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May 17th Update 

Level 2 and while NZ is trying to get back into action  we have taken the opportunity to reach all those people back in their cars travelling to and from wherever they are  heading. 

Monday the 18th of May, we have a national digital billboard campaign launching with a variety of messages.    It's pivotal New Zealanders come to understand the impacts of reducing hill country breeding farms at the top of the supply chain and what that  will do to the sector, to communities to support services and to our export receipts. 

Our messages are designed to bring an urban audience with us.  

Hope you all get to see one or two!





It's been Interesting to hear the banter in the  house this week.  We hope this means people are waking up to what is happening to productive farmland..   Link below.  And we agree, we need to submit on the proposals before parliament to protest policy that looks green but is anything but and crippling and destroying rural New Zealand  

We encourage you to tell our representatives what you think of the policies in place, because at the  moment all it is doing is destroying rural communities across New Zealand.



https://www.facebook.com/265197563978169/posts/858527714645148/?vh=e&d=n

History repeating itself?  It’s not that long ago, the 1990’s forestry ripped the heart out of a small Southland community. 

Waimahaka near Wyndham was one of a number of areas where farms were sold and planted out in eucalypt trees.  The gums had a huge impact on Tokanui with 35 houses shifted out of the area. Since then only three locals work with trees, the rest is done by contractors outside the area.

In 2019 the downstream effects on our rural communities are biting. Reported in a  media article, a Wairarapa-based shearing company employer of 20 locals, lost in 2019 access to 10,000 sheep that his company won't be employed to harvest.  Further north the sales of land in Pongaroa to forestry conversion are taking out young families looking to come to the community to farm, it will snowball from there.


A reminder:

The Environment  Select Committee deliberating the ETS Reform Bill.  

Our particular concern in the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme bill before the Environment Select Committee is the omission of a clear mechanism for limiting exotic plantings.  Effectively this means,  no present or future Government has a tool to manage land use or to prevent a barrage of more hill country farms being taken out of the supply chain.   We are deeply concerned about the lack of a mechanism, because the bill also proposes to lift the cap on the carbon price.  As soon as this happens, we expect to see an acceleration in the conversion of land into exotic forestry.   This is what has been modelled by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in their report on Farms, Forests and Fossil Fuels last year.  The Environment  committee process for the ETS is happening right now. We see an immediate issue that you can help press for change. There is no mechanism in the bill to limit the extent of emissions that can be offset by forestry, if any should be allowed at all. The bill also proposes to lift the carbon cap and it is widely acknowledged the impacts of this will result in more conversions of farms out of production. You can email any of the Environment select committee highlighting this and asking for change to introduce a tool. This is one good step you can take to help us save hill country farms!.  

Legislation for all New Zealand

NZ and the Agri-sector need a fit for purpose legislation for managing climate change.  Policy that aligns with our values, our land, people and futures
Rather than use farming as the sacrificial lamb policy should focus on Re-directing carbon emitter’s investment from offsetting to enduring solutions.  This would match the original intent of the ETS. “To provide a price mechanism to change emitter’s behaviour at source”. Simply put, it hasn't worked in its current form.   
It leaves us with the can kicked down the road and a bill for each and every household estimated at:

 


(1) Source:  Zero Carbon Bill Regulatory Impact Statement.

 Taking that land out of food production will reduce exports and make us all poorer. 

Will you help?

All our work is voluntary to help make sure policy that is set in place is good for New Zealand, and that those who make these decision understand the impacts of what happens at grassroots level. We were castigated for our advocacy a couple of weeks ago. Our response simply put, without advocacy the likely policies emerging are  unlikely to ever resemble anything which ordinary people can actually adopt. How many ordinary New Zealanders trust those in the offices of parliament to understand how the real world works in the context of their own community or their own business? There are of course a number and we are grateful to be working alongside them.  You'll know who they are. 

A policy making environment without its advocates is a dangerous world. Policy created in a vacuum might suit those making the policy but is highly unlikely to result in anything very useful. Examples abound of brilliant policy ideas which when put to the 'real world test', died in the ditch for lack of practicality.

For all those without the means or the will to submit on the hundreds of decisions that affect us every year, advocates are critical in ensuring that stupid decisions don't get through and that ruinous ones are mitigated.

In signing off, from the messy, dusty farm offices with their dodgy internet connections and amidst piles of home-schooling homework, the unpaid advocates of rural communities give a shout out to Federated Farmers, Beef and Lamb,  50 Shades and everyone else who bothers to go out of their way, on a shoe string budget, to tell the real story of what we are doing on the land and push back against the 'special interest groups' who would turn our nation into a giant pine plantation. 

Here's to us all


Regards

 

(Links  to our support page where you can donate online or find an address to mail a cheque!  All forms welcome
https://www.50shadesofgreen.co.nz/become-a-supporter/)


 

 

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