by frog
Another disgruntled Federated Farmer, Frank Brenmuhl, is unhappy that the Greens are not recognising the hard work the intensive dairy industry is already doing to clean up its act:
Again dairy farmers through the environmental policies of DairyNZ are quietly working away in the background making incremental gains for all society and not making a big deal about it.
The reason we’re not seeing that good work is probably because it is had to see the good efforts of many hard working farmers in among the rush by large industrial dairy to convert our land to more intense dairy farms. As MAF’s Pastoral Monitoring Report 2007 notes:
Following the announcement of Fonterra’s expected payout for 2007-2008, the number of farmers undertaking feasibility studies to convert to dairying has risen to unprecedented levels.
…Southland will be one of the favoured areas for investment in new dairy farms, with 28 new dairy conversions starting in 2007/2008 and an additional 15 dairy sheds. Existing farmers will also look to to expand through the purchase of neighbouring land and run off blocks.
The report then suggests a further 60 new conversions are possible in 2008/09 in Southland alone. The number of cows on an average Southland farm has risen from 455 in 2004/05 to 549 forecast for 2007/08, an increase of more than 20% in three years. And the number of cows per hectare has increased nearly ten percent. More land used for dairy and more cows on that land.
And it’s not just Southland; while the dairy cow population in Southland has grown by 30,000 between 2002 and 2006 it has grown by over 100,000 in both Canterbury and Waikato.
The same report says that the model dairy farm of 360 cows on 126 acres could expect to pay just under $60,000 on feed for the cows including maize silage (rather than the cows eating grass as they are genetically equipped to do) and $48,000 on fertiliser. Despite farm irrigation using about half of all New Zealand’s water, and each cow forecast to bring in revenue of $2,235 MAF’s model farm can expect to pay about $1,100 on water charges for irrigation for the entire farm of 360 cows. All of these numbers are increasing from previous years.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Wed, February 20th, 2008
Tags: dairy, Federated Farmers, Fonterra, Frank Brenmuhl, MAF, Southland
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Oh, perhaps This will help explain.
And I fergot to add Kyoto and the carbon credit fiasco, to the list of why did it all happen so suddenly.
Incentives Always Matter.
But speaking as an ex-Southlander with a very intimate knowledge of the western Districts, don’t ferget that dairying Was the first land use: look at all the old dairy factories. It was a Really wet province.
But over 100 years or so, with drainage (particularly on the peat blocks) the land simply dried out, and we now see irrigation aplenty. So there’s a big historical and cyclical component to what we’re seeing now. The wheel turns….
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Hmm… but remember that all that Southland drainage is still there in the ground – typically no longer remembered or not known by current owner – and that means that when you add rain or irrigation the leaching is straight into field tiles and novaflow and then into water-ways. Returning to dairying will have quite a different effect than the early days.
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Well if we started charging them for the ridiculous amounts of excess water they need to irrigate those dairy farms, it might be slightly less attractive.
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Good thought, Ari. Property rights in water?.
And yes, nutz, those tiles and 5m deep drains are still there. We had 3 150-year return period floods in the Aparima in 18 months, and a major cause was the run-a-tile-to-every-tussock drainage paradigm that then prevailed. Which itself was aided by the ‘spend it or poay tax perverse incentives that operated then – there was always a rush on buying tiles and hiring diggers in February and March.
Incentives Always Matter.
So getting the right ones in place, is always important.
Like not inadvertently arranging matters so that there is a massive incentive to mulch plantations, sell the land as dairy, and use a bumble-footed bureaucracy to dole out water allocations on a first-up-best-dressed basis.
But that’s ancient history now. Whereas the restoration of customary practices – taonga, you might say – the use by affected individuals of ancient common-law rights to quiet enjoyment of property – just might turn this mess around.
It could even be Green Policy…..
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I’m pretty sure that while the Greens want normal (say, residential…) levels of water use to be free, there may be some support among the Party for charging for incredibly large usages of water for commercial profit.
Seems like a pretty natural extension of their Polluter Pays system to farmers who overuse irrigation. So regardless of whether or not it is currently Green policy, the precedent is there.
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