Agsafe Weekly Rural Report

Finance: The NZ dollar remained steady over the week with a slight easing against the Australian dollar & firming against the US dollar. Brent Crude moved up a little and is currently at $US67.33/barrel.

Wool: The wool prices are firming. Contracts are being offered for coarse wools. They are removing the Keratin for pharmaceutical use which is underpinning the lift in prices.

Beef, Sheep & Venison schedules: The meat schedules are steady with some upward movement expected in beef schedules. The expected grass growth following the recent rain will allow farmers to keep stock on the farm a little longer if necessary.

Dairy Prices. The ANZ bank has come out this week and predicted the final for the current season to be $9.50 following 3 strong g/DT auctions. The auction last week was a confidence statement for most farmers.

We are hearing of some poor in-calf rates as pregnancy testing gets underway. You can always consider winter milking a small herd provided you meet minimum milk quotas. If you are considering winter milking it is important to check the feed availability and the staff. Cows being milked through the winter have a higher demand for feed and some old-fashioned hay is important.

Jim’s Weekly Rant:

The RMA was introduced to Parliament in December 1989 and it was too be an Act to empower development, but in the end, it smothered it and made development difficult. The Act grew over the years with the Courts being able to determine the next level of compliance and it has long been felt that the changes ultimately undermined the RMA’s original intent, the creeping small changes appeared to be relatively innocuous but the accumulation of the changes became the undoing of the Act. We saw a shift from allowing the non‑notification of consents where effects were considered to be “minor” to requiring them to be “less than minor” with some subtle word changes and activities that should have been waved through then triggered full public notification creating bureaucratic bottlenecks, increased costs, and lengthy delays, while discouraging the public from undertaking any projects at all! Other problems were structural and were buried in the enabling framework were “affected person” provisions that not only empowered activists to endlessly delay projects, but along with special Maori consultation rights and privileges, created an opportunity for extortion. The greasing of iwi palms and the filling of their pockets became commonplace. It was one of the issues that continued to evolve. The original Bill did specify Treaty ‘principles’ had to be taken into account, and it did recognize Maori relationships with ancestral land, but there were to be no special consultation rights but after representation and submissions by the Maori organizations, Parliament’s Planning and Development Select Committee amended the Bill to introduce mandatory consultation and this significantly elevated the role of iwi authorities from discretionary participants in the planning process, to special groups entitled to preferential engagement. Over the years, iwi involvement was expanded to become more intrusive. Risk-averse councils, afraid of being accused of breaching Treaty principles, began consulting iwi on virtually every development proposal - a minor subdivision, a farm shed, or even a deck extension could all necessitate “cultural input” – not required by the Act but by risk-averse council staff. The RMA grew into a noose that hung over the development and growth of the economy. It had to change and the coalition has attempted to change it. Submissions on the changes closed yesterday at 4.30 pm. The biggest change is separating the Act into two parts being firstly a Planning Bill and secondly a Natural Environment Bill Groundswell has produced some useful commentary on the proposed changes and one in particular is that the “noisy politics” around the changes are about urban housing but most of the unworkable regulations are within the rural environment and there are still too many areas that lack clarity as to the practical workings and there is perhaps still too much of the old RMA in a slightly tweaked form. Some of the changes include: legislating the concept of property rights in planning law and bringing in a compensation scheme for landowners - it is a good idea. The rules are often made by gun-shy bureaucrats in scared councils, and we wonder if presumption will be any use in practice. The national policy statements on Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) and Indigenous Biodiversity (NPS-IB) are central government rules made by Ministers under the RMA and are perhaps just a tweaked Labour water management policy. The Land Grab classifications, including Significant Natural Areas (SNAs), Sites and Areas of Significance to Maori (SASMs), Outstanding Natural Landscapes and Features (ONLs and ONFs) allow the councils to use the former Section 6 of the RMA to impose restrictions on landowners’ use of their own land. In simple terms there remains misguided and unworkable land use regulations that will continue to squeeze farming and other economic activity often without a clear environmental benefit. The RMA and its replacements will also decide the future of farming and the viability of the rural communities in New Zealand. The best environmental work in New Zealand today is taking place at the local community level. The catchments, local land care, water care groups, and a host of other groups where farmers and their communities are coming together to proactively manage and improve their own local environment. These local groups are having the greatest impact on environmental outcomes and the local groups should be given more power and opportunity to manage the local environment. The proposed Bill is not a rewriting of an Act, but a tweaking of something that was failing.