New Zealand's State Run Farms: The War Against Private Property.

(I have no affiliation with any farming body, nor do I believe that farmers have a right to pollute at the expense of others, but I believe the best way to achieve the prosperous and free society, and an unpolluted environment, is by relying on the single-most important factor that has made the West the best civilisation to be a part of in man's history: private property rights, and they are being destroyed in New Zealand. Remember throughout history the most audacious polluters have been communist countries.)

I’m in the process of penning a piece regarding Tyler Cowan’s interesting Great Stagnation Thesis, as it may apply to farming in New Zealand, and much sooner than might be thought with a Labour/Green government taxing on-going innovation out of the sector from 2014, however, in the interim, there is one frightening connection between farming in New Zealand and China, that has nothing to do with the Labour/Green/NZ First xenophobia regarding Chinese investment, that may also feed into this: it’s the out-of-control, indebted state, again, and it’s destruction of private property rights as a means for its survival.

Consider the following question, which you may think absurd at this stage of the post: how far is a society that has done away with private property rights, as we have done - and which I shall prove shortly - from the below position in China?

China says it has worked hard to overhaul its judicial system in ways that better protect human rights, but one of the country's most widespread abuses is increasing and is a leading cause of unrest.

The forced eviction of residents from their homes and farmland has quickened over the past three years, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report issued Thursday.

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Forced eviction "has become a routine occurrence in China and represents a gross violation of China's international human rights obligations on an enormous scale," said the Amnesty report 'Standing Their Ground,' which looked at evictions from February 2010 to January 2012.

Violent forced evictions are increasing as local authorities, often highly indebted, seize land and sell it off to developers to meet bank repayments for funds borrowed to finance projects, Amnesty said.

Income from the sale of land rights to developers represents local governments' single largest source of revenue. And officials looking for promotion also rely on developing land to deliver the high growth rates their superiors demand, the group said.

For those who think me fanciful trying to work New Zealand into this, there is no doubt about the growing indebtedness of local councils (echoing central government, which refuses to put a cap on spending ):

The country's 11 regional councils and 68 territorial authorities recorded a $127 million deficit in the March 2011 quarter, Statistics New Zealand says.

The debt is $50m more than in the December quarter.

As of August this year, local council debt has quadrupled in the last ten years from $1.8 billion to $7 billion.

And more ominous, state officials are as loose with private property rights, as they are our privacy, for they have no culture or understanding over the importance of either: there continues, in New Zealand, the on-going destruction of private property rights by that monster act of statism, the Resource Management Act, under which local councils are now regulating for their right to run the formerly private farms of their ratepayers:

Last week, Federated Farmers appealed the Environment Court's decision on Horizons Regional Council's One Plan.

As it stands, the plan threatens agriculture's ability to operate profitably in the region. Federated Farmers Manawatu-Rangitikei provincial president Andrew Hoggard says the current version would poorly serve the community.

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The re-introduction of resource consent requirements for other intensive land uses, including cropping, commercial vegetable production and irrigated sheep and beef, is hugely significant to the region's primary sector.
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The plan as it has now emerged has:

A nitrogen-leaching loss limit assigned to existing and new intensive land uses, based on the land-use capability of the soil

A sinking lid on nitrogen-leaching loss over 20 years

Requirements on farmers to get consent to farm where they have existing intensive land use in the priority water management zone, or if they seek new intensive land use anywhere in the region

Indigenous biodiversity managed at a regional, rather than district, level.

Although all farmers in the region are affected by the One Plan, some are more directly affected than others. For example, it is likely that, given production constraints and limitations to future land use, this plan will cause the value of all farm land in the region to drop.

Mid-Canterbury sheep farmer Chris Allen sums up the impact of this on (formerly) privately run farms, talking of Environment Canterbury’s similar Land and Water Regional Plan:

A Mid Canterbury sheep farmer fears he will need a resource consent to farm under the existing definitions of land use change in Environment Canterbury's Land and Water Regional Plan.

Chris Allen, who is also the Mid Canterbury provincial chairman for Federated Farmers said unless it was changed, sheep farmers could be among the first to require resource consents to farm.

The nutrient discharge rules outlined in the current version of the LWRP, meant there were incredibly tight tolerances for land use change, he said.

It defined a land use change as when a farmer's nitrate leaching was at 10 per cent more than the average calculated using the Overseer programme from 2011-2013.

A 10 per cent margin was "wafer thin" for sheep farmers. If a consent was required to farm, it would substantially limit land use change and better farming practices, Mr Allen said.

"Such rigid rules risk either freezing farm practice in time or spurring radical high-input indoor farming.

"It also strips away the certainty I need to invest in more environmentally desirable kit. It is based on your farm or orchard's average for the preceding two years so one poor season could seriously skew things," Mr Allen said.

The rules as they stood meant he may have to carry less stock, resulting in his farm underperforming productively and commercially and forcing him to dispose of lambs to remain compliant.

If he had a good season and planted more winter feed, he would have to factor that into Overseer to see if he could run extra lambs to take advantage of the growing conditions.

"That is not being a sheep farmer, that's farming by the numbers, and all I want to do is be a sheep farmer."

He was hugely concerned with Overseer being made central to the regulatory process.

It had severe limitations which had to be be acknowledged in the LWRP, he said

“For me to get an accurate assessment of my farm's nutrient performance will mean a big chunk of my time will be taken up as a data entry operator; data doesn't enter itself."

One farmer told him it took over six hours to create a nutrient plan using Overseer. Mr Allen was concerned at the time it would take for him to complete his own nutrient plan.

His 360ha irrigated sheep and beef farm near Ashburton Forks has four different soil types and has trading lambs on the property over summer.

When these lambs entered his property, he would have to account for that transaction within his nutrient plan as well as factoring in the soil type they were farmed on and whether the lambs were placed on irrigated land.

So we have local councils which seem to be able to make wide-ranging rules without having to demonstrate or conclusively prove the science behind them – I know a farmer in mid-Canterbury who has asked for the science, and nothing has been forthcoming – councils, further, that are running up huge amounts of debt, but which have an open ended source of revenue via the consents process, a revenue source only limited by the amount of regulation they can enact, that will restrict farm productivity, profitability, and thus farm values, leaving individual farmers less and less able to comply, or more importantly, take up the crucial ethical fight against this rampant statism at the place it can most damage the voluntary economy; the (day to day) local (government) level.

How many years do we need to goose step from Environment Canterbury’s Land and Water Regional Plan, and Horizon’s One Plan, to the Soviet Five Year Plans? Back to my original question, how long until the forced evictions and land sales of China? There was only ever the one great wall that stopped that, sacrosanct private property rights, and on the philosophical and political level, the councils have already won; private property rights have long been consigned to history in New Zealand, it’s just taking us (too long) to figure this out yet. Already we have at least one farm held under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, which may not sound related, but from that ask yourself how far is it in the bureaucratic mind from ‘punishing’ a farmer for growing cannabis, to punishing him, for the good of the environment, for leaching nitrate, or not getting an appropriate consent – remember the Environment Court is a criminal court. I know another farmer who now has a criminal prosecution from that court, and simply for building a stopbank, without a consent, to protect his farm from flooding. He didn’t realise he had to get a consent, at the time he thought he was simply doing something that made sense. Nor did he understand at the start of the legal process the import of the Environment Court prosecution being a criminal one. The consequence has been, so far, a cancelled family holiday to the US, given he does not know the vagaries of trying to enter that country after having declared a criminal prosecution, as you must, and many tens of thousands on the farm mortgage to fight the case.

Over a stopbank. Think about it.

What is at stake here is everything, with a prosperous farming sector being the least of it. When individual property rights are usurped by the state, we all lose our freedom. We’re simply the generation witnessing the movement back to the Gulags of Forced Altruism in a collectivist West where political will seems determined to replay, again, the brutal surveillance states of the twentieth century when the state was man’s master, not his servant. And I thought we won the Cold War: apparently not. The pity is, there was one philosopher of the twentieth century who figured this out, but she has been as misrepresented as she has been reviled by the voter whose main concern has been the (illusory) free lunch offered by irresponsible politicians of both the Left and Right. As the philosopher, Ayn Rand, wrote:

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

So when you read of the first farmer villains being taken through the Environment Court for not being able to comply with this new regulation that might well force them off their farms, and mark my words, they will be put through the show trials for us all to read about and be made examples of, also remember Ayn’s further words:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

It’s about time farmers understood it’s time for a revolution in their heads, and I’m not just talking about the vote in 2014, I’m talking about the coercive society which is now our social democracy, where you don’t own your farming operations anymore.

Update:

If more proof is needed of out-of-control expansionist councils, then Rob Hosking provides it over at NBR.


Update 2:

The shocking impact of Horizon's One Plan on agriculture - a must read

Quoting:

"Upwards of $15 million of ratepayers' money has been spent on a plan that will make farming here damned difficult," says Hew Dalrymple, Federated Farmers Grain & Seed vice-chairperson and an environmental award winning farmer.

"Thanks to Landcare Research's research, we now have a good handle on the One Plan as it stands following the Environment Court decision. It scarily confirms the impact upon farm profitability will be at the upper end of 22% to 43%.

"If you are a member of the public, take up to 43% off your post-tax income and you'll understand why we are angry. That grows when one of our policy staff members described even this high level of impact as potentially 'optimistic'.

"In spite of this Landcare Research report, the council is acting like someone who has been told they have a terminal disease. It is in denial. How many times and how many ways do they have to be told the current plan version is a dog before the penny drops?

"Instead of being an officer's mouthpiece, the elected council needs to 'grow some' and take charge. Councillors appear to have little understanding of which version of the One Plan they are talking about, let alone its effect upon agriculture. They appear to treat what council officers tell them as gospel.

"The council must listen to proper research that comes directly out of the work done for LawF. Given LawF got a positive reception by almost all parties, is Horizons really thumbing its nose at it now?" Mr Dalrymple asked.

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