Ron Pellow | February 15, 2021 from GlobalHQ on Vimeo.
A panel discussion at the end of a one-day Farmed Landscapes Research Centre webinar in Palmerston North last week looked at building New Zealand’s capability to achieve FEPs, and whether there is value in a coordinated national approach to them.
Beef + Lamb NZ (B+LNZ) environmental policy manager Corina Jordan says it is important that FEPs are viewed as more than just a piece of paper that farmers need to deliver.
Plans are about a process that has a farmer at the centre, so they can help deliver practice change on the ground.
While cognisant of the need to keep regulatory costs down, she says plans need to be viewed as more than that.
She says farm plans should add value to businesses, showing how to unlock opportunities. They can also be passed on when a property is sold.
“They are a value-add,” she said.
Jordan says the first challenge of implementing new requirements is convincing the majority of those affected of the need for them to be adopted and in terms of FEPs, the rural sector is now largely over that.
What’s needed now is consistency in areas, including the level of requirements and a framework to get there.
Too much uncertainty is disempowering and to help overcome that there is a need to align national, regional and sector approaches.
She says one of the first rules of creating policy is that it should be implementable and a real challenge facing the Government at present is to look and see whether there are aspects to its current freshwater policy that are not implementable.
However, she says FEPs are here to stay and the majority of farmers understand that, not only for the environment but because markets will demand it.
But they can’t just be a piece of paper, they have to be able to be made to work.
“There is a moral responsibility that we can actually land it,” she said.
Whether or not that involves a national process, she says what’s needed is a robust risk assessment process that can be applied around the country.
Foundation for Arable Research senior researcher – environment Turi McFarlane says because farmers around the country are at different stages in their FEP processes and councils themselves are yet to come up with a standardised approach, there’s uncertainty among farmers and that needs to be addressed.
“People want to know where to go and how to get there,” McFarlane said.
He says while Waikato Regional Council (WRC) and Environment Canterbury (Ecan) both had FEPs, their approaches to them are different.
WRC takes a more front-loaded approach and requires plans to go through checks and be signed off as fit for purpose, whereas Ecan does not require an up-front sign-off, with plans audited and then graded – those not receiving a pass mark are required to be reaudited more often and show that the property is at least making progress towards a pass mark.
He suspects any national system will probably be a combination of both, with plans signed off and then audited, although that will add compliance costs.
Over time, McFarlane would like to see the delivery of farm plans develop to the extent where farmers are in a position to do a lot of the work themselves rather than rely on outside help, which would also bring costs down.
They should also be able to learn from other farmers, to be able to go down the road, see what others have done and then decide if something similar can work on their own property.
Fertiliser Association of NZ executive manager Greg Sneath says it is important to remember that every country in the world is facing the same environmental challenges as NZ is, and what has been done in the past is not a solution for the future because that won’t solve issues around water quality and greenhouse gases while maintaining food security.
He says consumers are and will continue to demand proof that FEPs can supply, so it will have economic benefits for farmers and the sector as a whole.
As a world-leading food producer, NZ is in a position where it can help develop systems that can be used internationally.
Farmed Landscapes Research Centre senior research officer Lucy Burkitt says while organisations like Massey University and the NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management (NZIPIM) are doing their bit either developing farm environment training for rural professionals or creating a farm environment planner accreditation scheme, the reality is it’s a complex business and you can’t teach experience.
She says it’s important the industry recognises that because it has a role to play in continually mentoring people coming through.
