Social Media changing farming - making our Nathan Guy less than likely to broach the hard issues

So I got posted these pictures today from the World Heritage listed Wollangambe River in the Blue Mountains where Clarence Colliery allegedly dumped toxic coal waste.

 

If this is correct, this company is another example of not learning fast enough that we are in a social media environment where pictures can be circulated in seconds and speculation can become fact by sheer weight of mass population that it goes too.

That is why I believe NZ farmers are doing the very best they can to meet all our animal welfare and environmental standards. The small one percent of idiots are going to court but no farmer I know wants to be plastered all over Facebook and made to look like a redneck with no education.

Any slip up and it's all over the world in a nano second....which is alarming when it's incorrect. In the case of the live sheep export to Mexico SAFE did immense damage to our sheep trade by being allowed to talk without backing up their facts. Media jumped on their sensationalist headlines (not my media I might add!) and used it to sell papers without a thought as to what carnage it could cause.

When I'm sent this stuff I always want to see the other side before I make a decision - I thought that was what everybody else did too but now I know there are people with agendas who simply will not bend their views to allow others.

This worries me as we are a democracy - and increasingly I see farmers rights being imploded against the need for politicians to win elections.

In NZ farmers don't hold the balance of power - even though they hold the economy in the palm of their hands and this country would collapse should a true agricultural disaster like foot and mouth ever come to our shores.

When I spoke to Nathan Guy's office this week about live sheep for slaughter and whether even discussion would be allowed around the issue, his press secretary told me he already knew the answer and that was a big fat "no".

It seems the next election is never too far from a politician's mind....Just once I would like a Primary Industries minister to stand up for farmers. It hasn't happened for a long time on either side...