Ideal time to close town-country gulf as election looms

It's a worry that only about 13% of voters live in rural areas, yet more than 60% of New Zealand's bills are paid for by agricultural exports.

Can we really expect a majority of voters to support farmers when they tick their box on Saturday, November 26? I doubt it. And what about support for farming in the three years between your votes?

When I was a boy (yeah, all right - about 50 years ago!) I traipsed around Waikato farms with my father, who was a vet. Then, fluctuations in farming fortunes dominated the media and the minister of agriculture was always near the top of the cabinet hierarchy, usually perched just below the prime minister and the finance minister.

That locked in political power to protect and enhance our production and economic base, and support the farming families who care for 60% of our land surface.

These days, a growing gulf between town and country makes our future economy, community and environment vulnerable. Most townies do not understand the practical challenges faced by farmers. Fewer still have seen first-hand how many farmers effectively juggle the increasing and perfectly legitimate demands of the RMA and local councils, food processors and marketers, consumers, environmentalists and townies in general.

Worse, city dwellers mainly hear about farmers when there is a media scrum about the latest skirmish between town and country: when farmers are complaining about something or want something (be it water out of the river or a delay in the Emissions Trading Scheme), when public-access conflict erupts again, or when some individual farmer ends up in the Environment Court for fouling a stream that we all want to enjoy or is prosecuted for neglecting animal welfare.

Similar transgressions and conflicts abound in town communities, of course, but somehow the media don't identify them as part of a collective town responsibility or problem.

Actually, towns don't seem very sustainable places to me. The New Zealand Transport Agency wants to widen the main road coming into Dunedin from the south at the moment, a move that potentially threatens an amazing little critter called Peripatus that somehow has persisted in a bush patch by the road while its surroundings were clear felled for houses.

Peripatus, or velvet worms, are small, nocturnal and have bizarre mating and eating habits - they squirt an adhesive slime to trap their insect prey.

That's all very fascinating for a biologist, but do Dunedin residents care for them? It is going to be very interesting indeed to see whether the Dunedin City Council steps up to spend enough of the ratepayers' money to future-proof this remnant population that is out of sight and out of mind for all but a few scientific geeks like me.

For once, the tables are turned and rural dwellers can watch to see if their townie counterparts will respond to biodiversity concerns in the way we all expect farmers to.

As we come to the election, I hope the voices of farmers are heard loud and clear. Leaders on both sides of the urban/rural split and our politicians must put their heart and tongue muscles to work to build rather than run down the connection between us. Let's talk more about helping each other to become resilient and sustainable, and more about mutual respect and gratitude for each other's contribution to our prosperity and land care.

Only if we stick together can we give our grandchildren a land and life as good or better than our own.

Prof Henrik Moller is a researcher at CSAFE (Centre for Sustainability: Agriculture, Food, Energy, Environment) at the University of Otago. He contributes to Argos (the Agriculture Research Group On Sustainability, www.argos.org.nz).

 

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