It will take 80 years to clean up the Waikato River.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I had the huge privilege of flying at a relatively low height up the Waikato in an ancient biplane more than forty odd years ago and the thing that struck me most was the rainbow effect across the water from road pollution. When Auckland started drawing water from the river for household use the thought of that in my glass when I moved back from the South Island was too much, I bought a distiller unit and have used it ever since.

We are very slow learners it seems, the clean up of our environment should have started decades ago.

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Many many farmers are doing what they can with plantings to filter water going into drains and creeks etc but, yes, there is a lot more to be done. Meanwhile we complain about the cost of food going up. We can't have it both ways. If farmers are to spend the insurmountable costs in fully cleaning up their act, we won't be able to complain about prices skyrocketing.

And at least farmers are productive - feeding us and providing export income. I think our biggest problem is number of people. If people just stopped to to think before they bred, and if we stopped inviting tourists in to wreck the environment we would achieve more than making life hard for farmers.

We should note the lessons we have learned in the pandemic - that we rely far to much on ephemeral businesses and not enough on core essentials. That we rely too much on other countries instead of working to produce our own. I think farmers get far too much criticism - they are trying, but many others don't put in anywhere near as much effort.

There are any numbers of ways to produce food in sustainable ways for large populations. Industrial scale food production is happening in many countries now, on large and small scales. If we were serious about climate change and our isolation we would be exploring these ways and means right now and not just leaving it to the bright sparks determined to get into the medical mj market.