Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
License needed for work use Register

Gordon Campbell | Parliament TV | Parliament Today | News Video | Crime | Employers | Housing | Immigration | Legal | Local Govt. | Maori | Welfare | Unions | Youth | Search

 

Federated Farmers says ‘good on you Mr Anderton’

28 October 2008

Federated Farmers says ‘good on you Mr Anderton’

Don Nicolson, president of Federated Farmers, has praised the Minister of Agriculture & Forestry and Leader of the Progressive Party, Hon. Jim Anderton MP, for communicating agriculture’s importance to the economy during Monday’s leaders’ debate on TV One.

“At last we have a political party leader who has unequivocally stated agriculture’s importance to the economy. Good on you Mr Anderton,” Mr Nicolson said.

Federated Farmers says that while agriculture contributes 65% of everything we sell to the world, its importance has been surprisingly absent from the election campaign. With only a small part of the world’s surface capable of intensive agriculture and with 80 million mouths joining the human race each year, food production is critical with world food reserves at a mere 35 days. Even at peak output, New Zealand is only capable of feeding around one percent of the world’s population. Mr Anderton’s comments have helped frame the enormity of the sector’s contribution to the livelihood of every New Zealander.

“Over the last two decades New Zealand has employed a magpie like approach to economic development,” Mr Nicolson said.

“Successive governments and commentators have ignored what is right under their nose. Millions of dollars have been wasted trying to find the ‘next big thing’ to agriculture. In the late 1970s it was ‘Think Big’ industrialisation. In the 1980s we were going to become the ‘Switzerland of the South Pacific’ and over recent years, we’ve seen the venture capital ‘revolution’ and ‘knowledge wave’ come and go.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.

“What has agriculture done during this period? It’s only outperformed almost every other sector of the economy for 25 of the past 27 years.

“What Federated Farmers wants is a clear understanding politicians’ get the fact New Zealand’s future is in the production of food. That way we’ll be cutting our future from the cloth which has made New Zealand what it is today,” Mr Nicolson concluded.


ends

© Scoop Media

 
 
 
Parliament Headlines | Politics Headlines | Regional Headlines

Scoop Post Election Podcast: The River Of Freedom Documentary Review

After recording a River of Freedom review the Scoop Political Podcast went into hibernation. Now with a new Government formed it’s time to dust off this forgotten silver and look at the impact this documentary, about the Wellington parliamentary protest of 2022, had on Election 23. Watched by potentially tens of thousands of voters in the weeks prior to the election River of Freedom was not likely to have won votes for the then Labour government. More

Gordon Campbell: On The Skewed Media Coverage Of Gaza

Now that he’s back as Foreign Minister, maybe Winston Peters should start reading the MFAT website which is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of how Kiwis alerted the rest of the world to the genocide in Rwanda. How times have changed ...

In 2023, the government is clutching its pearls because senior Labour MP Damien O’Connor has dared suggest that Gaza’s civilian population - already living under apartheid and subjected to sixteen years of an illegal embargo, and now being herded together and slaughtered indiscriminately amid the destruction of their homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals - are also victims of what amounts to genocide. More


 
 
ACT: Call To Abolish Human Rights Commission

“The Human Rights Commission’s appointment of a second Chief Executive is just the latest example of a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy serving itself at the expense of delivery for New Zealanders,” says ACT MP Todd Stephenson. More


Public Housing Futures: Christmas Comes Early For Landlords

New CTU analysis of the National & ACT coalition agreement has shown the cost of returning interest deductibility to landlords is an extra $900M on top of National’s original proposal. This is because it is going to be implemented earlier and faster, including retrospective rebates from April 2023. More

 
 
 
 
 
 

LATEST HEADLINES

  • PARLIAMENT
  • POLITICS
  • REGIONAL
 
 

InfoPages News Channels


 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.