Q08209

Dairying is for the Better

With the structure of the New Zealand economy firmly built on the Agricultural Sector, predominately Dairying, it seems logical that we should respect and utilize such an industry - not criticize it and prevent its growth. The New Zealand Dairy industry is not just constricted to our own shores, but trades in hundreds of countries around the world, providing a large range of essential products we cannot live without. It also provides jobs for thousands of people in our country and even though the dairy cow produces significant methane emissions, it more than makes up for this with the encouragement of the growth of grass - a ‘lean, mean carbon dioxide to oxygen  converting machine’. It cannot be stressed enough: Dairying in New Zealand is for the better.

Cheese, milk, yoghurt, cream - the list of products that Dairying provides is endless. It seems illogical to tear down such a productive industry, to say the least, because with Dairying in our Armoury, the sky is the limit for New Zealand. According to Fonterra, Dairy provides 26 % of New Zealand’s total exports, worth just fewer than 10 Billion dollars in the 2008/09 season, a huge contribution to New Zealand’s total merchandise export earnings. For this reason, we cannot afford to lose Dairying in New Zealand.

The Dairy Trade in our small country spreads a lot further than the farm. We all know someone who has a job in dairying, if it is not ourselves. This is because 50,000 people directly work in Dairying while an estimated 100,000 have jobs related to it. That is roughly 150,000 people, 3.3 percent of our population, not a statistic you would likely want to see in the Unemployment figures, another essential reason why the Dairy Trade plays an important part in our society.

We should really all be thanking the Dairy cow for its work in helping the environment - for if we did not grow grass on which we feed our stock, the world would  have roughly 40% less of its brilliant Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen creating ability. Thus the world would have significantly greater problems than the methane gas emissions produced by cows, something scientists seldom take into consideration when they are affixed on criticizing Dairying.

With the great produce the dairy cow provides, the thousands of jobs in New Zealand it produces and the encouragement of grass the dairy cow brings, it seems a ‘no-brainer’ to keep the industry alive, instead of trying to pull it down because of supposed environmental damage it causes. Dairying in New Zealand is beneficial, and the industry should stay for many years to come.