will and the numbers to make it happen.

I’m very pleased to see that, like me, Fonterra have a new found pragmatism. They could have reverted to type and pointlessly fought the government over this legislation; instead they have chosen to support the Bill and will seek to have some amendments, such as setting methane targets at the lower end of the scale, made at select committee.

I suspect that given their recent announcement to not install any further coal burners and to embed sustainability at the heart of the Co-op, Fonterra are well ahead of the curve as far as meeting the targets set in the Bill go.

I’m pleased too to see the Shareholders’ Council, who I have been critical of in the past, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Board in a joint press release about their submissions on the Bill. That press release highlighted the common ground they shared, their differences are there if you care to read their separate submissions, but those tensions are quite rightly being kept private between the Council and the Board rather than being aired publicly.

The Bill will pass, but having the support of New Zealand’s largest company will certainly make things a lot easier for the government. I can only hope the various ministers acknowledge the goodwill Fonterra are trying to build.

Fonterra’s Board’s first duty is to the health of the Co-operative, and the biggest threat I see at this point in time is the government’s failure to adequately reform DIRA. The current government certainly went further than the previous one in making changes to DIRA, but they went nowhere near far enough.

I understand that being pragmatic is about give and take, I just hope Fonterra have built up enough goodwill with present government for them to start giving too.

Oh DIRA -- June 2019

As a Fonterra supplying dairy farmer you have every right to be disappointed with the release of the Government’s changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA).

Fonterra will still have to supply raw milk at cost to new, presumably foreign owned processors who can then export value-added product in direct competition with the co-op, all without having to establish their own supply chain.

Fonterra will still have to accept new milk under the open entry provision, albeit with a few tweaks around new conversions and environmental concerns, which is worrying enough, but wait until you delve deeper: the flawed reasoning behind keeping this provision is MPI’s  belief Fonterra can already control supply through the milk price. How this belief persists when legislation exists specifically to prevent milk price manipulation is beyond me, and this is where my disappointment turns to anger.

How the Minister can be expected to overhaul vitally important legislation when the people in MPI advising him seem to have little understanding of the dairy industry and the rules constraining it defies belief. On one hand there’s a recommendation the Minister appoint someone  to sit on the milk pricing panel, and on the other there’s a recommendation that totally ignores the reason for this panel’s existence.

So I’m disappointed and a little angry, how should I react?

I could get on twitter and give Damien O’Connor a serve, I know he does his own social media and interacts with the public. In fact when Genevieve Toop, Greenpeace’s sustainable agriculture campaigner, tweeted that the government’s stance on open entry was a disaster, the Minister interacted quite forcefully: “Absolute bullshit”, he replied.

While cathartic, getting angry on twitter is ultimately pointless. The Minister would probably ignore me, but there’s always the chance I could make him think farmers are dicks and that’s possibly not the best approach when he’s got something I want.

Let’s not forget that only a year ago this government really did think farmers and Fonterra were dicks, Shane Jones launched a sustained and blistering attack on Fonterra’s chairman at the time, John Wilson, and when he wasn’t reined in by his party’s leader or the Prime Minister he doubled down. Fonterra had spent the better part of a decade acting like a farmer advocacy group rather than a politically neutral, multi-billion dollar international company and the incoming Labour-led coalition government didn’t like them and weren’t afraid to show it.

What interests me is how our industry leaders have reacted to the DIRA annoncement, they are representing my views and theirs is the lead I should follow. They are the ones who get to meet MPs and will make submissions on my behalf.

Federated Farmers who can always be relied on for a good bit of outrage were, surprisingly, not outraged at all. They expressed disappointment with some parts of the release, highlighted the parts that gave them hope and expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of making submissions on the changes.

John Monaghan, Fonterra’s Chairman, was the epitome of diplomacy. He voiced cautious optimism and signalled a willingness to work with the government to make changes that were not only good for Fonterra, but good for the country and good for the environment. If John was disappointed he hid it well, his was the response of a man who knows Fonterra have come a long way in the face of a hostile government and Fonterra will ultimately gain more from having a constructive rather than combative relationship with the Government. He recognised the progress made for what it was and welcomed the opportunity to take those changes further.

Then we have Fonterra’s Shareholder’s Council. It has always been my understanding that they are there to represent farmer’s views and concerns to the Fonterra board, to review the board’s performance, to create a healthy tension and keep the board accountable, but they seem to have been popping up in the media lately expressing opinions on all manner of things.

In contrast to Federated Farmers and Fonterra, the Shareholder’s Council wrote a very angry press release containing phrases like “continue to kick the can down the road”, “a step too far” and “in direct conflict”. It read like a declaration of war, that they were there to fight, to argue, to be outraged.

It feels to me as if for every two steps the industry takes forward there’s always someone willing to take us a step back. Now is the time for diplomacy, to put forward reasoned arguments for change. As an individual who will never come face to face with a government official I can afford to throw some angry words at MPs, the people advocating for my industry cannot.

Don't Be A Dick -- May 2019

There’s picture doing the rounds on the internet of an English nutrition company by the name of Huel. Like a lot of companies they have their mission statement writ large upon a wall at headquarters, but where Huel differs from most is the message placed above. It dwarfs their mission statement, emblazoned in bold type: Don’t be a dick.

It’s a pretty good goal for individuals and companies alike: don’t do silly things to unnecessarily upset other people and good things will follow. The flipside of course is that being a dick can do you needless harm.

Earlier this year an ex rugby official and aspiring politician contacted me via twitter to ask my advice on how to be successful on the micro blogging platform. “Don’t be a dick!” I replied. Of course he ignored me and now not only is a he largely mocked online, even the party famous for tolerating dicks, the Conservative Party, doesn’t want a bar of him anymore.

Fonterra aren’t immune to being dicks either, back in 2016 and in the face of plummeting milk prices they changed the terms of payment for thousands of trade suppliers; instead of getting paid within 30 days now they would have to wait 90. Nobody liked it; not the government, not the opposition, the suppliers or the press. It was an indefensible move and, even though the appointment of new CFO Marc Rivers in 2018 saw the policy gone by lunchtime, the sour taste still lingers. The damage done will take years to repair, the new government don’t think too kindly of the Co-op and a lot of energy has to be expended rebuilding trust that was needlessly flushed away with a single dick move.

That’s why it’s heartening to see Fonterra being pragmatic when it comes to the government’s recently released emissions targets, and Mike Cronin, Fonterra’s Managing Director of Co-operative affairs, had the perfect response: “… we anticipate the government will support the significant investment in research and innovation that is needed to develop solutions to help farmers reduce their emissions. Our focus now is on supporting our 10,000 farming families…”

It’s a response that sees Fonterra support the government’s ambitions but leaves no doubt that they don’t intend to shoulder the entire burden.

That the Climate Change Bill has been attacked by Greenpeace for having no teeth, by Federated Farmers for unrealistic methane reduction targets, by Forest & Bird for offering “special favours to the agricultural lobby” and by Beef & Lamb for just about everything should signal that the government have probably got it just about right. Upsetting all the lobby groups at once requires some level of skill.

We need to choose our battles, and I don’t believe arbitrary targets set for 30 years in the future with no means of enforcement and no penalty for not achieving them is a battle worth fighting. Let’s save that energy for something meaningful and immediate, like DIRA, and in the meantime let’s try not to be dicks.

Call It Out When You Can -- April 2019

I’m not a naturally gregarious man, I don’t tend to go out of my way to meet people and nor do I tend to say much when I finally do: I’m more likely to listen and to think than to speak up and join in. Combine this with a career where I live at my place of work, and work hours that don’t make me inclined to socialise anyway, and you’re in danger of cultivating a very narrow world view indeed. 

Watching the news and reading the paper keep you informed, but these events are viewed through a lens of your own making and you’re often blind to your own biases.

Nine years ago I was encouraged to stand in the Board of Trustee’s elections and, having duly won a place at the table, took a seat on the board with my white, middle class conservative views which, I’m the first to admit, were very simplistic. It's fair to say I was a zero tolerance disciplinarian with little idea of the many different trials and tribulations faced by both teachers and students every day. 

Nine years later, having being confronted regularly with realities I never knew existed because I’d never encountered them in my own world, I leave the school governance system with a much better understanding of the huge risks faced by our Maori, Pasifika and immigrant children and a deep, abiding respect for the teachers and staff committed to helping them. I’ve shared in some great success stories too, and all of these experiences have helped broaden my views and deepen my understanding of the world beyond my farm gate.

So too with Twitter, the micro blogging social media platform I joined five years ago. Twitter has exposed me to a massively diverse range of views that had never even occurred to me on topics that I thought I was pretty well informed on. Reader, I was not well informed.

A couple of years ago I wrote a terribly racist tweet that I thought was funny; the only redeeming thing I can say about it is it came from a place of ignorance rather than spite. Some people blocked me, some people unfollowed me, many people called me out and a few took the time and energy to explain to me where I’d gone wrong. An African American lady patiently but with barely concealed anger gave me a history lesson and explained why my casual, throwaway tweet could cause so much pain. A friend chastised me privately online until I finally understood the perspective of the people I’d affected.

It’s now a little over a month since the terror attack in Christchurch. I didn’t tweet that day or the next, the outpouring of grief and rage on Twitter was too much for me and I’m not given to expressing these sentiments publicly. There were also a lot of very bad opinions floating about and I didn’t have the energy or inclination to engage with them. I still haven’t tweeted about the attacks because there are plenty of white men pushing 50 telling people what they think, another one wasn’t really needed.

A friend of mine who is an agricultural contractor shared with me an encounter he had on the day of the shooting; he turned up to a farm and was greeted by the farmer and the farmer’s daughter and it was only natural that talk turned to the tragic events unfolding in Christchurch.
“What do you think?” my friend asked as he set to work.
“Well,” replied the farmer, “that’s what’s going to happen if we let Muslims in.”

My friend was horrified and asked the farmer if he truly meant what he’d just said. When he said he did, my friend told him where he could stick his job, then packed up his gear and left. I admire him for that and only hope I have the courage of my convictions if ever faced with the same situation.

It’s easy to call people out on twitter, it’s safe and it has its place but it’s much harder to do it in person. I’m not suggesting we start telling off random members of the public on the street, but I’d like to think Christchurch has taught us it’s not okay to sit idly by and let people spew their hate or hurt others with their callous, ignorant remarks.

Choose your battles, but call it out when you can. I know I will be.

Fonterra's Culture Change -- March 2019

Is it just me or is Fonterra undergoing a remarkably rapid culture shift in a very short space of time?

Last year I attended the Ashburton leg of the Fonterra Financial Results Roadshow: quite apart from the delicious lunch and sneak preview of the new Whittaker’s ice cream, it was a chance to hear then interim-CEO Miles Hurrell  and new board chair John Monaghan deal with the unpleasant reality of Fonterra’s first ever financial loss.

Miles especially came across as humble, honest and realistic, and those are attributes in direct contrast to the brash and overly optimistic Fonterra leadership we are used to seeing. The way Miles spoke to farmers, the manner in which he answered questions and the way in which he took responsibility for Fonterra’s performance instead of taking the not unreasonable position that he was new to the role all point to this being the nature of the man rather than some PR makeover.

During the roadshow Miles made a series of promises to farmers, not least of which was a top to bottom review of the business. The speed with which this has happened can be seen in the restructuring that has already occurred within the co-op and also in Fonterra disentangling itself from the Beingmate joint venture in Australia to take full control of the Darnum plant.

The DIRA submission, which I covered last month, is another example of Fonterra’s new found realism; rarely have I seen such plain and simple language from them when dealing with such a complex topic. They stuck to the facts and backed themselves with solid data, releasing the whole submission for public scrutiny. Contrast that with Synlait who have selectively released parts of their submission and used the process as an opportunity to take pot-shots at the competition. I’m not entirely convinced that whining in the media that Fonterra pay their suppliers too much is the way to win support, or to keep suppliers for that matter.

There are signs too that Fonterra is finally coming of age and seeing itself as more than just a dairy processor, they are in fact a global food and ingredient manufacturer and are beginning to invest accordingly. In the past the co-op has stuck to its knitting, investing in dairy and dairy-related businesses over the globe with mixed results.

Fonterra has taken a stake in Motif Ingredients, a US based company that develops and commercialises bio-engineered animal and food ingredients. This is a clear sign they are looking to the future and are determined not to be left behind. Milk compounds are notoriously difficult to replicate in the lab, so Fonterra see this investment as having a stake in complementary proteins, products that Fonterra itself may use as ingredients that will integrate with and add value to their core dairy nutrition focus.

Of course GMO’s and lab based foods have their detractors.  Federated Farmers representatives were in a meeting with Air New Zealand shortly after the airline introduced the lab-grown Impossible Burger to their menu, the meeting had nothing to do with the burger, but rumour has it a Feds board member snarled “I’d like to reach over the table and stab you.”

Such are the passions that non-traditionally produced proteins inflame!

I wonder if that Federated Farmers board member is as impressed with new humble, honest and realistic Fonterra as I am.

DIRA Review, Time For Change -- February 2019

Back in June of last year I had real fears the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) review was going to become a political football rather than a serious look at what was best for the dairy industry and our country: Shane Jones had launched a blistering attack on Fonterra, their Chair and their performance. Winston Peters doubled down, giving Jones his full backing, and Jones renewed his attack in September.

I can only assume Fonterra had read my earlier column on how to deal with trolls because their public response was perfect: they said nothing. Without fuel the attacks lost steam and the focus shifted away from Fonterra to more responsive targets, and this is an excellent result because Fonterra’s DIRA submission is good, really good, and it deserves to be judged on its merits and not be used as stick to beat the company with.

I would urge all dairy farmers to read the submission; you can find it on the FarmSource website under the “news” tab. You don’t even have to read the whole thing, the letter from Miles sums it up nicely and Appendix A gives nice detail if you want it, I think the rest of it is there to keep the lawyers happy. If I can read and understand it then I’m sure the ministers and officials will have no problems.

DIRA came into being in 2001, allowing the formation of Fonterra which achieved one part of its dual purpose, to establish a large scale exporter of dairy products. The second purpose of DIRA was encouraging competition and protecting dairy farmers and domestic consumers.

The two big issues I wanted to see addressed in this review were access to regulated milk and the requirement for Fonterra to accept all new suppliers, known as open entry.

The regulated milk supply, where Fonterra is required to supply milk essentially at cost to competitors while they get their own supply going, was intended to foster domestic competition. 

Instead this milk was, and still is, used to make product for export. Off the top of my head I can think of four ex politicians heavily involved with dairy companies, they knew DIRA would allow them to compete internationally with Fonterra and gain a foothold overseas without the expense of first establishing their own supply chain. There’s plenty of milk being supplied at cost to ensure domestic competition and no need to continue subsiding competitor’s export ambitions. Goodman Fielder for example contracts millions of litres for local supply and even has Fonterra do the processing for them.

The open entry rule essentially requires Fonterra to accept all new suppliers so long as they are no further away than the furthest farm already being collected. Given Greenpeace’s “too many cows” campaign and the public backlash over the 5,000 cow dairy conversion in the McKenzie basin, this should be a no brainer.

Imagine if Fonterra could refuse to allow you to be a new supplier unless all your waterways were fenced and best practice riparian planting had been followed! We could be on the front foot with environmental compliance at a farm level rather than playing catch up.

This review is the chance for our Government to allow the dairy industry to move forward with confidence; I hope they use the opportunity to do what’s best. The time for cheap political point scoring is over.

Results Trump Democracy, ECan's Big Picture -- January 2019

Nearly nine years ago now the National Government sacked the Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors and replaced them with two commissioners: Margaret Bazely and David Caygill.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the death of democracy, but that seemed to me to largely depend on whether you voted Blue, Red or Green. Governments replace democratically elected boards, namely school boards, with commissioners all the time and barely an eyebrow is raised. The focus in that instance isn’t democracy, it’s on achieving what’s best for the school and the students, and likewise the focus on Ecan being run by commissioners should be “has the region and the environment been served better for that decision?”.

We farmers are smack bang in the middle of being held to account for our impact on the environment, and largely we have been poorly served by our regional councils. At least one is embroiled in a court case to determine whether they can proceed with their proposed method of determining nitrogen losses, and another has signalled that it will plough ahead with their plans despite the likelihood of a similar costly battle.

All of this is happening too late, David Parker had been signalling for a very long time in Opposition that regional councils had dropped the ball and needed to pick up their game. They had the power to effect and enforce change and were not doing it, so now they’re going to get a National Policy Statement that clearly sets out what the government expects of them. The Minister of The Environment is not happy with regional councils, with the exception of one.

Prior to the election I had the opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of questions around the water tax that was being mooted. I asked him if he was concerned that such a tax would drive marginal cropping farms to convert to dairying in order to get the best return from their irrigation. He replied that no, he was not concerned at all. He had faith that ECan had robust processes in place to ensure land use changes had minimal environmental impact. In that meeting the Minister was effusive in his praise for ECan, going so far as to say he believed the National government had done the right thing in installing commissioners. Canterbury, he said, had nothing to fear from a change in government.

It has taken ECan a good six years to get us into this position, making unpopular decisions and forging ahead with a big picture in mind. I’ll admit that I’m a farmer who grumbled every step of the way. Why did I need a nutrient budget? A Farm Environment Plan? Why for the love of my bottom line am I paying a consultant $10,000 to secure consent to farm?

All this became clear last November when I finally had my farm audited. My auditor, Megan Hands from LandSavvy, made it clear she was setting a baseline from which I was expected to improve. It might not sound like much, but this is the major culture shift between the ECan of old and the ECan of now, it wasn’t scary. It was collaborative.

Their expectations around the environment have been made clear, companies like Ballance and Ravensdown have invested in technology to ensure I have accurate records on hand, the water meters ECan told me to install 8 years ago at my own cost are another small piece in a much larger puzzle that is just starting to make sense to me now.

Every farm in the Ecan catchment, be they dairy, drystock or arable, will now have new consents to farm based on many factors including their nutrient inputs and losses. Every year their nutrient budgets will updated and reviewed against their consents to ensure compliance, and each farm will be regularly audited to see how they stack up against a range of criteria.

There’s no doubt that some of the tools being used aren’t perfect, but these are things that can be improved and tweaked over time.

At a time when people are not shy at pointing the finger and asking “why should you be allowed to farm?” I’m very glad to be farming in an area that allows me to be reply  “this is where I am now, and this is how I’m going to improve”