Two Ministry for the Environment staff have been visiting farms to meet and talk to farmers about the Essential Freshwater regulations and what’s coming with freshwater farm plans.
Sarah Perriam, of rural website Sarah’s Country, facilitated and organised the discussions over three days at the end of 2021, which have now been turned into a series of three podcasts, with three short videos also in the pipeline.
The Ministry’s Sara Clarke (Director Implementation – Climate, Land and Water) and Gin Loughnan (Manager – Climate and Water Agriculture) took part in the discussions at farms in Taranaki and Hawkes Bay.
For the first podcast, Sarah Perriam posed the question: “with a vision to create a national integrated farm environment plan that stands up freshwater regulations, how does the Ministry achieve this without layers of duplication and that works with existing regional council plans?”
Common themes in the podcasts, from those who farm, included about how the regulatory layers fit together and whether there is double-up between central and local government regulations. There is a perception that the goalposts keep moving and that people who farm are unsure what to do.
Sara then asked: how do we help people better understand the reforms and what they need to do?
Another theme was ‘one size does not fit all’ because of the variability of farm businesses and systems (let alone climate and catchment differences). Some of the farmers asked whether MfE was ‘reinventing the wheel’ and whether the Essential Freshwater package would in fact make things better?
The Ministry was there primarily to listen, and Sara and Gin asked lots of questions, as well as providing answers or comments during the discussions.
They were able to clarify that freshwater farm plans will become a management tool that sit beside the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and while some consents will still be required, there should be less overall with no duplication. Existing farm plan programmes will be leveraged and brought into the regulatory framework of freshwater farm plans.
A key difference, however, is that freshwater farm plans must reference a catchment context and also give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai.
The Government introduced the Essential Freshwater reforms as a package and the NPS-FM gives clear direction to councils that freshwater quality must be restored within a generation. The National Environment Standards for Freshwater were aimed at the immediate improvements needed to stop degradation of waterways, with rules directly affecting those who manage or own farms.
On the plus side the farmers believe that communities want to collaborate and are looking for opportunities to make things better. “We want to leave the land in better shape than we found it”, they said.
Catchment groups were a common theme but need more help and support so they can tackle bigger catchment-wide issues that seem overwhelming to individual farmers.
The farmers in the room also believed the leaders and innovators will ‘drag’ the laggards forward. They welcomed the dialogue with the Ministry calling it ‘true farmer consultation’.
There was a feeling that the Government, however, was trying to move to quickly and that even the best farmers might not be able to keep up.