Stocking rate is already problematic

In relation to Monday’s Column ‘‘We can take 10 million, with planning’’, in agriculture we look on the animal population of a farm as its stocking rate or carrying capacity: the number of animals that can reasonably be resourced by a certain land area. Most stocking rates are conservative to cope with seasonal variations in feed supply. Increasing the stocking rate usually requires intensification of land use, usually including additional fertiliser and sometimes environmental degradation.

NZ’s present stocking rate is 19 people per square kilometre. If we add tourists the number is probably doubled. For comparison the figure for Japan is 336. Covid-19 has clearly demonstrated how many of New Zealand’s existing people are under-resourced at our present stocking rate. I therefore suggest we need some serious debate on how or indeed why we need to double our stocking rate. Warwick Scott, Lincoln