But recently my home playground and my place as New Zealand’s foremost animal representative in the cyber world have been threatened by a troubling young upstart.

Rosie.

Rosie the Cow is the New Zealand dairy industry’s “Cowbassador”, chosen by DairyNZ to spread the message to children everywhere about how moo-velous our dairy industry is here in New Zealand. This ruminant pied piper has been travelling all over the country, blogging on her website about the magic of how grass becomes milk.

Rosie, like me, is looking forward to the summer holidays and has been encouraging children to send in pictures of themselves doing typical Kiwi kid summer activities like catching their first fish or even doing some bombs into the river.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Rosie that for many Kiwi kids, fishing and swimming in their local river is no longer an option.  The swimming holes have gone because too much water has been taken to grow the grass Rosie eats. The fish have all but disappeared and signs like the one below are popping up at rivers all over the country. A major culprit for this sad state of affairs is Rosie herself.

Rosie’s website doesn’t mention the fact that she and her dairy cow mates produce 14 times the amount of faeces as a human. Rosie conveniently ignores the fact that  her urine patches  leach nitrate into groundwater and spring fed streams and nutrient runoff from the paddocks she grazes help cause the algal blooms that leave me and my fishy friends struggling for oxygen.

But even worse, dairy cows like Rosie sometimes use rivers and streams as their own personal toilet. We’re talking about my home here! Rosie bowls on into the stream, churns up the banks with her great big hooves, destroys the eggs of my endangered friend the inanga (or whitebait), and then leaves a nice steaming present for us to deal with.

Now it’s not always the case that Rosie has such freedom to roam. Many responsible dairy farmers out there have been making good progress in keeping Rosie away from my home, by following recommendations set out in the voluntary Clean Streams Accord. But with lots of small streams where tadpoles like to hang out not meeting the Accord’s definition of stream, Rosie often gets free reign here with no fences or riparian planting in sight.

None of this is mentioned on Rosie’s website, of course.  Rosie the “ cowbassador” conveniently ignores the hard truths. She is more concerned with trying to convince kids that milk and the dairy industry are more important than the health of our streams, lakes and ponds – homes for Frog, fish and tuna (eels) and once the summer playground for many.

While Northland kids may welcome Rosie’s milk, Frog, Fish and Tuna can’t drink milk. We wouldn’t survive too well in  bottled water either.

Frog looks forward to Rosie blogging about places like the Mackenzie Basin which she’ll leave to us Frogs and our fishy friends.

Environment Southland is currently reviewing their rules around effluent storage capacity. In 2007 they moved to a system which saw farms require capacity to store either 60 or 90 days worth of effluent, depending on the type of application they used. While it is good to see that they are moving to a model which is going to be based upon the conditions (like soil type and topography) at the farm, I am concerned that this will lead to weakening of the rules.

Climate change will lead to more extreme weather events and,  in the south, probably an increase in rainfall according to NIWA. This needs to be taken account of by Councils.

The Land and Water Forum’s recent report suggests that we are going to start seeing some tougher regulations around water pollution in New Zealand. This is long overdue. There are a large number of consent applications that will need to be renewed over the next five years. With talk of extending consent terms out to 20 years we need to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to deal with predicted change. Farmers want a consistent approach. Frequent rule changes are not ideal for farmers or for the environment. We need to act now before it is too late.

Scary speech of the week award goes to Chairman of South Port (Bluff) John Harrington. In a speech to South Port shareholders, he suggested we should be doubling the dairy cow numbers in Southland:

For dairying growth to have an acceptable outcome will mean a trade-off between economic growth and environmental sustainability…

When I put that into our de-spinning machine it came out as: “more dairy growth will impact negatively on the environment.”

This is quite right, and a reason why we shouldn’t be going down this path. We in the Greens have some better ideas about how to ensure our children have jobs; ideas that don’t require us to give up on our 100% pure brand.

Consent Expiries for Southland Dairy Farms - Source: Environment Southland Presentation to farmer workshops

As the Greens’ agriculture spokesperson I’ve been visiting farms regularly this year and I’ve written up my reflections on 18 of these visits. There’s great stuff going on down on the farm, and I thought it was time some of these stories got out. They include clever innovations, quality animal husbandry, excellent protection of waterways and biodiversity, reduced pesticide use, and lots of pride and pleasure in running a good farm.

I’m no stranger to gumboots, gorse and grumpy rams – I run my own farm with my husband in the Coromandel. But every farm I visited I found something new – new ideas, new inspiration and new friends.

So I think it is time New Zealanders heard more about the Good Farms Stories happening in their countryside – too often the focus gravitates to the issues of conflict, pollution or bad farming practice. But for every Crafar farm disaster there’s ten good farmers doing good stuff and I’m keen to highlight their stories, their experiences and their contribution to keeping New Zealand clean and green.

So tomorrow at 1pm I’ll launch the Greens’ Good Farm Stories initiative. You’ll find it off our homepage tomorrow.

Here’s a sample from a Horsham Downs dairy farm just north of Hamilton:

Jenny on the walkway around the lake

“When we started here, the ducks were in the water troughs and the cows were in the lake”, says Jenny.

None of the farm’s drains now discharge directly into the lake, but go through silt traps and then percolate through the wetland fringes of the lake. Now, the lake is covered with water fowl that don’t stray on to the farm because there is so much food for them in the restored habitat. The ducks stay on the lake, and the cows stay out of it.

Andrew and Jenny were prepared for a drop in production because of the five hectares no longer in grazing, but this has not occurred. The slower release of water into the lake means the pastures uphill dry out more slowly in the summer, and the silt captured from the traps and spread on the farm returns a number of minerals that improve fertility.

A key milestone [for the farm] was entering the Ballance Farm Environment Awards in 2004. While they didn’t win the main farm award, they won the restoration award. Andrew says they learned a lot, and shortly after were given the 2007 Green Ribbon rural sustainability award, by the Minister for the Environment. The encouragement this provided was very important.

Many thanks to Jenny and Andrew for their warm hospitality – and congratulations for taking a big step towards sustainability.

UPDATE: http://www.goodfarmstories.org.nz is live!