By Kate Acland, chair of Beef + Lamb New Zealand
With many farmers facing incredibly tough conditions on farm due to drought and financial pressures, no one can be blamed for wanting to put their head down and get on with things.
Every so often I dip into Facebook and I’m more and more disheartened at the noise – the shouting, the targeted attacks, the tendency for some to talk past each other and the politicking. It’s making us more divided when we need to be united, and inevitably it’s making a whole lot of people tune out and turn off.
My feeling, backed by the farmers I talk to every day, is that this is a vocal minority and that the bulk of the farmers out there have just got their head down, trying to work out how they will pay their wages/contractor/bank next month.
These are the farmers who, after putting in 10-12 hours on farm, get home and can’t face a mountain of paperwork, can’t face the politics in the rural papers and certainly haven’t got the spare headspace to sit down and read six pages of Beef + Lamb NZ farmer remits and voting information.
They simply want to focus on farming and do the right thing by their families, businesses and rural communities.
We’ve just seen disappointingly low voter turnout (12%) for our most recent annual general meeting and farmer remits. Is this a case of apathy and a lack of interest in our organisation, or lack of interest in the remit topics?
Or is this just a timing thing and a case of farmers with a lot of other things on their plate? Are there farmers out there who are a little perplexed about all the noise?
Strong voter turnout is important; it gives us a strong mandate to speak and act on behalf of farmers. I certainly don’t believe that 88% of our farmers don’t care – I just worry they don’t have the headspace and time to speak up.
All voices matter, so how do we make sure they are given even weighting? How do we make sure the silent majority can be heard?
This year most of the remits were focused on climate change. I know many farmers are worried about this, but does the number of remits mean this is the top issue for farmers right now? As a farmer, I think what is top of mind for many at the moment are lamb prices and costs of production.
As a board, we need to consider how we interpret the remit results when we get a low turnout. Do the results represent the majority view, or those who have a particularly strong view on the topic?
What’s clear to me is that although we take remit results seriously, we need to hear from more farmers. Twelve percent isn’t enough.
We hear from our exporters, our global markets and from our New Zealand trade representatives that environmental and climate credentials will become increasingly important and that NZ is well placed to take advantage of these opportunities.
We hear from respected climate scientists who state that although methane is part of a cycle, it does have a warming impact, particularly if it is going up. They tell us the current methane targets are too high, but also tell us the targets should not be zero – agriculture has a role to play.
Listen to “Feature | Advocating for the loud and the quiet” on Spreaker.BLNZ’s position is clear – the current methane targets are too high and they have to be revised down and there is currently no justification for a tax on on-farm emissions.
Implementing emissions pricing without readily available technological solutions would be detrimental to both the agricultural sector and the wider NZ economy.
We won’t budge on this.
Social media is increasingly becoming an unpleasant space to be in. I’ve deleted Twitter/X, I’m almost done with Facebook, and Instagram is not far behind. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling the shouting is becoming overwhelming.
Where do the bulk of our NZ farmers sit? Where do they get their information and what do they need to know?
How do we ensure all farmers have the confidence to speak up and engage? How do we focus on what we all DO agree on? This is how we have the best chance of succeeding and landing enduring solutions.
I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but what I do know is that it’s important that we give space for everyone so we hear all sides of the story and take an informed view of how we best position our sector to succeed into the future.
Yes, it’s hard to be thinking about the future right now when the day to day reality is a grind for many of us – but we know as farmers we deal in cycles, weather, finance and markets. Unfortunately we’re in the perfect storm right now where they are all hitting us at once – but the good thing about cycles is they will turn.
We absolutely must continue to look to the future, we must make sure that the voices we’re hearing today are the ones guiding our sector to the place our children will need it to be, which almost certainly will be different to where farming was in our parents’ time.
MORE: Here a full interview with Kate Acland on Farmers Weekly In Focus, wherever you find your podcasts.
