National MP Jaqui Dean wrote in today’s Southland Times a puff-piece for the dairy industry and in it she said,
“Calls have been made for a blanket restriction on cow numbers to respolve environmental issues, but I don’t believe there’s anything to be gained by demonising the dairy farming community.”
Do you see the strange disconnect in her statement?
Calling for a restriction on cow numbers is ‘demonising the dairy farming community’?
She goes on,
"...all of this (measures being introduced) takes time, but I believe there's too much at stake to rush in and enforce wholesale changes or regulation which we may look back on with regret."
And there, I believe, we have it. National, if MP Jaqui Deans speaks for them on this issue, is saying, 'don't regulate, slow down, don't do anything to upset our valuable cash cow'.
This is not at all encouraging, in light of the state of the Waituna Lagoon and the results of the just-released State of the Environment report on water quality in Southland released yesterday.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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"...all of this (measures being introduced) takes time, but I believe there's too much at stake to rush in and enforce wholesale changes or regulation which we may look back on with regret."
That is what she actually said ,Robert, not your interpretation.
It doesn't take a literary genius to understand what she is actually saying Anon. That regulations on dairy stocking densities and therefore dairy effluent might risk disrupting dairy production and therefore dairy export-led economic growth. Like, duh.
I think I read somewhere that 15% of farmers are non-compliant with the regulations that are in place now.
Surely that number should be 0%?
Enforcing compliance with current regulations should sensibly precede "a blanket restriction on cow numbers", should it not?
Fortunately, Ms Dean is an expert on water.
Anonymous.
Hard to know what you are getting at, given that you've posted exactly the same quote that I did.
She seems to me to be signaling that 'force' and 'regulation', that is compulsion, won't be supported by National, yet Minister Nick Smith said just yeaterday, 'This Government wants to see the regional council taking the lead with the policy changes that are going to be needed in Southland to get these results going in the opposite direction', which I take to mean, set tougher limits and enforce them. Either I'm misinterpreting the Minister's intent of Deans is out of step with her Minister.
She's made claims like this before on Southland's 'water situation' and I concur with Shane's view.
Frodo has it correct. The pressure from industry to expand rapidly is intense. The effect on the environment is measurable. The political messages are as clear as the water in Waituna lagoon.
Anon@10:34
Perfect compliance would be a very good thing but still not enough. Best practice as it presently stands falls short of what's needed to protect the environment. Even Nick Smith is saying, raise the bar and use a stick to make sure everyone clears it. There is constant fightback from the industry as you'd expect. Significant changes are needed.
Your 15% non-compliance is true, but localised and over a shortish period of time. It was and is a wake-up call though, showing what can happen quickly, even when the pressure is being applied by the council and its staff.
The on-going call for a doubling of stock numbers in Southland must worry anybody following the 'debate'.
Bob I am not a particular Greenie as you well know.
In this case I have sympathy for your argument.
Sometimes it takes events that personally effect an individual to wake up to a particular issue, to enable one to distinguish it from the myriad of issues we should all consider.
I flyfish in the back country rivers so have contact and an understanding of river & stream water and how it changes as it moves to the coast.
There is no doubt whatsoever that dairying is the major contributer to the dirtying of our streams.
How is the situation resolved???
1. Restrictions on cow numbers?
2. Removal of dairy farms from unsuitable and marginal land?
3. Restoration of those farms to bush or more suitablr forms of farmimng e.g. Sheep, forestry etc.?
I know these are obvious comments, and people far more intellegent and educated in these matters will see my comments as naive.
Sometimes the solution is obvious, but the courage to act is not.
Cheers
Lofty
intelligent
Lofty - your coments on this issue are, as you said in your follow-up@9:59, intelligent and I appreciate your making them. As a fly fisherman and someone who gets his feet in the water, you are far better able to judge what's really happening out there and know what the cauuses are. The suggestions you make are all valid but I wonder how many of them the industry, the government and the general public would condone. The battle for dominance in the environment goes on and on and all the while, water quality falls. Some might point to areas of improvement and I'm encouraged by those, but the over-all picture, coupled as it is to the hunger for more development, more industry and more dairy cows, is not up-lifting at all.
My hope Lofty, is that your rivers become clearer, more populated with fish and the other water creatures that coexist with them and always accessible to outdoorsman like yourself.
Are you aware of the plan to create a cycleway beside Southlansd's Oreti river and the opposition from fishermen to the plan? Death by a thousand cuts, this environment thing!
Robert @ 7.00am.
It is the same quote, different interpretations.
I read Deans as saying "let's be certain that the changes address the problems effectively. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water." (my words, not hers). I don't believe that is inconsistent with what Nick Smith is saying.
Perhaps you are right Anonymous. I wish she'd make a clear statement about the place for regulation with regard dairying. She spends a lot of time in the opinion piece big-noting the industry, very little on what has to happen to prevent it from spoiliong the environment and it's own future.
No I did not know about the Oreti cycleway. On the face of it I see no particular reason why not, as always there needs to be understanding and protocols from interested parties.
The exclusive use of rivers and streams has never been gifted to fisherfolk.
Coexistance by user groups is very possible, and in fact desirable to engage in the protection and wellbeing of streams and rivers.
While I am a Southlander by birth I have not been back in the area for a few years.Sounds like I need to come home to sort you lot out ;-)
Yes Bob the fight will go on.
My major concern is the pace of degeneration of the quality of waters.
It happens so quickly after the advent of dairy farm establishment.
The destruction of streambed habitat which chokes off the nymph life is the start of killing the stream, algael growth occurs rapidly when the water becomes enriched with runoff.
Now I am not, I repeat not, anti dairy farming or private enterprise, or allowing individuals the right to earn and make as much as they want. God knows I own and run my own businesses, but...the establishment of dairy farms carved out of unsuitable land, and right on the banks of previously remote streams and rivers, without so much as a by your leave, and with obvious approval of the environmental agencies charged with the protection of those waterways, leaves me cold.
There is an opinion that any water allowed to run to the sea by natural waterways is a waste, and we have not made best use of it. (not one I subscribe to)
Wot say You Bro?
I heard today a comment a farmer made ..He said it took a hundred years to develop this country into good farm land ( from its native state..how long is it going to take before we destroy this land we have done so well from(possibly permamently)
Pauline, I am a great believer in mankinds ability to sort out problems that face us.
We will always find ways to survive and better ourselves.
The issue of water quality is no different, as the problem becomes more of an issue, so will more resources, both monetary and practical be pushed at the problem.
There will be a buck in it somewhere which will drive the improvements.
No Govt, in NZ wants to see the degradation of our environment for the turning of a fast buck, the greens are not exclusive in this.
It is how the situation is managed that is the issue.
There was an article in the ODT on the Environment Southland report yesterday. It said there were 114,000 cows in Southland in 1994, 15 years later there were 598,000!!
These type of increases have been repeated all over the south island- how could anyone think there wouldn't be environmental consequences? And how could anyone contemplate adding more cows and cowshit.
Lots to respond to here - water is such an important issue and one that's not well controlled at all. People from across the spectrum feel the losses that are being experienced across the country and are frustrated by the lack of clarity over our position and ability to manage the resource. Lofty - whatever one's ideology, it's only when you are at 'water-level' that you can judge where we really are at with this. The only politician who's really got out on the water, that I know of, is Russel Norman, who has kayaked dozens of our main rivers, lagoons and lakes specifically to learn how things really stand. Whether you like his pov or not, he's been out there and knows better than the likes of Nick Smith or Jaqui Deans, where the level of quality is in many of pour waterbodies.
John Key made the 'water going out to sea is wasted water' and his idiotic claim was echoed for months by his water-hungry supporters. I was disgusted by that claim and the way it was used as leverage to diminish the views of other water users (fishermen, kayakers, environmentalists etc, and bolster up the users - irrigators, industry.
(Pause here as I have to close up shop and head home - to be continued... :-)
I said - you are deluding yourself, in my opinion. Yours is the 'we are all environmentalists' argument, which is demonstrably wrong. If you were correct, there would be no degraded waterways in New Zealand, no significant loss of topsoil etc. Globally, there would be no man-created deserts (yet there are) dead zones in the oceans (yet there are) and so on. Claiming that we will rise to the occasion when things get bad enough, is a very foolish position to take, unless you have some real process by which the huia, the dodo, the moa and the Yangtse River dolphin can be restored from their extinct state. It's enormously foolish to manage a resource by letting it all-but-fail, then saving it at the final moment. I don't believe your claims that (Governments) National are on an equal footing with the Greens with regard environmental care, not in a million years. The Greens are very obviously, unique in this.
Viv - those figures do not make good reading. The industry of course, has rationales to wrap around their plans and will talk about 'best practice', 'herd homes', nutrient budgetting' and so on but you'll need to listen to the likes of Lofty who spen time in the water to know what's really happening. Those industries are well armed with words, just as the lignite diggers and the oil drillers are. That's all they need, seemingly, to ge the green light for their expansions.
lofty an interesting case of the double standard - trout do more harm to native fish than cows and it wasn't dairying that filled our rivers with didymo and our lakes with lagrosiphon.
We all leave a trail through this world we live in = unfortunately too few of us care to look back at our own trail
Darkhorse, I am happy to look at my footprint, I am under no illusion as to the issues that trout introduction have caused. I know them and I think understand them.
But the fact of the mstter is to me, that the degredation of total water quality in a very short space of time is almost exclusivley down to bovine numbers, and lack of stream & river border prtection.
I can relate many tales of back country streams fallin apart in less than 5 years from farm establishment.
The same rivers and streams held good stocks of trout for 50 years at least prior to that.
Yes trout have shunted out naticve species admittedly, but have not or never would cause the damage dairying has.
Will you do a post specifically on the WQ report?
Yep. Tomorrow's interesting challenge.
I went to the launch at Murihiku Marae 2 days ago and had a chance to talk to all sorts of 'players', intimately connected to water, one way or another. I'll try to get comment here from ES' chief executive. He's a very lucid thinker.
Darkhorse - I read that the greatest predator of marine fish is the cow! Billions of tonnes of 'low grade' fish are hauled out of the briny in nets and processed into cattle feed. If what I read is true, cows do more harm to sea fish than they do trout.
This doesn't further the argument one iota I know might be interesting to some trivia collector...
It is odd though, that you have adopted an attack point used by the Federated farmers to both defend the record of dairying and attack Fish and Game at the same time - sort of a 'Dirty Fishing' fight-back.
Oh good, I won't comment on WQ in this thread, then.
don't worry lofty i agree with you - I have had a fishing licence for nearly as many years too
and RG get really nervous when those cows sprout dorsal fins and large triangular teeth - which reminds me of something I met today
Dairying is not the issue, property rights are.
In the absence of clear property rights we end up with what we have here, the tragedy of the commons.
Tragedy of the Commons, yes Shane, but your solution is wrong. It'll never happen, therefore, it's useless to waste time yearning for.
Darkhorse - I've seen possums meet their end in one of those.
Just because you believe it will never happen does not make it wrong.
What IS wrong is the complete lack of protection and the failure of supposed custodians.
What IS wrong is the pitching of groups of kiwis against each other.
What IS wrong is the persecution of the productive.
What IS wrong is the necessity of the productive to seek permission from the unproductive.
Pragmatism is not the answer, and I will never back a lesser evil.
It remains evil.
And that is not ok.
that is wrong.
Shane - passionate stuff but if I might comment:
Just because you believe it will never happen does not make it wrong.
True. I ought to have said that it's the wrong path to take if you want to succeed - if it won't work, it's not worth pursuing, practically..is what I meant
What IS wrong is the complete lack of protection and the failure of supposed custodians.
The 'protection' isn't completely lacking, rather it's not complete enough. Are you counting the farmers as 'supposed custodians too? And the wider community? Iwi? Yourself in some way?
What IS wrong is the pitching of groups of kiwis against each other.
That is leading to more problems than you might be aware of Shane. Do you think the collaborative approach is best? I wonder if you've read Ali Timms Opinion in today's ST yet. She points out that industry is only pretending to be working toward a solution
What IS wrong is the persecution of the productive.
By whom? By 'the productive' are you meaning the farmers? For the most part, ES staff have been working with the farmers of the Waituna catchment collaboratively for a long time now but that has not proved to be enough to stop the damage caused by farming practices
What IS wrong is the necessity of the productive to seek permission from the unproductive.
In your idealised world (as described previously) the 'productive' do no harm because they are surrounded by others armed with rights, able to litigate. Why would anyone own a lagoon and what return might they expect from doing so, other than to reap the proceeds of litigation directed at their farming brothers and sisters?
Pragmatism is not the answer, and I will never back a lesser evil.
That's admirable Shane and I find myself claiming the same thing on many issues but here, at Waituna, where the damage is evident and ongoing? Can you afford to be so idealistic while a resource is destroyed as you wait in vain hope for the Libertarians to take ownership of our futures?
It remains evil.
It?
Evil?
Are you fighting 'it'?
And that is not ok.
that is wrong.
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