by frog
P Clifford and Fulton Long’s ongoing letter writing debate exploded across the letters page of the Southland Times yesterday with 4 letters dedicated to refuting Long’s assertion that a few dirty rivers is an acceptable price to pay for economic prosperity. I promised I’d keep you up to date, so here are not just P Clifford,
I agree with Mr Long that the farming industry is the economic backbone of this country but that shouldn’t be a free license to live by your own rules. Why can’t we have both a healthy farming and dairying industry and clean waterways?
But also Environment Southland Councillor, Ali Timms,
There is no economic prosperity for anyone in Southland – farmers included – if Southland’s water quality is destroyed. Farmers need clean water to run their business just as much as the rest of us, and only a fool fouls his own nest.
Pete Fowler from Tuatapere,
The only problem with Fulton Long’s argument is that economic prosperity is enjoyed by a few farmers but nobody else. We all put up with dirty rivers.
We all pay higher prices for food. Every worker in the country contributes to this small sector of the farming industry; everybody from the bus driver who takes the farmers’ kids to school to the GP who provides their families health services and the supermarket employees who supply the groceries.
And our own Green candidate for Invercargill, Craig Carson:
Most farmers would resent being portrayed as people who defile the environment to make a few extra dollars.
The Green vision is for New Zealand farmers to lead the world in the production of safe, healthy food.
Farmers know this cannot be done in a polluted environment. There is no point producing polluted product which nobody wants to buy. The pollution also adversely effects other major sections of the economy such as tourism.
That puts the ball firmly back in Fulton Long’s court. I expect, nay demand, a hard hitting reply.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Thu, July 24th, 2008
Tags: farming, Fulton long, letters, P Clifford, rivers, Southland, water
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The argument that farmers are the backbone of the country and therefore should have a licence to pollute more than other businesses is an example of the fallacy of composition. The farming sector as a whole contributes the most to the economy. but it is individual farmers that contribute to the economy and individual farmers who pollute (or choose not to). Just as it is individual businesses from other sectors that pollute (or choose not to) and contribute to the economy. So an individual farmer who contributes a certain amount to the economy should not have any more right to pollute than an individual taxi company or factory that contributes the same (assuming that is that contributing to the economy is a sufficient excuse at all).
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Chances are this guy was encouraged to have his say when he read Bill English’s column in the Southland Times where he said,
‘Dairying cops a fair bit of blame for messing up the environment. But the more I look into it, the more I wonder whether the negative perception is based on facts and science’
English goes on to imply that he knows of figures that will be released soon by Environment Southland to prove his assertion that it is the towns and road runoff, along with sheep farms! that are the real culprits and that water passing through dairy farms comes out clean. The dairy industry appear to have a friend in Mr English.
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So tell me, because I’m not up on the details here. where should the effluent of cattle go, and how, and what will that add to the retail cost of a kilo of topside?
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Strings, Are you seriously suggesting that the health of children who swim in rivers is less important than the retail cost of a kilo of topside?
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Kevyn
NOWHERE DID I EVEN SUGGEST THAT
I asked what, I thought, was a reasonable question. It involved three parts – what, how, and with what effect. If you can only see things through a lens of being criticised, it suggests youhave no faith in your beliefs (whatever they are) and need to push against people who are trying to understand the green position, rather than expand understanding.
If what you are advocating is that anything that has the potential to adversly impact the health of children should be stopped, then I have a list for you – it starts with schooling (most illness and disease are ‘caught’ in schools,) and goes through wearing clothes (the processes that make them can easily cause sickness,) right through to eating anything at all not home created from seed to feed (all those nasty things they put in food has horrible potentiality).
I don’t see a lot of naked, thin and ignorant children in the families of Green Party Members that I know, so assume there are acceptable and unaccesptable risks. However, I didn’t even go so far as to ask about them! I merely asked WHERE, HOW and at WHAT COMMUNITY COST you are proposing to eradicate or treat the effluent of cattle!
An answer that addresses the question, as opposed to a piece of dogmatic rhetoric, would be appreciated.
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Strings – where should the effluent of cattle go? – not into the waterways at all, but into the soil at a rate that soil micro flora and fauna can render it harmless to humans and useful to plants. This is a natural process that farmers could easily mimic, by matching the stock numbers to the carrying capacity of the pasture. An increase in the range of plants in the pasture mix helps a great deal also. These things have been shown over and over to work. Simple and effective- improve the farm’s soils and protect farmers children (and others) from campylobactor, ecoli etc whenever they swim, play,drink, fall etc into the waterways. Conventional farming eschews these ideas because…(they’re not taught at the agricultural colleges and so on and on..)
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if the currently externalised costs were internalised it might become a significantly more attactive way of farming.
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Sapient – yes, and with the currently skyrocketing price of imported fertilizer, favored by conventional farmers, ‘it’, sustainable farming, call it what you like, is becoming patently more attractive, even to the dyed-in-the-wools.
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I love the ‘conventional’ part considering how recent chemical fertilisers and monoculture are compared to the 12,000 or so years since the pastorial revolution.
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Strings – as mentioned by other posters, there are many proven ways to eliminate polluted run-off form any farms. Problem is, these methods are eschewed by the Farming-Industrial Complex because they are less ‘profitable’. If the real costs of pollution were passed on the polluter, the farmer, then the polluting farmer would very soon find those methods ‘profitable’ too.
I think that what angers many of us is that WE are expected to pay for this pollution in a myriad of ways. ‘The Market’ often seems to reward the wrong people & make the wrong people suffer too. After all even if the best practice methods were a little more ‘costly’, it would still be worth it for the general good.
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should have read ‘on to the polluter’ -
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Strings, My apologies for misreading the intent of your comment. Greenfly has covered much of where and how. In addition it is vital that paddocks are fenced or hedged from waterways to stop cattle from entering the water. Hedges or other streamside plantings are a better solution as they can inhibit surface runoff as well. As I understand it water pollution has never been a major problem with beef or sheep farming because of the relatively low stock numbers per hectare. The problem appears to be largely the result of intensive irrigated dairying. Presumably the combination of large amounts of effluent and too much “rain” is causing run-off into waterways.
As for community cost thats a term I haven’t really come across before. I’m familiar with social cost accounting but that looks only at the adverse consequences of an activity. Perhaps somebody can provide a link to a study that has looked at the food costs of mitigating the problem versus the health costs of doing nothing.
The answer to you final question appears to be: no impact on the price of topside but a possible increase for milk and cheese which, in light of prices being pushed up by global demand, may not even be noticable.
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Strings, There are definite parallels between farmer’s responses to water pollution and their responses to stock-truck effluent. If farmers dry-off their stock then the trucks effluent tanks should never overflow. Too many farmers still won’t take that action even though most have learnt that the practice doesn’t harm the animals, doesn’t reduce the prices they fetch at stock auctions and doesn’t require anything more than a little planning in advance. While trucking companies can include a clause in their contracts holding the farmer liable for any fines the trucking company receives for effluent spilling onto the road and use that as an incentive to get the last recalcitrant farmers to act responsibly it has actually taken a decade of educating farmers and drivers to get the problem almost eliminated. The stock-truck effluent did require spending a bit of RUC money building proper disposal facilities at appropriate intervals along state highways.
As with all problems, there will need to be a mix of education, enforcement and “engineering”. But the first step needs to be better monitoring by regional councils to identify occassional and habitual offenders so that the appropriate action can be taken in each case; education for the former, enforcement for the latter.
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Now, if we could just get a thread like this running at Telford and Lincoln and Massey, we’d be seeing some real change. Until then the pronouncements of lecturers there will shape our rural landscapes and change will be g l a c i a l.
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>
I asked someone I met who is a greenie , by their definition, about this over the weekend; his response was that the land was currently being ‘over stocked’ by about 300%. I guess we could cull the herd down by 75%, but what that would do to the country’s economy is a little off-putting!
>>This is a natural process that farmers could easily mimic, by matching the stock numbers to the carrying capacity of the pasture. An increase in the range of plants in the pasture mix helps a great deal also.
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This is an interesting statement, and one I can easily understand. Thank you.
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>>After all even if the best practice methods were a little more ‘costly’, it would still be worth it for the general good.
>
Here we start to see the start of that economic impact! “a little more ‘costly’” is a very ‘loose’ estimate. However, if I put it together with the former comment, the cost of milk and beef would have to rise by 300% to maintain the same income for the ‘producers’ (meaning not just the farmers, but everyone else in the value chain). There would also be a significant drop in the amount of export earnings (allowing for the current rate of domestic consumption to stay stable), which would have a negative effect on the international value of our currency, thus increasing the cost of imported goods significantly.
Kevyn – Apology accepted, with sincere thanks.
On your point . . .
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>>As for community cost thats a term I haven’t really come across before(sic).
>
The ‘community cost’ of something was postulated a while ago in some discussions here in Wellington on potential initiatives by the council. It relates to the gross financial impact on an average ‘community unit’ (which can vary from suburb to suburb but was viewed as a couple with one child for the city overall). The impact is usually negative when government is involved, as the only positive impact would be a reduction in taxes of one kind or another.
The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that off-setting, same year, savings from existing expenditure were always looked for when something new was being undertaken. This was the direct tax (rates) implication was always understood when decisions were being taken.
In the case of the possibilities discussed above, one might construe the ‘community unit’ was nation wide, that it consumed an average of 20 litres of milk per week at a base cost of $2 per litre, and an average of 5 kilos of cow meat products per week at a base cost of $18 per kilo. The “community cost” of this approach would therefore be to take a base cost of $6,760 – ((20*2)*52) + ((5*18))*52) – and multiply it by three – i.e. $20,280. This is the community impact when it is multiplied by the number of community units in the demographic (in this case circa 970,000 as it is a nation wide impact and I seem to remember the national community unit is slightly bigger than that of Wellington)
This is based on the unit continuing to consume the same volumes, which are (according to my Dr. Daughter) about what would be advised for this type of family, assuming the children were still at school. Given the ‘average’ couple currently earn circa $85,000 gross p.a., and have a marginal tax rate of 30%, this means their annual income would have to increase by circa $29,000 to maintain this standard and choice of nutrition.
This amount is the Economic impact per community unit of the initiative. On the overall economy, we would have an economic loss of $19,671,600,000 (nineteen and a half billion dollars) as there would be no offsetting economic gain.
So
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>>As with all problems, there will need to be a mix of education, enforcement and “engineering?.
>
I guess the big question is what do we need to educate on, enforce and engineering. However, when looking at this aspect of change, let’s remember that these costs are probably neutral to community units as, if you raise the cost of government you axiomatically create a need for increased tax revenue, but the increased income tax of $8,700 per community unit. However, the economic impact of this is negative $8,439,000,000 ($8,700*970,000) which is the amount of additional income tax revenue – which does not create any off-setting fiscal gain.
I have omitted GST from this analysis to simplify things.
So. If an over-stock of 300% is right there are the figures. If it’s 100% or 600% you can adjust them for yourselves. The question I have, is where can we get the increased national revenue (say a simple $20 billion), to ensure the Country does not go bankrupt and get taken over by an oil (say Saudi Arabia), or services (say India), or manufacturing (say China) rich country that calls our loans?
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How will you factor in the costs of not reducing the impact of overstocking – pollution, overuse of water etc? It isn’t just about having clean water (or, in the case of Canterbury in particular) water available for other purposes than dairy farms, but about revenue and resources lost to other sectors of the community, eg tourism, other kinds of farming, recreational fisherpeople, sporting codes and so on?
Economy isn’t a straight set of numbers, but a balance between need and desire.
Speaking of which, the choice of nutrition you mention, lots of meat and milk, isn’t a necessary diet but a very rich one. Vegetarians don’t eat the meat, vegans use neither and all of us would benefit from having less of both and more fruit and vegetables.
Lincoln University used to have an organic farming option by the way – does it still? It isn’t about going backwards but about understanding the biological processes of farming – science that seeks to work with the earth, rather than conquer it. Not polluting water in the first place is better than spending money to clean it up.
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OK
I get your point. However, what are food animals here for, and if their ‘product’ (e.g. milk, steak, etc.,) isn’t meant to be eaten how come it is so attractive to us? I confess to a love of a good steak.
Mankind has adapted the environment to ourselves since the beginning of history, and since the beginning of formal religious writing (let’s adopt the bible for that) has ascribed to itself god given rights over the fauna and flora (with the exception of apples if I remember rightly – but we ignored that). That ‘dominion over them’ has resulted in breeding programmes over many centuries that have resulted in the vegetables, meat and other ‘produce’ that we all partake of now. If the driver for your espousal of vegetarianism is to only consume that which the land naturally produces and can replenish, I suggest that most of the food you eat has been genetically modified through ‘grafting’ and other none gene-level manipulation, as well as imported from other ‘land’. I think it would be difficult to sustain life on a vegetarian diet composed only of produce that is native to New Zealand and untampered with. In fact, I know that for a fact, as my daughter (who is a vegetarian because she is an animal lover and won’t eat anything that ‘has had a face’, tried to create a ‘new zealand produce diet’ before her last visit here and gave up (and she’s not a quitter!).
Like so many other challenges in the history of humanity, I will look to human innovation and scientific discovery to eradicate the societal undesirable impacts of overstocking. While accepting the fact that not all waterways have to be pure, and very few naturally are (the blue waters of many South Island lakes are indicative of natural pollution!)
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