NZ Landcare Trust and Bupa Foundation join forces
The Bupa Foundation and NZ Landcare Trust have announced a new partnership designed to champion nature regeneration and address eco-anxiety and mental wellbeing among young Kiwis.
Southland farmers are creating unique community groups for town and country in response to escalating environmental rules.
Feelings are running high in the province as farmers confront new environment plans and activists running hot on winter grazing and nutrient laden waterways.
But it’s not all fire and brimstone: farmers are creating catchment groups to measure, monitor and improve practices.
Southland now has 20 of the voluntary, farmer-run groups known collectively as the Southland Catchment Group Forum.
Unlike catchment-based zone committees in Canterbury, the Southland groups aren’t charged with recommending policy to the regional council.
Southland project coordinator Sarah Thorne, an appointee from NZ Landcare Trust, says the network of catchment groups is unique and growing. The cumulative power of all these on farm changes is making a real difference to the region’s water quality, she says.
The groups cover town and rural communities across Southland and are well supported by businesses, rural professionals, farm sector support groups, councils and regional agencies.
The groups aim to improve water quality in an area special to them. They choose their boundary, identify their issues, come up with their solutions and celebrate their successes.
The groups work because farmers liked talking to farmers, Thorne says.
“Farmers are passionate about their land and looking after it for the next generation, and they like taking ownership of their issues and coming up with practical solutions which benefit their farm’s profitability, their families and the environment.”
The groups have different priorities, but all work on raising environmental awareness and education, providing a community voice and helping people to get ready for changes in policy and regulations.
The catchment groups run field days, find expert speakers and organise workshops to help people look after their farms and waterways.
The groups are working with schools, trialling technologies and nutrient modelling systems with agribusiness companies, sharing knowledge on good management practices and providing a community voice on local plans.
Farmers and their partners are also starting innovative waterway projects, using citizen science “and most importantly making well informed changes on their farms across Southland”.
Thorne’s role is funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries Sustainable Farming Fund until July 2020.
A vet is calling for all animals to be vaccinated against a new strain of leptospirosis (lepto) discovered on New Zealand dairy farms in recent years.
Two major red meat sector projects are getting up to a combined $1.7 million in funding from the New Zealand Meat Board (NZMB).
Angus Barr and Tara Dwyer of The Wandle, Lone Star Farms in Strath Taieri have been named the Regional Supreme Winners at the Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards in Dunedin.
OPINION: The distress that the politicians and bureaucrats are causing to the people of Wairoa and the wider Tairāwhiti is unforgivable.
Dairy
Rural banker Rabobank is partnering with Food Rescue Kitchen on a new TV series which airs this weekend that aims to shine a light on the real and growing issues of food waste, food poverty and social isolation in New Zealand.
OPINION: The new government has clearly signalled big cuts across the public service.
OPINION: Your canine crusader is not surprised by the recent news that New Zealand plant-based ‘fake meat’ business is in…