Things are clearly not well with our boys in blue. Their recent extended stay in sunny Port Moresby along with the PM and his entourage hit the airwaves for all the wrong reasons. 

Seasoned observers of our nation’s fine Air Force will note that their breaking down is nothing new. 

Although it gets more media time when the prime minister is aboard, no trip that is dependent on Defence equipment can ever be considered a sure thing. Much like the Interislander and its maritime misadventures, wringing the last ounce of life from old gear is just a reality of life in New Zealand’s Defence Force, as frustrating as it may be. It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you’re riding a donkey.    

New Zealand has always had old military gear. Decades ago on an armoured personnel carrier drivers course we had to re-appropriate rusty old steel track holding down the scrum machine at the Waiouru Rugby Club because we had no spares in the country. If that didn’t work our next stop was the museum just down the road.

The Air Force suffered the same equipment issues. I was once part of a training exercise where we had seven Iroquois helicopters in support. Lots of photos were taken before we started because we all knew it would be the first and last time we would ever see that many choppers airworthy at the same time. And we were right.

But while things were bad then, this time it’s worse. You see, while the Air Force could never be fully relied upon to turn up when you needed it, it could always be relied upon to turn up to a cocktail party, of which the recent prime ministers’ trip undoubtedly had many.  

Equally, if the Air Force were to break down, it would unerringly be in the same location as a well-reviewed beach resort, with quality accommodation and those little umbrellas that you can put in your drinks. 

A breakdown in Port Moresby on the way to a cocktail circuit is therefore the Air Force’s equivalent of a desperate cry for help.

While my feet still hurt from the memory of the numerous Air Force no-shows for a pickup, and the small person inside me enjoys watching both our politicians and well-groomed air crew suffer the same fate, I think in fairness we badly need a couple of new jets. 

And yes, these jets should belong to the Air Force because contrary to a few opinions out there, they don’t exist purely to fly over sports stadiums and cart the prime minister around. The ability to rapidly and reliably transport soldiers and equipment to locations that commercial air carriers cannot fly to is an essential component of any semi credible defence force. 

Aside from the Defence piece, there is another critical reason the PM needs a new set of wings: trade. It’s fantastic to see our new government following through on its commitment to grow the value and size of our exports, but we need to provide those who represent us with the tools to get the job done. 

In some ways it’s pleasing to see the PM and his delegation turn up on the national airline. As a Kiwi it seems to showcase our natural humility and willingness to get on the job without a bunch of unnecessary pomp and fluff. But the reality is that many of our trading partners value pomp and fluff. It demonstrates to them that we are a serious player, and that we in turn see them as deserving of such respect. 

It’s true that no government in its right mind would want to spend money on new jets when so many of its people are doing it tough. It’s much easier to spend money on health and welfare, nice safe vote buyers that they are. But without strong trading relationships and the income that it provides, there will be no money to buy votes. 

Investing in the core drivers of our economy is always a hard sell, but it is critical that we do so if we want a country worth living in. Investing in the means of getting our trade representatives out into the world and doing business is a key part of this.

As I write this article I’m looking out the window at the rain and mud, with the next job being shifting breaks. To be honest, it’s a little galling making the case for new planes for our fearless aviators while I slide around in a wet paddock. 

Who knows, maybe we’ll all get invited to the next cocktail party?

In New Zealand Fonterra is a big dog. In a good way. In fact, even in the global context it’s big, coming in as the sixth largest dairy company in the world. 

I was quite proud of this, so I was a bit taken aback when it recently said it wanted to get smaller. Around $3.4 billion smaller, to be exact. 

Brands like Anchor, Mainland and Fresh’n Fruity will all be on the block, allowing Fonterra to focus on core business such as collecting milk and flicking it on in simplified formats such as powder or other foodservice ingredients.   

As a Fonterra shareholder my first thought was great! Times are tight and wouldn’t a nice little cash injection be handy about now. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one to think so as the airwaves became chocka with financial commentators and opportunists lining up for a piece of the action.   

My second thought was why? After all, if its brands are going to be so attractive and valuable to potential purchasers such as Nestlé or Danone, why would we not keep that value for our own long-term benefit? 

There are some big brains in the Fonterra team, and you would expect that such a complete about-turn in strategy must be supported by some fairly deep and analytical thinking. 

But if such a major change is required, you could also wonder how they got it all so wrong in the first place.

Now I know this topic has been beaten to death in the media already, and as a new entrant to the dairy industry my opinion should be taken with a big pinch of salt. But perhaps a bit of “other industry” perspective may be helpful right now. 

After all, wouldn’t NZ’s wool industry like a couple of globally recognised and valued consumer brands in its portfolio right now? How about NZ’s velvet industry? Wouldn’t those farmers love to own a consumer brand that is internationally recognised and valued?

These industries have been selling raw, undifferentiated commodity products for quite some time now, and I suspect their farmers would be more than happy to discuss with Fonterra how that’s currently going for them. 

Commodity dependency is a real and well recognised issue for both NZ’s farmers and the country’s economy as a whole. It’s hard to reconcile that fact with Fonterra’s desire to sell off the only things that make it recognisable in its consumers’ eyes. 

Of course Fonterra could respond with the fact that selling consumer brands is hard work. It’s not always profitable and there is a logic train that suggests that focusing on a “business to business” model is currently more profitable, which surely is what its farmer owners want? 

Equally, I am sure that there are a number of Fonterra farmers who will quite rightly point out that some of the company’s overseas adventures have not always played out well. This could fairly help draw the conclusion that sticking to one’s knitting is the more sensible strategy.  

No doubt there are many other good and valid points that Fonterra’s leadership team could add to the case to sell, but there is one key principle that I know for fact, and that is one should always hedge one’s bets. 

I remember talking to a director of a well-known NZ food company shortly after the worst of covid. His business had survived the pandemic remarkably well and his reason for it was simple: multiple distribution channels and multiple markets. 

In short, his business sold food ingredients as well as finished products into a range of countries. While it was tempting to double down on a singular business model, it was his company’s diversification that underpinned its resilience.

The global trading environment is not going to become any more stable. We will have more pandemics. We will have more conflicts. Perhaps most worryingly to dairy farmers, we will have alternative proteins. 

To successfully operate in this environment, Fonterra’s farmers need a co-operative that can sell its milk consistently and at the best possible price. Not having any consumer brands within its business removes Fonterra’s ability to both connect with its consumers, to explain the value of its products, and ensure that its milk is not substituted for something or someone else’s. 

This must be a key factor in any dairy company’s strategy going forward.    

Just because doing something is hard, doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. Building a competitive capability in any endeavour requires taking a few knocks. Fonterra has clearly taken the odd one as it has built up its consumer brands, but now is not the time to quit them. They are far too valuable to its farmers, both now and for the future.

In Focus Podcast: Farmers do the sums as farm incomes tighten

Senior reporters Richard Rennie and Neal Wallace join Bryan to talk about Fonterra’s latest milk price forecasts, the frustration at the slow progress of methane inhibitors through the regulatory system and the state of sheep and beef farmer finances.

eating.the.elephant@gmail.com

I’d like to start this column by saying sorry. A retraction if you like. In my previous article on the perils of gender diversity, I mistakenly stated that my father was 84. He is in fact 83. I also stated that he got beaten in an arm wrestle by his 60-year-old female neighbour. Apparently it was, in fact, a draw. 

Naturally, I would like to express my apologies to the offended party and confirm that all other statements made in the article were 100% correct, for the most part. 

And so on to the main subject: Americans. 

I like Americans and recently I met a few more of them. They were from Texas, to be exact, where they drive trucks three times too big and have a habit of losing their guns in the seat pockets. 

But Texas is also the land of big business. In my travels there I met a gentlemen named Andrew Volleman. Andrew and his family moved from their home in the Netherlands to Texas in 1993, in search of opportunities to grow their dairy business and allow future generations of Vollemans to take their place within it. 

Starting with 100 cows, the Vollemans now milk 5000 a day, supplying their own brand of milk in glass bottles across the state.  

The glass bottles were important to the Vollemans as they wanted to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and also stand out in the marketplace. The big sticking point with this was the supermarkets, who were happy to sell the Vollemans’ milk, but not collect their empty bottles. 

Ultimately, the Volleman’s Family Farm brand was so strong that the supermarkets gave in to consumer demand and started collecting the Vollemans’ bottles and processing the customers’ $2 deposit. A big turnaround from a previous “hard no”. The Volleman’s brand is now so strong that in 2021 it was appointed the official milk supplier of the Dallas Cowboys.

There were a lot of things I took from the Volleman’s story but two stood out. 

The first is that supermarkets can be brought to heel if your brand is strong enough and consumer demand is great enough. 

The second is that scale was a strong component of that success. It enabled the Vollemans to access the capital and bring on the marketing muscle necessary to build a highly successful brand. 

Moving nearly 12,000km southwest from Texas we find ourselves back in our wee land of milk and honey, New Zealand. Scale and capital are not two things that you readily associate with our fine young country. 

They are, in fact, the two things that are badly holding us back. However, looking forward I think that may be about to change. 

NZ farmers are continuing to get bigger because they have no choice. We have few strong brands so the only way to stay in business is to chase profitability via economies of scale. 

But continuing to grow within the context of increasing market and climatic volatility is going to require the support of increasingly large and sophisticated investors. 

These investors will see the value in food production investments, especially within a world increasingly focused on food security, but these same investors won’t tolerate the poor and lumpy economic returns that the average farmer does. Nor will they accept the terms of trade currently offered by our four major banks.

These investors will start chasing market power like the Vollemans did. 

My guess is that they will look to where they can create market power within their various parts of the sector. They may look to form new and stronger co-operatives, or create products instead of commodities, or create brands that are so strong that value is captured by the grower and not the retailer. 

They may also drive to create the formation of lending institutions such as Germany’s Rentenbank, which supports the development of agribusiness through low-interest loans. 

I have no clue what approaches they will eventually employ, but I know for certain that they won’t accept the status quo.  

No one wants to see vast tracts of NZ farmland empty of the small towns and communities that were once such an important part of its fabric. Unfortunately, the great land consolidation ship has sailed, and I doubt there’s anything that’s going to turn it back. 

But if it’s any comfort, it may ultimately drive the change that is so badly needed by the sector and return the profitability back to those who actually own the means of production. 

We just need to hang on until it does.  

My fellow Eating the Elephant contributor Dave is a delicate sort of chap. Sure he’s big and used to row for New Zealand, but don’t let that fool you. I have it on good authority that he knits jumpers for the homeless and sings his pet calf to sleep every night.  

So knowing how soft of heart my old mate Dave is, I felt compelled to come to his defence in his hour of need. You see, Dave is in danger of being cancelled. 

What for you might ask? Good question, I would reply. After all, who could possibly want to cancel Dave? Well, it seems there are one too many white male contributors to the Farmers Weekly for one good reader’s taste. 

Dave’s big friendly mug was recently splashed across a Linked-In post asking for more diversity in this clearly chauvinistic publication. How many Daves must we suffer? 

Dave’s face tried to slide from the page in embarrassment, but the ink held him firmly in place.

So Dave, let me respond on your behalf, because I know you would rather settle the issue with flowers and a nice cup of tea. From behind my barricade of middle-aged white privilege, I venture out to offer a few words in your defence.  

But first a word of concession. The reader is, of course, right that there is preponderance of white male contributors to Farmers Weekly. And yes, the reader is also right that more diversity of opinion can only be a good thing. After all, and as the saying goes, if you and I agree on everything, one of us is irrelevant. 

But here’s where I stop agreeing. I say that the days of being outraged over a lack of gender diversity are over. I’m nearly 48 years old and I’m confident that women have had my measure for every one of those years. I know for a fact that it was my big sister who invented waterboarding. I can’t remember what the reason was, but I am certain that I told her everything. 

I also know for a fact that it was a girl in my intermediate years who invented cage fighting when playing netball every second Wednesday. I still recall the imprint of the wire netting on my forehead after suggesting she might like to hand the ball over. 

To make things worse, the female domination of Anderson men has gone intergenerational. My son’s Wakely Shield rugby team got soundly thumped by an all-girls team, who played with a level of skill, cunning and at times outright ferocity that left our boys bruised, shellshocked and with the beginnings of a nervous twitch. 

And finally, just when you think women might finally show a little sympathy, my 84-year-old father just got beaten in an arm-wrestle by his female neighbour. Admittedly there were at least 20 years in her favour, but the point remains.

Aside from their domination of the Anderson line, I would note that women have ably demonstrated their ability at the highest levels in every discipline in our country that I can think of. They have been our prime ministers, our diplomats, our Olympians, our music stars, our business leaders and our soldiers. 

There are few if any barriers left to success or participation that I am aware of, including in the agriculture sector. We only need to look around us to see those women currently leading or contributing to the various organisations in our sector at the very highest levels.

The challenge we face today is not diversity of gender, or race, or even sexuality. I think our real challenge is diversity of thought. 

Right now our sector is facing real challenges, which we largely attempt to solve with the same thinking we employed 50 years ago. Our wool industry is near total collapse. Our climate is changing in front of our eyes, driving land use change at a rate almost faster than we can adapt to. Our geopolitical environment is in turmoil and our biggest trading partner is in all kinds of financial trouble. 

These are all massive issues that require fresh, innovative and decisive thinking. We need the very best people coming forward with ideas and solutions that will help steady the ship and guide us through what are unquestionably going to be some very niggly years ahead.

Dave isn’t your problem. Dave is doing his best to contribute to a conversation that is bigger than all of us. Rather than rail against him, we all do better to join him. His gender is irrelevant and yours is too. The floor is open, and your voice is welcomed.  

In this series, the lads discuss levers.  
eating.the.elephant@gmail.com

There is a book title out there called Too Much and Never Enough. Here in Hawke’s Bay that seems to neatly summarise our relationship with water. 

Now I know that we in Hawke’s Bay do not hold a monopoly on droughts and cyclones, but in recent years it seems we have lurched from persistent dry to incessant wet, with little in between. 

The scars from Cyclone Gabrielle are the freshest in our memory, but it is the cumulative droughts that affect more of us more often.

The theme of this series of articles is “levers”. My take on the theme is what levers can we as a sector pull that will have the greatest benefit to our economy and our environment? 

As a farmer in Hawke’s Bay, I would struggle to think of a lever more powerful than that of sufficient and reliable water. 

You see, water is transformative. Any producer of food knows that reliable production requires reliable water, but it is the wider benefits to the region that sometimes get missed in the conversation. 

Hawke’s Bay has significant areas of land that could be put to a far better use, if there was reliable access to water. Returns per hectare from unirrigated drystock land are paltry in comparison to those derived from irrigated horticulture and high value crops. 

Certainly the benefits of water are there for the landowner, but it is what happens to this food beyond the farm or orchard gate that is the real story.  

Supported by the correct policies and incentives, and with a steady flow of water and produce, it is reasonable to think that districts like Central Hawke’s Bay could become a new hub of food processing and manufacture, creating jobs and demanding services that would boost the entire district.  

Productivity is often thought of as tonnage on the ship, but true economic productivity is the amount of value that is created from each unit of input. Water is fundamental to the creation of this additional value.

Aside from basic economics, there are other important reasons for large-scale water storage. Dams provide a buffering effect during weather events by absorbing excess water during floods and preventing areas downstream from being inundated. 

By regulating a river’s flow, dams help protect the communities, infrastructure and ecosystems below them. Cyclone Gabrielle is an obvious example of the damage that flooding can cause if left unmitigated. Dams aren’t a silver bullet, but they do help.

Climate change is another key driver for water storage, particularly in those areas already prone to drought. There is no question our climate is changing. There is also no benefit in ignoring the fact or thinking that the best form of adaptation is doing nothing. 

Even with efficient water management practices, Hawke’s Bay will increasingly struggle to match demand with supply, both in town and in the country, without the construction of new water storage infrastructure.  

The reality is that we need to store more water even just to maintain our current level of consumption. Kicking the water-storage can down the road is no longer an option.

Naturally, no solutions are ever as simple as they seem, and there are certainly questions to be answered when arguing the case for water storage. Who will pay for it? Will the water be cheap enough to buy for those that wish to use it? Will the community truly benefit from the water, or will it just make a small group of landholders wealthier? 

These are legitimate concerns, but they are within our ability to effectively address through smart design and policy. We as a country have built large dams before and we know enough to ensure that our efforts are equitable to those in the wider community who will ultimately share in the cost. 

As a hill country farmer, I am fully aware that I won’t be able to use any of the water that may come from our region’s potential water security initiatives. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t support them. 

There is an old saying that a rising tide floats all boats. I’m not sure that this is entirely true, but I fully believe that we as nation must start building large-scale water storage in those regions that would most benefit from it. 

The cost of inaction is too great, and the potential benefits are too significant to try to stand in the way. 

It’s pleasing to see that our new prime minister has come out in full support of water-storage infrastructure. Politics has always been the major stumbling block to date. Perhaps it’s an idea whose time has finally come. 

In this series, the lads consider New Zealand’s place in the world. 
eating.the.elephant@gmail.com

Shortly after re-entering the farming game, someone asked me what I did beforehand. I told him that for the most part I used to help companies manage risk. That person then rather unkindly pointed out that I must have been a bit rubbish at it if I decided it was a good idea to buy a farm. I was stung, but I bravely washed my pride down with a second pint.

For a little bit of context, I used to help companies work out how they could operate in high-risk environments, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. Both of these places can present massive financial and operational risks for those who choose to operate there. Conversely, the rewards can also be massive. 

The Danakil Depression has one of the worlds largest remaining deposits of potash sitting under its desert floor. The Congo is incredibly rich in high-value minerals such as lithium, diamonds and gold. The equation for working in these countries is that the benefits must tangibly outweigh the risk. To put it another way, the juice must be worth the squeeze, and then some.

The risk-reward equation is equally relevant to us farmers and the international trading relationships we so heavily depend on. Our industry leaders and government representatives strive to build relationships with countries we can create stable and mutually beneficial trade agreements with. 

These countries would ideally not be economically protectionist, nor resort to economic coercion any time New Zealand wants to clear its throat on human rights or protest about nuclear testing in its back yard. 

Unfortunately, idealism has a habit of giving way to reality at some point, and we will always end up having to swallow the odd dead rat to get a deal worth having. We just have to be confident that there is enough juice in the deal to wash the taste away. 

To give you an idea of why this is not always the case, lets look at our current free trade agreement with China. Since we signed this agreement in 2008, our trading relationship has grown to the extent that our exports to China are now worth approximately $21.45 billion, the large majority of that comprised of commodities such as dairy, meat and wood.  

This all sounds fantastic, but the reality is not as rosy. Our increased focus on the export of raw commodities such as raw logs and milk powder to China has seen a reduction in the number of value-added products leaving our shores. 

This has resulted in Harvard University recently ranking the complexity of New Zealand’s economy alongside that of Greece, Brazil and Russia. No big deal, you might say, but because the complexity of a country’s economy directly correlates with how wealthy it is, it seems we are also becoming progressively poorer. Which is a big deal.

Right now, the global trade landscape is in a state of flux. China and the United States are locked in a major trade war, the World Trade Organisation has lost its teeth, the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows no sign of abating, and the Israeli/Gaza conflict is spilling over into neighbouring countries.

Overlaying all this drama is an increasing shift away from globalisation and towards trade relationships driven by geostrategic interests, the two big players in this game being the US and China. 

We would like to think that this trend will reverse, and that NZ will be able to continue being the Switzerland of the South Pacific, aligning with no one and enjoying the benefits of trade with everyone. An appealing scenario but increasingly hard to pull off. 

There is a very clear trend in motion, with Australia’s strengthening trade and defence relationships with the US a recent case in point. Having to “pick a side” is a very real possibility.

Perhaps more at any other time, NZ has to reconsider its place in the world and what it wants to achieve. We would be silly to sabotage those trade relationships that are currently keeping us afloat, but we must begin to actively pursue trade relationships that allow us to create and sell value added products without penalty. Signing FTAs that incentivise the production and sale of raw commodities has done this, but will never be our pathway to economic prosperity. 

If globalisation as we know it is reaching for its final breaths, then we are entering a new era of risk. Like those companies operating in the world’s highest-risk environments, we’ll need to get the fundamentals right or risk disaster. Can we really trust our partners? Are we diversified enough to weather adverse events. Are we stuck in extraction when we should be innovating? How many dead rats is too many? 

The Danakil Depression is the hottest place, on average, on Earth. Located in Ethiopia, it sits at the very juncture where the Horn of Africa is slowly tearing itself away from the mainland. 

Supercharged by geothermal heat, the windswept volcanic rock floor of the depression easily reaches 55degC in its hottest months, making life there, for most things, impossible. When the wind rises, it feels like putting your head in the door of an oven on fan bake and simultaneously having handfuls of sharp volcanic sand thrown in your face. It’s brutal and was all too much for this boy.

Fortunately, the Afar people are made of sterner stuff than me. They have adapted to life in the Danakil and have even managed to make a living from it. 

Within the Danakil is a place called Lake Afar, home to the salt mines that provide almost all of Ethiopia’s salt. The Afar salt miners cut slabs of salt from the evaporated lake crust, before carting it across and out of the depression by camel train over 80km to the nearest trading town. For their labours, the salt miners received around 5 US cents (about 8c) per slab of salt. Just enough to live on.

From the air-conditioned safety of my truck, I watched the Afar cameleers lead their strings of camels out of the haze and across the desert floor in a seemingly continuous train that stretched from one horizon to the other. 

Both camel and cameleer seemed almost oblivious to the scorching heat and sand flying around them. As a young bloke with the usual youthful arrogance about my physical ability, I remember that humbling feeling when I recognised that the Afar measured their physical and mental resilience with a completely different yardstick than I did. 

Southwest of the Danakil Depression and 14,359km away lies our own little slice of paradise. As this year draws to a close, it seems that we have had to face down a few extra challenges of our own. 

There haven’t been too many 55degC days for sure, but we’ve had other demons. In February, Cyclone Gabrielle blew many farms in Hawke’s Bay to bits. High interest rates, low commodity prices and geopolitical turmoil have also contributed to an environment where many farmers on the east coast are now questioning their future in the sector. The juice is increasingly not enough to justify the squeeze.

Like the Afar people, New Zealand’s farmers like to pride themselves on their ability to withstand hardship. To be resilient and to roll with the punches. Stoicism forms not only an important part of our self-identify, it also underpins much of what we do on a daily basis. When times are tough, it is logical to just keep putting one foot after another.

But here the comparison ends.

The Afar people have for the most part no choice in where they live and what they do. They can see the opportunities and possibilities in the world around them, but they have no practical means of getting out of there. They have to keep on keeping on.

In comparison, we don’t. We have a world of opportunities available us. We are uniquely positioned to benefit from an increasingly global focus on sustainable food systems. We are almost embarrassingly well equipped to provide the high-quality food and fibre products that the richest in the world demand. 

Our climate will be comparatively less affected by climate change than other countries. Our government is stable, our international reputation strong and our land productive. Most importantly, we have access to the research and capital required to take us being from raw undifferentiated commodity producers to producers of high-value food and fibre products that are sought after in our global markets.   

To get there, farmers need to move beyond just being stoic and recognise that better is in fact possible. Our comparatively poor and fluctuating returns are not an inevitable reality. Nor is the environmental degradation that we still see in parts of our industry. 

We now have a change of government, and it will be tempting for us farmers to see that as a vindication of the status quo. But I get the impression that this new government wants us to achieve our potential, both economically and environmentally. We need to take advantage of that and help the government to help us. 

One part of this will involve being positive and embracing what we can do rather than commiserating over what we can’t. Another part will involve demanding the same from our industry leaders, who are appointed to serve our interests.

Stoicism has its place, but it should not be our default business model. We are lucky to have options. We should exercise them. 

eating.the.elephant@gmail.com

In this series, the lads ask if farming is more science or art. 

This month I bought a new chainsaw. I felt the lack of loyalty seeping through my bones as I set my old Husky aside for a brand-new Stihl. I was lured by the 66.8cc of log-shredding power, the shiny orange paint and the magic of the decompression switch. I occasionally catch a glimpse of my old companion sulking in the corner of the shed as I fetch the dog tucker each night.  The shame of betrayal burns but I can’t go back.

However, as enamoured as I am with my new wood-chopping companion, it pales in comparison to my first true love, the blasting gun.

I probably need to step back here to explain myself better. You see, my family has a long and enduring relationship with things that go bang. My great-grandfather, who unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting, reportedly never went very far without a splitting axe and a sack full of blasting powder. 

His enthusiasm knew no bounds, resulting in large quantities of firewood, and at one point, a large gum tree straight across the roof of his woolshed.

My great-grandfather was also generous with his supplies, believing in the irrefutable right of his grandchildren to small calibre rifles and as much blasting powder as they could eat. This resulted in plenty of wild game for the table, as well as the unfortunate sinking of a dinghy in the lagoon while blasting for trout. 

This generational love of explosives has survived world wars, depressions, great leaps of technology and successive Labour governments. For my family has always remembered that, whilst it is all very well to be quick and efficient, sometimes it is the process that really matters.

Now, for those of you who have been unlucky enough not to know what a blasting gun is, let me explain. Otherwise known as a “black powder log splitter”, the gun is a cylindrical device about 2 feet long, with a flat head at one end, and a narrowing point at the other. It is filled with blasting or gun powder, then driven into the end of the log you want to split. When it is sufficiently far enough in, a fuse is inserted into a hole in the gun, one that would be long enough for the firer to light and walk promptly back a safe distance. 

Lastly, and in a perfect world, another log would be positioned at the exposed end of the blasting gun to stop it from transforming into a low flying missile, never to be seen again.  

My personal introduction to the blasting gun came when I was still in single figures. My father was the man in charge of operations, and therefore things were done a bit differently. The first departure from best practice was with the length of the fuse. Money was tight and fuse was not to be wasted. Therefore it was cut short. As the fuse was also old, its burn rate was fairly variable. Therefore we were more runners than walkers. 

The second departure from good practice was not putting another log against the end of the gun. Shifting logs was hard work so a wet sack was used instead. This worked somewhat, but also meant that your hiding spot had to be at right angles to the future trajectory of the blasting gun. 

And so I watched the magic of the blasting gun unfold. The log was selected and the gun was prepared. I remember asking my father how he knew how much powder to put in. He was noncommittal, just something about “one more handful for good measure”. Then the gun was driven into the log, the fuse inserted and the sack placed over the end. I watched with fascination as the match flared and the fuse was lit. Its hiss came with a surge of adrenaline and we began to run.  

I had never before in my short life known running to be both so exciting and so full of purpose. We slid into our hiding area baseball-style and waited. The wait wasn’t long, because with a loud thump the gun went off. In hindsight the log must have been partially rotten because the top blew off it and bits of wood rained down through the cloud of smoke all around us.

I remember stepping out from behind our hiding place with my eyes glowing and the smell of blasting powder in my nostrills. I can still smell it now.

This article was supposed to be about whether farming is an art or science, but I’ve strayed a bit. Perhaps there is an art to farming, but it’s the science that makes it fun. And don’t we all need to do things occasionally that blow out the cobwebs? 

Ladies and gentlemen, please excuse me but I need to interrupt regular programming to bring you some breaking news. 

It seems, and I hate to be the bearer of such sad and worrying tidings, that there is a plague slowly making its way over our fair hills. It is a plague that we have met before, but never has its reach been so wide and insidious. I am of course referring to the manifestation otherwise known as Agriculturalus dickerus,  or dickery for short.

Now normally I wouldn’t think to write an article on the subject of dickery within our beloved sector, but a couple of recent events have made me consider the topic in more detail. 

The first involved me talking to an ex-business owner who had served farming customers most of his adult life. It transpired he didn’t have much sympathy for my standard monologue on the life of the poorly appreciated farmer. His take was that farmers tended to be rude, arrogant and entitled. Although he didn’t use the word “dick” specifically, I think we can safely read between the lines.

My second experience was being mistaken by a farmer for a member of our regional council. After being given both barrels on my parentage, my failings and how all the expertise that I actually needed was currently sitting on the other end of the phone, I came to the conclusion that all public-facing members of the council should be awarded an extra allowance for exposure to chronic dickery.

Admittedly, life does not always line up for those of us who spend most of our time behind the farm gate. Rules do not always make sense, policies are sometimes disconnected from reality and it’s hard to keep the blood pressure in check when you are sent an “education” letter from a faceless bureaucrat with an obvious penchant for spreadsheets and walk socks.

But ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that we need to rise above these provocations. It is time we do a bit of public navel gazing and see the world for what it is. You see, and this may come as a surprise to some of you, but people don’t like dealing with dicks. They may put up with you, but they will cease to support you. And that is the real issue. 

You may have heard: the positive reputation that we farmers used to have with our communities and the voting public at large is starting to fade. I know this because a certain Penelope Clark did a Kellogg Research paper on this very subject. She noted that in a 2017 UMR poll, only 59% of urban respondents had a positive view of the New Zealand sheep and beef industry, down from 78% of urban respondents who had a positive view of farming in general in 2008. She concluded that NZ’s primary sector was “sitting at the lowest level of acceptance, and on the precipice of its legitimacy being questioned, in light of a diversifying economy and food innovation”.

This trend worries me, and I feel that it should worry you too. Farming is not going particularly well right now. We are going to need the support of our politicians, our voting public and our consumers to help us as we work through some difficult years ahead. Somehow farming is going to have find a way to be profitable in a new world of increasing public scrutiny, consumer expectation and environmental conformity. Doing this is going to require friends. Lots of them.  

Now, I know that every industry has its fair share of dicks. And I don’t think that we are all out there acting badly. You only need to look in your local paper to see farmers out there amongst their communities giving their all for rural and urban folk alike. But the unfortunate reality is that nothing creates news or helps form adverse opinion more than people behaving badly. 

Fairly or not, we need to be better than this. We all need to be positive ambassadors for our sector. We don’t need to be meek, but we do need to be fair and constructive. We don’t need to like everyone we meet, but we do need to treat them with respect if we want their respect in turn. If we don’t, we are going to bear the consequences. 

I currently have a contractor with one arm working for me. His other one got torn off in a tractor accident when he was two. He happens to be one of the most positive people I know, despite what life has thrown at him. His family motto is DBAD (Don’t Be a Dick).

Words to live by.

eating.the.elephant@gmail.com

I wonder if, by any chance, you have read any Barry Crump? When I was a boy growing up in the King Country his books were my well-thumbed favourites, A Good Keen Man especially. 

In one of the books, and I can’t for the life of me remember which, Barry tells a story about getting off a train after a long time in the bush, and there, sitting on the platform, tied to a pole, is a dog jealously guarding a pile of old worn-out hunting gear. Barry makes the observation that both dog and gear must have belonged to a deer culler, because only a deer-culler’s dog would think such a pile of gear could be worth protecting.

There are parallels here with farming, Chris, and that’s what I wanted to have a chat to you about. 

It is easy to be sentimental about what we do here on the land. Like the images Barry Crump’s books created in my mind, just as vivid are those from a childhood spent on isolated hill country. Mustering stock by horseback, cutting scrub, the long days docking and even the billy tea at smoko when out fencing are memories I wouldn’t change for the world.

But I also know that my father shielded me from forming the other memories. Memories of financial hardship, letting the house insurance lapse, and wondering if the bank would make this season our last. These are the memories that farmers would like to forget, but can’t, because they repeat like clockwork. 

As we’ve touched on before, our industry is not much of an economic performer, or at least not for those who actually farm.  Our all farm types average return on capital is 2.5%. If you were a fund manager providing this level of return to your clients, you wouldn’t last beyond the first performance review. And yet those that represent our industry to our government seem hellbent on maintaining the status quo. 

Chris, what I am trying to say is that farming needs some fresh leadership. It badly needs the type of transformation that can only come from completely rethinking how we farm, what we sell and how we sell it. 

I understand that politicians will often take their cues from the loud and established voices. Voices that present themselves as representatives of the whole. But for the most part these voices are from the status quo. They are experienced in the past and want to see it continue. These are voices that have relied on capital gains as the basis of their business model, have pushed productivity over value creation and seek to sell commodities instead of products. These voices have overseen environmental degradation, a loss of social licence, the consolidation of farmland and the loss of rural communities. They have driven talented young farmers to leave the industry, and even the country, because the numbers no longer stack up. And again, all for the princely average return of 2.5%.

And this is bad for you Chris, because the country misses out on all that potential GDP. Revenue that is currently captured by those countries that import our raw commodities, add value to them and, in the worst cases, sell them back to us.

We need a fresh approach, and we need fresh people to drive it. This election provides an opportunity to really kick on with agriculture and grab a bigger slice of the value chain. 

Once this election is over, let’s form a new agriculture advisory group.  But let’s not rearrange the deck chairs and fill it with the same old voices who will give both you and me the same old thing. Let’s fill it with disrupters. Let’s fill it with the very best marketers, brand developers and food technologists out there. And most importantly, let’s put people in there with a track record of creating valuable products and successfully selling them to the world.

To help with this Chris, let’s rethink our trade policy. Let’s stop focusing on creating access for commodity products and start creating access for brands. Perhaps you could consider focusing as much effort on incentives as we currently do on regulation? 

Perhaps you could promote the development of additional processing capacity in New Zealand. Perhaps you could further accelerate entrepreneurial activity in the country and help develop a whole new range of brands that take full advantage of the latent potential of our first-class food, fibre and timber outputs. 

Chris, there is so much potential for our sector out there. I get excited just thinking about it! But please let’s stop listening to the old deer-cullers’ dogs. Give them a pat and leave them to lay in the sun. It’s time to kick on.