Eco model will benefit farming’s back pocket
Greenpeace won’t sit around in a boardroom while industrial dairying expands, writes Genevieve Toop.
OPINION: Dairynz’s failed attempt to shutdown Greenpeace’s ‘‘dirty rivers’’ television advertisement is yet another example of a desperate lobby group fiddling while Rome burns.
By spending considerable resources ignoring the science, the group continues to prevaricate as our water gets dirtier.
Sixty-two per cent of our monitored rivers are unsafe to swim in – and that is clearly unacceptable to the majority of New Zealanders.
Revelations that the dairy industry wants to extract water from the source of the worldfamous Pupu Springs to increase cow numbers in Golden Bay is a clear example of how far the expansionist dairying lobby is prepared to go. To pollute Te Waikoropupu Springs, a national and international treasure, is surely the act of extremists.
Dairynz’s complete lack of willingness to take meaningful action on polluted waterways has left the industry wide open to public outrage. This attitude, held by supposed industry leaders, has left farmers without the information to make the systemic changes that will save our rivers.
Greenpeace welcomes the recent overtures from Dairynz to work with them on this problem. However, we’re not going to sit around in a boardroom compromising while industrial dairy farming expands.
We hope that Dairynz’s recent backdown signals a willingness to help farmers with the vital transition away from the polluting industrial dairy model to an ecological farming model that looks after our rivers.
Unfortunately, judging by the group’s refusal to accept the Advertising Standards Authority’s ruling that our advert was not misleading, it doesn’t seem likely.
It’s not just the water issue that Dairynz is prevaricating about. It has done little to address the issue of farm debt ballooning out of control and putting financial strain on farming families.
Dairy farmers have come under pressure to buy more and more fertilisers, expensive irrigation equipment and supplementary feed for their ever-growing herds.
The Reserve Bank estimates that dairy farm debt has tripled in the past 13 years to $38 billion.
Ecological farming is an innovative model of farming that uses diversity and natural systems to boost productivity without the need for destructive chemical fertilisers or large-scale irrigation.
It requires fewer cows and fewer chemicals to produce highvalue, environmentally sound products and resilient farms.
A report by Agresearch that compared dairy farming models confirmed that the low-input, lowintensity farms that didn’t use chemical nitrogen fertiliser and kept lower numbers of cows per hectare produced the most milk per cow per year.
This model was the best environmental performer; it was also the least financially risky and was more profitable when milkprice payouts were low.
Rather than advocate for this model, Dairynz has actively supported plans to build think-big irrigation schemes which, if built, would allow the number of dairy cows to spiral out of control.
There are already too many cows for our waterways to cope with. Overstocking and farming on marginal land drives nitrogen pollution into our waterways.
This cannot be mitigated away by fences and riverside tree planting. The only option is to reduce cow numbers, fast.
Greenpeace has been visiting and talking with farmers who are finding innovative ways to build more resilient and environmentally friendly farms.
Now, we are releasing a new video to help people understand the science behind the campaign to stop big irrigation and cut cow numbers. It’s called ‘‘Mildred and the piss-apocalypse’’ and explains how cow urine travels through the soil and into the groundwater, poisoning rivers and aquifers with nitrates. It also explains how ecological farming works.
Our video calls on Kiwis to support an ecological farming future because that is the only thing that will save our rivers.
Genevieve Toop is Greenpeace NZ’S sustainable agriculture campaigner.