Co-op eyes plan certification
Fonterra’s new farm environment planning service will be registered as a certified industry scheme with the Waikato Regional Council as the co-operative looks to improve its environmental performance around water quality.
Being certified put the onus on Fonterra to ensure the plans are credible, Fonterra Farm source farm solutions manager Doug Dibley told farmers at a focus day at Owl Farm near Cambridge.
‘‘We have to have a really robust system in place that gives the council confidence of our ability to implement it.’’
Details of the industry schemes were still being fine tuned by the council, which planned to certify it to help share the workload of getting farmers to comply with new rules coming into effect from the Healthy Rivers plan change, Dibley said.
The plans would be granted legal status and divided into different areas of the farm business including managing sediment, erosion, cropping, phosphorus, effluent, offal and water.
He expected the council to randomly select a group of Fonterra farmers and do yearly audits on plans to ensure they reach the required standard.
‘‘The pressure is on us to ensure we do the right thing by our farmers and in doing that we are providing our farmers the ability to do it through us at cost.’’
The plans are part of Fonterra’s new Tiaki Sustainable Dairy Programme, which included farm environment plans for all suppliers, consent support, nitrogen reports, farm mapping and plans around managing riparian and effluent.
It has bottom line standards for all suppliers such as fencing water and compliant effluent systems and provides incentives for farmers to go beyond what was expected.
Fonterra had set a target that by 2025, all of its farmers had to have a farm environmental plan as part of their supply agreement.
Dibley said the plan identified potential issues on the farm and assigned actions to remedy issues under an agreed timeframe with landowners.
Signing up to the scheme came with the expectation that farmers would have to make changes to achieve good management practice.
‘‘That’s really important as we are trying to achieve a reduction in contaminants going into the water.’’
The plans acknowledged a lot of the work had already been done by farmers, he said.
Dibley helped form a farm environment plan for Owl Farm earlier this month.
‘‘When we came here the other day, probably 60-70 per cent of the plan was acknowledging good things that had had already been done and 40 per cent was identifying opportunities going forward to improve it.’’
The plan included risk ratings for issues ranging from low, medium, high and critical, which allowed Fonterra and farmers to prioritise actions for each issue. He said the council was considering adopting this initiative.
There would be no milk premiums for farmers who signed up for Tiaki. Dibley said Fonterra had considered premiums, but a constitutional change was needed to initiate it.
Instead, farmers would be offered discounted advisory services and products.
The co-operative would also move quickly on farmers failing to meet minimum requirements and community expectations.
Many of the complaints of poor environmental activity were coming from neighbouring farmers who had made considerable investments in their own farms to lower their footprint.
‘‘That’s pretty powerful that farmers are now calling each other out.
‘‘The carrot is quite hard, but the stick is a lot easier because we have got minimum conditions in supplying Fonterra and if you don’t meet those there are consequences we can apply around penalty costs or non-collection.’’