M
oving to a new property in a target catchment under Horizons’ One Plan would be daunting enough in an average payout year, but in a low pay-out season, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Lisa and Brent Lyons are keeping positive and though they have concerns they are committed to working with the regional council.
Having moved to their Pahiatua farm along the Mangatainoka River in June, the couple are still finding their feet.
“The upsize in scale isn’t too much of an issue, it’s just hard as it’s a new farm for us and we’re still learning,” Brent says.
“Once we have everything right and the cows learn the lay of the land and where all the gates are it will be easy.”
If a new farm wasn’t enough to keep them busy, navigating their way through One Plan regulations around nutrient limits certainly does.
One Plan is Horizons Regional Council’s policy document for resource management in the Manawatu-Wanganui region, with the operative version released in December 2014.
The One Plan sets nutrient management rules as well as restricting water takes for new dairy conversions and any farms in targeted catchment areas. Farmers must show, through nutrient management plans, how they will farm within the nutrient loss limits and the steps they plan to take to reduce further nutrient losses.
Brent and Lisa’s farm is in the Mangatainoka catchment, but it’s not their first rodeo with One Plan consents. To sell their previous property the couple needed to provide baseline nutrient figures, so they got a taste of what was in store for them after buying their new property.
The couple say they did limit themselves when they were looking for a new property, and could have found a smaller farm and gone out of the catchment area. Their decision was based on wanting a property that would last them a lifetime.
“The farm suits the two of us and if the kids want to get into farming then it will suit them too. We don’t want to be the biggest and the best, we’re in it for the lifestyle,” Brent says.
The previous owners helped Brent and Lisa over the line with buying the farm but the couple were faced with restrictions in the existing consent for the property that didn’t fit with their farming philosophy. They negotiated with the council to change the consent to better fit their farming style.
“We sort of went through the process back to front,” Lisa says.
“The farm we are on now already had a consent in place when we purchased it, but it wasn’t what we were going to farm like, so we had to get things changed.”
The original consent, based on the previous owners’ operation, meant the Lyons’ smaller Jersey-based cows allowed them to maintain their herd numbers. If their cows had been the same size as the previous owners’ herd, they would have had to cut their herd by at least 20 cows.
“We were able to maintain feed inputs but had to change grass silage to maize silage in order to do that, but we were also able to increase palm kernel and molasses usage,” Brent says.
Although some things have swung in their favour, Brent and Lisa had to make some changes to their preferred low-cost, low-input system, and for the first time in several years have to winter-off their stock.
“Normally we don’t graze any stock off the property, but now we have to, our low-cost, low-input system has been flipped on its head a little bit, but we knew that going into purchasing this place. I guess we didn’t expect the economic downturn of the industry, otherwise grazing-off might not be so much of an issue,” Brent says.
Brent and Lisa Lyons – taking a proactive approach.
“It’s just frustrating that we have to do all these things that go against what we have always done, and we’ve just been told to do it, no negotiation on that point, so we have to make the budget stretch that far.”
Although the process of changing the consent was lengthy, the couple say on the council were easy to deal with, but being proactive and asking questions was important to ensure they were being heard.
“We’ve always taken a proactive approach to this because we know it’s not going to go away. By going to the council and saying ‘what can we do?’ in the past we were able to get 30% of our fencing costs paid for and our riparian margins all paid for. We wanted to work with them, not against them.”
Lisa started attending courses about the One Plan to get a better understanding of the wider implications of the consent, something that has proved useful in their discussions with the council.
“It’s a long process and you can’t just pick the easiest option and go with it, you have to sit down and understand the consequences of the consent. It’s a legally binding document, so it’s in your best interest to negotiate something that works in favour of both parties.”
The One Plan limits are based on Overseer modelling. Originally meant as a tool for farmers to understand what was going on below the surface, Brent and Lisa say it’s morphing into a regulatory tool.
“Overseer was never designed for this. But it’s one of the leading models for fertiliser application, and undoubtedly there’s a wealth of information sitting behind it, but there’s no way it can see how people action and how people work through things.”
The couple say animal efficiency is an important factor in the issue but because Overseer only uses production as an indicator to determine nitrogen leaching the model isn’t showing an accurate picture.
“To me, more efficient cows would be producing less nitrogen, but the research isn’t there to back that up,” Lisa says.
Brent thinks basing nitrogen leaching on production is penalising farmers for doing their jobs well and says not all increases in production are because of increased nitrogen.
“If you have a good season not by doing anything different, just a good season, you get penalised because your production’s higher, according to the system means you’re leaching more nitrogen, which may not be the case at all.”
With no specific version of Overseer set for One Plan, version updates which use new research can change modelled nitrogen losses.
Lisa would like to see more scope in the best-practice standards for dairy farming and points out wetlands have great potential for nitrogen reduction as has been proved in the Whangarei district.
“They have used wetlands as a means and method to clean the effluent from the human supply – they planted them up and it’s proved to have really good water quality coming out the other side in an environmentally sound practice.”
The wetland areas on their property have the potential to be fenced and used to reduce nitrogen from their system, with most of the run-off going to that area of the property. Lisa says there is incredible potential for long-term benefits from a system like that, but because it’s not recognised as a best-practice standard under One Plan there’s no economic benefit, particularly with budgets being tight this season.
They say the regulations might just be pushing the problem to other areas.
“With having to graze-off our cows over winter and the preference for maize silage over grass silage, it feels like we are just shifting the issue onto another council, so are we really making a difference with all of this?” Lisa says.
Another concern is the emissions trading scheme (ETS). Lisa says some mitigation techniques can increase nitrogen losses to the atmosphere, creating a catch-22 scenario.
“If you look at cow housing, you’re almost doubling the amount of emissions that you’re losing, and that’s why there’s not as much nitrogen in the system,” Lisa says.
Brent says in order to off-set the grazing costs they could consider a housed system.
“That’s all well and good, but if or when the ETS comes out, we will be stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
Brent says the issues affecting the dairy industry in the region are hitting local communities too.
“It’s starting to go from one extreme to the other. I think the council thinks it’s all good, but they don’t realise it’s just going to hamstring communities. All the money we would normally spend in town is going to grazing, which may be out of the region, so that’s money the community isn’t seeing.”
The couple have their concerns with the broad-brush approach being adopted and say for a lot of farmers it’s tough to swallow.
They have seen some farmers shut-up shop and fear for the future of dairying in the area, but say their experience has been relatively easy and the council has always been willing to work things through with them.
“Farmers’ innovation is really incredible, and this will only prove that again once farmers learn the process. It’s all the great unknown at the moment and eventually it will be like when effluent consents first came out – people will see the benefit.”
