Students plan to protect environment
A new programme at Massey University is helping to protect waterways on farms.
Massey has started running a new 12-week course, advanced farm environment planning, which teaches students how to produce industry-standard, freshwater farm environment plans.
Senior researcher Lucy Burkitt said because of the Government’s freshwater policy, which required farms to have environment plans in place by 2025, there weren’t enough rural professionals to do that.
So this course is designed to train enough people to be able to create those plans.
Massey has two training courses, an online intermediate course and the advanced course where people spend time on farms.
The advanced course is a pilot course. The intermediate course has 40 students enrolled and the next two intakes are full.
There are five students in the advanced programme from across the country who have farm experience and this week they are visiting farms to collect information and develop freshwater farm plans.
They were visiting a dairy farm and a sheep-and-beef farmat Massey, as well as a crop farm at Marton. ‘‘These guys go out on the farm and identify waterways, the natural resources, the soil type, the topography, [learn about] understanding the farming system and how farmers can reduce their impact on fresh water,’’ Burkitt said.
She said Government policy meant plans had to be done by a certified fresh water farm planner and be audited.
‘‘A lot of people are training and developing skills to work with farmers to deliver these plans.’’
Massey’s mike Bretherton took the students around one of Massey’s dairy farms this week.
They looked at soils, dug holes and learned about things like nutrient loss in soil.
Students may visit commercial farms in future, Burkitt said.
‘‘A lot of people are training and developing skills to work with farmers to deliver these plans.’’ Lucy Burkitt Senior researcher