The problem is not that farmers are bad, Salmon told the Agricultural and Horticultural Science Institute forum at Lincoln University.
“It is the institutes and incentives they face that are not the right ones.
“Yes, we need to find new ways of using land, water and greenhouse gas.
“My core argument here is farmers are grounded in this type of thing, they have always had values and bottom lines. They could be a model in the new way of NZ we are trying to form.”
The forum, on the impact of changing landscapes on primary production, focused on the tension around land use and the need to bridge the chasm that at times exists between the demands of primary industries and other land and resource use demands.
Speakers addressed issues from designing a mosaic of land use to achieving multiple wellbeing, grazing land in a modified landscape that needs management and the impact of tourism on landscape management.
Salmon said rather than attacking farmers the issues need to be understood.
“We need to better understand why they are being led astray by the inadequate regulatory reform of some of these institutions.
“Changing mainstream agriculture practices to meet these new nested realities is about understanding we have to change the good farmers too, not just the bad farmers, towards new ways of producing food.
“The good farmer is about integrity, responsibility, accountability, long-term commitment with multiple objectives – economic, social and environmental – attuned to operating within natural limits.
“We need to rekindle some of those old term values, the ethical ideas need to be strengthened and we need to devise a system that supports good farmers.
“It must also support average New Zealanders to be equivalent of the good farmer.”
Salmon said the way forward must link a national policy framework to a monitored and accountable catchment framework using an independent national regulator with power to negotiate local solutions with catchment clubs.
“We need to transform these institutions to the integrity and credibility of the old farmer value, emphasising finding creative solutions which can’t be produced by a purely regulatory framework but could be incentivised by negotiated solutions.
“We are not achieving any of this under the current framework of regulation,” Salmon said.
Ruakura-based science challenge national team leader for future landscapes David Houlbrooke said the dilemma for farmers is balancing the risk if they don’t adapt to change while seeing huge risk to change.
Transformational change requires incentives, options and enablers.
“It’s about seeing what diversity is possible and adapting the use to the land not the land to the use to get good overall land-use sustainability.”
NZ needs to increase its social capital to enable well-informed debate about alternative futures, manage pressures and remove the barriers to a transition.
Houlbrooke acknowledged farmers have adopted change and achieved a lot over the past two decades.
“But the increased changed land use has out-balanced the mitigation measures of the past 20 years.”
He said next generation systems are complex.
“Land use transformation is context-specific and often deeply personal.
“We need improved understanding of how land managers are making decisions concerning land-use transition so they can be supported,” Houlbrooke said.
Change is constant, the rate of change is tough, it’s constant and it’s fast, Environment Canterbury councillor and Canterbury farmer John Sunckell said.
Balancing tensions in rural land use change for public good has no easy fix.
“I believe we have reached the point now of production meets regulation with the perception that primary production is no longer sustainable.
“We need a collective community going forward away from the very narrow thinking at the moment.
“The same tensions are going on right across the world. Everywhere we go the same challenge is going on.”
So how to resolve those tensions.
“In fact, we are well on the way to resolving a bunch of tensions but what we haven’t done is convince many, if any, on the other side of the debate that we have actually done anything at all.
“The major tension we face is not necessarily the facts but the perception of some of these opposition groups.
“We have come a very long way in a very short time and as a farmer and sometimes a regulator, the tension remains because there is no recognition of the remarkable progress being made,” Sunckell said.
