Food and Farming
These things are fundamental to who we are, what we do and how New Zealand makes its way in the world. But there are big problems with the way we’re currently farming. The industrial farming model prevalent in New Zealand is damaging our land, rivers, climate and farmers.
Our farming made a name for itself based on two simple five-letter words – clean and green - and our products set us apart in shopping trolleys and baskets across the globe.
But somewhere along the way we lost our bearings.
Family farms got snapped up and subsumed into industrial-scale dairying operations. We began to clear-fell forests to make way for industrial dairy farms, pile fertilizers onto the land; squeeze too many cows onto every hectare, and feed them supplementary feed from destroyed Indonesian rainforests. All this to sell faceless milk powder on volatile global commodity markets.
This high input, high output model has cost our rivers (two thirds are already at times too polluted to swim in safely , our climate (agriculture emissions make up half New Zealand’s emissions and continue to rise) and our farmers. New Zealand dairy farmers are collectively burdened with $38 billion worth of debt, putting unimaginable pressure on individuals, families and communities.
And things are set to get worse, with large-scale irrigation schemes planned across the country.
People don’t necessarily make the link between irrigation and big dairy - irrigation’s just storing and moving water around, right? Wrong. In New Zealand, irrigation enables industrial farming where it wouldn’t otherwise occur. It’s a golden ticket to more big dairy farms, which is the last thing our climate and rivers need.
The industrial farming model is a failed experiment. Change is needed if New Zealand farming and farmers are to prosper again. We need to make New Zealand farming something we can be proud of again.