Mike Butler: Wrecked rivers, iwi demands

Rapid changes in land use leading to polluted water and wrecked rivers have prompted a new book titled Water Quality and Ownership. Author Bill Benfield is a Christchurch architect and vineyard owner who, as a keen angler from an early age, has witnessed the progressive degradation of water quality in rivers and streams.

How has this happened? Benfield goes back to the Muldoon “think big” projects of the early 1980s that produced cheap nitrogen fertiliser from natural gas which enabled greater use of fertiliser.

Gerry Eckhoff: Dairying

The question posed by regular columnist Colin James (Otago Daily Times 15 March 2016) – ‘Is dairying too big to fail’ - is one of the more bizarre questions or comments written by a person described as a leading social and political commentator. 

To further suggest as James does, that a very junior Minister in Nathan Guy, commenting that he is hoping to see a doubling of primary exports by 2025, as a part cause of the current dairy downturn is an extraordinary claim. I would doubt that the dairy industry or indeed any other primary industry takes a blind bit of notice of a very junior minister talking up his portfolio.