OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight. "A levy is still a cost of production," he says. The Hound reckons Chapman is on the money here: scrutiny of the levy spend isn't what it used to be, especially with one rural publisher now in bed with DairyNZ, Beef+Lamb NZ and the Feds. We can, however, influence the cost of our levy-funded industry organisations. "That requires scrutiny of governance, overhead, duplicated services, separate offices, research, conferences and promotion," he says.