Two kinds of transformations in farmer subjectivity are being produced through tenure review. First, a steward subjectivity—in which the interests of the State and farmers coincide, and through which farmers are positioned as guardians of the nation—is no longer easily sustainable. Farmers attempt to deploy this discourse at times, but it has lost the power it once had. Second, as farmers find themselves in opposition to the policies of the State, a resistant subjectivity is produced. This represents a radical change from times when farmers were considered to be the economic and symbolic backbone of the nation. Farmers and farming are no longer understood in this way. Increasingly, they are regarded as an ecological threat to the nation (their gas-emitting cows are contributing to global warming, fertiliser run-off is polluting rivers and lakes and so on) or as simply businessmen, motivated purely by profits, with discourses about farming as a morally superior way of life increasingly ringing untrue.

The unravelling of the close relationship between farmers, the State and the nation has its roots in the 1980s and the neo-liberal policies of the fourth Labour Government. In the 1980s, in a very short time, all supports for farming were removed and the sector was deregulated, exposing New Zealand agriculture to the full brunt of market forces (Sandrey and Reynolds 1990; Johnsen 2003). This resulted in profound crisis for farmers—economic and symbolic. If the historical extent of government support for agriculture signalled farmer’s iconic status, the removal of that support signalled its loss. Farmer power was further undermined with the 1996 electoral system change to MMP, a system of proportional representation. Under the new system, smaller parties have a greater voice, and one of the new parties in Parliament is the Green Party. Greenies are the traditional enemy of farmers, representing interference from outside and the imposition of alien values. Farmers are concerned that the power of such interests (constituted as urban) will increase (Cushen 1997:5). And, it seems, their worries have some foundation. In June 2007, David Parker, the minister responsible for tenure review, announced the withdrawal of the Crown from some 40 tenure reviews to, in his words, ‘protect important high country landscapes and diversity values’ (‘High country tenure review decision welcomed’, Scoop Independent News, 22 June 2007). These properties are those with lakeside frontages—precisely the kind of land that farmers have the most to gain from converting to freehold. This effectively means that this land will remain in Crown ownership, though whether it will continue to be farmed or become conservation estate is not clear. Stop Tenure Review welcomed the decision, farmers deplored it: ‘[o]ptions for High Country farmers are becoming increasingly limited by a government which seems determined to force them from their leasehold land’, said Donald Aubrey, chair of the High Country group of Federated Farmers (‘Another blow for the high country’, Scoop Independent News, June 2007).

Though high country farmers continue to assert that their interests are the nation’s interests, this claim is no longer persuasive. No longer guardians of the nation’s heritage, high country farmers are being dislodged from their position as national subject and keeper of a national morality; they are being replaced by the urban environmentalist.