Initial Thoughts about New Zealand

The main thing that has surprised us about New Zealand are the high prices even for things produced in the country. We assumed that because New Zealand is a first world country prices for goods would be similar to prices for goods in the US. From speaking with people who live here there are a number of reasons why this is not the case. The most significant reason is that New Zealand relies on exports (especially of agricultural products) to make money. This means that local buyers have to pay international prices for products if they want to buy them. Another reason that prices in New Zealand are so high is that it is an island nation with a population of just under 4.5 million. This means that shipping costs are high and the buying power of the whole country is relatively low. All of this makes sense to us now, but we hadn’t done a good job of considering all of these things when we were planning our trip over here. This is one reason that we didn’t pack some of the things that we should have. Finding new, good quality work clothes (for a reasonable price) has proven a challenge, but thankfully there are a large number of second hand stores that have more reasonable prices.

New Zealand is one of the only developed nations that rely on agricultural products as its main exports (with dairy as its top export). The New Zealand government has put significant resources into researching agricultural products to help ensure that New Zealand agriculture remains competitive on the global markets. The farmers in New Zealand are some of the most innovative in the world, however they are still dependent on commodity prices so there can be large swings in their income. In recent years commodity prices have been very good so the economy has done fairly well. Currently commodity prices are doing so well that within the last few weeks the exchange rate for the New Zealand Dollar against the US Dollar reached the highest point that it has ever reached.

The three larges cities in New Zealand, Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, account for half of the population in the country. This means that there is a lot of open space in the rest of country for people to have a rural lifestyle. In general people living in rural areas are there for one of two reasons: 1. they are running a farm which is their main source of income or 2. they work in town, but want their family to experience rural life so they live on a lifestyle block. Almost every type of farming that you can imagine is done on New Zealand farms from raising deer for meat to growing asparagus. The more famous farm products in New Zealand include sheep, apples and kiwi fruit, but we have discovered that there also some nice wines, kumara and feijoa as well. People who live on lifestyle blocks raise the same crops as people on farms, but on a much smaller scale. Families on lifestyle blocks can end up working almost as hard as the families on farms because they have to cram a week of farm work into evenings and weekends while working a fulltime job and commuting.

One bad thing that we have discovered are the roads. The roads in and around Auckland are pretty good, however as soon as you get into the rural areas the roads get bad quickly. The roads are pretty smooth, but they are very narrow, winding and have one-lane bridges spread throughout them. There are very few weekends that go by without a fatal accident occurring somewhere in the country. The road conditions make us drive cautiously and it takes much longer to get from place to place than we expect. There is also a very strange rule called the give way rule. This rule stipulates that if we are turning left (remember we are driving on the left side of the road), we have to yield to people who are turning right across traffic. So far we have only been honked at once for forgetting this rule.

The best thing that we have discovered about New Zealand are the friendly people. I am sure that part of this is because we are staying with people who want to meet travelers, but even the people we have met in passing have been wonderful.

Fieldays

On Friday the 17th, I left Jenni at home with the children and went to the New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays, more commonly referred to as Fieldays. It is the largest agricultural show in the Southern Hemisphere and happens just outside of the city of Hamilton (two hours south of Auckland) at the Mystery Creek Events Center. It is also where farmers get together to discuss farming innovations, find contacts and make their major purchases for the year as most equipment is on sale. The only way that I can imagine describing it to people in the States is a state fair and agricultural expo rolled into one. There are no rides, but children were running all over the place (many of them on school field trips with their school uniforms on), eating junk food and delighting in the carnival-like atmosphere. There aren’t any carnival games either, however many of the merchants are almost as aggressive as carnival callers in getting you to try and buy their products. All the normal farm products from water troughs and fencing material to tractors are available and bargaining for these products is going on all over the place. There are also a wide variety of retail products produced in New Zealand including lovely Limoncello and wool and possum fur knitted goods. The Fieldays grounds cover almost 100 acres so my day involved a lot of walking. For me the most interesting part of the show was a barn that was full of farm innovations that people had come up with and were working on getting marketed. A few of the innovations that I remember were a better way for spreading effluent, a cheap moveable fence, a simple device to put over the top of water tanks to stop evaporation loss and a cheap, easy fence tightener. Although I didn’t get to see them, there was also a tractor pull competition and a competition to determine the most eligible rural bachelor. The only bad part of Fieldays was the traffic when we were leaving. It took us almost an hour just to get out of the parking area to the main road. The picture above doesn’t do it justice, but it was the best one I got without photo editing to create a panorama.