April 5, 2001

Plains Folk: The Plains of New Zealand

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

There's more to it than better beer, more to it even than the opportunity to get away from the northern plains during the gray season of March. And I'm getting tired of explaining why this time of year I take off for the South Island of New Zealand. So here goes with the why, to get it settled.

There is a place in New Zealand that is unlike any other place in that Pacific nation. It is the semiarid part of the country, a land of high grassy basins known as Central Otago. Everywhere else in New Zealand I, as a plainsperson, feel like I am on a little island and might be washed to sea at any moment. In Central I feel safe, and at home.

A number of people, such as my mother, ask why, since I live on the prairies of North America, I have to travel around the clock twice to get to some other grassy place. The answer is, in order to shake free of your prejudice and blindness, and see possibilities, you have to step outside your own situation. The best place to compare with your own experience is a place that is similar, but not the same, so that the differences stand out.

So, consider the following circumstances of Central Otago, New Zealand.

This is a semiarid land that was originally, and much of it still is, tussock grassland. Tussock grasses make a formation somewhat similar to the bunch-grasses of the plains, but not the same. They respond well to fire, but are not as fire-hardy. The grasslands of Central are the basis of grazing industries that emphasize sheep over cattle, rather than the reverse. On the other hand, the pastoralists of New Zealand, like the ranchers of North America, face growing pressures from environmentalists and regulators to withdraw land from grazing and place it into nature preserves.

Central Otago has a history of terrific problems with animal pests and introduced weeds. Red deer once were a menace, but after government shooters just about wiped them out, the survivors became invaluable as the basis of a domestic deer industry producing velvet for the Asian market–much as northern plains producers seek now to do with elk.

Gray rabbits were a more persistent and destructive pest for generations, but currently are knocked back to minor pest status by the introduction of RCD, the rabbit calicivirus. The virus was introduced illegally through a secret conspiracy of pastoralists who had lost faith in their government. Listen to them talk, and you'd think you were in eastern Montana.

Meanwhile, Eurasian gray hawkweeds, Hieracium pilosella, spread through the tussocks, making millions of acres unproductive, while the search for biological controls makes halting progress. Any of that sound familiar?

During the generation following World War II the sheep farmers of Central Otago responded to government subsidies with enthusiastic land development and massive production increases. Set in their ways, they were shocked in the mid-1980s when New Zealand, the most subsidized agricultural economy in the Western world (if New Zealand is a Western nation, which it is, sort of), reversed its farm policy and put farmers on a free-market basis, cold turkey. New Zealand sold its department of agriculture.

After that there was chaos on the land, but slowly a new order emerged. The pastoralists either failed or found niche markets, such as the fine-wool market that Merino New Zealand has carved out among fine clothing manufacturers in Italy. At the same time, exploiting the shock to traditional agricultural systems, all sorts of new enterprises flowed into the cracks of Central Otago–vineyards, orchards, deer farms, agricultural tourism, and most recently, olives. Prosperity has spread its wings over the land.

The country feels good to me, and it's overflowing with the lessons of experience. I'm going back for another look.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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