First we had traceability, then sustainability, threatening our ability to sell overseas. Now we’ve also got protectionism, whatever that turns out to mean.

One thing it is bound to mean is our export products will have to stand up to whatever overseas countries’ testing, or purity criteria, they choose to put on them.

Today it’s the Russians banning our beef and threatening our dairy products. And I’m sure the United States will start coming up with impossible demands fairly shortly. The United Kingdom sheep farmers are already in full cry over lamb.

To date we’ve relied on ‘Clean and Green’, ‘100 per cent Pure’ and the ‘New Zealand Story’ as our supposed proof of being beyond criticism. But as many will admit, all of those are only partially true, and the things we don’t want to think about are carefully swept under the rug.

Chemical fertilisers

As you will have realised from my previous articles, one such issue seems to be to be our ever-increasing use of chemical fertilisers, which are now growing quite a bit less pasture than 20 years ago. It’s not just less pasture to feed more cows, and not just the suspect source of at least one supplement used to make up the shortfall, but the steely determination among the science fraternity that what is being used now is the only way to grow pasture.

I recently attended a seminar for rural professionals in the Waikato – they continue to invite me, so I go. Much of the session was taken up by a senior officer from AgResearch expounding on all the 600 wonderful projects they were working on. And not one was focused on how to grow grass without all those chemicals.

Different ways

In this publication, month after month, there are small businesses offering different ways of growing pasture that don’t involve chemical N or superphosphate. They each have a loyal clientele, many of whom are greatly exceeding their district averages on pasture and milk production.

So why isn’t AgResearch investigating how these systems work, rather than continually saying these are people wanting to make money, and their systems couldn’t possibly be better than their own beloved chemicals?

I know some of these businesses would be very sceptical about AgResearch’s testing methods, having heard in the past how ‘science’ can be skewed.

But to go on blindly ignoring any alternatives, and thinking our freshwaters are going to improve by ‘mitigation’ and spending more farmer money on structures and pasture renewal simply proves the 55 per cent of ‘commercial’ funding going into AgResearch, and other science public-private research projects, somehow prevents anyone from stepping out of line on chemicals.

Algal disaster

In the South Island we already have the Selwyn River – a dried up algal disaster from irrigation drawdown of groundwater on soils that were never suited to feeding thousands of cows. Pouring on more chemicals and then washing them through porous soils has only one result – more pollution and less usable water overall.

To return to where I started, if we can’t start working to show our cows, sheep and horticulture are produced using systems that can be openly proven to be sustainable, non-polluting, and good for our fully operative soils, then those countries favouring protectionism will find excuses not to buy from us. They may well be covering up ghastly imperfections in their own systems, but that’s what protectionism is all about.

This is an opinion piece by farming and science writer Sue Edmonds.