Outgoing Federated Farmers South Canterbury Arable section chairman Michael Porter reflects on industry issues arising during his three year tenure.
“We’ve been dealing with the increasing level of compliance and legislation farmers are facing, and probably the biggest one of those has been crop residue burning,” he says.
“When the Fire and Emergency Act 2017 was passed, we were threatened with restrictions. Less trust was placed on us to do the task without their constant supervision.” He says New Zealand’s arable farmers are good at what they do, and have proven themselves to be responsible in the past.
“Farmers are asking to be given the responsibility we think we deserve and for them to trust us to do the job we’re trained to do. We are willing to accept the responsibility, but at the same time we are also willing to accept the punishment if anything goes wrong. We would prefer an example was made out of the one or two ratbags in the industry that are giving the rest of us a bad name.”
Federated Farmers has met with Fire and Emergency New Zealand but the upshot is a permit is still required to light and a smoke management plan is required to satisfy the emissions rules for ECan. The main discussion now is around making the process as simple as possible.
“Whether it’s an app or an online permit application service that is nice and easy to use,” Michael says.
“You could be standing in the middle of a paddock, apply for a permit and receive it right there in the paddock. We’re also looking at increasing the length of time the permit would stay active to be for an entire season.”
Michael says arable farmers have not been targeted, rather the residue burning issue has been caught up in generic and poorly written legislation.
“That’s what frustrates me about most of what we do at Federated Farmers, it’s reactionary. We haven’t had the chance in the past three years and we don’t have the resources to deal with things on a proactive basis.
Excuse the pun, but we’re too busy fighting fires.” He says arable farmers are an underrated group who are good at what they do, but are victims of their own success.
“I believe that because you can walk into a supermarket and buy grapes in July. You can buy anything you like and buy it for what I personally believe is slightly below the cost of production.
The customer is not being expected to pay the true cost of production, if they were the arable farmers would be making enough of a profit to do what they have been legislated to do, because we’ve got legislators who believe the only way things like planting trees and improving waterways will get done is by making legislation.”
He says the public is getting exactly what they are buying – a product produced on a minimum cost basis, while the farmer is trying to get the right balance between their land, labour, and capital, make money sustainably and have a lifestyle. “We need to be sustainable in three ways; financially, socially, and environmentally.”
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Crop residue burning a hot topic with arable farmers
