Russell Kirkpatrick's Journal
Utter Nonsense
12-Mar-2008
So the New Zealand government announces a $700 million investment in the sciences. Yay! Except it is all to be spent on food and agricultural science.
What astonishing naivety. What incredible lack of insight. What utter nonsense. They think this new science will benefit us all. It won't. It'll do the opposite. Here's the problem. The primary sector (Agriculture and food production) is the most labour-intensive sector of them all. The returns from this sector are far lower per participant than any other. This is the main reason why, despite New Zealanders working far harder (and working longer hours) on average than European and American workers, we are falling further and further behind in our standard of living. We simply don't get sufficient return on our investment.
So there are only two possible results:
1) The money gets wasted and we are $700 million poorer, because scientists won't be able to find efficiencies that suddenly turn the primary sector into a much more profitable business. We continue to rely on farming as the 'backbone of the country' and drift slowly into oblivion. Frankly, this is the better of the two outcomes.
2) The scientists get lucky and find a way of eliminating the most significant cost in the sector: labour. The inevitable result is that fewer people share in the increased profits, and the farming sector becomes even more of an elite than currently. Farmers then become even more successful in dictating the political direction of the country. We become even more vulnerable to international trends and prices (which we cannot influence, being so small on the international stage). A single unexpected fluctuation in international prices wipes out the 'flavour of the month' industry, whether it's dairying or hops or kiwifruit (oh, that's right, it's already happened to hops and kiwifruit). Farming collapses and we disappear into oblivion in a puff of chaff.
Of course, by 'giving researchers their heads' I don't mean they should conduct immoral or dangerous research without restraint. There needs to be checks and balances.
Not saying the $700m fund is right ... just not sure about the labour intensity of NZ agriculture...
I've been talking this issue over with a couple of farmers - they're of the opinion that farming is simply a way of paying the interest on land, and that all the profit in farming is realising the asset by sale on retirement. That's also a very sad state of affairs.