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Tag Archives: Alternative Vision
New Zealand Forestry: Getting off the Love affair with Simple
The British Columbian forestry sector imploded through 2018-2020. There are lessons here for New Zealand and elsewhere. Continue reading
Book Review: Hugh Campbell (2021) Farming Inside Invisible Worlds: Modernist Agriculture and its Consequences
The declining state of the rural lands – and their communities – is a growing concern for policy makers and researchers globally. The concerns are real, more especially relating to the trends to high energy input intensification and industrialism, and … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
Tagged Agro-ecology, Alternative Vision, Land use philosophy
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Nature and Corporate Neoliberal Economics in Conflict
The laws of nature and the laws of corporate-based neoliberal economics are in conflict. Continue reading
Are GMOs New Zealand’s Agricultural Future?
The debate about the future of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Hawke’s Bay (and NZ agriculture) is heating up. A number of opinion pieces are reacting to this government’s attempts to take legislative decision making out of the region’s hands. … Continue reading
Industrial Farming: The Deeper Roots of Animal Cruelty
My father was a gentle stockman, and he cared for people the same. He taught us how to hunt up and how to use presence and eye when mustering, and how not to push cattle too hard. He had a … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
Tagged Agro-ecology, Alternative Vision, Animal Cruelty, Commodity trap, Corporate Influence, Land Degradation, Local Development, Mechanistic Worldview, Neo-liberal Economics, People as Cogs, Production vs. Value & Price, resilience, Sustainable Land Management, Value not volume
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Morality & Strategy Trumped by Financial Expedience
After reading the enthusiastic trumpeting of the sale of our water overseas in Saturday’s paper (17th Oct) I wondered when what is morally right got trumped by what is expedient to the financial minds. Certainly it took a major turn … Continue reading
Irrigation in New Zealand and yet more Propaganda
The following was submitted to regional papers in response to an opinion piece written by Andrew Curtis from Irrigation NZ in early September 2015. Irrigation NZ’s Andrew Curtis’s comments (3rd Sept 2015) about land use and irrigation – as well … Continue reading
Reframing our Water as a Commons
This article was published in the Hawke’s Bay Today following the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s (HBRC) decision to allow an overseas water bottling plant to take water from the high quality aquifer that lies beneath the cities of Hasting and Napier. … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Socio-ecological Systems, Thought Pieces, Wicked Problems
Tagged Alternative Vision, Better economics, Common Pool Resources, Commons, Culture-Nature, Development, Environmental Ethics, HBRC, Heretaunga Aquifer, Neo-liberal Economics, Privatisation of the Commons, Privatisation of Water, Socio-Ecological Systems, Water Rights
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Seeing the World System of Weeds – Or – Do Androids dream of Intelligent Sheep? A Compleat Ramble
An anecdote about our research focus on ‘weeds’. I was a little mischievously provocative about our ‘weed’ research at Otago University. I remembered an Aldo Leopold article in one of my books of his essays (no, I can’t be bothered … Continue reading
Future Goals and Options in NZ Land Management – A Transdisciplinary View
A brief argument from some years ago to rethink land use in New Zealand “If we go through a list of some of the main problematiques that are defining the new Century, such as water, forced migrations, poverty, environmental crises, … Continue reading
Building Land Systems for Drought-Flood Resilience
A few notes from a morning rant “Although rainwater harvest has been accomplished by humans in virtually every drought prone region of the world for millennia, our society seems to have collective amnesia about the utility, efficiency, sustainability and beauty … Continue reading
Two strategic directions for Land Use in New Zealand: Where do we stand?
I wrote this what seems light years ago. I think it was 2007 or 2008. This is very rough, a mind dump. It was done quickly, and is more to do with me getting thoughts out of my mind and … Continue reading