In a move which Auckland farmers fear will set a precedent for the rest of the country, a significant amount of rural land has been earmarked by Auckland Council as being of cultural value.
And Auckland Federated Farmers president Wendy Clark is alarmed the council didn’t discuss its plans first with affected landowners, nor with the Rural Advisory Panel on which she sits.
“That was the first problem – it was just slipped in,” she says.
“There were 60 culturally significant sites which had already been documented and consulted about.”
But 3600 more sites were added, the number and range of which are of concern to the lobby group.
“The council said they took a precautionary approach and included anything Maori in nature, but that wasn’t verified to any archaeological extent so many are inaccurate,” she says.
For each site 6.9ha of surrounding land is affected, adding a new tier of cultural consultation. Any of up to 19 iwi groups can trigger the need to commission a cultural impact assessment where development is planned.
As sites can be of physical or spiritual significance, Wendy says some may have been included simply because tribes passed through them when travelling from one area to another.
“The onus should be on the council to prove the sites are of value.”
“It shouldn’t be up to landowners to retrospectively establish the validity, or otherwise, of council’s inclusions. And at the very least, you would expect to know what the criteria for selection is.”
There are also concerns about big variations in fees and charges, with one Pukekohe vegetable grower being charged $17,000 to be told a planned development on his property would have no cultural impact.
“The process has been very poor,” Wendy says.
“We’d like the council to go back to the drawing board, consult properly, draw up evidence-based criteria and establish some checks and balances around the fees.”
Federated Farmers is also battling a series of impractical environmental bylaws drafted by what she describes as an urban-centric council.
“Some common sense would go a long way.”
The problem has arisen with the council reviewing all legacy bylaws from the smaller councils from which it was formed, with a deadline for completion at the end of 2015. But some of the proposals have been impractical, she says.
‘I don’t like injustice and somehow I ended up articulating rural community concerns. It wasn’t particularly about rates on our farm. It was about community.’
An example was the idea that, during the open season, Auckland Council needed to be notified about any open fire greater in size than four metres by four metres and two metres high. Wendy says the pertinent issue is not how big the fire is but what’s burning and for how long. Fortunately, the council has now rethought that rule.
And no one thought of farm tracks when they dreamed up the stormwater rule that all impermeable surfaces over a certain size should be approved. That rule has now gone too.
“But wouldn’t it be great if policymakers asked from the outset, ‘How can we make these bylaws as practical and enabling as possible? How can we minimise the red tape?’”
There are also large issues looming such as use of paper roads by recreation groups.
“Auckland has a lot of people looking for a place to play,” she says.
But public access is an issue across the country because of farmers’ concerns about security, poaching and biosecurity.
“Other peoples’ dogs, for example, carry the risk of sheep measles and neosporin. When it comes to the use of paper roads there are natural tensions between landowners and recreationalists. Our aim always is to try and find solutions that everyone can live with.”
Auckland Federated Farmers’ strategy over recent years has been to influence policy before it reaches the public domain.
“It’s better to head off bad policy than to try and change it later,” Wendy says.
When it came to formation of the super city Auckland farmers saw advantages in staying put rather than looking to Kaipara or Waikato, particularly with the amount of growth spilling into the rural areas from urban Auckland.
“We knew Rodney and Franklin on their own couldn’t fund the infrastructure that was going to be required to deal with that growth,” she says.
“Auckland needed to contribute to the cost but they wouldn’t do so if the rural districts were not inside their boundary.”
But there were also risks that rural voices wouldn’t be heard.
The answer was the formation of a grouping of rural industries for council to come to for advice on rural matters.
The Rural Advisory Panel now has 20 members representing Federated Farmers, Horticulture New Zealand, Fonterra, DairyNZ, Beef and Lamb, the forestry and equestrian industries, quarries and aggregates and the Rodney and Franklin local boards.
There’s a place for viticulture and aquaculture at the table as well.
“We won’t always agree but we can tell the council what we do agree on,” Wendy says.
Teaching to farming
Wendy Clark always wanted to be a farmer but at 21 ended up as a physical education teacher at one of Auckland’s most prominent schools, Epsom Girls’ Grammar.
However once she married Norm, a farmer’s son and engineer, they started looking for suitable properties south of Auckland.
Proximity to New Zealand Steel’s mill at Glenbrook, where he worked, was key but only two properties came on the market in the year before they bought their 42ha effective farm at Patumahoe and moved a house from Orakei on to it.
A larger property they looked at was further away to the north on the scenic Awhitu Pennisula.
“But this one was a better bet,” she says.
While it was small, they knew because of its location they would be able to boost milk production and easily attract labour.
Wendy has always dealt with labour and stock, rearing their calves and until this season relief milking on weekends and public holidays. Norm, who is now semiretired, deals with anything mechanical.
“He’s great at harvesting and if a tractor breaks down he can fix it,” she says. “That’s a biggie for me.”
They milk 120 Friesian-Jersey cows which are mated to LIC Premier Sires. Their calving date is back to July 1 after moving it forward over the years to June 20, too far for her liking from their balance date of September 10.
The herd’s empty rate is consistently about 5% but last year’s six-week in-calf rate at 54% was below target.
Career-changer John Robertson, who has been on the farm for seven years as manager, has stepped up to contract milking this season as Wendy takes a step back.
“He does the important things well and I don’t have the worry,” she says.
Last season the farm hit record production of 1000kg milksolids/ha. The herd, milked through a 12-aside herringbone, was fed 60 tonnes of palm kernel from a trailer in the paddock, supplementing the 1ha of turnips they usually grow as a summer crop. About 3% of the pastures are renovated every year with 2ha of chicory grown in the past as part of that programme.
The Clarks are fortunate to lease two nearby runoffs, one of 10ha they’ve had for 20 years and one of 5ha they picked up last winter. They aim to take two cuts of silage from these blocks with surplus grass harvested for hay.
‘When it comes to the use of paper roads there are natural tensions between landowners and recreationalists. Our aim always is to try and find solutions that everyone can live with.’
All their young stock is sent to a grazier from November, coming back to the farm 18 months later in-calf.
The couple became Federated Farmers’ members the year they bought the farm and Wendy has risen through the ranks.
Farmers were being used as cash cows by the former district councils because of their land values being inflated because they were so close to the city, she says.
“They were subsidising everyone else. I don’t like injustice and somehow I ended up articulating rural community concerns. It wasn’t particularly about rates on our farm. It was about community.”
From secretary of the Karaka branch, she became chairwoman of Franklin subprovince, vice-president of Auckland and now president, a position she’s held for four years.
“It’s something that’s evolved, not something I sought,” she says. “But I enjoy the fellowship of other members.”
She’s a strong believer that farmers need to pool resources in order to enable agriculture to remain viable.
“Every day I see challenges to what we think of as normal farming practice,” she says.
“The rural community can meet those challenges but not individually. We need to work together.”
The Clarks’ three daughters, aged 31, 29 and 26, all work in fields connected to the primary industries The oldest is a veterinary surgeon who trained in Canada but now works at Massey University, the second a marine ecologist in Nelson and the third a process engineer who was working on membrane technology for Dairy Innovation in Melbourne but has now joined Fonterra.
Hearings under way
Auckland Council’s chief planning officer Roger Blakeley said there was a requirement for a Cultural Impact Assessment (CIA) for earthworks in proximity of sites and places of value to mana whenua. These were identified in the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan maps as circles with a radius of 100m, which was indicative only. A consent was needed and the CIA provisions applied where either:
• The extent of the archaeological site to which the overlay relates was known, and the proposed earthworks were within 50m of any edge of that site, at their closest point, or
• The extent of the archaeological site to which the overlay relates was not known, and the proposed earthworks were within 50m of the indicative circle, at their closest point.
“Through its submission on the Proposed Auckland Unitary plan, Auckland Council has sought to clarify these requirements,” he said.
“There are 1687 sites and places of value to mana whenua in the rural production zones (Rural Production, Rural Coastal and Mixed Rural). Applying a 50m radius to these sites 1324ha of land is affected rather than the 25,495ha of land as stated by Federated Farmers. It is unclear how this number was arrived at.
“It is also important to be aware that the unitary plan hearings process is now underway. Through this process the independent hearings panel will consider the views of the many submitters on this matter and provide independent recommendations to council on whether there should be changes to the approach.”
Blakeley said the Rural Advisory Panel was set up by the council in December 2010 with membership from all sectors of the rural economy and since then there had been 32 meetings. Initial discussions related to the Auckland Plan, followed by topics being included in the draft and then Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan.
These topics had included objectives, policies and rules for stock exclusion from waterways, significant ecological areas, earthworks and sediment discharges, rural zones and subdivision including transferable rural lot rights, outstanding natural landscapes, water takes and discharges, farm dairy effluent discharges and forestry activities.
“Feedback from these discussions have been valuable and informed the council approach to many activities in rural areas,” he said.
Asked why it appeared that identification of sites of significance and sites of places of value to mana whenua and the requirement for a resource consent for earthworks in proximity of them wasn’t referred to the panel, he said it was introduced in response to strong support from iwi for additional protection for such sites.
“As a council we’ve worked closely with iwi to find ways to minimise the impact on landowners and have introduced a facilitation service to simplify the process,” he said. “This involves the council contacting iwi on behalf of the applicant, and the iwi will say whether an assessment is needed. Most people are taking advantage of the facilitation service.”
In the six months to October 2014, Auckland Council had processed more than 6000 resource consents and fewer than 200 of them (3%) triggered a possible assessment, including assessments related to sites and places of value to mana whenua.
“There have been 50 site visits and 12 cultural impact assessments formally requested by iwi in that time.”
Key points
Location: Patumahoe, south-west of Auckland
Owners: Wendy and Norm Clark
Area: 42ha and leased runoffs nearby of 10ha and 5ha
Herd: 120 Friesian Jersey cows bred to Kiwicross
Production: 2013-14, 1000kg milksolids/ha, a farm record
Supplements: 60 tonnes of palm kernel fed from a trailer in the paddock, 1ha of turnips as summer crop, two cuts of silage from runoffs, surplus grass harvested for hay
Youngstock: to grazier from November, coming back onfarm 18 months later in-calf.
