Labour leader Chris Hipkins says his party would set agricultural and environmental targets, but leave farmers to work out how those targets are met.

“When you’re talking about water, when you’re talking about reducing methane, government has a really important role to say, ‘This is what we need as a country for farmers to do,'” he says.

“But then we’ve got to allow the space for farmers to do the innovation, the creativity that Kiwi farmers are renowned for.”

Hipkins says Labour chose not to have a stall at Fieldays this year, walking the grounds instead. He says farmers keep coming back to the same message: “Tell us what you want, and we’ll figure out the best way of doing it. Don’t try and tell us how to do it’; I reckon that’s a really, really fair piece of feedback.”

Labour has been working on its relationship with the farming sector since Hipkins took over as leader in 2023. He says Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford recently said publicly the relationship had improved.

“I’m really chuffed by that, I’m really stoked to hear him say that because we’ve been working hard on that.

“It is about listening, and it is about finding those areas where there’s common ground.”

Hipkins says farmers don’t get enough credit for what they’re already doing on environmental protection. People in cities tend to assume farmers exploit the environment rather than protect it, he says.

“I have lost count of the number of farms that I’ve visited in the last four years, and I can tell you that’s just not true.”

He says much of the Federated Farmers manifesto, released early last week, lines up with Labour’s positions.

“You’d be surprised at how much of that I looked at and said, ‘Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, all seems sensible.'”

Solar on farms should be a permitted activity, he says.

“There’s still way too many hoops for a farmer to jump through if they wanna put solar on their farm, so let’s just make that as easy as possible.”

New Zealand’s political system rushes policy but slows down on implementation, Hipkins says.

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

“Sometimes we need to slow down a little bit to speed up because if we got that policy-making stuff, took a bit more time, did it right, we’d actually find implementation was faster.”

CountryWide CONNECT with Andy Thompson & Sarah Perriam-Lampp is our daily rural show livestreamed from 11am-1pm. Visit country-wide.co.nz on how to watch/listen or download the CountryWide CONNECT mobile app, available on Apple iOS and Android.