Sixteen dairy farms have been awarded gold certificates by Hawke's Bay Regional Council for consistently achieving full compliance with their resource consents over five years. The awards event was well attended by the dairy farmers and their staff at Ongaonga Golf Club in Central Hawke's Bay.
This is a new recognition scheme, thought to be the first in New Zealand. It aims to help achieve the goal set by the Hawke's Bay Dairy Industry Liaison Group to have 100 per cent of the region's farms achieving full consents compliance.
"It's good to think that we've agreed on an outcome and that you have achieved that goal for five years, and that you are on the right page as far as your environmental footprint is concerned," said HBRC chairman Fenton Wilson when presenting the certificates.
The scheme is being run by HBRC in association with Fonterra, with sponsorship from RD1 and Farmlands and supported by Dairy NZ. The scheme recognises those farms achieving full compliance for the past three, four and five years with bronze, silver and gold recognition awards. A wide range of scale of farming operations are represented in the gold award farms that are spread through the region.
There were comparatively few dairy farms in Hawke's Bay, Mr Wilson said, but there was a high level of agreement between HBRC and the awarded dairy farmers on the importance of meeting consent conditions. It was hoped the award scheme would bring a sharper focus on improving environmental outcomes and help to overcome a level of inconsistency where some farms achieves compliance one year but not the next.