Conservation comment: Let's get in tune with the times

Brian Doughty Photo/File

In January of this year I wrote of Mike Joy on water quality with the comment of 'I like the message but not the song'.

Now to expand on my thoughts on this issue we could quickly look at how long we have been milking cows. Since the mid-1850s we have milked cows for profit, and there has obviously been an increasing number of dairy and sheep and beef farms throughout the country, and some would say with devastating effects on the land and environment.

I have for some time had the belief that problems are not solved by going head-to-head with your opponent but by starting an open and frank discussion on the issues in front of you. Much like our choir, if we all sing from the same song sheet you will hear some wonderful singing - unlike the situation we have with Mike's book Polluted Inheritance - New Zealand's Fresh Water Crisis, which contrasts with other scientists that tell us it's not all doom and gloom with industry working hard to make water quality improvements.

Who are we to believe?

As an example of communities working together, New York City used an ecosystem services strategy through an Urban-Rural Partnership to preserve the quality of its drinking water.

Essentially, it came down to the community having an input on their expectation of what level of quality was required along with the catchment land owner's involvement.
What the farmers developed was a programme that came to be called Whole Farm Planning, similar to what Horizons Regional Council have today with incentives for the farmer to join.

This plan had the added advantage of integrating environmental protection and business improvement together with an investment plan; they also had to obtain participation by 85 per cent of all farmers in the catchment area within five years.
Within five years after this programme was established 93 per cent of farms in the catchment had chosen to participate.

Given that New York City consumes in excess of five and a half billion litres of water daily delivered to more than 600,000 homes and 200,000 commercial buildings this was an amazing result.

Now think about our own waterways being degraded by ever-increasing dairy production - but at what expense to our environment. For me the late Tony Rogers, then our dairy section chairman, summed it up by saying as the cost of converting land to dairying in some areas was becoming prohibitive, a positive spin-off would be less environmental degradation, owing to less intensive types of farming.

Mike Joy says strong enforced legislation would help the situation in solving the issues, much the same as New York environmentalists wanted to keep water quality regulations. Farmers argued that regulations were incompatible with an incentive-based programme such as we have in HRCs sustainable land use initiative, but we still have rules by way of the One Plan.

So just think, if we were all on the same page and singing the same song, what a better place this land would be.

¦Brian Doughty is Provincial President of Federated Farmers Wanganui and a long-time tramper.