Nearly nine years ago now the National
Government sacked the Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors and replaced
them with two commissioners: Margaret Bazely and David Caygill.
There was much wailing and gnashing of
teeth about the death of democracy, but that seemed to me to largely depend on
whether you voted Blue, Red or Green. Governments replace democratically
elected boards, namely school boards, with commissioners all the time and barely
an eyebrow is raised. The focus in that instance isn’t democracy, it’s on
achieving what’s best for the school and the students, and likewise the focus
on Ecan being run by commissioners should be “has the region and the
environment been served better for that decision?”.
We farmers are smack bang in the
middle of being held to account for our impact on the environment, and largely
we have been poorly served by our regional councils. At least one is embroiled
in a court case to determine whether they can proceed with their proposed
method of determining nitrogen losses, and another has signalled that it will plough
ahead with their plans despite the likelihood of a similar costly battle.
All of this is happening too late,
David Parker had been signalling for a very long time in Opposition that regional
councils had dropped the ball and needed to pick up their game. They had the
power to effect and enforce change and were not doing it, so now they’re going
to get a National Policy Statement that clearly sets out what the government
expects of them. The Minister of The Environment is not happy with regional
councils, with the exception of one.
Prior to the election I had the
opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of questions around the water tax that
was being mooted. I asked him if he was concerned that such a tax would drive
marginal cropping farms to convert to dairying in order to get the best return
from their irrigation. He replied that no, he was not concerned at all. He had
faith that ECan had robust processes in place to ensure land use changes had
minimal environmental impact. In that meeting the Minister was effusive in his
praise for ECan, going so far as to say he believed the National government had
done the right thing in installing commissioners. Canterbury, he said, had
nothing to fear from a change in government.
It has taken ECan a good six years to
get us into this position, making unpopular decisions and forging ahead with a
big picture in mind. I’ll admit that I’m a farmer who grumbled every step of
the way. Why did I need a nutrient budget? A Farm Environment Plan? Why for the
love of my bottom line am I paying a consultant $10,000 to secure consent to
farm?
All this became clear last November
when I finally had my farm audited. My auditor, Megan Hands from LandSavvy,
made it clear she was setting a baseline from which I was expected to improve.
It might not sound like much, but this is the major culture shift between the
ECan of old and the ECan of now, it wasn’t scary. It was collaborative.
Their expectations around the
environment have been made clear, companies like Ballance and Ravensdown have
invested in technology to ensure I have accurate records on hand, the water
meters ECan told me to install 8 years ago at my own cost are another small
piece in a much larger puzzle that is just starting to make sense to me now.
Every farm in the Ecan catchment, be
they dairy, drystock or arable, will now have new consents to farm based on
many factors including their nutrient inputs and losses. Every year their
nutrient budgets will updated and reviewed against their consents to ensure
compliance, and each farm will be regularly audited to see how they stack up
against a range of criteria.
There’s no doubt that some of the
tools being used aren’t perfect, but these are things that can be improved and
tweaked over time.
At a time when people are not shy at
pointing the finger and asking “why should you be allowed to farm?” I’m very
glad to be farming in an area that allows me to be reply “this is where I am now, and this is how I’m
going to improve”
