These people are annoyed. They're annoyed at absentee vineyard owners, they're annoyed at arrogant growers, they're annoyed at irresponsible frost fan operators, they're annoyed at an apathetic Council.
Make no mistake. The only reason a rule change is currently being mooted it that the Council are only now realizing that the problem has gone too far. people are going to get hurt and someone will have blood on their hands. It's the typical situation commonly described as the 'Tragedy of the commons".
This is a situation where a limited resource (in this case a level of noise low enough to allow sleep) is abused and ultimately destroyed by individuals acting selfishly in an unmanaged environment.
The Council set a rule that they failed to enforce. Selfish owners / operators / growers took advantage of the situation to try and maximize their own individual needs (by having their frost fans turned up too high and putting them too close to other residents). The end result is an environment so poisoned that they have made it unfit for use and ultimately hurt themselves by ending up looking like arrogant polluters. Obviously in an industry with a focus on a clean, responsible, product, this image is undesirable. Sadly they have maintained the attitude that the problem is not theirs, its the people who can't sleep's problem. A failure to engage in a proactive management of the issue from a collective perspective means that the district that so many people have enjoyed for so many years (yes, since before frost fans arrived in 2000) is now having to try and rescue itself from ruthless industrial greed.
Not farming.
Industry.
6 comments:
I would like to use a sentence from your article regarding the frost fans. "The end result is an environment so poisoned that they have made it unfit for use and ultimately hurt themselves by ending up looking like arrogant polluters".
Do you realise that statement is more true than you may have thought.
90 percent of fungicides, 60percent of herbicides and 30 percent of insecticides are known to cause cancer. So next time folks you drink non organically grown wine, see how much poison you can taste.
While I meant the phrase in relation to the noise environment, the point is well made the irresponsible use of chemicals in the production of foodstuffs will never end well. I'm personally a big fan of organic produce, but I also feel kind of hypocritical, because without those type of products, the World wouldn't be able to feed the burgeoning population. I don't like the situation one little bit.
Of Course Wine is a luxury good, so I would imagine there should be a significant market for a luxury product, produced responsibly. Sadly, greed is a powerful motivator.
In Organic NZ Oct4 2007 Soil and Health have suggested close to 70% of Marlborough vineyards are sprayed with herbicides to assist in frost protection. It appears the hebicide active ingredients, metabolites and surfacants will leach and drift into aquifers. How does your water taste?
A good "farmer" will leave the land better than when he started. That cannot be said for most of the vineyards. Sorry I forgot, they create a lot of jobs and make a lot of money.
Yes, there is a copper based solution that is use by some growers for frost protection. I imagine it's use is probably the exception rather than the rule because of the limited effectiveness and difficulty of application. I would find 70% hard to believe. I would be far more concerned with the pesticide / fungicide distribution for normal activities, let alone the frost control. The number that are spraying that stuff will be far higher and far more frequent.
From The Listener Archive, Jan 12-18 2008, Steve Wratten says that around $1000 worth of fungicides, herbicides and insecticides per hectare are applied to our vineyards. (His words).
Add up the hectares in any area in vineyard and that is a lot of poison to leach into water acquifers.
I agree, it's huge. The case of the gentleman in Seddon who won a case against the Council and the neighboring vineyard was a landmark and yet very little is being done. If I could recommend a course of action, look at starting a blog. (It's probably helped for frost fans)
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