Dean Rabbidge: Time to scuttle the Waka?

Opinion: Southland food producer Dean Rabbidge shares his concerns over whether the controversial He Waka Eke Noa - Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership will deliver prosperity or pain for farmers.

He Waka Eke Noa has long been a contentious issue for the agriculture sector of New Zealand.

We have reached a point where the levy bodies and member-based organisations have agreed in principle to a mechanism that will see agriculture paying for a percentage of their emissions, mainly methane emitted from ruminant animals.

In my opinion, the producers who contribute to these levies and pay the memberships have been let down.

We have been signed up to a virtue-signalling system that will see us all paying a tax of varying levels which will be used for "research and development" to help reduce emissions while maintaining our already high production, world-leading low foot-print system.

We are told we need to do this to maintain our social licence to operate.

We are told that we will receive premiums for our products offshore.

We are told that the rest of the food-producing world will follow.

We are told that we need to do our part.

We are told to simply plant the less desirable areas of our properties in monoculture exotics to offset the emissions.

And we are told that, for most, the tax will be minimal – starting at around $1 to $1.50 per stock unit.

All of this I find to be completely mythical, unfathomable and insulting.

We all agree that the sector needs to maintain a social licence, but what about the social licence of HWEN?

I don't think it has one when it will see the existence of rural communities, families, and businesses threatened.

It will reduce the amount of high-quality protein that the world already sources from us.

It will reduce the financial viability for many, especially the high country.

Sadly, it will, and is already, creating division amongst what has historically been a united and staunch agricultural team.

The personal factor has been ignored and we are becoming collateral damage for what is a growing political power play.

It is forgotten that the properties we are all so proud of are not only our businesses but our homes, our children's playground and for many, part of our legacy.

Food security is becoming a more topical issue by the day, and we see European countries wind back environmental regulation to ensure they can continue to feed both people and energy.

Time and time again we are told that "once the Europeans do their calculations, they will soon learn they will be in a much worse position than NZ".

This may be the case, but I think it is more likely that they will value their food security to the point where they will not implement restrictions such as those that HWEN will generate for us.

I would like to know how paying a tax to the government (which in my opinion has a somewhat questionable track record of re-allocating it) is going to generate measurable, tangible and timely outcomes.

Personally, I know I could make a larger and faster impact by retaining my calculated tax and re-investing it into my property in the form of fencing, riparian planting with natives, or water schemes, all while maintaining our current level of production.

All of this is discretionary spend that creates better outcomes, but it will be lost in the name of climate change to a tokenistic and virtue-signalling tax.

HWEN has far too many inconsistencies, unfairness, complications, grey areas, uncertainties, future developments and unknowns to be agreed to.

When we combine HWEN with the carbon laundering scheme that is the ETS, I am gravely concerned for the future of New Zealand agriculture.

Our food producers are both angry and disappointed in the representation we have received and should no longer accept the position that we have been served.

HWEN is completely unacceptable in its current form.

It is He Waka Eke NO from me.