Not A Struggle Street Story

There's a column on Stuff today by Lyn Webster - a Northland Dairy Farmer - in which she says she has no sympathy for 'Struggle Street stories' because the reduction in the milk payout two years ago to $3.90 per kg of milk solids (kg MS), left her 'skint' but she just gets on and works every hour there is, and manages. 

 

There's the obligatory dig at the current Government whose 'misguided plans to make agriculture in New Zealand pay for the world's climate change woes" could 'screw over' her 'marginal business.' 

 

The column is a thinly disguised appeal to those who like the simplistic Kiwi Battler: Kiwi Bungler/Bludger dichotomy.

 

Webster leases a farm and runs 210 cows.Her 2 children are adults. She says she works every hour there is milking, but has written a book, writes a column for Stuff and does all the self-sufficiency activities that she details on her Facebook page, which has 6000 followers.

 

Like all farmers, she has the ability to provide herself with a lot of free food and she entered into her current situation with, and retains, a lot more control over her life than the average 'Struggle Street' resident - despite debt and the vagaries of the market and the weather.

 

So how about her claims of having it so hard?

 

The average NZ dairy cow produced 4,259 litres of milk in the 2016-17 season, yielding a total of 381kg MS.  

 

210 cows on average would produce 80,000 kg MS. 

 

Even at $3.90 a kg that’s a gross annual income of $312k.

 

At the 2017-18 rate of $6.90 it’s gross annual income of $552k. (1)

 

You would have to have a very low yield herd and/or pay very high rent for the land and/or be paying exorbitant interest rates to the bank to not to be able to make ends meet on those figures - especially in light of how much personal expenditure can be offset against business costs. 

 

Or am I missing something?

1. https://www.interest.co.nz/rural-data/dairy-industry-payout-history 

Earning Your Keep

Alongside the growing numbers of the working and non-working poor in the developed world, and the gross exploitation of the labour and natural resources of the developing world, is a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few grotesquely rich people than has been seen since the days of La Belle Epoque in Europe and The Gilded Age in the USA. 

 

Some people, responding to reports on global poverty, make the same old illiberal responses: 

 

"People who work hard deserve to be rewarded." 

 

“Rich people buy lots of goods and services so we all benefit.”

 

“There have always been rich people and poor people and always will.”

 

“The poor are people who make bad choices; the rich are people who make good choices.”

 

Do the people offering 'back to school' loans on which people pay 50% interest - earn their money? 

 

Is a choice to behave parasitically, a good choice? 

 

Do CEOs who are paid daily what a worker in their organisation is paid yearly, earn their money? 

 

Will they spend what they are paid on goods and services that trickle down to the people who work for them, or will they invest wherever it yields the highest – unearned - interest? 

 

Does someone who inherits wealth, which grows exponentially because of investments made on the advice of paid employees, earn their money?

 

Does a movie celebrity paid $50m per movie earn their money? 

 

And do working people who are paid such a low wage that they have to borrow from loan sharks in order to equip their kids for school, "gain deservedly in return for their efforts"?