“At midnight tonight, we will have been one week in lockdown, and it is sad to watch our economy crumbling. Tourism is dead and may never recover. We can shift some workforce to pick crops that are in danger of rotting as seasonal staff from the pacific islands cannot come in. That will also mean the islands’ people will also suffer economically.
Luckily though we are a good nation, so we shouldn’t have problems with feeding people. Export for some staples is still happening, so farming will be what pulls the country through, but it will take decades to recover. I presume most of WFO member’s countries will face similar degrees of recession as the world economic system is as severely affected by this as people are.” With this word, Katrina Sarah Milne, President of Federated Farmers of New Zealand and WFO Board Member of the Oceania Constituency, describes how COVID-19 is affecting her country.
Coronavirus: what the Federated Farmers is doing to support members
“With so much information available on COVID-19, we offer to our members a service of “finding and filtering” the information that is relevant to the rural communities,” says the Federated Farmers’ President introducing what the organization is doing to help its farming community.
Each day the organization updates its members on any matters that have arisen and new information that comes to light.
Information is available through a daily members’ advisory, as well on a dedicate page on the official website of the organization.
The dedicated page on the website is conceived as a hub. It provides links to all other agencies’ notices of information, so farmers do not need to search many sites for what they need.
Farmers’ views are fundamental and vital to enable Federated Farmers to represent and advocate for their farmers from a reliable and informed position. For this extent, the organization is periodically surveying its members to identify any other issues affecting the farmers that may not have been identified.
Find out more at the following link: https://www.fedfarm.org.nz/FFPublic/Policy2/Policy_Factsheets/Coronavirus_Information.aspx.