On NRT: Climate Change: Make farmers pay - https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/05/climate-change-make-farmers-pay.html
Post
Replies:
4
(1/?)
This is all fair comment, but ...
"... in November we can elect a better one which will."
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/05/climate-change-make-farmers-pay.html
Not if the 50% or more of the population who live rurally, or depend on farming for their livelihood, or feel a cultural allegiance to farming, feel like the Opposition are demonising farmers and planning a beat up. Messaging like ...
@norightturnnz
> Make farmers pay
... can be easily twisted to look like a call for a beat up, and regularly are.
(2/?)
Environmentalists need to rethink how we talk about regulating farming. We need to focus on;
* how much research is available on how to farm as better long term stewards of the land
* how unfair it is to farmers who are doing the right thing, at their own cost, when others can make more money polluting freely, and never get their comeuppance
(3/?)
Environmentalists need to rethink how we talk about regulating farming (cont.);
* how often it's family farms and other small farmers trying to do the right thing, while farms whose remote owners never leave the city - may never even visit the country - pollute without conscience
* how these Queen St farmers make bank by obliging the managers and workers they hire to do the cheap thing, not the responsible thing, often against their own conscience and better judgment
(4/?)
Environmentalists need to rethink how we talk about regulating farming (cont.);
* how all this increases the chances that small farmers will lose their land, allowing yet more of our rural land to be bought up by big business
* how it all contributes to the epidemic of poor mental health and suicide that plagues our surviving rural communities
Basically we need to focus on how all the stuff west against is *bad for farmers*, and food production, and only good for financial extractors.
