Rethink over winter grazing rules
PASTURE: Farmers get extra time to make themselves familiar with new regulations.
The Government has finalised intensive winter grazing rules which will come into effect this year. The changes will make the rules more practical for farmers and more effective in lifting environmental outcomes, Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced.
Intensive winter grazing regulations were originally set to commence on May 1, 2021, but were deferred until May this year after farmers expressed concern over their practicality.
The changes have been moved back further to November 1 this year to allow farmers more time to become familiar with the updated rules and to adjust practices ahead of the 2023 winter grazing period.
“The Government has listened to feedback from farmers, industry representatives, iwi and hapu¯, environmental groups and regional councils, and has improved the rules to ensure they work better to achieve environmental outcomes,” O’Connor said.
The amendments will require grazed annual forage crop paddocks to be re-sown as soon as conditions allow, instead of by a set date which was initially proposed.
Specific requirements around the depth of pugging had been removed and replaced with “a duty for farmers to take all reasonably practicable steps to minimise the effects of pugging on freshwater”, O’Connor said.
A new condition had been added where critical source areas in winter crop paddocks would need to be identified and not cultivated or grazed.
Any grazing on slopes of more than 10 degrees needed to be done under a resource consent, or through a certified freshwater farm plan once they become available.
Parker said the changes would help protect the soil and waterways by placing greater importance on paddock selection and ensuring land was suitable for winter forage crops.
“Evidence shows soil loss greatly increases if winter forage crops are planted and grazed on slopes over 10 degrees.”
Federated Farmers Southland vice-president Bernadette Hunt was pleased changes had been made, especially around pugging and resowing dates.
“When these rules first came out there was an uproar because they were so impractical, so I absolutely want to acknowledge the efforts of officials to deal with some of those impracticalities,” she told The Country’s Rowena Duncum.
However, she said the rules were “far from ideal” and industry groups were already achieving “a huge amount” to improve winter grazing practices, without extra regulations.
She hoped the Government and officials would listen to farmers in the future.
“These things work best when they engage with the people they’re going to affect.
“Clearly, they didn’t understand the practicalities and the issues that were going to be associated with the implementation of the rules — if they’d actually had a conversation with us that would’ve been very different.”
Hunt remained concerned about the Freshwater Farm Plan system which was due to be released later this year.
She was worried about requiring a resource consent or a plan to graze on a slope of more than 10 degrees.
“How many hoops are farmers going to have to jump through to be able to justify that they can winter graze on a not very steep slope without effects on freshwater — what is the extent of that farm plan going to be?”
Despite these misgivings, Hunt was pleased that everyone was talking and working together on a solution.
“The good thing about the farm planning process is that they have learned from what went wrong with this and they are massively engaging with the industry in terms of designing the process.”