Consent issue is 'awkward', says farmer

Rangitikei farmer Roger Dalrymple is part of a farmer group working with Horizons Regional Council on changes to the way intensive farming is consented. Photo/ File

The Dalrymple brothers want consent to irrigate more Rangitikei sand country from a new bore - but getting it could be more difficult since the Environment Court's April declarations.

Hew and Roger Dalrymple's Waitatapia Station has converted sand country into highly productive agricultural land. The station consists of four farms.

They sank a new bore on one of them, in Brandon Hall Rd, last summer. It is about 400m deep because the shallow bores in that area are already at capacity.

They can't start using the new bore without consent, and Horizons Regional Council has made that consent conditional on getting consent for the station as a whole.

It was a "horrendous", complex and expensive process, Roger Dalrymple said. They would have to employ someone to do it, and feed a lot of information into the Overseer computer programme. It could cost $30,000 for each farm.

The Dalrymples' Waitatapia Station has had consent for intensive farming since 2012. The amount of nitrogen they can leach was set in that year. It was a drought year and they were grazing stock for other farmers because they could irrigate.

Mr Dalrymple would not say how much they were leaching, but said the number of kilos per hectare was high.

They have been expected to reduce their leaching since, and he thought those reductions would be starting to show now, if trends were mapped. But they haven't had lysimeters working to measure it.

The Dalrymples are among about 220 farmers who have yet to get consent from Horizons for their intensive farming.

Environment groups Fish & Game and the Environmental Defence Society took Horizons to the Environment Court earlier this year. The court said the way Horizons was issuing consents for intensive farming was unlawful and ordered it to stick to the nitrogen leaching limits set out in its One Plan.

When the court's declarations were made, Horizons had already granted 221 dairy consents for intensive farming and two horticulture ones. It had 44 consents being processed as well.

Most of those applications were then withdrawn, or sent back to the applicants because they were incomplete.

Horizons must now decide how to change its consent process in reaction to the declarations. Because of that, farmers were feeling uncertain about where they would be in five or 10 years' time, Mr Dalrymple said

"Everyone is worrying about it. We are working with Horizons to try to come up with some solutions."

The council expects to have decisions made by August. It will then have another 180 dairy consents (mostly in Tararua) to process, plus 20 horticulture ones (mostly in Horowhenua) and 15 cropping ones (mostly in Manawatu and Rangitikei).

Mr Dalrymple said farmers watching this situation would delay applying for consent.

"You delay as long as you can, because who wants to spend money if you don't have to?"

To him the environment groups are "extremists", and he had been told the Overseer computer programme, the scientists and lysimeters may not be accurate. He said Horizons was doing "a magnificent job".

"I don't think Horizons are wanting to shut anyone down. They're pushing everyone in the right direction, which is great."