“Farmers are on edge when they hear those helicopters flying over,” the Waikato sharemilker told Dairy News. “They feel like they are going through customs all the time. They start wondering why the helicopter is flying over or whether something has happened in the past week that their farm is now non-compliant. There’s that fear of retribution all the time: what’s gone wrong? Why is that helicopter flying over my farm?”
Lile wants to see a full ban on flights. She also wants dairy company and council enforcement staff to work together to rationalise inspections.
Lile was among farming representatives who spoke to the Waikato Regional Council’s environmental performance committee about stress caused by the helicopter monitoring. The committee has now recommended to the full council a temporary halt on random helicopter checks pending a review of the council’s enforcement methods.
Lile and her husband Hamish recently went public via the National Depression Initiative (NDI) fronted by Sir John Kirwan, about Hamish’s experience of being depressed. Lile has also been involved with Farmer Mental Wellness Strategy and Action Plan chaired by the Dairy Womens Network.
Lile says the pressures of compliance are hitting farmers aged 45-plus. Three farmers committed suicide in one week last month, compliance being implicated in at least one death, she says. Quad bike crashes get huge publicity but little is heard about farmer suicide, she says.
Farmers want to comply but smaller farms struggle with the expense of a new effluent system. “The council comes onto the property after doing a helicopter flyover and says ‘you’re not complaint anymore; you need to do this, this and this’. The farmer gets a price and realises it will cost him $150,000 plus and the council turns around and says ‘I want it fixed yesterday’. You can imagine the kind of stress that is putting on farmers.”
Whether the compliance official is helpful or on an “ego trip trying to intimidate people” depends on who you get on the day, she says.
Ninety-nine percent of farmers want clear waterways and a clean, green image for New Zealand. “We understand farming is evolving; we want to evolve as well.”
But compliance officials – be they company or council – want it done tomorrow, she says. They forget about the need to help farmers become compliant. “They have to understand we can’t just pull $150,000 out of our back pocket and pay for it tomorrow. It is something that has to be worked on.”
Pressure for compliance is also coming from all the dairy companies and Quality Control New Zealand which does the on-farm checks for dairy companies. Every farm must be inspected every year by the dairy companies, so all inspections should be aligned so farmers are not hit with a “double whammy”.
Quality Control New Zealand could do the checks and report back to councils on farms which may not be compliant in five years.
“They could start working with them over how they can become compliant. That will take the stress and anxiety away. They will be able to operate a better farming business because there won’t be the fear of retribution anymore.”
Having the Fonterra payout plastered all through the media gives the impression farmers have plenty of money for compliance.
“But by the time we’ve paid all our expenses we are lucky if we’re earning 20c for milksolids.”
At the Waikato hearing she told the councillors “you are not only invading our farm with your helicopters but our home: it is personal to us”.
Ceasing those flights would be a big step in reducing farmer stress: “That’s the one that really stresses farmers out.” She has already had phone calls over the temporary halt to flights. “One farmer said he felt a weight lift off his shoulders.”
