Setting up for next season
As the season draws to an end for spring calving systems, increased attention and planning should be focused on next season.
Those numbers will come in August, prior to notification of a variation to the Land and Water Regional Plan in September, Environment Canterbury commissioner Tom Lambie told a stakeholder meeting in South Canterbury last week.
The 20-page A5 booklet, Industry-agreed Good Management Practices relating to water quality, is the result of the Matrix of Good Management (MGM) project which Environment Canterbury, AgResearch, Landcare Research, Plant & Food Research, and six farmer-funded levy bodies have been working on since 2013.
Despite that timeframe, opening the meeting Lambie said it was “just the start of the conversation we want to have with the community” and apologised for a glitch in invites which meant some farmers and other stakeholders may have missed the meeting.
His introductory comments were followed by presentations by five ECan representatives, one from AgResearch, and two of three farmers from the policy working group – cropping farmer Colin Hurst, Waimate, and sheep and beef farmer Colin Smith, Hurunui.
“I’d like to say 80 to 90% of what farms do is good management practice but we don’t know that,” Smith said, adding that the only work done to assess where the industry is up to is in dairy and there the range was found to be from 90% GMP on the best farms to 40% on the worst.
However, Hurst played down the GMP requirement. “GMP is something quite achievable by farmers and not too difficult. It’s not ‘best management practice’.”
Environment Canterbury plans to monitor compliance with GMP through an online “Farm Portal”. While that’s still “a work in progress” it will require farmers to map their properties online, and state whether they have over 50ha of irrigation or 20ha of winter forage intended for cattle.
Under the region-wide default rules – catchment zone committees can and are tabling variations – those are the triggers for making farming a consented activity and annual uploads of the latest Overseer model of the farm system will be required.
Guidelines, not a guide
The GMP booklet states it is not intended as a guide for farmers and growers, but spells out good management practices (GMPs) on everything from farm planning and records to ground cover, nutrient management, feed, and irrigation and water use, with “implementation guidance” for each.
For example, under feed, the GMP is: “Store, transport and distribute feed to minimise wastage, leachate and soil damage.” Implementation guidance includes feeding away from waterways, storing on sealed or compacted surfaces, and siting stores away from waterways.
Effluent and waste water management has four GMPs, including ensuring systems meet industry specific codes of practice or equivalent standards, having sufficient and suitable storage to avoid spreading when soil conditions are unsuitable, and that effluent is applied at depths, rates and times to match plant requirements and minimise risk to water bodies.
The exception is if the farm’s irrigation is part of a scheme, in which case ECan is expecting the irrigation schemes to manage their members’ compliance.
No questions were permitted during the course of the presentations but they flowed thick and fast once the meeting was opened to the floor.
“If the farm’s leased out, who’s responsible?” asked one farmer. Answer: always the property owner, even if they’re overseas.
Would all the modelling and monitoring actually make any difference on the ground? “A very good question,” answered commissioner David Caygill.
How would ECan gain farmer engagement? Reconfigure its teams and work with the farming community, answered Lambie. “We cannot do this ourselves.”
How would ECan handle the avalanche of consent applications, asked a sheep and beef farmer who noted he would need one so there would be hundreds of others who did too. “That’s why we’re trying to stage the [catchment] zones. We don’t want all the consents to rush in at once.”
What prospect is there of a farm management package compatible with ECan’s Farm Portal so data would auto-upload? “We’ve got that as one of the items in phase 2.”
Others noted the workload of preparing applications for what could well be only a three year consent and queried the justification for the 50ha irrigated or 20ha cattle wintering triggers for consents.
