Kevin Hackwell: Clean and green on the farm

Psst, someone needs to have a word in Federated Farmers' President Charlie Pedersen's ear. "Hey, Charlie, environmentalism is mainstream these days. Lots of farmers even do it."

According to Pedersen, environmentalists are "at war against the human race". In Pedersen's alarmist vision, environmentalists "look upon mankind and our achievements as a negative that needs to be curbed and defeated."

Environmentalists are the modern-day equivalent of missionary zealots of a bygone era, who "seek to turn the clock back", Pedersen says.

The words "pot", "kettle," and "black" spring to mind here. For Pedersen's viewpoint seems to belong to another century, a colonial era when exploitation of the earth's natural resources was pursued with little thought of what would happen when the resources ran out, when every tree had been chopped down, the native wildlife pushed into extinction, the earth eroded and stripped of its fertility, the waterways destroyed.

Fortunately it is a viewpoint not shared by many of Pedersen's fellow farmers - including many members of Federated Farmers, who he admits "rolled their eyes" when they learned of the content of his anti-environmentalist speech.

Forest & Bird is proud to count many farmers among its 40,000 members, including past president Gerry McSweeney, a South Island high country farmer.

Many farmers are acutely aware (much more so than many city folk) that farming must be environmentally sustainable because their very livelihoods depend on it.

The weather extremes that could be produced by climate change may cause mere inconvenience to city dwellers - but to farmers severe drought, floods and erosion can bring financial disaster, as we have seen increasingly frequently in recent years.

It is in everyone's best interests - not least the farmers' - to support better catchment management practices, rather than await the next disaster and seek further government emergency support.

Farmers also know the value of environmentally sound practices to their business. International markets demand products that are grown using sustainable practices - and are prepared to pay for them.

A 2001 Ministry for the Environment study found that New Zealand's clean, green image was worth an added $30,000 at the farm gate for every farmer in New Zealand, such is the premium that image adds to the value of their products. It is a premium worth hundreds of millions - possibly billions - to New Zealand.

With these ends in mind, many farmers carry out sensible, environmentally sound measures, such as covenanting bush blocks, fencing off waterways and gullies, ensuring more careful and targeted use of fertiliser to avoid leaching.

It makes sense environmentally, and it makes sense economically. The argument is not us-versus-them or farmers-versus-environment, but a relationship between humans and the environment in which both are the winners.

Pedersen may have trouble getting his head around the idea, but most farmers have long understood the need for a sustainable relationship with the land. Just ask those in the lower North Island still attempting to recover from the effects of this month's floods.

On some points we can agree. Pedersen accepts "Environmentalists are correct: we do need to protect our country, our planet, our children's future and their children's future."

We also agree with Pedersen's statement that solutions need to be based on innovation and science.

So it doesn't help when he makes alarmist claims that "rolling back agriculture's intensification would have to be matched by worldwide starvation or a matching reduction in population".

All the evidence concludes that worldwide famine and poverty is caused not by environmentalists forcing curbs on intensive agriculture, but on economic, political and trade systems that do not allow equal distribution of the world's food and wealth.

Nowhere has it been found that conducting farming practices in an environmentally unsustainable way produces long-term financial gains, nor sustenance for the world's poor.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. Worldwide, millions of hectares of previously productive land are going out of production every year because of the effects of unsustainable farming practices.

Yet Pedersen is still railing against pressure to modify practices on dairy farms surrounding Lake Taupo (a relatively recent land use in the area) that are causing serious degradation to one of our most iconic lakes. I doubt the future generations Pedersen speaks of will thank him if they are no longer able to swim and fish in Lake Taupo.

Rather than railing against imagined "enemies" among environmentalists, Pedersen would be better serving the farmers he represents if he worked constructively alongside environmentalists and the Government on initiatives that will ensure the long-term viability of both farming and the environment for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

* Kevin Hackwell is the Forest & Bird advocacy manager