Farmers fight freshwater farm plans but say their stance is nuanced

Colin Hurst’s South Canterbury farm is complex.

“We’re a mixed arable farm,” explains Hurst, the Federated Farmers’ vice president whose responsibilities include freshwater regulations.

“We grow grain and seed crops, we do dairy support with winter grazing, we graze sheep, and finish beef cattle.”

So his freshwater farm plan is probably bigger than most.

“It cost me $10,000 with the consultant. If I include my own time, it could be another $2000 or $3000, then I have to get it certified. We could get over $15,000 to $18,000 to complete it all.”

Actually, it won’t cost him that.

Hurst says the Foundation for Arable Research paid for the consultant – “they had a bit of funding from central government to undertake certain things” – and the plan was done as a test.

Farm plans, or farm environment plans, are common in many parts of the country, at the behest of regional councils and dairy companies such as Fonterra and Synlait.

Freshwater farm plans are different because they’re mandatory and regulated, being brought in as part of the previous government’s ‘Essential Freshwater’ overhaul in 2020 – the same package that capped fertiliser use, and put clamps on winter grazing.

The freshwater plans are being brought in, region-by-region, starting in parts of Waikato and Southland. Farmers and growers have 18 months to get them certified.

But after the change of government there’s been pushback.

“It’s quite a convoluted process,” says Federated Farmers’ Hurst. “There’s some good things in it too, but I think the important point is we’re requesting all farmers to have an environmental impact assessment on their farms.”

Though farms like Hurst’s may be ahead of the game – “we’re already doing a lot of these environmental types of things, anyway” – such a blunt imposition doesn’t factor in farming intensity, like the difference between a large dairy farm and an extensive sheep and beef operation, and whether nearby waterways are pristine or polluted.

“It’s not about us kicking the can down the road,” Hurst says. “It’s about having [reporting and monitoring requirements] based on the impact of the farm, with the risk to the environment.”

Opponents to the freshwater plans are now lining up.

On March 1, Beef + Lamb surveyed members about mandatory, certified freshwater farm plan regulations, while stating it is strongly against the regime, and is pushing for requirements to be amended, and timeframes pushed out.

(Beef + Lamb chief executive Sam McIvor says costs and benefits need to be weighed, and improvements to freshwater shouldn’t involve duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy. “To have a freshwater farm plan framework succeed, it needs to be anchored to a risk-based approach and not simply a blanket mandatory requirement.”)

A week later, in a Federated Farmers’ “Friday Flash”, Hurst said the current framework was “a complete dog” – which was impractical, inefficient and expensive.

“We’ve called for urgent and significant changes to the current system to make the whole process simpler and more affordable for farmers.”

In a letter to five Government Ministers, sent on March 5, Federated Farmers railed against “blanket rules and regulations”, which were too burdensome and costly, and called for immediate legislative and regulatory changes.

A traffic light system would be better, Hurst explains.

“If you’re an intensive dairy farm, irrigated, you’ve got water quality that’s poor, you need quite a bit of rigour going on. That just makes sense.

“But if you’re a hill and high country farmer – extensive property, low stocking rates, pristine water – why are we asking those farmers to spend a lot of money to actually not achieve anything?”

DairyNZ’s general manager of farm solutions and policy Dr David Burger confirms that it, too, is lobbying for changes – “for greater effectiveness, reduced cost and to remove unnecessary duplication, and for greater provision for existing sector-led farm environment plans, which most dairy farmers are implementing”.

This united agricultural front worries academics and environmentalists.

Professor Jenny Webster-Brown, director of the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, sees this opposition as a change of direction by industry groups, which could erode public trust in farming, and degrade their social licence to operate.

She points to research that found comprehensive advice to dairy farmers, and on-farm changes, helped improve water quality. (Although, with some contaminant thresholds still being breached, more action, above best management practice, was required.)

“When farmers implement them on a catchment-wide basis, you do see catchment-wide improvements in water quality.”

Though there’s an up-front cost to use consultants for the plans, Webster-Brown says without them farmers might face additional costs later to clean up environmental contamination.

Marnie Prickett, a research fellow at the Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, used to front the Choose Clean Water campaign, and was a member of the Freshwater Leaders Group advising the previous government on its freshwater reforms.

She says agricultural groups appear to want the status quo, and self-regulation, as opposed to considering what’s appropriate for each catchment.

“It’s another way of holding off on having to do that real, long-term thinking work around farm systems.”

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s executive director, Russel Norman, says agri-business groups have “vociferously, and extremely aggressively” opposed freshwater regulations from the beginning.

The point of catchment-wide regulations, aligned to national bottom lines for concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus and periphyton growth, is to tackle the cumulative effect of “massive pollution” from farm operations in some areas.

“It’s impossible to achieve these improvements without mandatory regulations,” Norman says.

“That’s the whole reason why it’s so difficult – there are all these catchments where there’s far too much pollution going into waterways currently, far too much water being abstracted for irrigation. And, so, without regulatory direction, those rivers and lakes will not be fixed.”

‘Too few farmers are adopting practices that would mitigate the adverse impacts of farming operations on water or are not doing so with sufficient urgency‘

Regulatory impact statement written by Ministry for the Environment and Ministry for Primary Industries in 2022

Industry opposition to freshwater farm plans has emerged during what appears to be a receptive new Government focused on lifting economic growth, led by the farming sector, and cutting red tape. Much of its first few months in office has been spent scrapping or reversing the previous government’s policies.

Last Friday, in a speech to the Planning Institute, Resource Management Act (RMA) Reform Minister Chris Bishop said an amendment bill would be introduced in May would alter the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management – including re-orienting Te Mana o Te Wai.

Associate Minister for the Environment, Andrew Hoggard, a former president of Federated Farmers, says he has received advice on improving freshwater farm plans “so that they are more cost-effective and pragmatic for farmers”.

His office says: “He is currently considering that advice and will be consulting with Cabinet in the coming weeks.” 

Newsroom asked how the Government intends to improve the quality and quantity of freshwater, and whether any measures will be mandatory. Hoggard’s answer, which didn’t address the question, said the coalition intends to replace the RMA, and the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPS). 

“This is a commitment in the Act-National coalition agreement and is aimed at allowing more flexibility in how regional councils meet environmental limits.”

This past Friday, Bishop said reviewing the NPS would take 18 to 24 months.

Under a permanent replacement for the RMA, land use within environmental limits would be permitted, Bishop said.

“I believe that with clear rules, the replacement RMA system can deliver economic growth and better environmental outcomes.”

(Hurst pleads for more of a bipartisan approach to farm plans from political parties – “We can’t go from one extreme to the other, and back again”.)

Progress ‘must accelerate’

Freshwater farm plans were brought in as part of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management to help farmers and growers reduce their environmental impact.

Basically, under the plans farmers and growers have to identify risks to freshwater, and list actions to manage or mitigate those risks.

The 2022 regulatory impact statement, produced by the Ministries for the Environment and Primary Industries, said the country’s freshwater was “under significant pressure following 150 years of population growth and land use change”.

Many farmers and growers were reducing their environmental impacts but to “halt the degradation of our freshwater”, the scope and scale of progress “must accelerate”.

“Too few farmers are adopting practices that would mitigate the adverse impacts of farming operations on water or are not doing so with sufficient urgency.”

Immediate steps must be taken to improve water quality by 2023, the paper said, “and reverse past damage to bring our waterways and ecosystems to a healthy state within a generation”.

Mandatory and enforceable freshwater farm plans were key, and regulations, which came into force last year, would ensure national consistency.

The plans are separate to existing farm environment plans, or requirements demanded by dairy companies Fonterra and Synlait – they will “build on that work”, the Ministry for the Environment’s website says.

“Freshwater farm plans will tie into … regional council plans, and will be a way for farmers to document actions they are taking to meet council rules and requirements.”

To be fair to farmers, requiring 34,000 farmers and growers to adopt these plans is a huge undertaking, not least for the league of certifiers and auditors. There are also question marks over how effectively regional councils will regulate them.

‘Too onerous’

Federated Farmers’ president Wayne Langford’s letter to ministers on March 5 said farm plans, in general, can be practical and effective, but the freshwater plans are too onerous – especially on farmers who “present little environmental risk”.

“As they are being implemented currently, they are a requirement in addition to consenting requirements and standards, rather than the practical and outcomes focused alternative they could be.

“The existing regime is also expensive to implement for central Government and councils at a time where we are facing record high rate increases and a strong desire to cut unnecessary Government spending.

“Federated Farmers want a system that is effective, robust and accountable, which empowers farmers to act based on farm and local, catchment-specific risk.”

Langford said high-risk activities in high-risk catchments should be subjected to more stringent requirements and higher scrutiny, and the system must have integrity to give confidence to regulators and the public.

However, the more you delve into Langford’s six-page letter, the more you are confronted with recommendations to dismantle the current approach, and delay the response to the country’s freshwater problems.

“Unnecessary” regulations on winter grazing and nitrogen fertilisers need to be removed, Langford wrote, and farmers need a big say on what happens next.

The agriculture sector “should take a leading role in the design and implement of tools to support the development and roll-out of farm plans”, and “industry and catchment representatives” should assess the appropriateness of actions to protect freshwater.

On freshwater farm plans, Federated Farmers recommended: removing certification; removing compulsory auditing and making plans “auditable”; and excluding non-commercial farms.

Existing farm plans meeting minimum standards, including those on 8000 dairy farms, should be recognised, Langford suggested, and given time to meet national standards.

“Minimal” information should be submitted to regulators, to protect farmer data. Plans “must sit with the farmer and only be made available for auditing and regulatory purposes”.

Considering the Government is reviewing the national policy statement on freshwater management, councils should be given time to develop catchment-specific action plans “for priority environmental outcomes and contaminants”. In saying that, the focus on “impractical” nationally set, numerical bottom lines for contaminants is “poorly conceived”.

“Both the bottom lines and the timeframes for improvement place unfair onus on the current generation of farmers to ‘fix’ freshwater issues that have been many generations in the making (and from which New Zealand at large has benefited from socially and economically),” Langford wrote.

“These issues can only be resolved by the efforts of current and multiple future generations.”

That’s a direct challenge to the regulatory impact statement’s goal of having ecosystems in a healthy state “within a generation”.

Though agricultural groups are backing generic farm plans as the best way to clean up waterways, a Ministry for the Environment report into Canterbury’s sensitive Ōtūwharekai/Ashburton Lakes, released last year, found a system for adjacent farms, with audited and compliant farm environment plans, failed to protect the lakes.

The report was damning and evidence of systemic failure, environmental groups said at the time.

Marnie Prickett, the University of Otago researcher, says for polluted rivers, aquifers and lakes to improve, something has to change.

“You either need teeth in your regulator and in your local plan, or you need teeth in the farm plans. You can’t have no teeth in your system, otherwise polluted water will stay polluted.”

The country already has the technical know-how to restore its waterways, Prickett says.

“But we just have to recognise what the catchment needs, and work to what the catchment needs, rather than the farming systems that currently exist. Because farming systems change, but what the catchment needs won’t change.”

Expanding on that theme, Russel Norman, of Greenpeace, says: “There is no requirement under God that those farms must always stay as dairy.”

Professor Jenny Webster-Brown, of the Our Land and Water science challenge, thinks areas with good quality water should also be required to have freshwater plans so farmers have to show how they’re going to protect water, and keep it from degrading.

All the national science challenges will run out of funding in June. Webster-Brown says Our Land and Water was conceived to improve our freshwater quality, “while still making a good living off the land”.

“I think we’ve identified a lot of ways to make that happen.”

Instead of focusing primarily on journal articles, Webster-Brown says research was translated into tools, “digital widgets”, and research summaries available to the public, but particularly farmers.

“It’s identified where in New Zealand we need to make the land use changes, how they can be made, what are the options for people who want to do something other than dairying in the area that they’re in.”

Asked about the new Government’s policies, she says her team isn’t as positive as they were 12 months ago.

“Watching the Government trying to undo all of the positive steps that had been made for the environment has been very demoralising.”