Thursday 10 August 2006

Irony down on the farm

What's the definition of irony?

From the fifties until the early eighties the goverment's Marginal Lands Board paid farmers to break in marginal lands to bring more land into production.

Now, a quarter of a century later, if a recent fad gets traction a Marginal Lands Board is again on the cards, but this time it would be paying farmers to retire marginal lands, to take them out of production!

You think that's ironic?

Some of you still think that governments know what they're doing. That is the real irony.

LINK: Farmers concerned by land retirement plan - Newstalk ZB
Brain slippage - Not PC (Peter Cresswell)


RELATED: Politics-NZ, Global Warming, Environment

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marginal lands in the 50's meant land not worth the cost of development, without tax funded subsities. [bad economics, but pro productivity]
Land now being called marginal obviously is economic to farm, or farmers would abandon it volitarily.
This sounds like more expansionary aspirations from the conservation dept,already major tax funded beneficiaries. [saving the world from productivity, at its expence]

Anonymous said...

The Great Helmsperson and her DoC spokesholes are as uncluttered in their thinking as always. The farmer is an enemy to nature. The latest buzzword "sustainable" is everywhere, qualifying all discussion with a smug arrogance.
LINZ is not an impartial civil servant in all this and has shown remarkable bias in dealing with tenure review in accordance with the leaders philosophy. The UK is a case example of what not to do. Provide unfettered access for others on your property, retire your property from farming, extend protection to predators, prevent hunting, subsidise non productivity etc, etc, ad nauseum. It all stems from the same thought pattern. 'We know better than you about your land, and its not really your land anyway,it belongs to future generations, you just happen to be paying the rates on it and subsidising bureaucrat drones till they get here'

The cultural difference between Australia and New Zealand is our OZ cobbers have not forgotten how to say "get stuffed" to meddlers

KG said...

"The cultural difference between Australia and New Zealand is our OZ cobbers have not forgotten how to say "get stuffed" to meddlers "
Amen to that, George. As an Aussie who has come to live in NZ, I'm amazed at just how placid Kiwis are in the face of bureaucratic interference in their lives.
And doubly amazed at the biased media that encourages the apathy of citizens.