Canterbury regional councillor Tom Lambie said he is aware of irrigation companies threatening to cut supply if they don’t improve bad grades from farm auditing.
Farmers subject to audits are graded from A to D.
The As don’t get another audit for three years and the Ds are “immediately due for a serious talk with the council and maybe the irrigation company supplying their water,” Lambie said.
Several Canterbury irrigation schemes audit their shareholders directly on the council’s behalf.
Lambie said irrigation companies are generally doing a good job and there is competition among farmers to get top grades.
At the other end of the pressure scale some schemes are making it clear to shareholders they needed to step up their performance or lose water.
“They’re saying, if you get a C, we’re not happy and if you get a D, we’re having a discussion with you as to whether we are going to supply you water next year because you’re letting everyone else down,” Lambie said.
Irrigation New Zealand chief executive Andrew Curtis said while switching the shareholder off is the ultimate sanction, irrigation schemes use a cascade of interventions to help shareholders achieve the requirements.
Most provide practical training workshops for their shareholders – focusing on common issues and compelling those not meeting expectations to attend and upskill.
Some are also holding aiming-for-an-A workshops to encourage shareholders to go above and beyond.
A shareholder failing an audit might be asked to make improvements before another audit.
“To date these approaches have been sufficient to rectify any issues, noting the ultimate sanction of being switched-off looms in the background and ensures shareholder compliance.”
Lambie said a growing number of farmers treat auditing as an exercise in self improvement and some seem to relish the pressure, like a school exam or restaurant health rating.
If they receive a B, they want to know why the grade wasn’t better.
Canterbury farmers operate under a novel system called Good Management Practice (GMP), an agreement between the industry and the on how best to improve soil and water quality.
Lambie said GMP is based on a biological system so environmental improvements haven’t been as fast or far-reaching as some hoped.
The region’s water quality problems, like nitrate leaching, excessive phosphorous and sediment could be alleviated if farmers keep to GMP targets.
GMP is having an impact, Lambie said.
E coli levels have generally fallen in the six years since GMP was introduced and riparian planting is helping to buffer waterways from harmful, ag-related side effects.
“We’re saying this is not the end point but man we’ve made some progress.
“It’s a continuation of a whole lot of things.”
Lambie said New Zealanders are fundamentally more interested in what is leached into the environment than how it affects a particular farming sector.
Every catchment is affected by regional plans differently, reflecting a rainbow of land uses and environmental factors, like climate and soil variation.
The diversity in Canterbury ranges from the downlands and harder hill country of Hurunui in the north to the light, stony soil of the central plains and on to the lagoons and wetlands of coastal South Canterbury
While Lambie is happy with region-wide progress on GMP, more work is needed over the next decade and probably longer to improve water quality. Clamps on farm outputs, like nitrate leaching, will continue if improvements are too low or slow.
“We’re saying plans can be reviewed after five years and they’ve got a 10-year shelf life. If that number is not good enough we are going to ask them to go down again.”
The key to GMP is making the principles relevant to every farming situation, whether it is dairying, an arable producer or sheep and beef.
Asking farmers to now cut nutrient loads harder than originally planned is not a sign GMP has failed or been too light-handed, he said.
In hindsight, given the way the provisions of the council’s land and water plan override previous regulations, it might have tried to introduced GMP earlier, Lambie said.
One of the tougher challenges was settling plan change 5, an agricultural behemoth that could limit the scale and intensity of farming in higher-density, dairy-heavy catchments like Selwyn Waihora.
The existing plan change is ready to come into force but first has to survive an appeal by Irrigation NZ, representing seven irrigation companies, Federated Farmers and DairyNZ.
Lambie hopes “We’re coming out the other end and it might not be too far away.”
Whatever the result, GMP has to be backed by science and that took a huge amount of time, as did extending the system to farmers.
So, while GMP does not have grand-fathering rights to maintain existing nutrient-use, it is a living document that can be changed over time, Lambie said.
