Pete Fitz-Herbert: Politicians need to have farmers’ backs

New Zealand's farmers are world-class but the tough "lifestyle" may see more retire, says Pete Fitz-Herbert. Photo / Warren Buckland

OPINION

Politicians need to retire the phrase “backbone of the country” and actually have farmers’ backs instead, writes Manawatū farmer Pete Fitz-Herbert.

I was elbow-deep in hormones and mud when it dawned on me: I should be about to retire.

If this was a sport, I would be long past my prime and deep into the stage of being held together with strapping tape, steroid injections and physio appointments.

But farming isn’t a sport. Apparently, it’s a lifestyle.

I think I have come to the conclusion that farming would be better described as an existence, or battle, of attrition.

I used to have a good knee and a bad knee – now they just take turns being the reason for limping. And all my synovial joints are best described as flogged.

If only the nipples I was born with were on my knees and could be greased.

I remember being amused by the idea of old people feeling when it was going to rain; I now have better success forecasting than the MetService.

So maybe I should be about to have a change in career or a “lifestyle” change?

Imagine a non-farming job in a non-farming house, walking to the fridge and finding veges in the drawer and not animal health products.

Having a vacuum that wasn’t stuffed with more hay than a bird’s nest, or a fireplace with a luxury rug in front of it, not gumboots and wet weathers drying.

Or just knowing that a water trough isn’t going to break when you really want a couple of hours off.

Don’t get me started on where to buy clothes, after years of wearing Boehringer Ingelheim-branded clothing pretty much exclusively. If I don’t need to buy drench, where will I get my clothes?

Even the basic concepts of a day off and public holidays are foreign to me.

But I’m closer in age to someone getting their first cancer diagnosis than I am to the average age of an apprentice.

What would be my options?

Spring always has a way of ramming home the facts of your life choices or lack of them.

I mean, days are filled with a heap of feedout, mud, round, death, life, sleep and repeat, without ever feeling like you achieve anything.

Between the exhaustion and sleep deprivation, you need to make sure the kids are fed and watered and you ask the dogs how school went.

It takes the determination of an Olympic athlete to make it out of bed some mornings, although, what would they understand?

Usain Bolt ran on a flat track in Lycra.

If he was in gumboots, full wet weathers, carrying a newborn calf through a bog with a cranky and hormonal 700kg cow charging after him, he actually might have broken the 9-second barrier and been a real Olympian.

It wouldn’t be a clean race, though. In those circumstances, he would clearly be well over the recommended and legal levels for caffeine.

Between being elbow-deep in spring with all the mud and hormones, I was trying to check off the end-of-year financials, when it dawned on me that my tractor and bikes get depreciated annually, but my body can’t be.

Sure, if I get injured in an incident, we have ACC but the wear and tear isn’t a concern for anyone other than me and my wife, who has to put up with the constant moaning.

Farming really specialises in wear and tear of the body – and melanoma.

Is it about time we consider this?

Could income tax take into consideration depreciation on the body of a worker?

Or at least consider health insurance a tax-deductible business expense for those who are self-employed.

I don’t consider myself a god walking among men, like Usain, but if my health suffers, my business suffers substantially.

So, as we approach the magical polling day, maybe our aspiring politicians could consider this as an idea.

Think about our self-employed, all our farmers.

Think about our knees and our backs.

The ones we have been using to carry all those public servants as they worked from home.

Have our backs, not as a throwaway comment about our nation’s backbone, which has had plenty of wear and tear from the current Government.

Actually, if I may digress: if I were to paint an image of the way the current Government has treated farmers over the last six years, it would be as if a child was getting an unsolicited piggyback ride from Usain Bolt, the wrong way up a cycleway in bare feet, as the child whips and shouts orders without any real understanding of the world-class athlete they are riding into the ground.

Our farmers are world-class but, if we don’t see a change, maybe more of us will retire from farming because the reality of the “lifestyle” is slowly leading to a depreciation of our joints and our spirits.