Friday, March 29, 2024

Report adds fuel to soil protection calls

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Valuable soils need greater protection as the Government considers where to build another 100,000 homes and the area available for horticulture continues to shrink.
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A Horticulture New Zealand report written by KPMG said new housing areas had resulted in the loss of prime horticultural growing land.

More than 10,000ha was converted from horticulture to alternative land uses including housing and lifestyle blocks between 1975 and 2012.

HortNZ chief executive Mike Chapman said 1% of the high-value land around Auckland was protected under the city’s unitary plan, amounting to about 3000ha, largely around Pukekohe.

However, Hort NZ wanted another 6000ha set aside to reduce the pressure growers in that district faced.

Some of their land had been zoned urban, resulting in significant rate rises and forcing them to look further afield for horticultural country.

“Pukekohe may well be desirable for putting houses on but there may be other areas not as suitable for horticultural activity that would still be okay for houses.

“Developers may like flat land but so do vegetable growers,” he said.

The report provided strength to Hort NZ’s desire to see the valuable soils recognised and protected under some sort of national policy statement providing top-down, Government-sponsored oversight.

He was heartened to hear Prime Minister Jacinda Adern talk about the need to protect such land in the same context as building satellite towns and housing.

New Zealanders ate about 300,000 tonnes of the top 10 vegetables including carrots, potatoes, broccoli and cabbages out of total production of 1.1 million tonnes of those types of vegetables.

Consumption was almost entirely provided by domestic production with only a miniscule 0.1% of the top 10 vegetables imported.

However, the report paints a picture of what risks the loss of high value land posed to the country’s ability to not only feed itself but to continue with what was proving to be a valuable export earner.

Last year almost a quarter of a million tonnes of the 10 key vegetables were exported, earning $615 million.

The public-good benefit of preserving land to ensure vegetables are kept relatively affordable was also explored.

New Zealanders were relatively big eaters of vegetables at 64kg a head a year of the top 10 but the country continued to suffer the Western malaise of obesity and associated diseases.

A survey in 2015 investigating the potential impact of subsidising fruit and vegetables found a 20% subsidy could prevent about 560 deaths a year.

But Chapman said Hort NZ was not advocating for something as direct as a subsidy. Better protection of soils and water would be a more welcome outcome of Government decisions.

The last government had tended to take a market-led approach to dealing with soil and land use.

“The view had been that the Resource Management Act would take care of the soil but this will not avert a crisis of losing those soils,” he sasid.

There was also a risk inter connected horticultural supply sources would be lost if there was not greater uniformity over soil protection nationally.

“We may grow a particular crop that grows only in a couple of areas. If, for example, you lose land in Pukekohe, we could lose our ability to supply greens in spring time and they may not be ready in the other area they are grown.”

Protecting local soils would also be supported by most consumers, 70% who told Consumer NZ they wanted to buy locally grown fruit and vegetables.

That strengthened the case for Country of Origin Labelling, something else the previous government dragged its feet on, he said.

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