Listen: DairyNZ defends farmers' effluent practices

DairyNZ Strategy and Investment Leader for Responsible Dairy - David Burger. Photo / Supplied

A recent Forest and Bird report on dairy farm effluent monitoring has put farmers' on-farm environmental practices in the spotlight again.

DairyNZ Strategy and Investment Leader for Responsible Dairy David Burger caught up with The Country Early Edition's Rowena Duncum for a chat about the report and how farmers can maintain effective effluent management.

Burger says DairyNZ was surprised by the report's "simplistic approach taken by the authors," mainly because effluent management has been "quite a success story for the dairy sector."

"If we look at how far we've come over the last decade it's actually been quite incredible in terms of the improvements made on-farm across all the regions and the work we've been doing with regional councils clearly reflects that."

Listen below:

Duncum asks Burger what best practice effluent management looks like.

"In a nutshell it's all about appropriate storage and the appropriate effluent block size for irrigation on farm." says Burger, "also really well-maintained equipment and regular processes and active management to make sure that equipment doesn't fail along the way."

Burger says DairyNZ offers a lot of advice on effluent management which can be found on its website here.