It would do that by boosting the Sustainable Farming Fund from $7 million a year to $20m a year and renaming it the Future of Farming Fund.
However, the Green Party immediately claimed credit for prompting National to put more money into sustainable farming though leader James Shaw said it wouldn’t be enough to make a big difference.
Prime Minister Bill English and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy went to Woodhaven Gardens near Levin, in Guy’s Otaki electorate, to announce their move.
Woodhaven managing director John Clarke said the 38-year-old business employed 205 permanent full-time staff and 40 seasonal workers sustainably producing 1.2m cases of healthy vegetables a year and like the rest of the primary sector didn’t want a tax on the water it used for growing and washing its produce.
“Water is key for us. We don’t want any tax on water.”
English told the workers National didn’t want to take more off them and its opponents were treating them and the businesses they worked for like an ATM machine.
National wanted to work with the rural sector to ensure increased production at the same time as raising environmental standards.
“We don’t want to punish you.”
Rather than taking money away and giving it to bureaucrats in Wellington National would support more research and give primary industries the tools to improve environmental performance and had been working at that for years, English said.
The fund had already supported more than 1000 projects.
Its increased investment in agricultural science and innovation would roll out new technology to farmers.
A Future of Farming Panel with representatives of industry, science and environmental groups would oversee the fund.
It would deal with one of the biggest single issues for New Zealand but it was not a question of either production or the environment. It was one of ensuring both improved.
“We want you on the job, earning income and doing it with high environmental standards,” English said.
Guy said Horowhenua’s 33 irrigators provided 1800 jobs and put $140m a year into the local economy and they were petrified of what a water tax would do to their businesses.
National wanted to increase exports not just of farm produce but also of technology.
“To help focus the Future of Farming Panel and industry we will set a target of doubling the value of our agritech industry to $6 billion by 2025.
“We want the latest soil sensors, farm management software and diagnostic tools all developed and used here and exported to the world.”
He described the funding increase of $13m as turbo-charging the initiative.
But Shaw said that wouldn’t be enough to make a step-change in cleaning up rivers.
National had stolen what was just a small part of the plans already announced by the Greens.
“We will invest around $136m in initiatives to move to better farming.
“We’ll invest in the Sustainable Farming Fund, create a Transformational Farming Partnership Fund, support organic farming and growing and establish a Good Food Aotearoa NZ national sustainability accreditation scheme.
“Revenue for those ventures will come from a nitrate pollution levy charged on dairy farmers who continue to pollute our soils and water.
“We’ll also accelerate depreciation on the infrastructure that has left so many dairy farmers up to their eyeballs in debt, so that they have breathing room to pay down debt and free up capital to move away from intensive farming,” Shaw said.
Federated Farmers science spokesman Guy Wigley said the payback for food production, export earnings and the environment from turbo-charging the fund would be many times the investment.
“Working with the sector is a far more effective and useful approach than the tax and punish policies of some other parties,” he said.
One of the ongoing projects, a smart irrigation study in Canterbury, involved Federated Farmers as a lead organisation.
It was about quantifying the relationship between irrigation over time, the accumulation of soil carbon and changes in soil water-holding capacity with spin-offs for knowledge on groundwater recharge and nutrient leaching.
