Wellington  2 February 2009

RMA Reform Will Help Rural/Urban Divide

Our Association is delighted to see new public policy being developed around the Resource Management Act. We have several reasons for wanting reform.

The unbalanced application of this statute to rural New Zealand in response to urban and residential interests poses a threat to our rural communities and ongoing economic development.  It is tool at the sharp end of the rural urban divide.

An increasingly urbanised population have no connection with agriculture. Milk comes from bottles, eggs from little cardboard crates, and meat from the shelves in the local supermarket after the vegetable section, but before the deli. There is little, if any, urban connection with the animals and farming practices from whence these products came. Rural New Zealand is seen simply as a recreational playground to the majority of our citizens, just as the countryside is in other developed countries.

This may not matter in places such as Britain, where agriculture contributes less to GDP than the sum of its fish and chip shops but in New Zealand it’s a problem.   

We run an economic model based not on high technology manufacturing or service industries, but one more reliant on agriculture and other forms of primary production.  We don’t trade widgets, but rather tourism, dairy, meat, forestry, fish, and horticultural products.  Our $42 billion worth of traded services and products are generated from rural, not urban New Zealand.

The tiny population that manages our land is a hugely important cog in our economic wheel.  For example last season just over 11,000 dairy farmers, a slightly greater number than the extra core civil servants hired over the last decade, produced milk that contributed $8.5 billion in export earnings.  Written off as a sunset industry in some quarters 25 years ago, agriculture’s proportionate contribution to GDP has not only increased, but  productivity gains made by this sector  have kept New Zealand’s overall economic performance out of the basket case category.
By international standards our farmers are well educated, innovative and adaptable. They are hugely important to us.

So it does no one any good to view farmers as greedy exploiters of our natural resources, polluting waterways and degrading the environment. There is no argument that current patterns of land use can and do have adverse effects on soils and waterways, but these should be put in perspective and constructive solutions sought.

For decades urban dwellers and processors used their nearest water source, be it river or sea, as their natural septic tanks for disposal of untreated wastewater. There is a rich irony in Wellington, with its ethos of ‘regulation will fix everything’ being one of the last cities to abandon this practice just a decade ago. Nowadays  discharges from these sources have been cleared to the stage where accidental overflows are deemed newsworthy.

Science and technology are being applied to horticultural, arable and pastoral farming to ensure that these activities can be and are carried out sustainably. What is best practice now will become the norm in the future, driven by market demand, peer pressure and regulation.

Our competitive advantage sits with our temperate climate, abundant water, fertile soils, innovative farmers (top performers are producing international record crop yields), and their ability to produce food for an increasingly hungry world. The countryside is not primarily a recreational playground for urban dwellers; it is the engine room that drives our economy, and should be seen by all New Zealanders as such.  Work comes before play.

Because of a lack of understanding of farming needs  the RMA in its current form has become an impediment  to ongoing sustainable development and a potent weapon for factional, rather than community interests.This tension arises numerous times up and down the country.  

Two examples will suffice.

Before Christmas Meadow Mushrooms announced it was closing its Waikato mushroom growing operation with the loss of 160 jobs. It could not justify spending $2 million complying with Environment Court imposed conditions that odour from its composting operation be contained on site. The company was reported as having spent $2 million at its plant since 1995 reducing environmental effects.

Secondly, recreational interests have made application for a water conservation order to be applied over the Hurunui River.  If granted, this would effectively shut out the only practicable source of water for irrigating an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 hectares of fertile arable dry land in North Canterbury. The RMA would be used to favour fishing and boating interests by application of unspecified and undefined ‘outstanding amenity or intrinsic values,‘  rather than the local communities’ wellbeing and the national economic interest.

It is estimated that over the next two generations the worlds’ population will increase by 50% above its present 6.7 billion. New Zealand is one of only a handful of upper income net food exporting countries.

We can and must significantly lift food production in a sustainable way.  Changing the RMA is part of this – and it’s also part of shifting the perceptions of what it is to earn a living off the land and all the trade-offs and complexities that this brings.
 
Bagging farmers and putting urban over rural interests just doesn’t cut the mustard.

ENDS

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