I have family/friends over three continents and eerily, the world over, farming is following the exact same pattern… Incentivising farmers to stop farming/leaving land fallow etc.

Except in India, where desperation is seeing folks destroy their own crops, as they are worthless. No $$ given there.

I’m also someone who’s been following how THREE WATERS/SNA reforms are tracking along… closely… and have submitted/questioned/petitioned our council for more information. So, this doesn’t make good reading… at all.

Is our SNA mapping going to see same scenes here?

Are the Three Waters Reforms going to see water going to salmon/steelhead pools and seeing farmers get 5% of the needed allocation, like in the USA?

USA in last two decades has got 49 million acres out of farming. Now, its recently begun subsidising farmers to destroy their own crops.

UK, I note, last March suggested farmers be paid to leave farming and a year later, that’s a reality… ‘to get young blood in to set up glamping sites on farms’!!!

In India, the farmers protests are now on for the 8th month, nearly 500 dead and no end in sight.

Cost of agricultural inputs are rising. Labour is an issue in most places (which I’ve felt is deliberately done, between ‘Safe’ teaching our kids in schools via lesson plans condemning farming and kids told rubbish about agriculture and climate change) and farmers are increasingly getting older. Legislation of course is a minefield of changing goalposts.

See the page from UK which states less than 1% of locals stated on farms more than 6 weeks.. 1%.

In NZ, no MIQ beds made available for farming staff/shearers etc.

By next year, there will be overseas staff in NZ who will leave permanently, as having not seen family for three years (winter 2019 onwards), would be enough to make them quit.

Where are we headed?

They’re trying to cause mass starvation

Column Author: Jaspreet Boporai. a 42 year old wife, mum of two kids (6, 4) and a dairy farmer. She and her husband manage 1500 cows over two farms in Western Southland for a large equity partnership.

Jaspreet got her degree in accounting from Massey and has also been bookkeeping for the last decade.

She and her husband moved to NZ in 2009, swapping 80 hour weeks in corporate banking for prob longer weeks in farming! (her husband has done his MBA and Jaspreet was a mortgage underwriter in India).

Hailing from Punjab (the epicentre of Indian farmer protests), India’s wheat basket, the love of land runs strong in the couple and wanting to go large scale farming got them to New Zealand.

Jaspreet’s family has been serving in the Indian army for many generations and nearly 30 years ago, her dad served in the Indian army contingent under the aegis of the United Nations in Africa. Thus, began her interest in all things UN related!