Targets for water quality being debated

01-09-2008 | Sam McIvor

In May 2008 "The Primary Sector Water Partnership Plan of Action" draft was released for public consultation by a consortium of major industry players. Although it is only voluntary, some of the targets laid down by this collective will be challenging for the primary sector.

The consortium of major players included New Zealand Forest Owners, Federated Farmers, Fert Research, Meat and Wool NZ, Fonterra, Dairy NZ, Horticulture NZ, Irrigation NZ, Farm Forestry Association and Foundation of Arable Research.

Each of these organisations has outlined their commitments that they as an organisation will achieve over the next few years.

You will find the commitments for each of these players in the paper on www.landvision.co.nz. In addition to these, this group have outlined the collective targets for action.

Certainly these industry initiatives are aimed at intensive agriculture, but I think that it would be unwise for less intensive agriculture to ignore the indicators.

Now I am not suggesting that every sheep and beef farmer should fence and plant their waterways as this would be costly and impractical to say the least. But as an industry we do need to think about our farming practices, and how we can continue to enjoy the privilege of great fresh water quality in this country.

Another aim of this draft paper is for the primary sector to be engaged with national and regional decision making.

They want it to provide a framework where the industry and local government will work alongside each other to achieve desired water quality outcomes so regulation is only used as a back stop rather than the beginning of the relationship with landowners.

Meat & Wool have outlined a very broad based directive: Meat & Wool NZ's environmental objective is "enhanced sheep, beef, and goat sector efficiency and profitability, while sustainably managing air, soil, and water resources".

The aim is to provide the tools and services out there to help farmers achieve this.

It has three key objectives:

• To encourage the uptake of Overseer-based budgets

• To give farmers an opportunity to obtain Land Environmental Plans

• To help the fertiliser industry increase the uptake of the Code of Practise.

These three key objectives go hand in hand and are all just good common sense. All farmers not only should have detailed land resource information of their property but understand it. This is the key to sustainability. It is difficult to make those informed management decisions without this information.

Property resource information will also form the basis of any land and environment plan and would also play an integral part in nutrient management and the use of Overseer.

With the recent rapid escalation of fertiliser prices it is even more critical to maximise the fertiliser dollar and extend the property into nutrient management blocks based on land resource information. Extending this into a nutrient budget is just one way of achieving wise use of nutrients that have limited impact on the environment.

For dairy farmers the Fonterra Clean Streams Accord targets go some way to addressing the overall objectives of this paper.

Already each landowner should have at least half the waterways on a property fenced to exclude stock, have installed bridges and culverts at regular crossings, have a compliant resource consent for effluent management and be actively managing nutrient inputs and outputs on the property.

Recent news releases show that dairying has a long way to go in some of these areas - recent on-farm surveys showed that only a third of dairy farms in the Greater Wellington region complied with their effluent consent conditions while only half in the Horizons region complied.

Unfortunately any labels such as dirty dairying will ultimately extend into all facets of the primary industry.

In addition, the Clean Streams Accord also aims to deliver tools and strategies that see a 30% reduction in nutrient losses at catchment scale in areas where water quality is identified as being ‘at risk' by 2016.

I would suggest that this may be moving at a slower rate than the local regional councils envisage for their "at risk" areas, and that regulation will overtake this aim.

One of the good things about this initiative for intensive agriculture is the above industry groups are not only talking between themselves but also engaging in dialogue with local bodies.

It is also important to note that there have been other initiatives in the past, such as the Farmsure or Greentick Programme that was designed by farmers for farmers and as a tool it would achieve the desired targets of the Primary Sector Water Partnership Document and much more. It is probably timely that this programme is revisited to future-proof the sheep and beef industry against future regulation.

• More? Lachie Grant or Sarah Dudin at www.landvision.co.nz
  

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