Water
Dairying and Declining Water Quality
This Peer Review was initiated by Federated Farmers to assess the quality of Fish & Game New Zealand and Forest & Bird's co-authored report, "Dairying and Declining Water Quality - Why has the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord not delivered cleaner streams?" The peer review has found serious and critical errors and was undertaken by Federated Farmers policy staff in Wellington and Dunedin.
Quality and allocation
Farmers have always taken a strong interest in water - it is literally the lifeblood of farm operations. However, decisions that central and local government make on water allocation and also water quality have the potential to severely impact both the freedom to farm and farm productivity, particularly in areas that rely on irrigation.
What the Federation is doing?
Primary Sector Water Partnership
Federated Farmers is a partner organisation in the Primary Sector Water Partnership, a primary sector initiative that is working to anticipate and engage proactively on water management issues at a pan-sector level. The partnership is working with regional councils and territorial authorities to identify priority catchments and to develop sector-specific initiatives within those priority catchments so as to ensure sector efforts and available resources are focused where there is most need.
The Primary Sector Water Partnership Leadership Document has been produced to provide an outline of the partnership's commitment to achieve sustainability in freshwater resource use, as well as to describe the specific environmental management initiatives of the various partners towards achieving that commitment.
What can I do?
Federated Farmers is committed to continuing environmental improvements and keeping New Zealand farmers well ahead of the rest of the world.
10 in 10 Campaign
The Federation launched the 10 in 10 Campaign in November 2006. The aim of this campaign is improve water quality by getting members to reduce nutrient loss from their property by 10 percent over the next 10 years.
Federated Farmers knows farmers are innovators, and we want to harness this individual innovation for the benefit of all. We are asking farmers who are doing something innovative to help reduce their nutrient loss to email us at 10in10@fedfarm.org.nz so we can pass it on.
Who can help you
Our spokesman for water is Hugh Ritchie; you can contact him: hritchie@fedfarm.org.nz.
Our policy advisor for water is Melissa Jessen. Melissa grew up in a rural environment and appreciates a farmer's need for and interaction with water. You can contact her: mjessen@fedfarm.org.nz.
Further information
One of the issues with water quality is whether phosphorus or nitrogen should be the priority target for water body health. A recently released report, 'Schindler's on Eutrophication of Lakes' sheds new light on the matter.
The paper shows that Phosphate is the main nutrient causing algae growth in our water ways and explains the reasons why controlling nitrogen will not work. This is great news for New Zealand farming as phoshpate is easier to manage than Nitrogen. Phoshpate is mainly an above ground/soil movement issue so is controllable compared to nitrogen which is soluble below ground problem with very limited control options that do not adversely affect productivity.
To use a farming analogy: Farmers know that if they plant a clover rye grass mix into a paddock after a crop that has used all the soil nitrogen they get a very good crop of clover but limited rye grass because clover can fix its own nitrogen out of the air. But if the phosphate level in the soil is very low then there will be a very poor crop of clover and still limited grass growth. There are many bacteria and algae in our water bodies that can fix atmospheric nitrogen just like clover.
The paper explains the effect of reducing nitrogen in water bodies is that we will still get the same volume of plant/algae growth but the algae are the nasties like blue greens and others that cause slime.
