Anger, guilt and optimism: young farmers' complicated relationship with climate change
As farming confronts its climate impact, Charlie OMannin speaks to the next generation about how they feel. In short: its complicated. If youre waking up every morning feeling awful about the job youre in, feeling like youre the reason climate change is happening, like you need to counteract your emissions, like you need fewer cows, well what would be the point in waking up and getting the cows in? Briana Lyons belongs to a generation of young farmers facing a radical future. Agriculture makes up 48 per cent of New Zealands greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Ministry for the Environments 2018 Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. In order to prevent global warming topping 1.5 degrees Celsius, agriculture needs to reform itself from the ground up, dramatically cutting its emissions and its pollution. But for young farmers like Lyons, guilt and worry over climate change is set against having to change a culture they love one that has sustained their families for generations with stress over uneven government regulations and negative public opinion thrown in for good measure. READ MORE: * Out the gate and on the board - Central Hawke's Bay farmers get behind surfing for mental health * View from the Cow Shed - what farmers want in election 2020 * The race to future-proof our farms Lyons is 20 and studying law and commerce at Canterbury University, but she intends to return to work at the farm after she finishes studying. I feel very lost without it, she says. You feel like youre involved in something. When you get up in the morning, youre growing or harvesting a product thats going all over the country, all over the world. When Lyons was 10, her parents were told by Central Hawkes Bay District Council they had to turn a paddock on their dairy farm into an effluent pit. At the time the farm ran 120 cows, but Lyons says the pond they were made to dig by the council was big enough for 300 cows. Lyons remembers her parents stressing about the cost of the pit, which was very expensive, and having to build it in the middle of winter, the only time when they didnt have to milk cows. It was also the first time she remembers being aware of climate change. Im going to controversially say I dont think [the effluent pit] was worth it, because our farms so small. We were never going to have 300 cows on the farm, so we have this massive pond that you can walk through with gumboots. Its hardly got anything in it, and it never will. For Lyons, the regulations that restrict farmers pollution of the climate and environment have been uneven and confusing. She points to an increase in farmers planting native trees on their farms as an example of farmers taking initiative on the environment. Two years ago, Lyons helped plant natives on her farm, only to have them die in the 2020 Hawkes Bay heatwave, itself a taste of the harsher, drier conditions that are becoming more frequent with climate change. I was almost planting out of guilt. I told Dad, lets plant near the road, because I wanted people to see them. They all died, which is very annoying. Farmers do want people to think theyre doing good. Its almost like a little kid does something good and wants to go show their mum. All of our neighbours farms on the highway are planted, because those are the ones that everyone sees... There is this underlying pressure, or fear, to look like youre doing a good job to the public. Lyons says farmers feel like theyre being blamed for climate change, and its having a negative effect on them. People will always need farmers, but why would you want to farm in the future if youre always going to be the bad guy? Its an awful feeling when youre really trying to do the best by your land, and youre being held up as not doing enough and being actually detrimental to the land that you love and that you rely on. Georgia Mischefski-Gray is a 22-year-old farm manager on the 750ha beef and dairy farm in the Bay of Plenty where she grew up. Mischefski-Gray went to uni intending to become a lawyer and move to New York, but moved into a food science degree instead. When Covid ended her plans to go overseas, she was faced with having to decide what she really wanted to do. She chose to return to the farm. At university, Mischefski-Gray began to deep dive into climate change, and decided s... it's actually coming. We need to do something about it. She joined environmental groups and attended protests. She says she got a lot of hatred for my background from the other students at these events, who couldnt understand why she was there. Her response was that everyone has to care and everyone has to put in an effort. Her parents planted trees, putting the farms native bush into the QEII trust, and fencing off waterways long before regulation made it compulsory. For her, addressing climate change means we need to have huge changes to how we do pretty much do everything, all our systems, and farming isnt exempt from that. At the same time, she thinks farmers know the land best and the government needs more consultation with farmers. At the end of the day, we do want our soil, our water quality to be as good as possible, because then the animals are the best they can be and the money coming in is good. And, while shes only just started work on the farm, she plans to start researching regenerative agriculture practises overseas, and looking into Agrecovery, a New Zealand programme that collects and recycles on-farm waste. Over the coming decades, Mischefski-Gray expects to see more farms converting to horticulture and the remaining animal farms transitioning to green practices. But she thinks well still be farming dairy cows, even if its for a more luxury market she reckons New Zealand will be able to make the transition more easily than other agricultural countries, such as the United States. In general I'm pretty happy and excited for the future of farming, and the future of food; by the time I'm old, I think it's going to be really cool to see what we're eating, she says. Liam Mavor and Eli Johnson echo some of those thoughts. They are both 16-year-old students at Waitaki Boys High School, in Oamaru. Both grew up on farms and both are intending to become farmers, although Eli is also planning on becoming an apprentice plumber. Liam said he first began to hear about climate change when he started high school. At first, he only connected it with his farming background a wee bit, but not that much, but as we got older we realised more about it. I think theres a fair bit we can change, fixing up the messes that could have been fixed a while ago. Eli agrees, saying its the role of young farmers to try to clean up the older generations mess, I hate to say it. They probably didnt mean to, but thats just how they farmed back in the day, and it has to be changed. We just do what we love, just farm, says Mavor. Things will change, theyre going to have to, but not too much hopefully. The pairs attitudes havent always been typical, according to their agriculture teacher at Waitaki Boys, Elizabeth Prentice. She says shes seen the attitudes of her students change over the 30-plus years shes been teaching. What they are beginning to realise is that its not optional, that things have to change to sustain our life on this planet. Theyre not silly, theyre not stupid. But theres still that old concept of farming and thats what I battle here... They dont acknowledge the business side of it, they dont understand a lot of the environmental issues that the Resource Management Act produces. However, she says [those] thought processes are beginning to go, which I didnt see 5-10 years ago. I think theyre starting to realise whats ahead of them.