Farmgirl back next week with a few juicy posts

Farmgirl wants to apologise for lack of blogging recently. The set up of a new business has enforced a silent blog for two weeks but she will be back next week from Monday and is pleased to say that she has HEAPS of juicy posts to write about.

See you back here on Monday!

The great urban-rural divide down under and on top!

So you thought we were the only country stuck with this ever growing resentment between the big smoke and rural industry?
While we may have been struggling to assert our prominence as an industry into the hearts and minds of Aucklanders (like John I don't give a stuff about the rest of New Zealand Banks) and politicians, the recession has helped agriculture to 'show off' its wares once more with economists stating it is us that will lead New Zealand out of recession and the news that Marac Finance is looking to regional New Zealand (yes you heard correctly) for economic growth and opportunity.

No such luck in England however. Read these comments from Farmer's Weekly blogger David Richardson:

"According to today's Daily Telegraph an un-named, but by implication, influential senior economic adviser to Gordon Brown told him the City of London was the only really important engine of the British economy and that "the rest of the country can be turned over to tourism".
Admittedly this advice was said to have been given sometime before the fall of Northern Rock. I should also point out that the expose has come from the UK National Defence Association which particularly deplored the fact that defence was looking at a £15bill shortfall in funding and that it was bracketed by the said economist alongside manufacturing and virtually all other industries.
There was no mention of agriculture or food in the report. But doesn't its content sound familiar? Our industry has suffered from the same kind of attitude. Government policy towards it, delivered through DEFRA, has sidelined us. Food and farming were branded unimportant. Tourism and a pretty environment were given top priority. You could just imagine that same economist telling Gordon Brown to let farming go hang and import most of our food. It is entirely consistent with what happened to defence.
And where has that advice to rely wholly on the City got us? I don't need to give an answer. It is transparently obvious to us all. And it confirms what dangerous people some economists are. Governments should sack them all and go back to legislating with common sense. But they've been listening to economists for so long they have probably lost the ability to think for themselves. Sometimes I pull out my hair in despair. And if you've seen my photograph you will realise where that leads."

In the words of our most famous export - Fred Dagg, "We don't know how lucky we are!"

Protectionist measures could sink world trade by 8%

World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy gave some serious warnings in an interview with Brian Fallow in the NZ Herald this morning.

Lamy was blunt - the stakes in the Doha trade talks have increased substantially as nations seek to protect their own economies. In layman's terms, it could be worse if it wasn't for Doha.

Lamy said we were 80% towards achieving the outcomes from that round but his organisation has also released information showing that if nations were to push the boundaries of present tariff levels, world trade could sink by up to 8%.

There are then two concerns:

1 As the squeeze gets tighter I think we can assume many will push those boundaries

2 This will lead to a deeper recession yet and if we don't think we're really in as much poo as other countries that will soon change.

And finally, I wholeheartedly agree with comments on http://homepaddock.wordpress.com/ about protectionism, considering the furore of Swazi last week and the complete farce the bailing out of Mascot Finance has become.

Here's what Ele Ludemann had to say:

"Protectionism comes in many forms, not just direct subsidies. Feel-good campaigns which encourage people to buy-local and outrage when local firms lose out to foreign competitors as happened last week when Swazi lost the contract to supply our Defence Force are protectionist too.
We can not expect others to open their borders to our produce if we shut our doors to theirs and we will pay a very high price if we give our trading partners an excuse to buy local themselves.
New Zealand has a lot to lose if short-term recession-busting measures result in subsidies and tariffs which will protect our competitors and reverse the painfully slow but steady progress towards global free trade.
But every other country will lose out in the long term too because the only fair trade is free trade."

PS - congrats to Ele for just completing her 2000th outstanding blog. If you haven't yet, get online and read her blog. It is quite simply superb!