Palm off

Here in verdant, fecund Southland, we’re ripping out Indonesian jungles (and we don’t want to talk about it!).

We’re enthusiastically importing palm kernal extract, to feed our dairy cows (what’s wrong with our over-abundance of grass??) and in the process, encouraging the Indonesians to fell more jungle to make space to plant out their cash-crop.

It’s a  ‘necessary evil’ says Southland Federated farmers grain and seed chairman John Gardyne, but dairy farmers are caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’. (What’s that? Why yes, it’s the sound of a Tui gagging!)

Winton Stock Feed director Nelson Lyndsay said he ‘did not want to comment on the impact of the palm oil industry in Malaysia and Indonesia’. Very wise and suitably opaque, Mr Lyndsay. Well done, Southland dairy men.