With declining lake water quality, a combination of land purchases for retirement or a change of use, a cap on livestock numbers and nutrient application was imposed in the Lake Taupo catchment.
For farmers like Barton, not only had protecting the environment caused a decline in income but costs increased while prices received by producers continued to fall each year.
Barton said consumers, who were the final step in the agricultural food chain, could not be divorced from that problem.
“If farmers are asked to deal with the water quality issues on their own, it’ll just become a cost.
“But if we can ask the consumers to pay a premium for doing the right thing, then we can share that burden between everyone who’s involved in the food space.”
Taupo catchment farmers were required to provide the Waikato Regional Council with annual information on fertiliser use, stock numbers, stock sales and purchases to prove they had met their stocking and nutrient cap obligations.
That information could come out of annual accounts or receipts but there was no requirement for farmers to supply the council with their annual financial accounts.
Barton had turned what could be a seen as a negative obligation in to a positive, by using the council’s environmental verification for the nine-farm Taupo Beef branded selling group, which sold beef and lamb and soon venison to North Island restaurants.
The meat packs carried a symbol noting it came from farming systems credited with protecting Lake Taupo.
Regional councils were introducing a variety of measures to improve water quality, such as nutrient leaching and emission caps, limiting stock numbers and requiring resource consent for some farming activities, which made any future conversion of land to dairy more difficult.
Waikato Regional Council’s resource use director Chris McLay said the Healthy Rivers Wai Ora proposed plan change as drafted, required all farmed properties over 4.1ha to report annual stock numbers, fertiliser use and imported feed.
Farms greater than 20ha were required to have farm plans to manage the loss of contaminants with those plans either part of an approved industry-led scheme or by granting of resource consent.
Any consent required the development of farm environment plans and appropriate reporting.
“We need to be able to measure what farmers are doing in order to track progress towards achieving the objectives of cleaning up the Waikato and Waipa Rivers,” McLay said.
Waikato University economics professor Frank Scrimgeour said the traditional tactic of growing production by increasing fertiliser and feed was no longer a straightforward solution because of environmental constraints.
Instead farmers needed to be more efficient in their use of inputs.
“They may use the same amount or less but the marginal benefits will increase because they would be less wasteful.”
Scrimgeour said gains were possible from increasing the skills of staff, especially managers, an avenue that had not been fully used.
“A better farm manager will make better decisions.”
Massey University business, innovation and strategy director Hamish Gow said the industry needed to rethink its operating model if it wanted to continue expanding.
That meant a shift from using averages to measure impacts to focus instead on the impact of decisions at the margins.
It was a similar quandary for dealing with Auckland’s growing population.
“The real question needing to be addressed is to move away from averaging and look at the impact of one more animal or one more human being added, both of which are putting pressure on our structures.”
Gow said just what model would allow farming to continue expanding was up for debate but that debate needed to be based on the marginal impacts.
“We are using very average economics at the moment to understand how we look at these issues when we need to look at the marginal impacts.”
Gow said the uncertainty about land use options would also be felt in land prices as some buyers chose not to invest because they did not know what future constraints they faced.
