Chester Borrows: Time to stop and appreciate farmers

Great to see that the left is continuing to bag farmers and has no grasp on the importance of dairying to our economy and the standard of living enjoyed by us all in this country.
Public Service Association President Helen Kelly reflected the union movement's firm belief that farmers of New Zealand are welfare beneficiaries when she said at the weekend that "... farmers have been subsidised in this country for years when the taxpayer bails them out after floods and droughts, bails their finance companies out when they collapse and allows them to go on polluting our rivers without having to pay."
There'll be no saving of us if her good mate Andrew Little ever leads the Labour Party. This reflects the cocky comments from previous deputy PM Michael Cullen, who skited that he'd been educated by wealthy Canterbury farmers through a scholarship to Christ's College and then Canterbury University, but it wouldn't stop him screwing them in government.
This disregard and abhorrence for our rural sector is having an effect. As I have been hearing in shed meetings around Coastal Taranaki lately, the farming fraternity has had a gutsful of ignorant commentators who have no understanding of the rural sector slagging off an agriculture and forestry industry which provides over 50 per cent of New Zealand's income and has been the only industry saving us from third world status for decades.
Our whole economy is built on growing produce we sell to the world. Ms Kelly's swollen Public Service Association membership would never be able to survive an hour without farming because they produce nothing that can be sold on any market in the world.
I can't see the tourists flocking to New Zealand to see empty paddocks reverting to scrub or lining up to buy a lentil burger at our top-class restaurants because the preferred farming practices of the left resulted in our first quality meat and dairy being priced right out of the market. Caning the dairy industry for the price of domestic milk in our supermarkets shows complete ignorance. Fonterra's share of the domestic milk market is just under 50 per cent and if that company really wanted to squeeze every dollar out of the milk market they would exit the domestic market and export the lot. It would be very interesting then to see how much Sue Kedgely and her ilk would be forced to pay for milk.
It is about time those on the left understood New Zealand farms are cleaner than any in the world. We plant more trees, use better animal husbandry practices, produce better products and compete under tighter constraints than any other primary production country. We should be applauding our farmers.