What could be worse for New Zealand? For our rivers, our soils, our rural communities, the NZ way of life?
Years of high milk prices, greed and a hands-off Government have transformed our farming communities. The price of land suited to dairying has climbed steeply. Increasingly marginal land is being converted. Herd sizes have increased.
These factors create pressure in many ways: on the animals, the people working with them, our environment, the quality and structure of our most productive soils, rural communities, our economy.
The controversial report out of Massey University in April (http://bit.ly/1N4AC6q) neatly describes the "radical change" the industry has undergone in just a few decades, from "a low input, low cost and low impact system to high intensity, high cost, high impact system, increasingly reliant on imported feed and fertiliser".
How much more dairy production does Mr Key think we can bear?
There are alternatives. With collective will, and some leadership from Government at all levels, we could keep the ownership of prime agricultural land in the hands of New Zealanders - and owned by farmers, not faceless corporations.
We could diversify what we grow and rear, and rely much less on imported food.
We could individually and collectively question just how much poorly made, resource-consuming and polluting crap we actually need cluttering our homes and minds: reducing our imports takes the pressure off the need to export.
We could begin some honest, fact-based discussions with our teenagers about their employment prospects and encourage them, as appropriate, to learn practical skills rather than aspire to white-collar jobs, so many of which will be outsourced overseas (note to UCOL: in a world of climate change and peak oil, we don't need beauty therapists and hairdressers nearly as much as we need farmers and tradeswomen and men).
The potential here in Whanganui is amazing. Our temperate growing climate is one of the very best in the world. Our best soils are world class. Land is cheap. And the River Traders' Market provides a low cost, low risk way for new growers to begin selling.
I note the groundswell of opposition to the TPPA here and overseas, and I'm heartened by the staggering diversity of those speaking out against it. I hope we can look back on 2015 and see it as a turning point, where the will of the people for what was right, fair and decent prevailed against blind corporate greed and politicians who have forgotten for whom they govern.
RK Rose is a fermenter, fomenter and gardener with a liking for permaculture thinking.
