Dairy farm cleans up its act
A dairy farmer makes changes to comply with Canterbury’s tougher land and water regulations. Tony Benny reports.
When David Croft was growing up on the family’s dryland sheep farm, the locals used to joke it was so dry that the rabbits had to bring a packed lunch. Four decades or so later the farm is covered in lush grass as calving comes to an end and milking builds to a peak.
The change started when his father signed up to a governmentsubsidised irrigation scheme in the late 1970s. Like most farms in Amuri Basin, North Canterbury, the Crofts’ property was developed for border-dyke irrigation, now regarded as inefficient and environmentally unsound compared with today’s high-tech spray systems.
‘‘Back then, MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) were dead against spray irrigation and they seemed to dictate how things were developed,’’ Croft says. ’’When we converted to cows in 1992, we were about half-developed for border-dyke irrigation so the next few years we fully border-dyked it. That was best-practice on the day, so you did it.’’
The advantage of border-dyke irrigation was its low running cost, using gravity to spread water rather than pumping, but early this century the downside was revealed when by-wash, the leftover water that drains into waterways taking sediment and phosphorous with it, was blamed for polluting the Pahau River that ran through much of the dairy farming area.
‘‘ECan (Environment Canterbury) jumped in a jet boat and went up the Hurunui River and came across the Pahau, one of its tributaries. It seemed contaminated so they did a few water samples,’’ recalls Croft.
‘‘They said that there were two ways we can approach this; we can do the regulatory way which they had a habit of doing or we can have a community meeting – so we chose the community meeting.’’
The upshot was the formation of the Pahau Enhancement Group and in time the elimination of irrigation by-wash into the river.
Some farmers changed completely to spray irrigation but Croft’s solution was to build a storage pond to collect border dyke by-wash from the higher part of his farm and to convert the lower part of the property to sprayirrigation which used the stored by-wash.
The system worked and irrigation by-wash was stopped from finding its way from his farm into waterways. But since then Croft has changed most of the farm over to centre pivot with fixed setspray-irrigation in the corners, mainly because it is more efficient and grows more grass but also because of increasing environmental pressure to do away with border-dykes.
Like all Canterbury farmers, Croft faces new environmental regulations. This includes limits on nitrogen leaching and a requirement to have a farm environment plan (FEP) drawn up with a timeline to move the farm to good management practice standards that need to be adhered to if they wish to keep farming.
The Amuri Irrigation Company, in which Croft is a shareholder has formed an ECanapproved environmental collective which has overall responsibility for preparing and auditing the plans for farmers who are members of the collective.
‘‘Amuri Irrigation made a commitment to the Hurunui and Waiau Zone Committee that they would implement FEPs and meet other targets by an agreed timeframe,’’ says irrigation company environmental manager Alastair Rutherford.
‘‘We drew up the plan for our environmental programme and we sent if off and got 10 pages of comments back from ECan,’’ he laughs. ’’I think it was a difficult time for ECan as well; it was a new way of working. There was no precedent - there was nothing to copy, nothing to follow,’’ adds Croft.
‘‘That’s always been the advantage and the disadvantage of being first off the block,’’ Rutherford continues. ‘‘You get the chance to put your ideas down on paper first but at the same time you’ve got nothing to work from, so it’s been a bit of a challenge and an opportunity.
‘‘Initially there were some quite hard-nosed people in ECan demanding things that would never have worked and we’ve managed to work through a number of compromises and I think people are beginning to understand how audited selfmanagement actually works.’’
All 144 shareholders in Amuri irrigation now have farm plans in place and the company has opened the membership of its environmental collective up to independent irrigators in surrounding areas. The plans cover six main areas: Irrigation management, collected animal effluent management, nutrient management, soils management, waterways and riparian management and hotspots, including offal pits and silage stacks that could create point-source pollution problems.
They are audited according to the standards set out by ECan. Rutherford, an ECan-approved auditor himself, began the first round of auditing in January. So far 53 plans have been assessed. He says the process has taken longer than expected and revealed where the weaknesses are. ’’The results confirm irrigation and nutrient management are the areas in greatest need of improvement and we’re developing a strategy to work with farmers to address these, including a clear process set out for dealing with repeat failure.’’
The plans are benchmarked against good management practice which has now been codified and published but that hadn’t happened when most of the plans were done so there is some inconsistency to be addressed.
‘‘The book hadn’t been published when we were writing farm plans so in this first audit process we’re trying to get everyone up to that standard. The farm plans were done by a number of different people so they’re a bit variable, the standard is not even, so our first audit is trying to get everyone up to that common standard.
‘‘We’re aiming for good management practice across all the farms.The vast majority of the farmers completely accept what their audit report says, they understand what the problems are and they’re willing to work towards solving them. There’s a small number who might have problems because they don’t understand what the issues are, so it’s a matter of education and appreciating what those problems are, and a very small number who are not being co-operative.’’
Croft is chairman of a recently formed environmental subcommittee charged with overseeing the process and with educating farmer members.
Since auditing started, two nutrient courses have been run and soon there will be an irrigation training day as well. Rutherford is quick to point out that while the new regulations can mean farmers have to spend money to get up to standard, for example upgrading their effluent storage, there are benefits as well.
‘‘It’s not a denial, it’s not saying we’re not responsible, it’s how are we going to do this better. And if there’s an economic benefit in doing it better by saving money on fertiliser or pumping costs or we can grow more grass with less inputs, then that’s a bonus. A really important part of our environmental work is trying to sell those win-win scenarios so you get a dollar benefit and an environmental benefit as well.’’