Clive Bibby: Change needs to be based on a sustainable strategy - not driven by ideology

For those who have spent a lifetime working in the livestock industry, listening to farming leaders bemoan the current state of the sheep industry is not something we want to hear.

It isn’t that their claims of treachery by various governments aren’t justified - just that it appears to be too little too late and nobody in a position of authority in government circles appears willing to do anything about it. We have been down this road many times before and it is becoming tiresome waiting for a response from those who have the ability to make things happen that will avoid a repeat of disasters waiting to happen.

Surely we are better than this!

I can remember shearing sheep when Sir Robert Muldoon introduced a livestock incentive scheme that led to sheep numbers in this country rising to a record high of 72 million. We were told that this policy was a cure-all to the nation’s economic woes.

Unfortunately, like many of Muldoon’s policies and many similar crackpot ideas from subsequent governments, the numbers didn’t stack up and quickly the situation proved to be unsustainable. As a consequence, it was often left to farm workers like me to try and deal with the bag of bones that, in that case, were the result of overstocking - a management failure that is often avoidable

Since those days when the income from sheep red meat and wool amounted to about 66% of total livestock farm income, the total sheep numbers have dramatically reduced to the current tally of about 25 million.

In the intervening years, we have found other ways to improve the incomes from sheep and cattle properties without increasing stock numbers dramatically. It is all about more efficient use of the classes of land we own.

Having said that, not all of the reduction was aimed at achieving a sustainable balance of sheep and cattle on the hill country properties where they had been the most efficient use of the available grazing land for over a century. We discovered other more efficient ways for making a buck out of our marginal hill country.

This is where the forestry industry, which had previously been limited to the Central North Island volcanic plateau and smaller farm wood lots, began its expansion over much of the nation’s marginal hill country. It became a controlled change of land use restricted to classes 6 and 7 marginal hill country and backed by a law that governed the changes made on individual properties.

Being a controlled activity, the idea became a game changer for properties that had traditionally relied on sheep and cattle as the sole source of income.

Unfortunately, things quickly got out of hand.

Championed by the climate zealots within government who saw an opportunity to use trees as a silent sequester of green house gases, the laws governing the expansion of the forestry industry were repealed and coupled with the introduction of Emissions Trading Scheme that offered carbon credits to those who planted trees, the value of land that could support the highest density of trees per hectare soon became a determining factor on the type of land use on all classes of grazing or semi arrable land. .

Since then the carbon market has ensured a wholesale sell-off of some of our best grazing land to foreign traders who owe no allegiance to this country yet continue to operate their rape and pillage practices across land that should be being used to take advantage of the current boom in sheep meat prices

While the huge reduction in sheep numbers due to the expansion of the forestry industry can be largely attributed to the woke environmental policies of the last government, the current mob are not entirely blameless either.

The have also had the opportunity to stop the carnage but for reasons better known to themselves, have refused to reinstate the old law or use the OIO ( Overseas Investment Office) as a controlling agent limiting the sale of our best productive grazing land to Kiwis who want to farm it in the best interests of all New Zealanders.

There are also other more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of using Sheep products that are currently a drain on the industry.

Ironically, these include the use of crossbred wool for home insulation - a policy that would seem a no-brainer but under the Coalition has been ignored. I can’t understand why they would not make the changeover from synthetics to the use of crossbred wools in carpets and home insulation a mandatory bi-law.

Surely there are some laws that need to be mandatory because they are in the national interest. Nobody in their right mind would suggest that such moves restricting the expansion of forestry and the outlawing of the use of synthetics in the building industry was not an idea whose time had come. Governments need to grow up and adopt policies that secure the Country’s economic and environmental future - we need to accept that at some stage we will have to adapt our own industries to practices that reward us for what we do best.

Adopting programmes that are already discredited and will never benefit us is madness - we simply need to concentrate on developing and enhancing the returns from “tried and proven” policies that work for us.

Clive Bibby is a commentator, consultant, farmer and community leader, who lives in Tolaga Bay.