‘Mackenzie needs profitable farms’

Federated Farmers South Canterbury president Jason Grant has defended farmers and says profitable farms are the best thing for the environment on land like the Mackenzie Basin.

Grant said some points raised in an Environmental Defence Society report on the state of the environment in the Basin, published last week, are ‘‘delusional’’.

The illusion that large-scale irrigation is going ahead in the Basin is not true and small strategic areas of irrigation on vast properties actually enhances the environment, he said.

‘‘The Mackenzie Basin does

Federated Farmers South Canterbury president

have a few challenges and I would say the biggest concerns are weeds, namely wilding pines and gorse, invasive pests, and erosion is another really big concern and always has been because of the nature of the soils,’’ Grant said.

‘‘The profits from a lot of farms in the Basin are really important to help combat some of the issues we are facing.

‘‘We’ve got DOC [the Department of Conservation] who are a huge landowner and those vast areas of land don’t generate an income, and they’ve probably got some of the worst weed and pest problems of any bits of land.

‘‘It just shows that if you’ve got people farming, and they’ve got a profitable farming business, they can pour a lot of money back into that land because they own it, they have an affinity to it, a bond, and they want to look after it and pass it on to the next generation.’’

Grant said discussions about the large scale dairy development on Simon’s Pass Station, which was highlighted in the report as an example of ‘‘system failure’’, were blown out of proportion.

‘‘That was started years and years ago, and at the time of starting down their journey they were encouraged by everyone to get into that development but the rules have changed and public sentiment has changed,’’ he said.

‘‘That is still quite a small percentage of a big tract of land and a lot of the time the amount of intensive land in the Basin is blown out of proportion.’’

The report also called for the five agencies involved in the management – Mackenzie and Waitaki district councils, DOC, Environment Canterbury, and Land Information New Zealand – to work in a more aligned way through a shared hub based in Twizel.

Grant said bringing in more agencies would be ‘‘too much’’.

‘‘The farmers in the Mackenzie Basin are under some of the strictest rules in the country already, and they do their best to farm under those pressures and some of the rules that are set in place are good, and some of them probably go too far, but there is a balance there,’’ he said.

‘‘Environment Canterbury, it is their job to oversee a lot of the rules that are set in place. I don’t have any concerns and am happy with the way things are.’’

‘‘The profits from a lot of farms in the Basin are really important to help combat some of the issues we are facing.’’ Jason Grant