A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plan to cut Canada's fertiliser emissions by 30 percent by 2030 has caused outrage among the country's farmers. They say the policy will force many of them out of business and will exacerbate the global food-supply crisis brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Canadian farmers
argue that this dramatic reduction in fertiliser use would lead to 30 percent less food being produced and threaten the food supply of developing countries that rely on Canadian exports.
Since we see similar punitive policies being advanced against the interests of farmers in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, it is almost as if these governments resent the breathtaking Green Revolution of the 1970s when the application of well-understood irrigation principles, mechanising farm work and the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers saved a billion people from starvation.
Incidentally, why can't Somalia grow its own food? It has two rivers flowing into it from the highlands of Ethiopia, the Juba and the Shabelle, each of which annually produces flows of 4.5 million acre-feet and 1.9m acre-feet respectively, more than enough to irrigate Somalia's 3.5m acres of arable land and feed its population of 18 million.
Somalia needs dams and hydroelectric power, of course, and also off-stream reservoirs if the topography permits. But they are environmentally incorrect so Somalia can't have them.
