Fonterra's plan to give dairy farmers guidelines on improving their farms' environmental performance will not solve the problem overnight, a farming leader says.
"There just aren't enough qualified people to give farmers the information they need," said Dairy Farmers of New Zealand vice-chairman Frank Brenmuhl yesterday.
By summer, he said, most ofthe nation's 13,000 dairy farmers should have clear indications of what environmental standards they were likely to have to meet, but many would need an individual assessment of their property, which would take time.
Mr Brenmuhl was commenting on new calls by environmentalists for the Government to set national environmental standards to be enforced by regional councils in an effort to stop some dairy farmers polluting waterways.
Fish and Game New Zealand director Bryce Johnson said it was important to fence livestock out of all waterways; set maximum nitrogen levels for the amount of fertiliser and cow effluent that could be put on pasture in a year; and plant margins of rivers and streams to filter runoff from paddocks.
Mr Johnson's comments accompanied a scientific review by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which said agriculture was the biggest polluter of waterways, and that dairy farming was the main source of problems.
Fish and Game New Zealand, which commissioned the $26,000 report, said the findings vindicated its campaign against "dirty dairying".
But Mr Brenmuhl said the report also pointed to other factors in local pollution, including water extraction from rivers, septic tank leaks, duck faeces, horticulture, and urban development.
"It isn't just dairy. I'm disappointed at Fish and Game's continuing attacks on dairying."
Mr Brenmuhl said the report showed there had been no deterioration in water quality since 1993, even though there had been a big increase in dairy farming.
In Cambridge, Waikato Federated Farmers president John Fisher said farmers were fed up with Fish and Game's environmental campaign.
"I doubt if we'll ever make Fish and Game happy."
He said care needed to be taken that any environmental policy did not detract from the benefit dairying brought to New Zealand.
"Any land-based business must have some effect on the environment."
Forcing farmers to look after the environment would not work.
