Conservation Group 50 Shades of Green is organising a provincial get-together in Wellington.

Chair, Andy Scott said the conservation group’s message needed to be told to a larger audience.

The blanket planting of good farmland has reached crisis proportions. Add to that the water proposals, land use changes and the consistent campaign against rural businesses, we have a problem,” Andy Scott said.

“We’ll be telling our story to a city audience by coming to Wellington. The politicians aren’t listening to us so hopefully the general voters will.

“The meeting will be at 11am on Thursday 14th of November before marching to Parliament arriving at 1pm

It isn’t just farmers coming to town but representatives of all of provincial NZ from farmers to bankers, stock agents to rural advocacy groups and suppliers though to real estate representatives.

“We’re expecting a good turnout of people from the provinces,” Andy Scott said.

A fair go. That’s all New Zealand Farming communities are asking for.

We are the men and women who grow your food. We work in the rain, sun, snow and wind to take care of this land, our animals and our families.

We ask that the New Zealand Government take a step back, take a good hard look at what they are doing to rural New Zealand and have another try.

Give us a fair go.

We ask for a fair go on Emissions (Net Zero Carbon Bill)

- We own land, which is home to hundreds of thousands, even millions of trees, and yet our emissions reductions targets are unnecessarily high and ‘gross’ while other emitters have ‘net’ targets which will be met by planting what remains of our farms and our communities in trees.

We ask for a fair go on Water (Essential Freshwater, NES, NPS and 360 RMA regulations)

We are custodians of vast waterways, a role we have embraced over the last 20 years and into which huge investments have been made. We were not properly consulted in drafting the Freshwater Reforms, none of our elected representatives were permitted at the table to provide a voice on our behalf. Meanwhile environmental lobby groups were ushered in to share in the spoils of an unfettered political agenda. We need local solutions to local problems, and we need to be heard.”

We ask for a fair go on Land Use changes (Emissions Trading Scheme)

The Government never originally intended to return carbon credits to foresters for carbon sequestration, the forestry industry lobbied for over 6 years to achieve this outcome. This artificial market for sequestered units will drive escalating afforestation by international and domestic investors at an unprecedented scale should the ‘free market’ be given its head and allowed to bolt into our hills. Our communities are not carbon sinks, our people matter more than that.

We ask for a fair go on Mental Health

The Farmers of New Zealand and their families are being painted as environmental vandals by their own Government. The persistent focus on farming being a ‘problem’ is perpetuating the groundswell of disgusting behaviour targeting farmers and even their children by extremist activist’s intent on furthering their own agenda’s. This campaign against rural businesses and their family’s cannot be ignored or worse, given credibility by the Government, or rural families will ultimately pay the price.

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