Owen McShane is the director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies Trust, which works with specialists in their fields to promote its objectives.

Owen McShane.

One of the Trust’s objectives is the promotion of a heightened awareness and understanding of, and knowledge about, the environment and environmental issues within the community in New Zealand.

Owen has made numerous presentations on a wide range of subjects to conferences and seminars over the years, including at the University of Auckland and local interest groups dealing with general and specific matters relating to resource management.

Rural Living – How do you see things ahead for the rural community given the current economic climate?

Owen McShane – There is, of course, no such thing as “the rural community”. Instead there are many communities of interest.

For example, those who import rural inputs will be benefiting from the strong dollar while those who export may be suffering. But as our dollar looks strong largely because the US dollar is so weak our position relative to real purchasing power in other markets may be actually improving.

Those of independent means should be enjoying all the bargains. Now is the time to buy a flat screen TV, and to visit friends in the US and the UK. Those seeking finance may benefit from low interest rates but first they have to actually lay their hands on the money and if their equity is now stretched to the limit that may prove difficult.

RL – How do you see the growth of the lifestyle block in New Zealand?

OM – I do not particularly like the term “lifestyle block” because it implies only people on 4ha lots pursue a lifestyle.

Most farmers will tell you that they have been in farming mainly for the lifestyle – not for the money. The movement from the cities back to the countryside or to rural towns is a major migration throughout the New World and much of the Old World.

Many of us grew up on farms or in the countryside and, having migrated into the cities as part of the post war urban migration, are now, as we enter some form of retirement, moving back to our roots.

It is these migrants who tend to innovate with new crops and techniques and also open many tourist and retail facilities for the tourism industry.  Another group are divorced women who bring their younger children with them and provide teaching, nursing and other professional skills.

While many farmers were disturbed by these demographic changes most now appreciate having decent shops, restaurants, and medical services, and appreciate that the increased employment opportunities might mean that their children and grandchildren will stay near them rather than rush off to Australia.

RL – Farmers – especially dairy farmers – seem to be accused of being responsible for everything from global warming to the rising cost of living. Do you think this is accurate or fair? How can we change this view?

OM – There is a small but vociferous group who believe that all economic activity is actually based on raping the earth mother and hence would prefer to see all such “exploitation” of the earth’s “natural resources” closed down. In their quest for 100% pure New Zealand they would be happy to see New Zealand wiped clean except I suppose for their chosen few, who would be needed to tend to our threatened native species.

Maintaining a clean environment actually costs money – both to pay for the clean ups and to maintain the environmental priority. Truly poor people are more concerned with having something for breakfast.

Those who blame our cattle’s burped methane for whatever global warming there may be need to explain to me why they tell us to reduce our dairy herds but insist with equal vigour that we restore wetlands and preserve mangroves.

After all wetlands are the greatest contributors to atmospheric methane along with the Brazilian Rainforests and the rice paddies of South Asia.  There are no more ruminants in the world today than in pre-industrial times, so what’s the problem?

RL – What is the one thing you do everyday to help the planet?

OM – Nothing I can do or conceive of doing can help the planet, if only because the planet is completely indifferent to whether I or anything else exists. I do my best not to damage the local natural and physical environment.

For example, we planted eighty thousand trees and plants on our last property and hope to repeat a similar exercise here. Our gardens produce flowers for most of the year which must help the bees which desperately need pollen as food to maintain themselves in good health and able to resist the viruses which seem to be reducing their populations. The farmers need bees, bees need flowers and hence the farmers need keen gardeners.

The planners would keep “lifestyle” blocks out of pastoral farming areas and put the bees at greater risk. It’s time the planners learned to appreciate the complex exchanges between people, plants and animals.

RL – What is the most interesting book you have read recently and you would recommend to others?

OM – Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

RL – What three people would you invite to dinner if you could?

OM – Michael Pollan, Freeman Dyson, Virginia Postrel.

RL – Is New Zealand still the clean green haven it has traditionally been viewed as?

OM – That is a very new idea so it does not seem to be a “traditional” one. For my ancestors who came here in 1839 it was a land of opportunity and freedom and where they hoped to build a utopia of some kind. “The clean green haven” is an invention of our tourism marketing board. 100% Pure is a meaningless slogan which should be banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. What is 100% pure soil? Who wants to drink 100% pure water? 100% pure air would never form raindrops. 

And I am quite sure we do not hold 100% pure thoughts.

RL – What is the most important thing lifestylers could do to help the environment?

OM – That depends on what environment they want to help. As Professor Wildavsky said to me in 1969 at UC Berkeley “If New Zealand now has a Minister for the Environment then eventually he must be Minister of Everything.”  

So chose your territory, and then do what you do well. A teacher can have a positive effect on the teaching environment of the classroom. Teaching phonics would be a good start. Tend your garden. Improve your mind. First, do no harm. That’s not a bad start.

RL – If there was one single aspect of civilisation that you were given the power to change this afternoon, what would it be?

OM – The sixties was the last decade of the post-war Age of Optimism. The seventies ushered in the present Age of Pessimism.

If I could somehow press a button that made us all instinctive optimists again I would do it.

I suppose the only button that could do that would be one which launched all the doomcasters to a clean, pristine planet free of human impact – somewhere like Mars. Or better still Uranus; it’s further away.