- Origins and objectives of the Group
- Management of the Group
- Physical and Technical Results
- Financial Results
- Research Activity
Kurow Pest Management Liaison Committee
Origins and objectives of the Group
The Kurow Pest Management Liaison Committee, more commonly known as the Kurow Liaison Committee, was originally formed as the Kurow Resource Committee in 1985. The origin of the group stemmed mainly from like minded land occupiers as a "cause reaction" to the severe drought in 1984/85.
The group's immediate original aims were to gain drought funding and government support through media attention. In the longer term they wanted to bring to agriculturists in the region the benefits of minimum tillage and to stimulate plant breeders and soil scientists to look into dryland variables in plant varieties. Various members of the group also looked at the importation of new legume varieties, salt bush and tree lucerne.
The key group co-ordinator, based at the Canterbury Regional Council in Twizel, had been with the group on and off from when it started in 1985. At that time he was a soil conservator working for the Waitaki Catchment Commission (WCC) and he helped to facilitate the formation of the group and acted as a co-ordinator and technical resource for trial work and field days. He was keen to introduce a new approach to sustainable land management that was modelled on farming groups in the United States.
The group co-ordinator had a Churchill Fellowship to the US in 1984 to study dry land pasture management systems. At that time the US was reducing subsidies. Farmers in Montana, Oregon and Dakota went to Washington to try and stop large areas being ploughed up with consequent soil loss through wind erosion. The communities obtained backing to purchase direct drills to stop soil erosion. They also got into other areas such as stream riparian management. Effluent from feedlots was getting into small creeks and the groups were active in shifting the feedlots to improve the waterways. These groups were really proud of their efforts that were undertaken without subsidies, using their own resources, for the good of their own area. It was this farmer driven approach that became established in the Kurow area.
In the late 1980's the Resource Management Act (RMA) brought about the dissolution of the WCC. Its successor organisation, the Canterbury Regional Council (CRC), introduced the concept of "user-pays" pest management. At this stage the Committee changed its name to the Kurow Pest Management Liaison Committee. It then had a change in role and relationship with the catchment authority.
Management of the Group
The Kurow Liaison Committee covers around 400,000 hectares of the Waitaki River catchment from Otematata to Duntroon. There are about 350 rural family ratepayers and approximately 500 urban households (150 in Duntroon and 350 in Kurow). Within this, the group is broken into five smaller areas that meet separately. Each area nominates two people to the main committee that then elects a chairperson usually with a three-year tenure. Also represented on the Committee is a person from MAF, DoC, CRC and the manager of the Kurow Pest Management Unit.
This group is slightly different from the other groups studied in that it is now a resource management Landcare group combined with a pest liaison committee (that considers the pest works and budgets of the Council). Other groups in the area have a Landcare group and a separate pest liaison committee. The Kurow group decided that the same farmers on the Landcare group should be the members of the liaison committee for pest management.
Being both a pest liaison committee and a resource management committee causes controversy as the emphasis is away from a grassroots farmer-driven approach to one where the Council is driving the process. The Council wants to use the group to explain their management systems and to get approval of their budgets by the community. The alternative role is for farmers to get together to determine what they want to do and how they want to do it, and pull in the professional resources to help them.
In order to keep the group going, there needs to be someone who has the time and motivation to keep active. Much of the success of the group is due to the role played by the chairman. The group has had excellent player/coach type people supported by a number of other strong farmers.
In the mid 1980s, catchment board subsidies on river control were being reduced. Then came the voluntary sustainable land management group to fill in the vacuum left. A huge effort was made to get it up and going but then inevitably once the issue is dealt with, farmers run out of motivation and the groups go into senescence.
In a situation where the co-ordinator is employed by the Council but acting as an advocate for farmers, the situation can become very difficult and requires careful management and tolerance from all the parties.
Physical and Technical Results
Initial Drought Response
The Kurow group formation was helped with a very strong start because of the desperate situation of the drought during the 1984/85 period. A key issue at the time was that under drought conditions some people were shifting stock out, but others were doing nothing. A meeting of about 90 people took place to address the issue of stock movement. The stock agents arranged to get stock out with the help of private enterprise. If the WCC had tried to arrange stock movement it is likely it would have only got half the job done. Once the stock pressure was reduced the WCC provided money for reseeding and seed drilling companies brought in direct drills to help out.
The group encouraged farmer led field days to look at alternative plant varieties and trial plots under normal grazing conditions (in contrast to research station based trials) with help from WCC staff. The group was so successful at attracting media attention to the problems of farming in the area that they were blamed for depressed land values and a resistance to lending from financial institutions.
Once the drought was over had passed, everyone felt pleased with their efforts and the group gradually died away. It is very difficult to keep these groups going and they require a coach to motivate them to stay active.
Pest Management
In 1991 there were hassles between farmers and the CRC over rating and rabbits. Farmers did not want to pay because the problem was not being solved. They had meetings and formed groups. Federated Farmers in the Kurow/Hakataramea area was almost defunct, but between them and the CRC a woolshed meeting of around 80 people was arranged, with mainly farmers attending. There was some anti-council sentiment up in the Hakataramea valley. Also some concern that the group was too big but when this was discussed among the people, they wanted to stay together. They ran field days on a wide range of issues including rabbits, nasella and other pests and weeds. While the group was successful in the sort term once these issues were resolved the group became largely inactive.
Another example of the voluntary approach is the battle over the secondary control of pests and provision of netting to fence off rivers. Farmers contended that rabbits were coming out of the DoC land along riverbeds and infesting their farmland. Farmers got together with DoC representatives at a meeting to discuss the issue. This started a dialogue, which now has evolved, to where the group uses the DoC offices for meetings and there is now a much-improved relationship between DoC and farmers. Out of the meeting came the acknowledgement that rabbits were bad on both sides of the fence. These meetings keep things simple and to the basics. They largely involve communication processes. The key thing is to get everyone in the room to discuss the particular problem. As a result of these types of situations, farmers are now able to develop their own pest plans and have these approved by the council each year. This means that the council does not have to employ people to do this and as a result, rates are lower than would otherwise be the case.
Farmers in the area felt that the group was a good opportunity for all the neighbours to get together to discuss relevant resource issues. They noted that this was the first time the area had a forum for this type of discussion.
The wallaby rates issue is a further example of the farmers-driven approach successfully resolving a resource issue. The CRC planned to establish a rate for the control and eradication of wallabies in the area. Farmers got together and formulated their own pest management plans to the satisfaction of the CRC and prevented a rate being imposed.
Photo 5 Kurow Pest Management Liaison
Discussing the use of salt bush as a dryland species for fodder banks - Hakataramea Valley.
Commercialising Pest Management
The Pest Unit of the Kurow Liaison Committee has been successful in implementing a `user pays' system for pest management. It has been so successful that it has won tenders for pest management work in the Marlborough area to help farmers there to set up similar systems. The Pest Unit for the Committee is highly regarded by other regional councils and is considered to be the best pest management unit in New Zealand. They are now trying to operate as a private entity so that they can tender for jobs outside their area as a Local Authority Trading Enterprise (LATE). However, they are having problems with the CRC over obtaining this status.
Southern Boundary Dispute
The original boundary between the Canterbury and Otago Regional Council districts was the Waitaki River. However, this was changed and re-established on the basis of the Benmore, Aviemore dam catchment areas and to the top of the Danzie Mountains from Lindis Pass through to the Danzie Pass. The farmers on the Southern side of the Waitaki River want the boundary placed back to the middle of the Waitaki River. These farmers feel that they are paying higher rates because of the overlap of the two regions. However, this would split the Kurow/Hakataramea Committee area into two between the Canterbury and Otago Regional Councils and result in the fragmentation of the Pest Management Unit as there are key members on both sides of the river. The majority of the Committee is in favour of the status quo with the catchment administered by one authority, the CRC.
Each Regional Council (Otago and Canterbury) has spent over $500,000 on the boundary dispute and it is now into its third round of debate. The Kurow Pest Management Committee has been instrumental in the process to resolve this dispute and provide an important channel for debate between the regional councils and land owners.
Monitoring of water "takes"
The Committee is currently looking at the establishment of a reasonable and fair approach to the use of water within the RMA and the monitoring of this without regulation. The Committee is working with the CRC to sort out and set up appropriate mechanisms, particularly in the Hakataramea, with concerned stakeholders where there is currently little information available on the water resource.
Current Scope of the Committee
Field days are held about every two years with the most recent held by the Committee in June 1997 and covering:
- a demonstration of a mulching machine;
- inspection of a nassella tussock area;
- the growing of flowers, bulbs and new commercial crops;
- fly strike control with chemicals;
- biological control of gorse, broom and nodding thistle;
- Tb and rabbit control programmes;
- demonstration of good rabbit control fencing methods.
The next activity planned by the Committee is an in-hall workshop to be held around mid-winter and covering issues such as:
- water resource management and the value of water;
- biological control of weeds;
- Genetic modification to reduce footrot in sheep;
- specialised crops;
- harvesting of sweet brier;
- research on fertiliser ground spreading.
The Committee meets every two to four months depending on the workload. In 1998 it met three times. Each of the five sub committees focuses on particular issues relevant to them independent of the main committee. When the main committee meets it covers all the issues for the whole group. For example, in a meeting of the Committee held in December 1997 the focus was on:
- RCD and rabbit
- Tb;
- plant pest inspection for nassella tussock;
- draft policy for changes to section 36 of the RMA.
In December 1998 a wider range of issues were discussed by the Committee including:
- policy on pest inspection surplus monies;
- southern boundary changes;
- buffer zones for Tb and possum control;
- broom control;
- rabbit control;
- rooks;
- ferret control;
- wilding tree control;
- rowans, elderberry and conifer problems;
- green lupin, gorse and broom spraying in riverbeds;
- nassella tussock;
- irrigation, low flows and flow monitoring.
The Committee is involved in a partnership with the CRC to undertake education programmes through workshops and field days on the use of biological control of noxious weeds i.e. nodding thistle, broom, gorse and also organising farmer groups for the control of nassella tussock, Tb and RCD
There is little interest from the wider community about the activities of the group. Meetings are well publicised with fliers in all the local publications and everyone in the district is welcome to attend. Groups such as Plunket do the catering as a fund raising activity. Apart from this, people attending meetings are made up of farmers, professional people such as researchers and local body representatives and people from the private sector including stock, machinery and fertiliser firms.
Financial Results
Discussions with the group members did not reveal any financial monitoring of the changes to farm management resulting from the activities of the group.
Results of the adoption of environmentally sustainable farming techniques are reported for Riverside Farm in Shearer and Brosnan (1994) but only in general terms. The authors conclude that by "adapting to and working with nature an economically and environmentally sustainable management system has been developed for Riverside that has made it a better place to live and will leave it a better place for future generations."
Another indicator of the financial benefit provided by the group is through the work done in 1989/90 to reduce inequalities in pest management rating. After discussions with the CRC the costs of pest control were broken down by district resulting in a saving of $80,000 across the 240 farms in the Kurow area.
The major rationale for the group's focus on pest management issues stems from this experience with the CRC and the type of savings as reported above. The Committee sees itself as providing a mechanism to keep the Council honest. In the early days of the group there was a strong feeling of distrust between the group and local bodies largely because of a lack of dialogue and a rather paternalistic or even arrogant approach shown by the latter. A major benefit of the Committee has been in encouraging the Council to communicate with farmers and become much more transparent and accountable for its activities in the district. Now that a good working relationship has been established issues are resolved in a much more even partnership resulting in more efficient solutions to environmental problems. An example of this is the work done on a voluntary approach to the control of wallaby thus avoiding the need for a rate to control this pest.
Research Activity
The Committee has always encouraged research activity and there are currently at least half a dozen field trials in the district. In the early days the WCC was active in co-ordinating and funding conservation trials for river control and shelter. Extensive trials on direct drilling of a wide variety and combination of existing and new pasture species followed this. Trials have been conducted by many different organisations including a range of commercial fertiliser and machinery firms, AgResearch and Lincoln University.
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