UK Lord seriously recommending turning veggie to save the planet

It really is frightening when British Government is influenced by the likes of Lord Nicholas Stern, a so called 'academic' and economist who authored the highly influential Stern Review on the economics of climate change.

The man is now suggesting seriously that we all turn veggie - and he has some support for his manic views.

This from Farmers Weekly UK:

People should stop eating meat to help the world conquer climate change, a leading scientist has warned.
"Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases," said Lord Stern of Brentford.
"It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better."
Lord Stern's comments are significant because he is the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming.
'A global agreement to tackle climate change would result in soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases, he said.
People's attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable, Lord Stern predicted.
"I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating," he said.
Lord Stern made the comments in a front-page interview with The Times.
The article has attracted more than 283 comments from internet readers.
"Eating a vegetarian diet is a lot cheaper than a meat one," wrote Jonte Jay.
"Let's face it - the most expensive foods on the average families shopping lists are meat and dairy."
Peter Radcliffe wrote: "Those who refuse to give up eating meat are contributing significantly to the destruction of the planet."
But most comments were far less sympathetic.
Nicholas Fox wrote: "Tell me I'm having a bad dream and not really living in such a ridiculous country."
Reuben Camara wrote: "Forget methane. There is far more hot air emitting from parasite Lord Stern's mouth than can possibly be good for the planet."

When this kind of myth starts to get traction you know that we are in trouble. It is now time to address some of the balderdash being spouted and to fight back. Our Government has already in principle agreed that agriculture is helping contribute to the problem. It really is only a slippery slope from there to what Lord Stern is suggesting. Why are we not standing up to this?

Ferrier's paycut a timely warning to other agricultural businesses

Well done Fonterra and well done Andrew Ferrier on taking a whopping great pay cut of $360 000 even if his salary is in the realms of fantasy at $3.62 million a year.

When you look at it on paper, three million seems a heck of a lot to pay the figurehead of an organisation, but converted to US dollars it's paltry compared to what he could get working elsewhere in the world, especially it seems, in a recession.

Have a read of this blog written by Rick Newman in the US regarding the trend upwards of CEO salaries in the States despite the gloomy economic conditions:

It's good to be CEO, even in a recession. Especially in a recession.
Hewlett-Packard's stock price fell 29 percent in 2008, and the company announced plans to lay off 25,000 workers after it acquired Electronic Data Systems. But CEO Mark Hurd didn't feel the pain. Hurd earned $43 million in 2008, a 73 percent raise from his 2007 pay. Perks included $136,000 worth of personal travel on corporate jets, paid for by shareholders, and $7,472 in travel expenses for Hurd's family, according to an analysis of HP's annual proxy filings by shareholder activist Eric Jackson. Several other top HP executives earning multimillion-dollar pay got double- or triple-digit raises.
[See 10 gaffes by doomed CEOs.]
Hurd has been a strong CEO since he took over in 2005, generally credited with enhancing HP's profitability after a period of drift. But the big pay hikes during a dismal year are generating some of the toughest criticism of Hurd's tenure. "There are some very troubling aspects about how he, his management team and his board approach executive compensation and governance," writes Jackson. "Investors should steer clear of this Silicon Valley icon until it gets its act together."
For all the talk of reining in CEO pay and enacting financial reform—even from some CEOs themselves—it's beginning to appear that very little has changed in the way companies are run and executives get paid. A new survey of CEO pay by research firm the Corporate Library finds that median take-home pay among more than 2,000 CEOs fell by 6.4 percent from 2007 to 2008, the first time on record that CEO pay has gone down instead of up. But that was in a year in which the stock market fell by 37 percent and the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. By almost every measure, the vast majority of companies performed far worse in 2008 than in 2007. "While the downturn has affected pay, the link between pay and performance remains weak," says the report. "Such a minimal decline in pay given the massive decline in shareholder value is hardly an adequate response."
A surprising number of CEOs didn't personally experience the downturn at all. Of 100 industries tracked by the Corporate Library, median CEO pay went up in 40. The 10 highest-paid CEOs included seven from the oil industry, which had a banner year as gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon. The others were Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie & Fitch. Schwarzman earned the most: $702 million. No. 10 Jeffries earned $72 million.
[See how to pay CEOs what they're worth.]
Reformers want to see much tougher rules linking executive pay to the long-term performance of their companies, and a few CEOs took a step in this direction. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs endured a 97 percent pay cut in 2008, because the tony Wall Street firm rescinded bonuses for top executives. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase went without a bonus as well, resulting in a 92 percent pay cut. But both of those companies were big bailout recipients under the microscope of politicians and regulators. And both have paid back all their bailout money, which means Blankfein and Dimon will probably do a bit better in 2009.
[Get ready for the miraculous hollow economy!]
It's likely that overall CEO pay will bounce right back up in 2009 as well. Many CEOs earn a relatively low base salary, with the majority of their total compensation coming from bonuses, company stock, or options to buy stock. The plunge in the stock market last year means the value of CEO-owned stock fell as well, and many CEOs declined to exercise options to sell stock since prices were so low. That has changed in 2009, with the market up smartly. It could even turn out to be a record year for CEO pay raises, as they springboard off of last year's lows. At least somebodies getting ahead.

So good on Fonterra for insisting on a performance based salary. It's just a shame that some of our other agricultural companies are not using the same standard for their bosses and their board sitters...Farmgirl can think of one such fertiliser company that would and should be rife for a pay cut!

Farmgirl on Farming Show

To listen to Farmgirl's latest chat with Jamie Mackay on the Farming Show follow this link: http://www.farmingshow.com/farming221009.html

Dollar for dollar with US a looming catatrosphe

When banking commentator Bernard Hickey said it was not out of the question for the New Zealand dollar to match the greenback in the near future, you could hear the collective Prozac popping among exporters.

Surely Hickey is talking balderdash? But hey, it's okay, he went on to say jubilantly, because it's great news for anyone going overseas or buying consumer products.

What was he thinking?

There won't be a country if his dire prediction comes true. There could be no worse economic disaster in this country's history than if our dollar did match the US. All the talk of recession over the past year would be like a bad day at the races in comparison to what would happen in that situation.

It is difficult for the farming fraternity to hear comments such as these when the squeeze is going back on with the Kiwi climbing through the 76 cent mark.

As for Bollard's comments last night that the high dollar was not an impediment to future interest rate hikes, you could only squirm, knowing that will give overseas investors the confidence to keep investing and therefore push the dollar up further.

Just what we needed Mr Bollard...well done...

Throw the bunnies!

For **** sake! If New Zealand rated on a political correctness scale (Farmgirl's pet hate) we would be number one in the world, but sadly it's not an accolade we want.

The latest debacle featuring the SPCA who have stood in and spoilt the farm kiddies fun at the annual Waiau pig hunting weekend by outlawing dead bunny throwing is enough to have you bashing a bunnies head against the proverbial brick wall.

Look, it may not be everyone's cuppa, but that doesn't mean that it should go by the wayside. The trouble is that if we bow down to the SPCA animal welfare aficionados it is going to get worse. So go ahead Waiau - THROW THOSE BUNNIES.

Farmgirl doesn't claim to be the brightest in the den, but heck, even she knows when a rabbit is dead, it can't feel anything, contrary to the namby pamby office sitters that seem to make up SPCA these days.

Imagine what these idiots were like as kids. If the cat caught a mouse, they made you spend all your pocket money on getting the vet to operate, because the poor minced up mouse deserved better than to end its life in the intestines of your pet. They were the type of kids you could never take out to the farm. They hyperventilated when they saw the pile of lambs tails at the end of the tailing pen, and vomited when they saw a bird eating an insect.

Are we now saying that we are not allowed to swing lambs around to help them breathe when they are born, even though it saves their lives?

Come on Waiau...THROW THOSE BUNNIES and fight back for all of us sane people in this crazy country...but make sure won't you, as parents, that your children don't play with their sausages or chops at the dinner table before they eat them...it's cruelty don't you know!

Nobel Peace Prize right on the money

Farmgirl is one of the few that think US President Barack Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sure, there's thousands of candidates out there who have swam 100 miles through crocodile infested waters, survived under a hail of bullets and rescued millions of starving children. No, I'm not taking the mickey but I am saying that the judges got it right because they awarded the one thing that is not quantifiable, not easily seen, nor able to be scored on a human rights ledger - they recognised the value of HOPE.

That many are critical of Obama's victory show how materialistic this world has become. Unless someone is starving to death for a cause and giving us a visual recount of suffering, we can't connect the dots. We seem to only understand the concrete.

Yet there was one thing we understood last year...one day where it wasn't about the visual, where we felt good, where unity abounded. Don't deny it..Obama's Presidential win made you feel good because it meant that there was HOPE - hope that we might solve this religious mess, hope that we might overcome the obstacles we see in other human beings who might not look like us (ironically, his win was about overcoming the visual).

You might think then that we as the people deserve the prize for getting him there, but you have to look at Obama's extraordinary journey. He dispenses the HOPE and is working for a bigger cause than you and I...he's working for a peaceful solution, a listening America and just because he hasn't got down in the swamps and saved the many that are drowning in the poorer countries, it doesn't make his journey any less award able.

It took courage for the judges to choose him...just as it takes courage every day for him to be in the highest office in the world.