Friday, March 29, 2024

First cabs off rank for One Plan

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DairyNZ is hoping to get a pilot group of 50 farms consented under the Horizons Regional Council’s One Plan by June this year.
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The first two target catchments within the council’s area are due to come under the new rules just a month later. They include the Mangapapa catchment, just north of Woodville and the Waikawa catchment south of Levin. Over the next two years the rules will come into effect across the entire region.

DairyNZ has been engaging with Horizons about the One Plan since the consultation stages, which began in 2004, and is stepping up its involvement with local farmers to help them gain consent under the new regulations.

Geoff Taylor, a people and business project manager for DairyNZ, said the form of that assistance is still evolving.

“We’re aiming to get 50 farms consented by the end of June. We’re using those guys as a pilot so we can develop a system that’s pretty robust – we will know what to expect, the farmers will know what to expect, and it will cut as much of the red tape as possible.”

Farmers were keen to engage in the process to get more certainty back into their business.

“There’s almost a feeling that they just need to know what it is that they need to do, and then they will get on with it.

“Getting the consent done is only the start rather than the end point of where farming is at in the Horizons area. We’ve also got a job over the next five to 10 years to work out how we can keep businesses growing without growing that environmental footprint.”

One Plan aims to improve surface quality by introducing farm-scale nitrogen limits in nine target catchments where intensive farming, which includes dairy farming, sheep and beef farming under irrigation, cropping, and commercial vegetable growing, will require a resource consent to operate.

A key criterion in the consenting process in those target catchments are the nitrogen leaching limits incorporated into the plan which are linked to Land Use Classification (LUC). Lower LUC land, judged as having a higher capacity for production, is allocated higher nitrogen leaching values than higher LUC land.

This flat-line “natural capital” approach to allocating nitrogen is different to many other regional councils which have based nitrogen limits on a grandparenting process, where limits are based on benchmarks calculated from historic farm performance over a specified period.

The One Plan limits, based around Overseer modelling, progressively reduce over a 20-year time frame.

A farm-scale nitrogen leaching limit is calculated by mapping each farm LUC and effectively creating a weighted average based on the various LUC proportions.

Horizons general manager strategy and regulation, Dr Nic Peet, said farms in the target catchments would effectively be farming within limits.

“There are two pathways in the plan for getting a consent for nutrient management. One is where farmers can meet those nutrient leaching targets and one is for when they cannot,” he said.

“Council have looked to take a really pragmatic attitude to implementation and said both sets of farms will get consents of a decent length.”

If farmers meet the targets, they will be given a 20-25 year consent to farm. If farmers cannot meet the targets, Peet said they will be required to provide a plan mapping their nitrogen-leaching trajectory. A Sustainable Milk Plan, a format developed in conjunction with DairyNZ, will form the basis of that.

“If they are willing to make an effort, we’re still talking about a 15-20 year consent.

“What they are looking for is for farmers who have made a really good effort to reduce their nitrogen leaching; they are not looking to say that farmers have to significantly reduce their production or significantly impact their profitability.”

He said the only people likely to get short-term three- to five-year consent terms were those unwilling to engage in the process and make onfarm changes.

Peet indicated Horizons was more interested in changing farmers’ mindsets towards their environmental impacts than in punishment.

“Ultimately this is about a culture of the way that farmers and consultants and so on think about nutrient management,” he said.

“We all want to see a thriving rural economy, but we’re really keen that uppermost in farmers’ minds, as well as the kilogram of milksolids, as well as the welfare of their animals, is ‘What am I doing with my nutrients and am I using them in the most efficient and effective way?’”

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