Farmers serious about clean environment
Freddy Farmer is musing over what he sees as a mismatch between dairy farmers’ commitment to cleaning up their act and the public’s perception of them as the dirty denizens of arable New Zealand.
‘‘As I see it, dairy farming is being made the scapegoat for the quality of New Zealand’s waterways, which no one denies has gotten worse over the last 20 years,’’ Freddy surmised in response to recent media reports about Fish & Game’s Farming and the Environment Survey.
‘‘It’s pretty disheartening to have our reputations shredded yet again when the Fish & Game report itself shows that dairy farmers are as concerned as anyone about the environment.
‘‘The vast majority of dairy farm owners and managers strongly agree we should take responsibility for reducing the impact of our dairy farming on the environment.’’
The report shows that 76 per cent of dairy farm owners and managers strongly agree that polluters should pay, and that expanding intensive dairy farming through large scale irrigation schemes should be allowed only if scientific evidence shows that measures are in place to ensure downstream waterways are not polluted.
‘‘When it comes to attitudes, we’re all on the same page,’’ Freddy said.
‘‘It’s just that public perceptions around actions – that is, what dairy farmers have been doing to clean up their act – have yet to catch up.’’
Freddy, for one, has spent more than $90,000 over the past four years to reduce environmental impacts from his dairy farm, including fencing waterways, planting riparian strips, and increasing the size of his effluent holding pond.
‘‘Every dairy farmer I know of has been doing likewise, and Fonterra’s taking a hard line on it, too,’’ he said.
‘‘Farmers who don’t get their act cleaned up won’t get their milk picked up.
‘‘Some big changes and investments have been made. So it’s pretty disheartening when the story being told is not a true representation.’’
He thinks it’s also reasonable to ask why all New Zealand farmers aren’t being pressured to fence off all their waterways and generally mitigate any environmental impacts from their operations.
The vast majority of arable land in New Zealand is still in sheep and beef farming.
‘‘They don’t have to do any waterway fencing. Besides, it would be financially unrealistic to ask them to, considering the vast land scale of their operations. You’d have to subsidise them or see them go bust.’’
Ultimately, polluted waterways are a distressing and emotive issue for everyone, dairy farmers and townies alike.
‘‘There’s always going to be a disparity between what the public thinks and what’s happening at the grass roots, so to speak.
‘‘But I think we’re really all on the same page, and dairy farmers are making huge efforts to get their farms up to environmental spec as quickly as we can.’’