| 43 MEAT & WOOL » Geoffrey Young Geoffrey going for Beef+Lamb NZ board Geoffrey Young. Karen Phelps Advocacy and getting practical outcomes for farmers regarding proposed regulations are the main things that past president of Federated Farmers Southland Geoffrey Young will focus on if elected to the governing board of Beef+Lamb NZ. Geoffrey, owner of Cattle Flat Station, a 5400ha, 15,000 stock unit farm in Northern Southland, has always been a passionate and outspoken advocate of farmers’ rights so when senior members of Federated Farmers and Groundswell NZ approached him to stand he had no hesitation. “The climate is warming and we are not getting the harsh winters we did in Southland when I was a young boy. We had several natural ice-skating rinks and now there are none. But while the climate is changing it has probably always changed,” he says. With the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle fresh on everyone’s minds Geoffrey sympathises with farmers hard hit in the region and says that farming is the key to recovering from the disaster. He is keen to hit pause on climate change regulations for farmers to give this opportunity. He says primary industries will help New Zealand to reduce its debt, as significant investment will need to be made in the region’s recovery. Methane targets for farmers are also in his sights: “If you work on global warming potential it has small amount of effect of 0.3% per annum. So essentially we are being asked to reduce methane by 10% by 2030 and up to 47% by 2050. There will be huge losses and several billion dollars in export income if methane regulations are introduced and we need to be ramping up our production of primary products and get our country out of the big debt hole we’ve got ourselves into. There are certainly much easier ways to make a living than farming now. And the danger is that people will just keep dropping out, as they are sick of working hard, making meagre incomes and being vilified by urban people. We should be one united country and primary production is still the backbone of New Zealand. With no mitigation measures, taxing farmers on the methane will do nothing to reduce any climate change potential especially when tourism is a huge emitter of CO2 and the government is actively promoting tourism.” Geoffrey also has concerns about the amount of farmland being planted in pine trees: “Tourists don’t want to come to New Zealand and drive through kilometres of solid pine forest. They come to see well-farmed areas and all the natural beauty we have in abundance in New Zealand. For every hectare of pine trees it means less stock units. We can’t plant our way out of greenhouse gas emissions. They are certainly not the total answer to stabilise land and reduce emissions.” Geoffrey says that his main aim around advocacy is that he believes with three often disparate voices – DairyNZ, Federated Farmers and Beef+Lamb NZ – this weakens the position of farmers. “Unfortunately a lot of the time these three voices don’t align and it’s weakened our bargaining power. There needs to be a review carried out of advocacy over those three entities to see what we come up with as we need to go into government meetings with a united voice. Too many regulations are being written by people with no practical knowledge of a lot of the issues around farming. We need to get some sound practical voices in the room to get things pushed ahead and I’m giving farmers a clear choice. That’s what democracy is about and I certainly have different views to the incumbent chairman.”
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