Tuatahi Farming Partnership, which farms 6000 hectares of high country land in the catchment above Lake Taupo, was one of the first and largest landowners to strike a deal with the newly established Lake Taupo Protection Trust to protect the long-term future of the lake.
Tuatahi sold 28 tonnes of its nitrogen footprint to the trust for $10 million and sold carbon credits from tree planting to Mercury Energy.
The contracts led to significant land change water scientists say will, in the long term, benefit the lake.
The nitrogen and carbon deals have also led to new farming and business opportunities for Tuatahi.
It has significantly reduced its beef and sheep operation, moving into forestry, tourism and now potentially into koura farming.
Tuatahi land has 60km of streams, ponds and wetlands, waterways that are becoming cleaner by the year and that might be ideally suited to farming the native freshwater crayfish.
Tuatahi director John Hura says an analysis is being done to see how the koura venture stacks up financially but there is no question the environment is right.
“I guess what this is showing is that we are developing a farming and business operation that is throwing up opportunities, things that we would have never considered 10 years ago,” he says.
Added to the possible koura enterprise are a tourism-focused deer hunting lodge, which is running, and nearly 1000 hectares of forestry plantings.
It is a farming operation very different from what it once was.
Trust chairman Clayton Stent, says success for Tuatahi is also success for Lake Taupo.
“It’s a great story. It shows the work of the trust to remove non point-source nitrogen from the catchment has been achieved with positive consequences.
“It hasn’t been the doom and gloom for farming that was envisaged by some 10 years ago and, of course, we hope the real winner will be the lake itself.
“Before we started the science was telling us that as a country and a local community we needed to act if we wanted a healthy future for the lake.
“The overall nitrogen reduction target for the catchment of 170 tonnes was met ahead of schedule and a very important step has been taken for the long-term protection of the water quality of Lake Taupo,” Stent said.
Tuatahi director John Mariu says the contracts with both the trust and Mercury were a dynamic step in the future management of the land.
“It has taken us to a new place in terms of land utilisation and commercialisation and, very importantly, it has also seen a greater merging of the cultural intent that the shareholder owners have for the land.”
Tuatahi has grown to a $60m enterprise and provided shareholders with a secure financial future by also adding considerable off-farm investment.
The Tuatahi directors say that when it came to changing farming practices and land use they really had no choice.
The long-term protection of Lake Taupo was paramount for them as tangata whenua. The fact they’ve been able to take advantage of other opportunities along the way has been a bonus.
Hura says land use change was the catalyst.
“It has enabled us to be a lot more progressive in our approach to farming but without compromising our connection with land as Maori owners.
“And thinking about the possibility of farming koura, one of the things I have found out, and is interesting to know, is that prior to 1926 local Maori had a commercial enterprise selling koura in the area so the fact that we might be doing this again is a great story all round … a bit like back to the future,” he says.
