waitangi.com
There are parallels in the first two examples below to what is happening in New Zealand today. The first two paragraphs merely hint at one vast and enormous story in China. The second example is very clear-cut of what happened in the Ukraine.
Only a century ago in China, farmers had been forced to plant opium on their food producing land, and suffered exceedingly vicious and cruel penalties if they did not comply. Normal food supplies then began to run very low, and when a dry period did occur, tens of millions starved to death! The 'Western' influences (mainly through Britain, America, France, Russia, and Germany) who benefited from the trade in opium and other natural resources, as if they had done no wrong themselves blamed China's Mao Tse Tung for the deaths of the many millions of people,
And yet Mao, who was a pacifist at heart, had been forced to make a stand against the West to save his people from total annihilation. The peasants (mostly farmers), were peaceful industrious families, close to the land and nature, but were labelled 'communists' as though it was a dirty word, and slaughtered by their millions under the Imperialist Western influences.
In 1932/33, only 90 years ago in the Ukraine Soviet Republic, there was an event that became known as the Holodomor, a 'man made famine'. Close to 4 million people died from starvation, many likening the incident to a deliberate genocide.
The starvation was caused by Russia's Stalin with his Marxist ideology when he imposed a Collectivisation of farmland, in which individually owned and managed farms were confiscated and run by large state enterprises. Farmers were dictated to as to what they should grow, and those that objected were made enemies of the state and driven off their lands by force.
The Government Collective planners had set quotas for grain, and these were unable to be met, having a shortfall of 60%. The already starving and impoverished peasants were then accused of stealing it, and further punished.
There is much interesting reading about this on the web. Two good links are at www.history.com and www.britannica.com.
It is now 2024, and we are not living in those countries, nor in that time period. There is a new Russia with Mr Putin not having exactly the same socialistic or Marxist views. Large amounts of farmland are available for private ownership and management, with production increasing.
Here in New Zealand there are many thousands of hectares of productive pastureland already lost due to the Carbon Offset programs related to climate change concerns, and many more thousands expected to be converted. For myself, this is all a very confusing area which does not make sense at all. Reading the vague documentations puts me off, and looking at the climate change arguments and differences that drive the whole issue, it makes me realise that I have been down the same track in the past. That trip began in the 1970's when planting my own land in a farm-forestry situation, and dealing with various sections of the Forest Research Institute in Rotorua.
In those days I was full of enthusiasm and it was exciting learning from various publications (mainly UK, US, and Aus.) on timber tree species suitable for my property, and how to grow them for dimensional stability. Dimensionally stable wood has always returned the highest value over many millennia. The next stage was a portable sawmill, and more learning, picking up skills from an old bushman, and life was a dream. My first 2 acre wood-lot I sold, fetched (I was told) the highest price in NZ that year.
Writing the paragraph above brought the same warmth and joy to my heart again, and yet when I think of this next paragraph and of the good friends I made in the F.R.I., then sadness and tears well-up in my eyes! They had been following an Agenda! The agenda for an 'export-drive'. Obviously human nature favours leaning towards the objectives of the employer, and so the results they published were becoming quite biased.
It could be seen in reading their recommendations, that they were going to cost the country, particularly farmers, billions of dollars! Recommendations implied that every cubic meter of clear knot-free wood (obtained by pruning off the young branches) would fetch $100 a cubic meter (or per tonne). The figures looked good, but their management program showed me they were growing stress into much of the wood, and that a far smaller percentage would meet that criteria. No matter what I mentioned to correct it, I was not heard, and so I wrote a few articles with titles like Pruning for Pulp (1984), Fibre-Forestry? (1985), and All Pruned Wood Makes Pulp, that were published in various magazines. (Pulp is certainly the only category that fits all the grades, but is valued at about 5% or less of the top quality wood).
Anyway, I was somewhat cancelled. Mal-information may be an applicable word today, being items that although correct, do not fit into a particular agenda. I was going to write some examples but it will fill several chapters, although one non-technical incident will do: I visited the head of one division in his office at the F.R.I., and the conversation went like this: [me] 'You left details of one of the trial plots out when you published the results.' 'Yes' he replied, 'We thought it anecdotal [not worth considering] evidence as it was different from the other results'. And my gentle response, 'Then the further as time goes by, the error will become more pronounced.' Well that was enough to wake him up. He near-on exploded, and standing up with eyes bulging, steadying himself on the desk, told me to leave in no uncertain manner.
Human nature, as it usually follows past patterns, will bring upon us a famine of land being available for beef and sheep production. Yet even our meat companies are pressured to follow some form of anti global-warming criteria or agenda, much of which is based on mis-information. Many of the 'for' arguments try to justify their case on future $ returns or values, as if that is more important than humanity! The wealthy anti-beef lobby promotes its genetically engineered grains which are non-compatible to humankind, while at the same time giving donations along with dietary recommendations to major health authorities that strongly influence the media.
There are even far greater influences than that, which include the pharmaceutical industry, who have great controls over media and on what we think and eat. All of the above combined affect our health both spiritually and physically. One just needs to look at the condition of health in the society about us. Most of these conditions, which are now commonly accepted, were rarely recorded or did not even exist a hundred years ago. The cause being mostly due to the processed foods we eat, the altered DNA of wheats, processed sugars, other sweeteners, and additives, preservatives, soy and similar grain oils.
The circumstances affecting both China and Ukraine in the examples above have all to do with the human greed for money and power at the expense of much of the population, who are often initially deceived by a propaganda of untruths and subsequent broken promises. When powerful entities prioritize their own economic (or political) interests over localised populations close to the land, it leads to severe and often tragic outcomes. Then knowing this and with the likely adverse consequences of entering into an Emissions Trading or other Carbon Credits scheme, it leaves me very dubious about the whole idea.
We need to keep our pastureland for meat and healthy food production, or the penalty will be severe.
HOWEVER, outside of those schemes the outlook is promising. There are tree species both indigenous and many exotic, which are readily grown here and produce good quality, stable and naturally durable wood for building purposes, that do not need to be treated with arsenic, chrome or copper. Dry wood does not rot, and having buildings with decent eaves providing good drip-zones kept things quite tidy and long lasting. Of course there was a lot less leaky roof problems pre the treatment days.
The slash problems which occurred in the recent floods can be virtually eliminated with a change in several government policies. A little study shows that blaming the changing weather patterns for our problems is not a valid excuse at all, as there appears there were many, even more regular weather events causing severe flooding over the past 150 years (on the East Coast anyway), some as severe as the most recent.
The biggest problem seems to be that the voice of localised experienced people who have lived their lives on the actual land, and who are intimate with it, knowing it's intricacies and seasons; is overridden so often by the collective intellect of Councils, generally following Centralised Government decisions with rules, regulations, compliances, with the threat of penalties and so on, which has nothing to do with the localised environment nor common sense pertaining to it's management.
Metoikos 27 Sep 2024.