This year hasn't been short on emotion, debate and outrage, but the most surprising uproar for me has come from the Country Calendar episode on Lake Hawea Station.
I hadn't seen the episode but started to see unhappy murmurs on Twitter on Sunday evening, then who could miss the onslaught that followed on Facebook. I was intrigued: Wow, what terrible things had been said? How insanely outrageous was this episode? I immediately checked it out. After watching my first thought was, is that it? I wasn't disappointed with the episode but couldn't calibrate the incredibly negative comments with what I had just watched. So, I watched it again and took notes, I observed the language, the tone of conversation, noted the references to their own beliefs and listened hard to their philosophy. I don't know Geoff and Justine Ross but now I have a great deal of respect for them.
When did great business capability, strong values and following your belief system become offensive?
They were focused and clear on their business plan and the legacy they wanted to leave, they were objective, balanced and running their farm based on their own values. They have strong knowledge and proven experience of premium global customers' needs and they wanted to create a legacy based on their own belief system. They talked about their pride and belief in NZ farming and immense respect for the sector, their excitement for the future, their desire to share how awesome NZ farming is with the world.
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Yes, they admit to being natural disrupters and always looking for ways to do things differently but when did progress, innovation and experimenting with different ideas become offensive?
My experience with farming is that it is very much a values-based sector; no one farm is exactly the same, each farmer will have unique beliefs.
One comment that made me go hmmmm said: "Not everyone can sell a vodka company for millions and then buy a farm to try [to] promote their fantasy ideas."
This is correct. Not everyone can work out of their garage, have a great deal of sacrifice, take a decade or so, risking everything, to build up a global brand that is then sold for millions. How cool is it that a Kiwi did that? How cool that the Kiwi family stayed in New Zealand and reinvested into an awesome sector like food and fibre because they believe in the future of the sector and want to leave an amazing legacy.
Would we have rather seen Hawea station sold into more exotic trees as a pointless offset, or become a wealthy foreigner's get away without real productive impact?
It breaks my heart to see farmers feeling bruised and beaten by society but even more heartbreaking, and extremely confusing, is to see farmers beating up on other farmers for being progressive. They seem to show more empathy for farmers who do bad things than they do for farmers who are trying to improve perceptions of the sector for the benefit of the sector.
It did give me an awkward chuckle at the number of comments that said things like, "I watched five minutes then turned it off", only to then carry on to say how ridiculous it was. Hang on, you didn't even watch it?
So, let me understand this, you get annoyed when others don't take the time to understand your farming business but it's okay for you to judge someone else without taking the time to understand them?
I get that many might have felt it gave a perspective they personally didn't believe was farming, based on how they farm, but people doing things differently and being proud of what they are achieving isn't an attack on you.
Driving for consensus, doing things the same and bagging others for disrupting progress is not democracy - connecting different perspectives celebrating progress and difference is.
