A farm is not like other workplaces. It has developed the way it has for a reason and no matter how much you legislate, the rules will be broken because they have not been thought through properly in the first place. There is no other workplace where the lines between work and family life are so blurred, which must make a farm - particularly a family farm or a smaller farm where a couple work together - a unique workplace and one which must be treated accordingly. Unfortunately, when rules and legislation more suited to a corporate-type operation such as human resources, health and safety, environmental and food quality compliance are applied in a blanket-type manner, then some rules suddenly cease to work effectively and become a negative and costly drain on personal and public resources. An example of this is the recent story where a farmer wanted to clear a drain and it cost $14,000 in resource management fees to do $1000 of digger work. Another is the case of the young hard- working couple fined $40,000 for not wearing safety helmets and for giving children rides on a quad bike. Workers under 16 years of age have their jobs at risk because they are not legally allowed to operate basic farm equipment and working single mothers also risk their jobs because they are no longer allowed to transport their children around the farm. These situations all erode the future sustainability of farming in New Zealand and have the biggest impact on the smaller family type of operation, which still contributes a large percentage of earnings to the nations economy. For some reason, farming is perceived as a rich sport, ripe for the pickings to pay for any impact it may have at the Governments whim. This is not the case, and any riches farming may or may not have are all extremely hard won. We are so far geographically from the rest of the worlds population that its amazing we can export anything. However, we manage to feed our own population and millions of mouths overseas. Instead of being given credit for this amazing feat, some brainiac has looked at farmings environmental impact and pointed the finger at emissions, water quality and all the other things that any economic activity would impact on, and said: Youve done that, now you have to pay. The only reason farming is top of the pops for environmental impact in New Zealand is because farming is the only thing anyone has done here with any great success or scale. Now everybody is complaining but no-one is coming up with a less environmentally impacting alternative. You dont have much environmental impact lying around on a couch collecting the unemployment benefit. Annoyingly, tourism is sometimes cited as the antithesis of farming: Farming will destroy the natural beauty/ resources tourists come here to enjoy. How do tourists get here? Jet planes, which are enormously detrimental to the environment. However, this is conveniently ignored while farmers are beleaguered with more complaints and more and more rules which prevent them from getting the job done. Farmer bashing assumes that the farmer does not care about anything, including the environment - why then have we spent millions of dollars on it? It assumes we do not care about our children because we take them to work - but they are part of the farming future and they have to see it in action. It assumes we do not care about our own head because we will not wear a helmet. But we know that helmets will not stop people crashing bikes, especially if they are young, old, drunk or stoned, which seems to be the case in many quad bike fatalities. If it wasnt for farmers New Zealand would be a Third World country. For this reason alone, farmers should be treated with respect.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 03:38:51 +0000
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