DCD ban damages growth
Incident could be the trigger for a shift to true sustainability.
THE WITHDRAWAL of the chemical DCD from on-farm use delivers three blows to the NZ dairy industry: reputational, environmental and economic. It strikes right at the strategic heart of our largest export sector.
The sector strategy relies on continuous growth of commodity milk production and mitigation of adverse environmental impacts here in New Zealand; and overseas on cost-competitiveness against other commodity producers, and a rock-solid reputation with consumers for food safety and environmental integrity.
DCD, a compound widely used around the world in agriculture and industry, is critical to all four pillars of the strategy. We led the world, introducing it on-farm in 2004. It delivers three benefits, according to results last year from the definitive study here, the Nitrous Oxide Mitigation Research project:
It improves water quality in streams and rivers by reducing the leaching of nitrogen from urine patches in paddocks by an average of 21 per cent
It increases pasture growth by a range of 0-17 per cent and an average of 3 per cent, thereby improving productivity
It reduces emissions of nitrous oxide, the most potent of greenhouse gases, from urine patches by an average of 50 per cent.
Thanks to help from DCD, Lincoln University’s model farm produced more than 1800kg of milk solids per hectare last season. Costs were moderate because the cows ate only pasture grass and no supplemental feed, and environmental impacts were reduced. Many management improvements helped but DCD was critical to this impressive economic and environmental performance.
So far DCD works best in regions with cooler, drier winters. Thus, the biggest take up has been among Canterbury farmers, plus some in Southland and the lower North Island, but only by 21 in the Waikato.
The Ministry for Primary Industries says fewer than 500 farmers use DCD. Applying national averages for farm and herd size, the ministry suggests only 70,000ha and 200,000 cows are affected by its withdrawal.
But this seriously underestimates the importance of DCD in two ways: typically it is used by sophisticated, large scale, intensive farmers, so the number of hectares and cows affected will be significantly greater.
More importantly, the dairy industry was banking on rapid growth of DCD to help it increase output yet still meet tightening environmental standards.
Many water catchments around the country are already near or at their maximum nutrient loading. Any increase in farming could cause water quality to decline further. Farmers can take other mitigation actions but DCD was becoming an ever more crucial tool for many of them.
In some 10 years of testing here, DCD had never shown up in milk because it decomposes quickly before it gets into the food chain. But DCD residues were found for the first time last September in minute concentrations in a very small number of samples. The most likely explanation is more accurate testing procedures. But changes in farming practices might be another.
There are no standards, here or abroad, for DCD residues in milk products. So the Government and dairy industry decided to withdraw the chemical until such standards are negotiated. These will likely be agreed since DCD is used in producing some other foods. But this could take up to two years, or longer if our feedlot farming competitors who don’t need DCD put up a fight.
The Government and dairy industry did the right thing, but badly. They communicated slowly with other governments and poorly with media and consumers.
As a result, ‘‘NZ milk scare’’ stories flashed around the world, even in reputable media, particularly riling China’s government and consumers. The truth about DCD is far more benign but damage was done to the brands of New Zealand, Fonterra and others in the dairy industry.
Such food purity, safety and environmental issues are getting more common and more intense. Consumers, media and governments are demanding stricter standards and more effective responses. Our government and dairy industry have to get vastly better at dealing with these.
‘‘Things that don’t belong in milk shouldn’t be in milk,’’ Theo Spierings, Fonterra’s chief executive declared resolutely on Radio NZ’s Nine to Noon on Monday. Yet that exposes a contradiction in all industrial food production. DCD and many other compounds used to achieve it are safe. But they are unnatural additions so the most healthconscious consumers shun the products as impure.
The harder we work our land, water, animals and plants the more convincing we’ll have to be to justify the science and technology we use. Reverting to small volumes of simple, pure products is not an option – for us economically or for the world in terms of food supply.
Hopefully we’ll play a leading role globally. But DCD is a telling example of the difficulties along the way and how economically and environmentally stressed our commodity dairy farming model is.
DCD has enabled users to farm more intensively by reducing the adverse impact of nitrates on waterways. Denied it, they will have to work a combination of three options: find other ways to mitigate the damage; reduce output; and increase pollution of waterways. The Ministry for Primary Industries says it will be talking to regional councils about how they will handle any deterioration in water quality. Initially the risk to waterways is minor because the number of DCD farmers is small. But the longer DCD is parked, the greater the economic and environmental pressures become.
This gives the Government an excuse to back off on water quality standards. This was meant to be a critical year in which it made some big decisions on these issues. The battle lines were already drawn with Horizons Regional Council, the leader on setting nutrient limits and water standards, under intense pressure from Federated Farmers, the dairy industry and the Government. Understanding that we have to farm within environmental limits is sinking in for most farmers and the Government. But their instinct is still to push those limits. That is a dangerous game to play. Instead, they should make DCD the incident that triggered a strategic shift to true sustainability for the dairy industry, both economically and environmentally.