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| Ministry of Agriculture
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Issue 4 April 2000
| From the Editor One of the main objectives of MAF RM Update is to keep readers informed by trying to anticipate your questions on topical sustainable resource management matters. This issue attempts to highlight some of the important work and strategies that are being undertaken in the North Island on improving sustainable land management practices in the hill country. The following articles illustrate there is actually considerable interaction and communication underway to better co-ordinate the development of best management practices on at-risk hill country land. On another matter, we have decided not to electronically mail this publication to all subscribers, as, owing to its large size, the publication is likely to place heavy traffic on our server. Instead, we will e-mail readers who are on our e-mail list to inform you when the latest MAF RM Update is available on the MAF website. Hard copies of MAF RM Update will still be mailed to all our current subscribers. I hope you find this issue informative. John Vaney |
Implementing Sustainable Hill Country Management Strategies
Over the last 10 years local and central government, Crown Research Institutes, land user groups, environmental groups and agribusiness have worked together to define the issues of sustainable land management across a range of farming systems, including hill country. All agree on the definition of sustainability; the challenge now is the implementation. Phil Journeaux and Barrie Wallace of MAF, and Dr Alec Mackay and Bruce Thorrold of AgResearch report on progress to date and plans for the future.
The concept of sustainable management took hold in New Zealand with the introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991. Subsequent to this, in 1996, the Government launched its Sustainable Land Management Strategy. These two developments have prompted landowners, agencies and interest groups to start addressing the term “sustainability” as it applies to sustainable hill country management.
Since the GATT round of 1993, the international marketplace further focused the minds of those involved in the agricultural sector on the issue of sustainability. The forum made it clear that greater emphasis would be placed on the trade of primary products and sustainable production issues.
Framework for Evaluation
An International Board for Sustainable Research and Management has developed a framework of five criteria for evaluating whether agricultural practices are sustainable:
1. Production - is production increased to, or maintained at, the
required level?
2. Security - how is the risk of achieving the required production level
reduced?
3. Resources - how are soil, water and air quality and other resources
affected?
4. Economics - is the production system financially viable?
5. Social - how publicly acceptable is the production system?
The framework has been adopted by many international agencies.
In New Zealand to date much of the effort in developing sustainable land management policy has been trying to weight and integrate the three components of a sustainable system – economic, biophysical, and social. For example, economic sustainability is crucial for many hill country farmers, while issues such as erosion, although seen as critical, cannot be fully addressed due to financial constraints imposed by low farm
A draft MAF project shows that 75 percent of North Island hill country farms are currently not economically viable without outside income. While there was certainly an appreciation of environmental issues by farmers - 68 percent had initiated some land management strategy within the last five years to meet environmental needs - the difficult financial position and farmer attitudes are major factors influencing significant change in the near future.
The project also noted that a key component of hill country sustainability is the dependence on local facilities, and concern about social factors such as retention of schools, stemming population drift, access and availability of health services, and cost of local services. Rapid changes over recent years, often involving closures and/or consolidation into larger, more distant centres, have all added to the strain imposed by poor financial viability.
Identifying the Issues
Significant progress has been made in identifying the sustainable land management issues facing hill country land managers through the use of community-based activities. Two such groups, formed in the early 1990s, were based around the Westview and Gwavas farms in the southern North Island. The groups included farmers and representatives from banks, agribusiness, policy and resource agencies, regional government, and other interest groups such as the Fish and Game Council, Maruia Society (now Ecologic Foundation), organic producers and conservation, forestry and horticultural organisations. The differing points of view were considered essential to identify the issues and concerns of the wider community and to develop acceptable solutions.
The groups established that “sustainability” means considerably more than stopping soil erosion and point source effluent discharge. Sustainability is complex, with the issues invariably linked. A number of environmental issues were identified including: water availability; both surface and ground water quality; nitrate leaching; soil fertility depletion; soil structural decline through stock treading; soil loss through wind erosion; pest such as rabbits and possums; tuberculosis; and weed control. In addition to environmental issues the groups identified a range of social (e.g., social change, rural decline, landscape management, aesthetics) and financial (e.g., economic viability/performance of pastoral systems at current production levels, market access) issues.
Several positive attributes and opportunities for the study farms were also identified, including: future economic prospects with additional development and alternative land use; proximity to major centres; tourism potential due to the unspoilt nature and historic character of one property; and the diversity of the local community.
Five key messages emerged from these two community groups:
- Sustainable management is based on sound knowledge of the farm resources.
- Many current land management practices are sustainable where appropriately applied and when correctly implemented.
- The wider community has opinions about how land should be managed and these need to be considered.
- Sustainability is about communities as well as individual enterprises. Land managers need to become actively involved in the community debate on sustainable land management.
- It is possible to design farming enterprises that are both profitable and environmentally sustainable.
Similar themes have emerged from other studies of sustainability in rural communities.
The Environmental Issues – What are They?
While the economic and social perspectives on sustainability are important to everyone, the environmental consequences of land use are high on the agenda of many national and international agencies and inter-government agreements. They are:
• Soil Quality
Accelerated erosion, sediment run-off, soil compaction and pugging and nutrient all contribute to this issue.
• Water Quality
Hill country farming systems contaminate surface and ground water with pathogens, sediment and nutrients (nitrate, phosphate). Land use change also affects the structure and health of aquatic ecosystems.
• Air Quality
Drift from agri-chemicals used in weed and pest control and topdressing, is the main contributor to the issue. Greenhouse emissions from soils and livestock have the potential to become major forces in hill country farming. This will have positive and negative effects, as any carbon tax will provide opportunities for farmers to derive cash flow from tree-planting programmes.
• Biodiversity
The recent discussions around the Biodiversity Strategy emphasised the importance of private land in protecting biodiversity in the intensively utilised landscapes that exist in hill country and lowlands.
Westview Farm sustainable land management project field day.
A Pathway Forward
With the issues well defined and agreed on, the impetus now turns to the design and implementation of more sustainable systems. The following issues are identified as barriers to designing and implementing farming enterprises that are both more profitable and environmentally sustainable:
- Lack of paddock-scale resource information available to hill country land managers.
- High cost of obtaining the resource information.
- The need for producers to develop an approach for using soils information in business planning.
- The need for farmers to learn some additional skills to be able to interpret soils, landform and stream information for environmental planning.
- Low availability of time and money on-farm.
- Lack of information on which to base trade-offs between the different components of sustainability.
Many national and regional government initiatives, research projects and local groups around the country are currently addressing these issues. Here we highlight two initiatives which take different approaches to hill country land sustainability. Both these studies involve researchers and farmers working together to look at ways in which environmental management can be integrated into the farm business, rather than remain a separate activity.
1. Soils Underpinning Business Success
The “Soils Underpinning Business Success” education package was initially developed by AgResearch, Landcare Research and Massey University scientists working with the Manawatu Wanganui Regional Council (horizons.mw) land management Staff, an agricultural consultant from Agriculture New Zealand and a group of livestock producers in the southern Hawkes Bay in 1999. It is currently being refined by a second group of producers in the Wanganui area.
The rationale behind the project is that farmers need reliable soil information to make best use of their land while managing environmental impacts. This kind of information is not available to most farms and is costly to obtain from experts. In addition, farmers require new skills to use the information most effectively. The education package will provide farmers with “easy-to-learn” skills for identifying and mapping soils on their own farms. The package includes a module for linking the properties of soils to their behaviour, and responses to management, as well as examples of how this information can be used for making management decisions.
The education package is an extension of the Westview and Gwavas study groups, where this type of soils information was used successfully by farmers to identify strengths and weaknesses in different parts of their farms and develop new, more profitable management options with improved environmental outcomes.
2. Whatawhata Catchment Management Project
This project takes a quite different approach by focusing on the design, implementation and monitoring of a catchment where rapid land use change is taking place - away from almost total pastoral use to a mix of intensive pastoral use, forestry and conservation.
The project centres on 280 ha of land at the Whatawhata Research Centre, an enclosed catchment 30 km west of Hamilton. The area is paired with a native bush catchment, which NIWA has monitored for both water quality and aquatic ecosystem health for the past five years. Participants in the project include farmers, Regional and District Council staff, the Department of Conservation, researchers from NIWA and AgResearch and the AgResearch farm staff. The project has progressed through the following stages:
Defining a well managed catchment
In the first stage participants developed criteria for a well managed rural hill country catchment. These criteria included the five listed earlier in this article. They then assembled a tool-kit of indicator methods for measuring these criteria, including financial aspects (e.g., profit, farm value), animal performance, environmental (e.g., erosion, water quality, native species health, nutrient balances), aesthetic and social. Currently available technology, such as OVERSEER, for calculating nutrient budgets, and MCI, for assessing in-stream ecology, were identified as measurement tools.
Baseline measures
Considerable effort was then put into making baseline measurements of the current state of the catchment. The results have shown moderate farm financial performance, consistent with the MAF study showing poor viability. Contaminant loadings in waterways were quite high, and the quality of aquatic habitat has reduced. Erosion rates have declined since the 1920-1940 period, but are still assessed at around four tonnes/ha/year.
Planning change and evaluating options
After taking all this information into account, the group has redesigned the catchment land use into something more sustainable. It proposes to convert almost 60 percent of land into forestry (based on erosion rates and long-term gorse problems), fence off and enhance native vegetation remnants, exclude stock from waterways and intensify farming on the more contoured land. The group estimates the project will establish in 18 months the land use change an individual might implement over 30 years.
Currently the programme is focusing on evaluating future options. Researchers are using models and expert knowledge to forecast the future impacts of land use change on catchment performance, using the indicator set developed previously. Some interesting results are already apparent; for example, one option evaluated was conversion of 50 percent of the catchment to forestry over a 30-year period. This is a major land use change for an individual farmer. Erosion forecasting indicates this will reduce total erosion by about 1 percent per year to a maximum reduction of 40 percent below current rates in 30 years’ time. The forecast indicates that rapid progress in erosion control will not be easily achieved, and consequently policy development needs to take a long-term view of land use and management trends in order to effectively intervene for the benefit of society.
The future
During the coming winter the land use changes will be put in place and monitored over time to see how the total system responds. More work will be done analysing the cost and benefits of land use change over the range of indicators. Further examples looking at farm profit and aquatic ecology are currently being worked on. The combination of this data with the forecasting analysis has the potential to help both land users and policy agencies develop more effective approaches to land management.
Hill country such as that illustrated in the Wharite Peak area of Manawatu embraces a great diversity of soils, landscapes, micro-climates and land uses that need to be considered when implementing a sustainable land management strategy.
In Summary
Hill country sustainability continues to be a major issue for the country. Its importance is recognised by: central government through its Sustainable Land Management Strategy, Green Package funding, East Coast Forestry Project, etc; local government through its input into farm plans, Landcare groups, riparian planting etc; and a number of other agencies such as NZ Farm Forestry, Landcare Trust, community groups, Focus Farm groups and agribusiness with their quality management programmes.
Because of the financial constraints faced by farmers and the time lags involved in eco-system response, both the implementation of and the ecological benefits from management change will take time. If the “natural” rate of change is not sufficient, then policy intervention may be required. However, policy agencies need to consider these long lead times and the “natural” changes that are occurring in land use as they decide where to allocate scarce resources.
Success in this area of hill country sustainable management will continue to require the initiative, commitment and joint approach of these various agencies and groups. In addition, quantitative assessment of the current situation and future scenarios will assist in focusing effort on those areas where management change is most urgently required.
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Phil Journeaux Regional Team Leader, Policy
Information Group, Hamilton. |
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Dr Alec Mackay Biophysical Scientist in the
Land Management Group, AgResearch Grasslands, Palmerston North. |
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Bruce Thorrold Scientist, AgResearch Ruakura. |
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Barrie Wallace Regional Team Leader, Policy Information Group, Palmerston North. Barrie’s experience covers 24 years in MAF’s Advisory and Research Divisions in Otago, the East Coast of the North Island, its International Business Unit in Head Office and MAF Policy in the lower half of the North Island. He is currently MAF’s representative on RMA matters in Taranaki. |
Contact for Enquiries
Amber Duncalfe
Editor - RM Update
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND
Tel: +64 4 894 0710
Fax: +64 4 894 0745
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