GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNS AOTEAROA

Community-powered storytelling & action

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About Us

Grassroots Campaigns Aotearoa is a decentralised and informal network created to help activists connect, share skills, and support one another’s campaigns across Aotearoa New Zealand. Rather than operating as a traditional organisation, GCA functions as a collaborative platform for grassroots action, creative campaigning, and community-led advocacy.


Through investigations, public awareness campaigns, and media work, GCA’s campaigns have contributed to the formation of a government task force and have helped lead to prosecutions relating to animal abuse and environmental harm.


A core part of our approach is making footage and campaign material available to other groups with minimal restrictions in order to maximise public awareness and impact. Our work has featured in documentaries including Milked and Greenpeace’s Something in the Water, as well as across major mainstream media platforms in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.


GCA footage and investigations have also been used by leading animal welfare and environmental organisations, referenced by political parties, and discussed in Parliament as part of wider debates around animal welfare, agriculture, and environmental protection.


At its core, Grassroots Campaigns Aotearoa exists to strengthen grassroots movements by helping people share information, expose hidden issues, and support collective action for social and environmental change.

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fedupwithfeedlots pixteller
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Use our template to write to your MP #fedupwithfeedlots

[Your MP]
On Friday, 26 June, a story published in The Press revealed that an American businessman has purchased 288 hectares in Marlborough’s Kenepuru Sounds with the intention of converting the farm into an intensive feedlot farming operation.
The new owner, reported by Farmers Weekly to be Sjep William Ysselstien, has not yet been granted resource consents for the proposed feedlot system. In 2017, one of Ysselstien’s farms in the US was fined by the Environmental Protection Agency for illegally discharging pollutants into streams.
 
Grassroots Campaigns Aotearoa published this information in a Facebook post on Friday, 26 June, and it rapidly became clear that New Zealanders oppose this overseas style of industrial farming. As of Monday morning, more than 1,000 comments opposing another feedlot in Aotearoa New Zealand had been posted. The largest feedlot currently operating in New Zealand, located in Ashburton, was mentioned multiple times, with members of the public referring to it as “cruel” and saying it “absolutely stinks.”
The Ministry for Primary Industries states in the Animal Welfare Act 1999 that “livestock mainly need to be protected from heat stress and cold stress.”
 
We are asking [Political Party/MP] to commit to banning any future feedlots throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. The area in question has experienced extreme weather events over the past few years, meaning that intensive farming which has been shown to contribute to climate change could place an already fragile environment at even greater risk of pollution, sediment loss, and nitrate contamination.
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