This week on The Best of The Country, Jamie Mackay caught up with Rabobank's Sustainability Analyst Blake Holgate for a chat about whether farmers should consider forestry.
This week's top interviews are:
Jacinda Ardern:
The PM ponders - legalising cannabis, Simon Bridges and farmyard noises, the impartiality (or otherwise) of Trevor Mallard, the Zero Carbon Bill, Royal babies and a Royal Wedding.
Miles Hurrell:
Fonterra's chief executive comments on the 11th straight GDT rise (+0.4 per cent, WMP - 0.5 per cent), why feeding hemp by-products to cows is illegal when we're legalising cannabis and a heart-warming story about some Fonterra tanker drivers in Te Rapa.
Blake Holgate:
Rabobank's Sustainability Analyst comments on the reality of planting one billion trees to mitigate climate change, where we're going to plant them and how are going to harvest them?
David Read:
This Wairoa farmer says he has seen a big jump in the price of farmland, as cashed-up purchasers have bought 10,000 ha of pasture land for conversion to forestry. He believes this is being repeated up and down the country and threatens the future of sheep and beef farming and the small rural towns and communities that depend on it.
Simon Bridges:
National's under-fire leader denies he's back the wrong horse with "slushy-gate" when there's controversial issues such as the Zero Carbon Bill, legalising cannabis and the performance of Speaker Trevor Mallard to get stuck into.
Listen below:
Mum accuses Education Ministry of breaching its own criteria.