Editorial: Govt's own goal on winter grazing

Thousands of farmers have less than a month to apply for resource consent for winter grazing on their farms next season.

With councils underequipped to process these resource consent applications, farmers are at risk of breaking the law as planting for winter crops needs to take place in late spring; all because the Government has failed to develop Freshwater Farm Plans on time.

Federated Farmers says now farmes are being told by the Ministry for the Environment, Ministry for Primary Industries and various regional councils that 'it's okay' and nothing will happen if farmers get planting, even though they'd be at risk of breaking the law.

This is yet another sad example of an overzealous Labour Government getting the process wrong. Farm environment plans should been rolled out well in advance of the rules around winter grazing.

Federated Farmers, B+LNZ and DairyNZ says they anticipated this potential outcome and even warned the Government.

They wrote to Minister David Parker in August calling for winter grazing rules to be put on hold until November 2023, as the Government has not yet implemented crucial elements of the new framework. There has been no response. A second letter sent to Parker last month was also copied to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

For a government that seems hell bent on piling regulations on the agriculture sector, the lack of response from Labour leaders is puzzling.

Some regional councils are even advising farmers not to apply for a resource consent, even if the law requires it.

In the view of Federated Farmers, this is placing a lot of risk on farmers.

The farmer lobby rightly point out, if things go wrong on the farm and council action is taken, a farmer will be in a far worse position than if they had a resource consent.

So they rightly asked Parker and the Government to delay the regulations and to allow for the development of a practical alternative until the freshwater farm plan pathway is fully available.

The Government doesn't seem to be listening. They seem happy to see thousands of farmers breach the law thanks to the incompetence of some government department.