Written by Agriland Team from Agriland
Farmers around New Zealand have taken to the streets of dozens of towns and cities in tractors, agricultural vehicles and utility vehicles (known in New Zealand and Australia as ‘utes’) to voice their anger over environmental restrictions on agriculture.
According to media reports in the country, thousands of farmers and vehicles have descended on some 55 urban centres, including some of the country’s largest cities.
The demonstrations are being organised by Groundswell NZ, a grassroots rural movement.
Groundswell is referring to the events collectively as ‘A Howl of a Protest’.
In a ‘position statement’ in advance of the protests, the group said: “Farmers and growers will be joined by industry support people, tradespeople, contractors and councils in the unprecedented nationwide demonstration.”
The group is making its demands “with a sense of absolute urgency”, it said.
The group has seven demands of the country’s government, revolving around recently adopted environmental policies which they say restrict farming activity.
The demands are:
The post New Zealand farmers protest environmental restrictions appeared first on Agriland.co.uk.
Continue reading on the Agriland Website...
Farmers around New Zealand have taken to the streets of dozens of towns and cities in tractors, agricultural vehicles and utility vehicles (known in New Zealand and Australia as ‘utes’) to voice their anger over environmental restrictions on agriculture.
According to media reports in the country, thousands of farmers and vehicles have descended on some 55 urban centres, including some of the country’s largest cities.
The demonstrations are being organised by Groundswell NZ, a grassroots rural movement.
Groundswell is referring to the events collectively as ‘A Howl of a Protest’.
In a ‘position statement’ in advance of the protests, the group said: “Farmers and growers will be joined by industry support people, tradespeople, contractors and councils in the unprecedented nationwide demonstration.”
The group is making its demands “with a sense of absolute urgency”, it said.
The group has seven demands of the country’s government, revolving around recently adopted environmental policies which they say restrict farming activity.
Yes, you’re actually seeing this: Auckland’s Queen St has been overrun by tractors and utes https://t.co/r9mLpbwxqb #Newshub pic.twitter.com/VTZtFLY13Q
— Newshub (@NewshubNZ) July 15, 2021
The demands are:
- Scraping a national water policy and having freshwater quality guidelines implemented on a regional basis with catchment groups;
- Removing or rewriting rules on natural areas such as wetlands to allow landowners place these lands in trusts voluntarily, rather than being forced into it, which the farmers regard as a “land grab” by government;
- Scrapping a national policy on biodiversity in favour of voluntary, landowner-led measures on a regional basis;
- Classifying rural and agricultural workers from overseas as skilled manual labourers rather and unskilled labour (these workers are an important source of labour in the dairy and horticulture sectors);
- Removing an emissions trading system which the protestors say is “seeing large areas of farmland incentivised into pines and [is] a significant cost burden”;
- Lifting the burden of environmental regulation on high country (elevated pastureland); farmers;
- Scrapping a tax on utes, as these vehicles are “essential to New Zealand’s economic heavy lifters”, including farmers, horticulturists and tradespeople.
The post New Zealand farmers protest environmental restrictions appeared first on Agriland.co.uk.
Continue reading on the Agriland Website...