Recommendations

We recommend that to make further progress with best management practices for sustainable land management in South Island hill and high country that Government support be directed towards ensuring that communities and individuals have the skills and processes needed to access and use information to make decisions appropriate to their particular area, rather than being presented with packages of information, practices and guidelines for sustainable management. The following areas should be priorities:

1. Developing processes to enable land managers to more readily access and use information to make decisions that achieve sustainable land management goals.

There are several steps to achieving this:

  • Develop a better understanding of what is required to achieve better access to information through a farmer-led pilot programme that takes one topic and a develops a relevant, updatable system, based on trusted sources.
  • Involve local communities in a review process to determine other information needs, and to the test pilot process.
  • Provide opportunities for skills training, using workshops in local communities, to enable better use of environmental and production information for sustainable land management.
  • Clarify where there are gaps in available information, and what is required to fill them.

Pilot project to develop a process

Processes to better access information should be developed by means of a pilot programme whereby a collaborative farmer-led team takes one topic (e.g. soil health) and brings together available information into a form, and at a level of detail, that is useful to farmers. This process would develop a better understanding of what is meant by the need for "better access to information", i.e. is it that information is hard to find? it can’t be understood? it’s hard to know what to do about differing theories and mixed messages? or is it difficulties in using information to decide on alternatives to present land uses and management practices?

The pilot would test the design of an information system that could be readily accessed and updated, developed by farmers, in collaboration with others, to target the key issues and integrate production along side environmental issues.

Paddock level Foresight

As a next step, there would need to be a strategic planning / foresight* exercise carried out with the communities (through landcare or other community groups) to identify the needs and priorities in different local areas.

If this was carried out once the pilot project for access to information was well underway, then feedback on that could be gathered at the same time.

* "Foresight" is a process for discovering a route to a desirable future. It involves imagining a realistic desirable future and elucidating ways for creating that future. It is based on consideration of drivers of change and the goals of individuals, groups, enterprises, institutions or sectors. In contrast to forecasting, which stands in the present to determine how the desired future is to be created, foresight makes participants stand in the future when their desired goals have been achieved and determine, from that perspective, what had to happen to have achieved that future. Thus it is a powerful way of overcoming a "business-as-usual" mentality.

Using information for best management practices

In addition to developing the processes for accessing information, farmers need to have the skills to use information to make decisions, especially those that require fundamental changes to current practices. Three particular areas have been identified as important:

  • strategic planning / setting goals and objectives
  • DSS skills (note results of RFT computer workshop survey >80% had made a change on farm as a result of attending a DSS course (RFT, 1997))
  • making monitoring data more useful, by enabling benchmarking and comparisons

Appropriate courses covering these practical topics, run in local communities, by trainers with good knowledge of sustainable management will also provide an important opportunity for sharing information and learning that is relevant to good farm practices for sustainable land management. This process will enable land managers to challenge and add to their existing knowledge and make changes, rather than being confronted with their existing knowledge being totally redundant (see page 5). Local workshops provide an opportunity for land managers to "think outside the square" in terms of making changes in a supportive and understanding environment. In addition, the expertise of community leaders can be passed on in situations where they gain some recognition ($$) for this.

Such workshops are most effective if run in local communities, where high comfort levels can be developed and local solutions derived. However, the costs of running workshops for small groups are high, and full cost-recovery from participants will not attract those who could benefit most.

The benefits of implementing this recommendation include:

  • The process for access to information could be useful to agencies and urban communities as well as the farm families.
  • By providing a process for accessing information, organisations could reduce costs of widespread mail-outs and similar approaches that don’t reach the target audience
  • By enabling farmers to access the information they need, and supporting them with skills training to use the information, sustainable land management decisions relevant to particular circumstances are more likely.
  • There is an opportunity to develop the information system as a neutral platform of common understanding to assist resolve current conflicts between different parties (e.g. farmers, environmental groups, councils, DoC)
  • Developing the potential to implement a wide range of alternative land use options that require new skills and capital.

2 Government input into the provision of new information / tools that are complementary to existing farmer information.

In particular, this must include revision / completion of some processes that are currently not readily available / acceptable to farmers. For the high country, two that are important are Hieracium Management Programme (HMP) which was well-supported by farmers, but has left expectations unfulfilled, through lack of funding, and land condition assessment using vegetation monitoring which needs ongoing resources to complete coverage of all areas and to support the landcare groups with outside expertise. The current funding gap in the PGSF process, which has lead to some partially completed, but potentially useful tools not being implemented must be recognised and addressed by the resource management agencies. Adaptive management is an ongoing process that requires both research and development input and end user involvement. Current funding arrangements do not provide for this either.

3 Regular scientific assessment of the resource base

There is a need to fund regular scientific assessment of the resource base and land uses to provide a "peg in the ground" against which future changes can be checked and farmer monitoring data audited.

Sustainable use of SI hill and high country resources can only be achieved if management policies and production objectives are consistent with the long term productive capacity of the resource. The need to quantify resources and monitor trends in those resources, particularly in relation to the impact of management, has been identified by both farmers and resource management agencies as being a fundamental requirement. This has become especially important since the status of pastoral resources has changed dramatically in recent decades and "traditional" standards relating to particular land types are no longer reliable guidelines for sustainable livestock use.

In public discussion of high country land tenure, land use and conservation during the last decade, the deficiencies of knowledge about basic pastoral matters in the hill and high country have become increasingly evident. Sustainable resource use without a detailed understanding of the resources available is a nonsense.

While on-farm monitoring will provide information at one level, periodic formal, scientific assessment and analysis is also needed so that valid conclusions can be drawn for particular classes of terrain. This information would be useful to a wide range of groups, and could be compared with historic survey and analysis, such as research by the former Tussock Grasslands and Mountainlands Institute.

Those who would benefit from having this information include:

  • Land managers to compare their patch and their monitoring with scientific data across many properties.
  • Local, regional and central government agencies for a scientific basis to underpin policy and planning decisions.
  • Conservationists to have factually based information on land uses to better understand causes and effects.
  • Scientists, especially those working on soil and vegetation, need objective land use information (e.g. livestock use) to enable practical application of their results.

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MAF Information Services
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND

Fax: +64 4 894 0721
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