Plucking Possums

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The displays of huge tractors and equipment at Field Days are certainly very impressive, but often it is the more interesting looking smaller sites that get the most attention. A really good example was the "Possum Plucker" being demonstrated outside the Department Of Conservation tent at the Northland Field Days this year. This ingenious contraption can be backpacked into the bush to remove fur from possums caught in bait stations and traps.

Possum fur prices are looking good. Inventions like the possum plucker will definitely come in handy as hundreds of possum plucking hunters head off into the bush to cash in on the high prices being paid by exporters and New Zealand textile manufacturers. In a recent TV1 news item, one plucky trapper was reported to have collected $12,000 worth of fur in seven days. That sort of return is creating a lot of interest and now DOC is being pressured to open up more publicly owned land for trappers.

The resurgence of interest in Possum fur is due to not only to its attractive appearance and insulation qualities. It also combines well with merino wool and so "possino" garments are becoming very popular at the top end of the fashion industry. In the past, possum fur prices suffered from animal rights campaigns, but countries like China have fewer concerns over those issues and this is driving possum skin prices up as well.

The New Zealand Fur Council estimates that around two million possums are being harvested each year commercially and returns from possum based products earns New Zealand approximately one hundred million dollars a year. Textiles New Zealand CEO, Elizabeth Tennet, has been making the claim that if Government and local bodies provided more incentives and encouragement, the industry returns from possum products would quickly double.

The TV1 report also had a DOC spokesman explaining how his department was in a bit of a dilemma. Possums are destroying native vegetation and wildlife and so eradication has been DOC's primary objective. Sadly, that goal has been not possible so far because they do not have the funds, manpower or technology to do it. As a stopgap measure, the controversial 1080 poison is being used to lower possum numbers to less destructive levels.

Hunters are arguing that trapping would do much the same thing for free and yield a financial pay back for the country. Tax payments from trapping, trading and manufacturing would then be available for possum proof sanctuaries that are saving native species threatened with extinction. Needless to say, DOC spokespeople are not very comfortable about his proposal. They argue that National Parks and reserves were not created to become possum farms.

However, because eradication has proven to be "Mission Impossumble", our Government is facing a lot of pressure to open up more land in areas with high unemployment. If hunters get their way, then of course less 1080 would be used and so possums would be safer to eat. You never know, possum pie could well be in our supermarkets soon - and not just a mysterious dish rustled up by Grandma Moses in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Rio Bound

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During the last decade, many of the larger South American economies have been growing strongly. Banana Republics and Dictatorships transformed into progressive democracies and their people were rewarded with a rise in their living standard of living.

Fonterra has been cashing in on this change of fortune by investing in dairy processing enterprises there as well as supplying them with milk products from New Zealand. Their latest venture is in buying 850 hectares of farmland in the Brazilian province of Goias and setting up a New Zealand designed dairy farm.

It will supply a local processing company and milk around 3300 cows in two milking sheds. Fonterra obviously thinks that it better to join in with the opposition rather than competing with them head to head. It is very likely that some kiwi dairy farmers will be concerned about this – especially in light of the PPG Wrightson’s problems after investing in Uraguay farms.

This sort of investment is of course not new to Fonterra which these days provides 30 – 40% of the international tradable milk supply with diary products from New Zealand and other countries. Its options in New Zealand for expansion have been limited by Government regulations and the decreasing amount of suitable land for new diary farms. Therefore overseas investment has been seen to be a logical way to grow the company.

In the reported words of their CEO Andrew Ferrier, “This pilot project will allow us to develop and test the right model for our own dairy farming operation. This demand will not be met by milk produced locally.”

Those words will provide little comfort for farmers who see Fonterra as a New Zealand owned farmers co-operative and not an international dairy corporation like Nestle. Strangely enough, Fonterra finds it acceptable to buy farms in Brazil and yet wishes to keep New Zealand farms locally owned. As Fonterra chairman Sir Henry Van Der Heyden has been reported to say, “I want to see as many farms as possible stay in local hands (in NZ).”

If this is so. then setting up dairy farms in Brazil and sharing New Zealand’s technology and capital seems to be a strange way to go about it. New Zealand ownership of farms at home is hard to argue for if you are buying up farms in other countries. Consequently, our Government has allowed an increasing number of New Zealand farms to fall into foreign hands and these have the potential to buy up Fonterra from the inside.

In New Zealand, dairy farmers are also having to change their currently “dirty dairying” behaviour and adopt a “clean streams” approach to give some credibility to our very good environmental reputation. It requires a considerable amount of investment and it could be argued that this should be given a greater priority than expansion overseas.

In Brazil, the Goias district apparently faces similar environmental problems to New Zealand. It will be interesting to see if Fonterra’s trial farms are environmentally friendly or merely shifting “dirty dairying” offshore.

Saving NZ Rail

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John Key's National Government has continued to support cycleways, but under resourced KiwiRail is looking at mothballing Northand's rail link.

Budget Bill

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A Frankly Furtive Way To Use Cellphones

Wandering Willie

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Overseas visitors to New Zealand often tell me that they are amazed to see animals and vegetation from their own country growing so much better here. This gives us an economic advantage when they are useful, but on the other side of the coin is the huge cost controlling weeds and pests.

Alas, many of us have made it worse by allowing weeds to escape from our gardens. These invaders are giving farmers and the Department of Conservation plenty of financial head aches as they struggle to remove them. In many cases the horse has bolted and keeping weed numbers down is the best we can do.

A recent example is the introduction of beetles from South East Brazil to control Wandering Willie (or as some know it, Wandering Jew or Tradescantia). This plant has for a long time been a widespread nuisance in the garden and many dogs get an allergic reaction by touching it.

Now it is becoming a really dangerous threat to native bush by smothering the forest floor and preventing the growth of regenerating native vegetation. As part a jointly funded project, Landcare and the Auckland Council have now released the first beetles at Mount Smart Domain on the 25th of March this year. It is hoped these beetles will chomp their way into infestations of Wandering Willie and reduce its rampant growth. Other species of beetle are also being prepared for release in the near future to knock the weed back even further.

Over 30,000 new varieties of plants have been brought into New Zealand and more arrive every year. Most of these are beneficial or at least non intrusive. However, our wonderfully mild climate and relatively few insect pests seem to be an open invitation for some plants to conquer the landscape.

The effect of global warming is another factor and Christine Shepherd, from Auckland University, is completing her PhD. by investigating how this is affecting the spread of several species - such as Bungalow Palms and guavas. Bungalow and Phoenix palms are easily out competing their native cousins the Nikau Palms and endangering its presence in our bush.

These new palms grow much faster and produce a lot more seeds than Nikaus. At present, they are not very noticeable but in 30 years time they could be a common sight in our bush. They take around 7 years to mature and birds disperse them over wide areas. Both palms are admired for their beauty but some tough decisions might have to be made if we want our bush to be free of the dangerous spines of the Phoenix Palm and Nikau endangering Bungalow palm.

Insects that eat the weed palms and not Nikaus could be hard to find because they are all closely related. The most helpful things we can all do would be to stop planting exotic palms and remove the ones already here – or at least remove all the flowers on valued palms each year.

Fake Freddy Gallery

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It looks as tho' the Whangarei District Council is going to fund a very controversial Hundertwasser styled gallery at the Town Basin area costing around 12 to 13 million dollars. As much as I like Hundertwassers work, this gallery is a fake one based on a sketch which showed very few details. The new gallery will not earn its keep I suspect and reminds me very much of the Cargo Cult in the Pacific, where Islanders built airports with wooden planes on them to attract the magic aircraft they had seen land during WW2.