Water Certificates unfair to New Zealand

25 September 2009

Don Carson

If Carbon Credits and Food Miles weren’t enough to pound New Zealand agriculture with, now we are going to endure Water Certificates.

It’s the brainchild of the environmental lobby that correctly sees worldwide water is a precious and scarce resource that is often squandered. Consumers, who see themselves as environmentally aware, can read the label stating how much water went into making the product. A single tomato (13 glasses of water), a glass of wine (120) a glass of milk (200) a hamburger (2400) and so on. Too much water, and the would-be customer reacts by pulling the tomato slices out of the burger and giving the rest of the burger back. It’s a conscience driven system.

The trouble is, it’s not at all accurate. Beef for a burger that came from a US feedlot, in the middle of arid Texas, may take the 2400 virtual glasses of water to grow from semen to sirloin. A ground beef pattie, from a kiwi cull cow, would have taken a fraction of that – unless you double count the water from milking the cow for the previous five years.

But it’s far too complicated a story for Joe shopper rushing through the weekly shop in their lunch hour. They only get to compare chook with cow, as though the average of each was the sole basis of comparison.

It gets worse. Unlike atmospheric carbon, water is divisible. Most parts of the world don’t ever have as much water as the people there would like and could use. Then, if there is enough water, it’s for only part of the year.

New Zealand is blessed. We more often have a problem of getting rid of water, than we do of getting enough water. Seasonal low temperatures, and not rainfall, is the natural feature that limits our agriculture production. If it is not mixing a metaphor, we have water to burn. Being extravagant in using it here is not damaging to the environment, with some exceptions in same places at some time of the year.

That is not going to get us any merit points from the water counters and the like who rule our market destiny with simple emotional formulas designed to be shorthand for shopping housewives. Nor can we boast, in our overseas advertising, how we have so much water here that it would be a shame to not splash it about. Presbyterian ethics of restraint run deep in the conservation movement.

We need two responses, working together. One, get the scientific data to respond to anyone who asks the questions of what is really the impact of our exports on the environment. And secondly, keep on keeping on the natural and clean environmental story we have been marketing for the past few decades.

Doing both well will keep our exports up the premium end of the market – at least until someone works out yet another trade protection trick against us, all in the guise of protecting the environment.