Bruce Bisset: New Zealand, let's redefine farming

Heavily-fertilised monoculture paddocks are in no way sustainable, writes Bruce Bisset. Photo / File

It's ineffably sad that at a time when many farmers are facing ruin because of water scarcity, the legacy problems associated with over-use of "traditional" chemical-based farming methods are threatening to put the nail in the coffin.

The news the nitrate "bomb" hiding beneath our rural landscape is now coming through in Central Hawke's Bay – as it is or will throughout pastoral New Zealand - gives the lie to the idea that our heavily-fertilised monoculture paddocks are in any way sustainable.

That's why, if I were a farmer in trouble, I'd be getting in behind Greenpeace's call to the Government to pledge a billion dollars to kickstart a mass change to regenerative farming practices.

And let's face it, if you're in a situation where you have little left to lose, now may be the best time of all to embrace that change.

Certainly, on the evidence to date, we need government to take a strong lead and make sustainable farming our national priority.

Because it isn't happening anywhere near fast enough.

Regulatory change has so far been piecemeal at best, with only a handful of regional councils proactively working to alter land-use rules for the betterment of the environment – and constantly being hamstrung by legal challenges from the body that supposedly "looks after" farmers.

Federated Farmers cling to their "no regulation" mantra, arguing farmers should simply be "encouraged" to change and given plenty of time to get their heads around that, which reinforces a drag-the-chain attitude among farmers themselves – and winds up making regulation inevitable.

Yes, there are farmers being proactive and doing some amazing things in terms of land, stock, soil, and water management, but they are still a minority and there are very few who have been doing it for more than a couple of decades.

I've been talking about this issue for 30 years, and I'm not even a farmer. So how come so many who are, still have their heads buried in "you can't make me" manure?

More to the point, how come the, in some cases truly remarkable benefits of regenerative practices, are not being trumpeted far and loud by bodies like the Feds, bringing their members (and others) around to appreciating that it's not how many cows you can fit on an acre, its how healthy those cows and that acre are.

A happy farm is a productive and profitable farm. To be happy, it needs deep soils full of microbial life, lush variegated pastures, shady trees, fenced and planted waterways and working wetlands, forest belts on hills (not just for erosion control, but for water retention and biomass development), and animals that are allowed to follow their natural rhythms as much as practicable.

In short, farms that are treated as the ecosystem they are, not as an artificially-modified mass-production factory.

What the drought and the emerging historic problems are reinforcing is that things must change. It should no longer be acceptable for big corporate farms to waste copious amounts of water running unsustainable practices when their neighbours are dry as dust and facing ruin.

It can and should be that both units are sustained through sharing what water there is and both be viable healthy farms. But if that means the basic nature of a farm needs to change to fit the new landscape, then that's what nature demands.

The key is to fit with nature and make friends with it – not fight against it.

Because as we should have already learned from the tsunami of climate change coming down upon us, when you fight with nature, you lose.