Farms Archive

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  Opposing the common good - by frog

  
  
  
  Also giving his Federated Farmers AGM speech this morning was Keith Kelly, chair of the Meat and Fibre Section (in this bloggy context ‘fibre’ means wool rather than broadband): The biggest problem of all however, could be the emissions trading legislation already through the first stage of the select committee process. By my calculations this [...] read more
  June 24, 2008 1:32 pm - 17 Comments
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  Stolen water - by frog

  
  
  
  Frank Brenmuhl, chairperson of the Dairy Section of Federated Farmers, has just given his AGM speech in which he bemoans that attacks that he perceives dairy farmers face from the Greens and other environmentalists.  The basis of his defence is very Rousseau-ian: The physical resources that we use, to produce food is what we have [...] read more
  June 24, 2008 1:04 pm - 4 Comments
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  The farmers’ share - by frog

  
  
  
  Federated Farmers have just released an interesting report on the share of profit that farmers get from the retail price of food.  [T]he farm price for wheat in 2008 was 16 percent of the cost of a loaf of bread. Of a 20-slice loaf of bread the farm share accounted for around three slices. In [...] read more
  May 15, 2008 4:37 pm - 22 Comments
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  Industrial dairy’s big payout - by frog

  
  
  
  While it is good to see some of our farmers doing well I do have to wonder what Fonterra’s record payout for dairy farmers ($7.30 per kilogram of milk solids, up from $4.46/kg last year) will do to further encourage dairy conversions. New Zealand is currently rapidly converting diverse farms and forests into a monolith [...] read more
  April 11, 2008 3:04 pm - 22 Comments
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  Tahorakuri Forest: from carbon sink to industrial dairy - by frog

  
  
  
  This stunning photo that Greenpeace released today shows Tahorakuri Forest near Taupo being rapidly converted into industrial dairy farms.  The organisation doing this damage is  the government-owned company Landcorp: Greenpeace points out that up to 455,000 hectares of forestry land is at risk of being deforested and converted into industrial farms – the majority for [...] read more
  April 8, 2008 5:30 pm - 9 Comments
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  The price of bread - by frog

  
  
  
  National Radio had an item on the rising price of bread this morning. Much of the reason given was droughts in Australia and overseas use of crop land for biofuels. Now, bread should be something that we are able to supply relatively easily. After all it’s mostly made from things we should be able to [...] read more
  March 28, 2008 1:56 pm - 7 Comments
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  Independent science - by frog

  
  
  
  Isn’t it ironic that the primary sector, which has already received a massive tax payer subsidy due to its exclusion from the Emissions Trading Scheme, should now be getting a second batch of $700 million dollars sent the same way. Whether this is a wise investment or not is going to depend on whether we [...] read more
  March 12, 2008 9:00 am - 9 Comments
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  It’s time to start living here as if we plan to stay - by frog

  
  
  
  Taranaki streams are struggling under the burden of dairy effluent according to the Daily News, with twice as many cases of non-compliance as last year.  However Taranaki is not the worst province in the country: In October last year, Environment Canterbury released a report on its monitoring of resource consent compliance that found 17.7 per [...] read more
  March 11, 2008 1:19 pm - 22 Comments
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  Food democracy - by frog

  
  
  
  According to Heifer International the typical supermarket contains 30,000 items. About half those items are produced by 10 multinational food and beverage companies. And 138 people – 117 men and 21 women – form the boards of directors of those 10 companies. We’ve got a lot of (standardised) products, but not always that much choice. [...] read more
  February 27, 2008 3:58 pm - 27 Comments
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  Russel’s reponse to the State of the Environment Report - by frog

  
  
  
  From his media release this afternoon: “Not only [has the Government] failed to solve the problems threatening New Zealand’s biodiversity which were the key problems identified in the 1997 report, we now have the addition of major problems of environmental degradation caused by land use intensification and increased roading transport, which are also driving water [...] read more
  January 31, 2008 5:04 pm - 3 Comments