BULLETIN ISSUE 25: Spring 2019
MAKING SENSE OF THE NONSENSE By Tony Egan
Reflecting on all the debate about carbon emissions recently, I wondered if I had joined the fat twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee speaking to Alice: ‘The time has come,‘ the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax – Of cabbages and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot – And whether pigs have wings.’ With this nonsense in mind, I had a go at reducing my methane emissions by the required 10%, but soon realized that this is easier said than done, after all methane is a gas that likes to get out! I must confess that this required considerable effort … I went blue in the face … I crossed my legs … and I ended up producing a reasonable amount of nitrous oxide instead. I can now see why they are targeting gross emissions and why nitrous oxide is a much bigger problem than methane. The experience did add a little something extra to my Healthy Rivers submission (but then that is another story). Others are saying we must stop blaming Rotorua and plant trees … that we should accept being 10% smaller is not quite as embarrassing now that the Greens have made it an achievement. With all this going on, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were at a ‘mad hatter’s tea party’! And
farmers must be wondering if there is a method in all this madness. How did they become the solution and New Zealand the savior of the world? It’s hard to see the wood for the trees, when the industry associations can’t even seem to agree. The Feds are like the Cheshire cat keen to watch and offer sage advice from the sidelines while Beef & Lamb are in the thick of it having a go. Poems are prone to deeper meanings that belie a deeper truth. Alice had to make sense of the nonsense to achieve a happy conclusion. In many ways we are on a similar journey, we know climate change is real, and we know carbon is the cause. We know the world needs agriculture to play its part in finding a solution, and we know we need to do this with some urgency. Like Alice, we need the journey to continue if we are to solve the riddle and Greenlea wants to play its part. This starts with more support planned for our buyers and farmer suppliers and a commitment to sensible solutions. As some year twelve Agribusiness students said to me the other day … my generation can lead, follow or get out of the way!
IS MEAT OBSOLETE?
PART 1 IN A SERIES
IS MEAT OBSOLETE?
In our previous issue, Tony Egan, our managing director, took a light-hearted look at the ‘state of our nation’. He tries again this issue to ‘make sense of the nonsense’. What all this signals, and what you will all be very well aware, is the volume of noise, the degree of activity and the level of angst in the agricultural sector is growing. The meat industry is not alone in feeling the increasing pace of change and the pain of disruption. We’ve all heard the predictions … 10 billion people on the planet by 2050 and a global temperature increase that will surpass 2oC if we don’t do a lot with extreme urgency. With all this occurring around us, you must ask yourself the question “is meat obsolete?” Certainly, the vegans will answer in the affirmative. And we have yet to
www.greenlea.co.nz
find a way to appease them. However, vegans aside, we are extremely optimistic about the role of meat in a changing world. While there may be paradigm shifts in global eating habits, we believe that our story, our truth about the way we farm, will re-position our products as luxury items that are highly desirable to conscious foodies around the world. There are essentially three broad arguments against meat: environmental costs; animal welfare; and nutrition. Over the next three issues of the Bulletin, we will examine each of these potential disruptors to our industry and discuss how we believe New Zealand can position itself to turn these arguments into our advantages in the global food market.