Saturday, March 30, 2024

Change of plan

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Changes to Canterbury’s Land and Water Regional Plan have received both brickbats and bouquets from farmers and industry participants as they try to quickly come to grips with what they all mean.
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Some, like farmers in the area known as Hinds Plains between the Ashburton and Rangitata Rivers, were blindsided by a surprise addition to Environment Canterbury’s Plan Change Two.

While the plan makes room for some new irrigation it essentially stops any new water being taken from the Barhill Chertsey Irrigation (BCI) scheme in the Hinds Plains area even though the scheme has put “millions of dollars” of infrastructure in place. BCI general manager John Wright said an appeal on matters of law was all that was left open to the scheme to try to overturn the rule.

He said BCI, which already had a global nutrient loss allocation, had anticipated water would be available through the scheme for about an additional 5000- 6000ha over the next five to 10 years.

BCI was dealing with about 10 farmers, some of whom had signed up for water well before February 13 and had made onfarm investments in anticipation of receiving water through the scheme this coming spring.

As expected, based on the collaboratively agreed solutions package which came from the zone committee, Plan Change Two was based on reducing the average nitrate nitrogen concentrations in ground and surface water to 6.9 milligrams/litre.

In most situations further intensification was restricted until that number was achieved and farms leaching more than 15kg nitrogen (N)/ha/year would require a consent.

Those leaching more than 20kg N/ ha/year would have to make reductions from what they’d be leaching under good management practice in the order of 15% by January 2025, 25% by January 2030 and 36% by January 2035 or until they came below 20kg N/ha/year loss.

All farms leaching more than 15kg N/ha/ year would need a farm environment plan.

The new plan had also taken into account the area’s dilution solution – managed aquifer recharge – which was being investigated.

Numerous other rules had been introduced with the plan change which related to specific areas and situations in the Hinds Plains area.

In late February DairyNZ and Environment Canterbury ran meetings to help explain the changes. At some meetings farmer numbers topped 100.

As well as Plan Change Two the Canterbury-wide change, Plan Change Five was also discussed. It was also released on February 13 but wouldn’t become operative until sometime next year.

It set out new consent thresholds. Rather than being based on the amount of nitrate leached, any farm that had more than 50ha of irrigation or 20ha of dairy wintering would require a consent.

Even farms in greenzones that exceeded those thresholds would need consents.

Plan Change Five also brought in the use of the Farm Portal.

It was a world-first in terms of managing nutrient loss from farms and used a combination of the industry-agreed GMPs, farm location information and Overseer budgets to calculate individualised nutrient loss figures.

It introduced two new numbers:

1. The baseline GMP loss rate – the loss rate a farm would have had based on its Overseer files and other farm information for the 2009-2013 years if it was operating at industry-agreed good management.

2. The GMP loss rate – the loss rate for the last four years based on the farm’s Overseer files and farm information.

Number two couldn’t exceed number one. Farmers had to run their Overseer budgets outside the Farm Portal to ensure they weren’t exceeding those numbers.

While there was general industry acceptance of the approach, there was concern about some of the detail.

DairyNZ didn’t have confidence in all the proxy calculations in the backroom workings of the portal. Its experts had access to those proxies and had found some concerns.

DairyNZ sustainability developer Tony Fransen said DairyNZ would be submitting on those concerns and other points in the plan but he also urged farmers to have their say.

Farmers had until March 11 to lodge a written submission on Plan Change Five.

Fransen said having people who had “skin in the game” make submissions would add weight to the hearings.

Submissions must be based on what’s in the plan and should state what changes the submitter wants and why, and also if the submitter wished to be heard.

What could be said at the hearing was likely to be limited to what was in the written submission.

While using the portal wouldn’t be mandatory for most farmers until the plan becomes operative, they had been invited to get online and have a go.

The Farm Portal was now in “play mode” so farmers could load their Overseer files and farm details to preview what their baseline GMP loss rate and GMP loss rate might be. Both Environment Canterbury and DairyNZ wanted to hear from farmers who had found any strange outputs from the portal. But DairyNZ was also warning because some of the proxy calculations could underestimate and then overestimate some numbers, problems with the calculations might not be obvious.

For a submission form go to: http://files.ecan.govt.nz/public/pc5/004_PC5_ Submission_Form.pdf  

To try out the Farm Portal: https://farmportal.ecan.govt.nz/  

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