Yesterday I took apart my bike and crammed it into the small rental car of a friend attending the festival. We drove back to Dunedin airport, where incredibly helpful people gave us materials to pack up the bike. Upon arrival in Wellington, I unpacked it, put it back together (with the assistance of friends I ran into in the baggage claim), and cycled back around the bays. I was slightly surprised and very proud that it worked properly!  A half hour bike ride now seems impossibly short.

The festival itself was a great success. Sunday was a community open day in the town of Mataura, where I (and hopefully quite a few locals) learned a great deal. The star of the weekend was a fifth generation Queensland farmer named Sid Plant, who has direct experience of a mine moving in and destroying a farming community. His community of 64 families has dwindled to 11, as the noise, dust, and other negative impacts of the mine have driven people to sell off and move out. He said the land would take at least a million years to return to its pre-mined state. His story was poignant, and actually brought tears to my eyes as he played a song written about the sad fate of his town Acland.

We are up against something big. The powerful corporate interests that stand to make a lot of money from selling fossil fuels, especially as liquid fuels and fertiliser become more expensive, have money and influence on their side. Local and central government tend to be optimistic and enthusiastic about the potential to increase growth, and reluctant or unable to challenge the proposals. The public are busy trying to make ends meet and raise their families. They usually just want to avoid conflict, and would like to trust in the professional competence of those proposing the mine and/or those charged with regulating activities. Given the financial challenges facing many families, survival of their nearest and dearest is paramount, and they may not feel they have the luxury of protecting an abstract entity called The Environment.

For decades the argument has been that there is a trade-off between prosperity and environmental protection. It was right there in the answers to the poll on the Southland Times website yesterday. It essentially asked: Do you agree with the protestors that coal mining will be bad for the environment, or do you think we should go ahead because it will make us rich? When it is posed as this kind of dichotomy, it is easy for people to believe the Government’s rhetoric about a ‘balanced’ approach — just a little more environmental degradation for a little more economic growth won’t hurt us.

The green paradigm shift is the recognition that we don’t have to trade off our health and well-being for a little more economic growth. All the additional fossil fuels we burn from now on will only make it harder for us to transition to an economy that is not dependent on fossil fuels, and will worsen climate change. We have the opportunity to do things differently, and in a way that benefits us all.

It may not be good for mining companies, who have a mindless and ethic-free imperative to return a profit by doing the same old thing. But companies are not people. The people working for mining companies can do something different, and possibly much more enjoyable. We need government and regulation to step in and create the incentive for new activities that won’t result in catastrophic climate change, that won’t threaten our essential farmland, and that will build up (rather than destroy) our communities.

We must start with education and outreach, listening and learning. The more people involved in the conversation, the more robust our collective decisions about the future of our economy will be. As someone said at a closing meeting of the festival, a tiny flame as been kindled in the community of Mataura. I look forward to watching it grow.

This is how the story begins.

The Group was initiated by hapu of Te Uri o Hau and Ngati Whatua o Kaipara o Nga Rima, both of whom have kaitiaki status on areas of the harbour and its catchment.  They very quickly worked out that lots of people and organisations were doing work on and in the harbour, but there was a lack of integration or even coordination so the outcomes of the efforts were less than they could have been.

A research project delivered a solid base for understanding the condition of the harbour and of the influences acting on it, and now a combination of Western science and matauranga Maori is being applied.  An ecosystem managment approach is  generating solutions – focused actions, especially protecting the waterways feeding into the harbour from sedimant and pollutants.

One of the best presentations I thought was from two young farmers whose families have long association with the area, who are now devoting considerable resource and effort to stabilising eroding land, fencing off and protecting waterways, pest management, and retiring land that assists the ecological restoration and also has a positive effect on the productivity of land still in production.

It is early days, and a lot of work yet to be done, but as an example of Maori and non-Maori organisations and individuals working together with a common cause, to improve environmental, social and economic prospects, it is hard to beat!

There are great things going on in rural New Zealand with some farmers proving that we can have both a healthy farming sector and a healthy environment.

One of the last things Jeanette Fitzsimons did before leaving Parliament was to put together a collection of good farm stories about improving animal health, protecting rivers and streams, reducing pesticide use, improving biodiversity, managing the soil, and protecting against drought.

The Good Farm Stories website features eighteen of the best examples of excellence in sustainable farming. Farmers from Otago, Canterbury, Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay, Bay of Plenty and the Waikato are featured on the website.

Farmers have received a lot of bad publicity of late due to factory pig farming, polluted rivers and streams, and the proposal to farm cows in cubicles in the Mackenzie Country. This Green project helps balance a debate often dominated by a minority of farmers who are abusing the environment.

There is a good farm story for every ‘dirty dairy’ story that turns up in the papers. These good farmers are ambassadors for New Zealand’s clean, green brand.

That’s all well and good. Maybe they do taste good and maybe there would be a market for them, and maybe it would increase (captive) Weka numbers. Maybe they’ll even submit to sitting in a nice cage, like chickens…

But what I find a bit laughable is Roger’s assertion that farming Weka would benefit the species and save them from extinction:

If we want to make sure wekas are not threatened or endangered we should farm the lot because no farm species has ever died out.

Yeah, that’s worked really well for wolves. They became domesticated, and now there are wolves everywhere! Right? No, actually. Wolves are very endangered in most parts of the world, while a shadow of their former selves do pretty well as dogs.

Imagine this: We set out to farm Weka, so someone makes an inventory of all the wild Weka and chooses a (sub) species that look especially tasty or large or whatever other criteria we prefer. All the other species of Weka get left to go extinct, and may even find that their habitat is reduced to make room for the farmed Weka. We then breed millions of our selected Weka, and over time we favour the traits that make them more suitable to us – bigger breasts, more eggs(??), docile behaviour, tastier meat while eliminating the traits that make them ‘wild’ – aggressive, curious, adaptable, fast runners, loud cries to communicate, whatever. The species changes and becomes weak, they pick up parasites from other farm species, they start to require antibiotics and so on.

Look around you at other domesticated species. Bulldogs that can barely breath, Sheep with so much wool that their shit gets caught in it (leading to death from flies), Alsations with back legs that barely work and vegetables that require daily defence lest they be overrun by wild plants. None of these animals bear any resemblance to the species they are descended from. Do you think your white floppy eared rabbit would survive for 5 minutes in the wild? Does it even know how to have babies without leaving them to starve (ours didn’t. Then some dogs ate it)?

One day we find that we haven’t saved Weka, we’ve enslaved a slow, obese, lazy and dependent decendent of what used to be Wekas.

So sure, go ahead and farm them for their meat if you must (think of the children economy!), but don’t pretend you’re doing the Weka or biodiversity a favour by doing so.

And this is cubicle factory dairy production – the battery cow. Or this:

Cognitive dissonance anyone?

Most of us love having homes where we go to rest, eat, blog and shelter from rough weather. But imagine spending 8 months of the year confined inside – you’d have one hell of a case of cabin fever. That’s what is being applied for in the case of the Mackenzie Basin factory-farms.

Federated Farmers and the National Business Review are pretending not to know the difference between a herd home and a factory farm. They even think Russel Norman and I have different opinions on them.

A herd home on a Waikato dairy farm

They can’t succeed in driving a wedge between Russel and me on this because Russel and I visited Mike Moss’s herd home together, last year. This farm is featured on the Greens’ Good Farm Stories website.

Herd homes are open, light and airy and the cows are free to move around. They are not used 24/7. Even in filthy weather the cows are outside for at least the four hours it takes them to eat their daily ration of fresh grass. Then they are off the paddock, protecting the soil from pugging in wet weather and sheltering in the herd home where they have a ration of hay or silage to eat at will.

Russel and I were totally convinced when we saw the cows waiting to get back in after their time outside. When the weather is fine and the soil reasonably dry, they are outside all the time. Using a herd home as part of a pastoral farm results in much less nitrous oxide emissions from the wet soil. More manure and urine are able to be collected and treated for application to pasture when conditions are suitable. Animal welfare is improved. And herd homes can be used in a low-energy system because the cows still harvest their own feed with local dry feed as a supplement.

Mackenzie Country in snow CC 2.0

The factory-farms being applied for in the Mackenzie Basin are the opposite. The cows will be indoors 24 hours a day for 8 months, perhaps in cubicles most of the time. All feed will be brought to them, so it will require additional energy to produce and transport. Will it be palm kernel? Or maize or silage ‘cut and carried’ by trucks from hundreds of miles away? The Mackenzie Basin is a place where for much of the year no feed can be grown locally and the weather is inhospitable for cows.

Federated Farmers have twittered that it is the “principal” (I think they mean principle) that matters, not the scale. They’re wrong: it’s both.

Environmentally, scale can be everything. 180 cows might have a manageable impact on water quality, but 18,000 cows is a whole different ball-game. It is precisely the scale of dairying in New Zealand – the sheer numbers of cows, the intensity of stocking rates, and the resulting effluent and emissions – that is turning what used to be seen as a ‘clean green’ wholesome industry into a major polluter.

It’s also the principle. Outdoor cows that occasionally go indoors is fundamentally different to indoor cows that occasionally go outdoors. Animal welfare is an issue of principle, not scale – farm animals should live meaningful lives on farms, not in factories.

Intensive dairying in completely unsuitable places like the Mackenzie Country, and factory-farming practices generally, are recipes for disaster. The principle is all wrong, and the scale makes it worse still.

If you need any more convincing, then consider that Fonterra promotes use of herd homes on dairy farms, but has serious concerns about factory-farming destroying New Zealand’s competitive advantage of World SPCA-approved ‘clean and green’ pastoral dairying. And today the ODT reports Otago tourism and residents’ organisations calling the factory-farming proposals “insanity”.

You can find it here: www.goodfarmstories.org.nz

There’s a wealth of material, so grab a cup of tea and enjoy!

It’s very timely, given the headline of the DomPost today: “Manawatu River ‘among worst in the West’”. As Russel’s response notes, much of the pollution of the Manawatu comes from farming effluent, nutrient run-off, erosion and damage to tributaries that do not have fences and riparian strips. This photo was taken last year and shows an example of the problems.

Russel quite rightly says: “Many farmers are taking it upon themselves to improve the situation, but the large-scale changes we need to return the Manawatu to an acceptable level will require Government leadership.”

So the Greens are keen to highlight Good Farm Stories, shine a spotlight on pollution from all sources – Russel notes the contibution of industrial factories like Fonterra and Tui, and town sewage – and push the Government into action.

Because if we don’t, we’ll lose the ecology of our great rivers, the right of the public to enjoy them, our clean and green image and with it our export markets. So what are we waiting for?

Agricultural intensification over the past 10 years has led to the highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation.

Lake Taupo farm and forest

So says the 2009 annual report of Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute, in an article about ‘Post-capitalism conservation’.

Landcare argues that the market is disconnected from natural capital, a problem that has contributed to the current economic crisis. Land biodiversity in New Zealand is a good example: where natural vegetation has been cleared away for intensive farming. This results in:

increased risk to the ongoing supply of essential goods and services (such as clean water) provided by biodiversity, as well as its intrinsic aesthetic and intellectual value.

They say that the fragmentation of native forests and streamside vegetation also make us more vulnerable to invasive species and impacts of climate change, and reduce resilience on the remainder of native biodiversity such that it further fragments.

I was staggered at the fact that the last decade has seen the fastest decline in native vegetation since colonisation. I knew we were still losing more native cover than we were gaining, but the ‘worst decade’ status is quite extraordinary. It’s certainly more evidence that the Labour government’s environmental rhetoric was just that, rhetoric.

The key instrument to arrest this decline would be a National Policy Statement on Biodiversity to give some guidance for the Resource Management Act. There’s no doubt it’s a difficult policy to write, because to work it would have to restrict landowners’ clearance of native vegetation, and incentivise regeneration and replanting. Given this decade’s performance has been so bad, current voluntary schemes like covenants, guidelines and accords are not sufficient. It is New Zealand Inc. that will pay the cost, including private landowners, with degraded waterways and more pest and weed problems. The Greens finally convinced Labour to commit to the NPS on biodiversity as part of ETS negotiations (pine forests in the wrong place can be another threat to biodiversity), after Labour’s earlier false start in 2000. National committed to one before the election:  “National is committed to developing a NPS under the RMA on biodiversity. It is likely the 2011 deadline will be met”. This then slipped to unlikely, but now seem interested again. Whether the two old parties have more than a Clayton’s interest will be seen in time.

Meanwhile, Landcare’s work is aimed at assessing and valuing the public values of biodiversity, including the idea of biodiversity offsetting. The Greens can see some benefit in biodiversity offsetting, but plenty of dangers too.

Mokihinui Gorge from the air

Take Meridian’s proposed land-swap to allow them to dam the Mokihinui River. Their proposal is to swap the 330ha of forest and river they want to inundated in the Mokihinui Gorge with 794ha of coastal forest land they have bought. This would then mean the gorge was effectively private land, and no longer conservation land, so no concession would be required from DOC to dam it. That’s a net gain of 450ha of native forest, right?

Wrong. The first problem is that currently there are 1030ha of native forest at the two sites. Doing the swap and damming the gorge will result in 800ha left – a net loss of 330ha. While the protection status of the coast forest would be higher, it is forest now and will still be forest after so little is gained. Fundamentally, neither area of forest should be cut down .

The second problem is that the nature of the two sites is very different. Damming the Mokihinui would result in one fewer wild river, obstruct a very health habitat of the already-declining long-finned eel and whio (blue duck), and destroy a unique landscape with its own intrinsic values.

DOC and the Minister of Conservation are currently considering Meridian’s proposed land-swap, so please write to Tim Groser to urge him to turn it down.

Frog will look deeper at biodiversity offsetting in future, but finally, Landcare’s article also notes the importance to pest control to ensure we don’t just have forests, but have healthy forests. The Green MPs write about the same in the latest issue of GreenTimes, which you can read here [PDF 800kb].

It’s great to see diverse groups – tree-huggers, deer-stalkers, bird-watchers, knobbly-kneed trampers, sharp-edged climbers, risky rafters, kool-kat kayakers, and angelic anglers – representing “over 100,000 New Zealanders” and united in seeking to protect wild rivers from inappropriate and unnecessary hydro-electric and irrigation water storage dams.

They’re not saying no hydro or storage anywhere, but that we have a finite number of wild rivers left, and must protect them from being picked off one-by-one.

The groups are Fish & Game, Federated Mountain Clubs, Forest & Bird, Whitewater NZ, the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ, the NZ Rafting Association, the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater Anglers and the Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ.

The various groups point out the public values for conservation and recreation that are inherent to wild rivers, and are lost if they are dammed. For Whitewater NZ it’s enjoyment of the water, and the tourism industry; for Fish and Game it’s the fishing, of course, and the importance of Water Conservation Orders (that the Govt seems keen to get rid of); for FMC it’s the ability to walk and camp in a natural setting, of which wild rivers form the “lifeblood”; and Forest and Bird cite the unique wild river wildlife – native eels and fish, and endangered blue ducks.

The groups have fought hard for decades to get protection of wild lakes and rivers such as Lake Manapouri and the mighty Motu River. Water conservation orders have been a crucial tool in protecting such waterways, but the future of the orders, and the fate of dozens of other threatened wild rivers, is in peril.

They also note that we’ve already sacrificed many wild rivers, so there are a finite number left. They say, “Damming them is irresponsible and short-sighted, especially when there are much more responsible and sustainable options.” They’ve done their homework on the energy and irrigation needs too, which a summary of the alternative solution, and the choice, on their website. They also think that:

Energy planning must become more strategic, focusing on efficiency rather than building more dams. The Electricity Commission has said that NZ could make savings of 6400 gigawatt hours a year – equivalent to 20 Mokihinui dams – at less cost than building new electricity generators. New Zealand also has plentiful wind and geothermal resources that can be better developed to generate electricity. Innovative emerging technologies also show promise.

Industrial-scale farming is demanding more water from rivers to irrigate land that is naturally too dry for dairy cows. Farming use should be appropriate to the climate and land.

I’ve signed up as a supporter on their ‘oarsome’ website. Please join me!

First dig up Southland. Probably farmland at this stage, but could be conservation land once the Minister’s review of Schedule 4 is finished.

Extract lignite, the lowest quality coal, very wet and of low calorific value. Add copious water pollution, coal seam methane and land disturbance from open cast mining.

Then a chemical process will react the lignite with nitrogen from the air and make ammonia, then urea. Lots of greenhouse gas from the carbon in the lignite, but hey, we can capture that and store it underground for hundreds of years, where it will do no harm. That way we won’t have to pay for any carbon emissions. How do we know it will stay there? Well, we think it will for a little while, and even if it doesn’t, how are you going to prove it? Quite a complicated process, trying to monitor carbon dioxide seeping out from the ground. Probably no-one will want to pay to do that.

But I’m getting distracted. There’s a huge market for urea in NZ as a nitrogen fertiliser on farms and currently the plant at Kapuni that makes it from natural gas can’t make enough so we are importing. A good kiwi business, Solid Energy – really wants savings on our import bill.

It’s urea that makes it possible to run five cows per hectare rather than two, and increases milk production.

It’s also urea that causes cow urine to emit higher levels of nitrous oxide and the higher stocking rate also increases it. Along with climate changing emissions it greatly increases the runoff from farms to waterways, increasing nitrate levels and faecal bacteria in the rivers we want to swim in or drink from.

But it’s also urea that makes farming profitable, right?

Wrong. I’ve visited a number of dairy farms in the Waikato recently who have given up using urea and dropped their stocking rate. The extra milk they could produce isn’t worth enough to pay for the urea, for the bought in feed to enable them to run those high stocking rates, and to pay for grazing their young stock off the farm to make more room for milking cows. If they are also able to claim the organic premium, they are laughing all the way to the bank. They also tell me their stock are much healthier, their vet bills halved or better, their soil micro-organisms more abundant. Here’s my Straight Furrow article.

This dog of a project has only emerged because of the Government’s proposed changes to the ETS. These changes mean that there is no cap on the emissions for Solid Energy making the urea, or for farmers piling on more nitrogen.

New Zealand’s emissions will rise substantially, but you, dear taxpayers, will foot the bill.

Muldoon would be proud of this new Think Big, which will no doubt be as profitable as the last lot, if anyone is old enough to still remember them.

The Green Party is analysing the full impacts of this proposal and we expect to be able to give you some numbers when we’ve finished. But as usual, at the moment we have more work on than we can handle.

The Mohaka River has a Water Conservation Order on it. However its quality is declining. One tributary comes from the volcanic plateau where land has been converted from forests to industrial-sized dairy farms. [See my earlier post of Fish and Game's underwater video showing the mixing of the polluted Taharua into the pristine Mohaka waters.]

One of the Taharua farms is a Crafar farm and has been convicted of illegal effluent discharge in the past and given a record $37,500 fine at that time [now surpassed by the $90,000 fine for a Waikato Crafar farm].

However, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is grappling with the problem that even full compliance with effluent discharge rules will not arrest the decline of the water quality. The Chair has written that:

…science now strongly suggests that three large intensive dairy farms, on a small catchment with light volcanic soils, are overloading the Taharua stream with nutrients, which is then detrimentally affecting the Mohaka River, particularly in its upper reaches.

Baybuzz recently wrote about a Council meeting where this was discussed.

In a meeting yesterday full of promising aspirations to clean up the Tukituki and allocate its water, to rescue the Taharua River from nutrient overload, and to “engage” dairy farmers in the Bay, our Regional Councillors just couldn’t bring themselves to utter the word “regulate” … as in require land use practices that would mitigate unacceptable water pollution. Even when posed as a “last resort” option to deal with the hard cases.

Haven’t we learned?
If we don’t regulate builders, we get water-logged homes.
If we don’t regulate financial institutions, we get fleeced.
If we don’t regulate medical practitioners, we get maimed or worse.
In each of these cases, we legislate formal standards and then enforce them.

The HBRC Chair Alan Dick replied that the Council is willing to regulate, but only the “effects of land use activities and the consequent non point source discharges that are generated”. However, when regulating effect is not enough, regulating cause is needed. Sadly, an attempt to get the Council to agree to simply investigate regulating land-use was rejected.

These soils are simply not suitable for dairy environmentally, or economically given that 2 of the 3 farms are apparently now in receivership. It seems a good opportunity for the Council or Government to buy them and plant some sustainable forestry.

The decision of the Council is to be considered by the whole Council this Wednesday. The Mohaka is a national treasure – Water Conservation Order are for “nationally outstanding” waterbodies – so it is quite appropriate for all Kiwis who love the river to have a say, not just those who live in Hawkes Bay. The Council needs to strongly regulate cause and effect to clean up the Mohaka. You can email the Chair of the HBRC - Alan Dick .

Baybuzz also reported that at the recent HBRC meeting, someone called Simon Lusk commented:

Councillors should be aware that the interests of a limited few to make a profit out of a public good is not a platform that has lead to enduring electability. Voters in NZ and overseas have taken direct action at the ballot box to protect water.

Hear hear!

The World Bank has withdrawn funding for the palm oil sector including the Wilmar company that supplies [PDF] palm kernel to Fonterra. The World Bank is not satisfied that the palm plantations they loaned to in parts of the developing world met acceptable standards for sustainability. Congratulations to the Forest Peoples Programme and other groups such as Greenpeace for the excellent activism and lobbying on this issue.

As a forests campaigner I am delighted at any moves for reassessment by the funders of planet-wrecking. The wholesale destruction of tropical rainforests in places like Sumatra, Kalimantan and West Papua has accelerated since the rush to produce palm oil. Fonterra and New Zealand dairy farms are some of the largest customers for palm kernel on the planet, which is a co-product of the palm oil plantations. They need to stop and think about their responsibilities.

The illegal and unsustainable logging which precedes the plantations must stop.  The palm oil boom has made it even tougher to prevent the extinction of rare plants and animals which depend on tropical rainforest. Then there is the small matter of the 60 million indigenous people world wide who depend on the integrity of forest ecosystems. Rainforest destruction is our loss in terms of climate change and biodiversity, but forest people are also hit by the immediate front-line loss of homes, food supplies, culture and future.

It is about time that the World Bank slowed down the funding of deforestation and demanded robust certification of all products connected to its funding programmes. Their action signals to industrial dairy, corporates that market palm products and concerned citizens that all products from the tropical rainforest areas of the world need careful scrutiny. It is not easy to verify that timber or palm products come from socially and ecologically sustainable sources, but consumers can start by asking questions.

This destructive industry is attempting to claim green credibility, but with little success. The English Advertising Standards Authority has just upheld  a complaint by Friends of the Earth of misleading advertising by Malaysian Palm Oil companies. An advertisement claiming palm oil to be The Green Answer was found to be untrue.

The World Bank has signalled change with their cheque-books and we can also do our bit. In this country, and globally, Fonterra needs to examine the use of palm kernel as an animal feed, just like Cadbury did with palm oil recently after intense public pressure.

I’m confident that New Zealanders are also keen to reject illegal logging. Fortunately, Parliament has an opportunity to stand up against rainforest destruction by voting for my Member’s Bill, the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Bill, which will regulate the trade at the border. The Bill will be in the House at the end of this month so I’m asking you to remind the Government of Aotearoa New Zealand how to vote for the forests.

It looks like Armageddon. It’s just a palm plantation.

Palm oil is a controversial component of everything from cosmetics to confectionery. Its use has been blamed on the destruction of tropical rainforest and habitat for the Sumatran tiger and orang-utan. Public discontent is growing. Just last week, Cadbury New Zealand announced it had shelved plans to use palm oil in its Dairy Milk chocolate.

But oil is not the only product that comes from palm.

Palm kernel expeller or PKE is a product made from its crushed and processed fruit. Unlike palm oil, its use has received minimal press. Two weeks ago, the Sunday Star-Times travelled to Indonesia, with an unofficial environmental and rural sector delegation, to investigate this trade first-hand.

Russel pointed out the massive increase in palm kernel imports last year, and the latest figures show it has again doubled in the last year. We imported 1.1 million tonnes in 2008.

Kim’s feature story quotes Russel’s speech in Parliament where he said:

Increases in consumption of palm kernel mixtures or `cakes’ by New Zealand agriculture over the last seven years, excluding this year [2008], would need up to 900,000 hectares of rainforest to be cleared for palm oil to meet the increased demand if new plantations were required … equivalent to clear-felling rainforest four times the size of Te Urewera National Park.

So, adding in 2008′s 1.1 million tonnes the area may be now more like all of New Zealand’s National Parks combined! The scale is mind-boggling. Just picturing 1.1 billion kgs of PKE is difficult – that’s the same weight at 2.2 billion packs of butter or 200,000 male Asian elephants!

This morning Russel notes the impact that New Zealand’s addiction of PKE is having on our own farmers:

Just this week members of the NZ Grain Council wrote to the Green Party concerned about large-scale PKE imports because it is environmentally destructive, is a biosecurity risk, and is leading to the ‘demise of the NZ domestic grain industry’.

The Farmer’s Weekly magazine reported last week that New Zealand grain farmers have been hit by a ‘perfect storm’ with ‘a large carryover of maize, wheat and barley from last season’. Unsustainable imported feeds like palm kernel are used instead of locally-grown supplementary feeds.

New Zealand is skating on thin ice here. We countered “food miles” claims by pointing to our sustainable and natural outdoor grass-fed farming practice, yet the whistle has now been blown on an increasing and large-scale addiction to a terribly destructive imported ‘fast-food’.

Cadbury realised pretty quick they were on a hiding to nothing with palm oil in their chocolate; will our Government and industry act to prevent this sabotage of our ‘clean and green’ economic advantage?

I spoke yesterday at the hearings in Whakatane for consents to discharge to air and water from the pulp mill.

The pulp mill, owned by companies Carter Holt Harvey and Norske Skog, started polluting the Tarawera River and the air around Kawerau in 1955. Now they want another 35 years of maintaining the status quo. The local Green Party and I have sought a maximum ten-year consent, as reported in the NZ Herald this morning.

We also cannot accept the companies’ repetitive use of an “exceptional circumstances” excuse to pollute and discolour the Tarawera River. Section 107 of the RMA allows for otherwise polluting discharges to air and water to be granted under “exceptional circumstances”.

‘Exceptional’ means something ‘extraordinary’ or ‘infrequent’, yet the Tarawera has been ordinarily and frequently (indeed continually) polluted for 54 years. Reapplying for “exceptional circumstances” is an unacceptable interpretation of our environmental protection laws.

The pulp and paper mill needs to demonstrate a transparent and robust plan to stop using the chlorinated chemicals that turn the Tarawera River into a polluted private drain, and do this within ten years.

Kiwifruit grower Harry Lagocki warned that the pollution damages Bay of Plenty’s horticultural industry. He said, “I have to convince buyers that my water is clean, or my fruit is rejected. This is not just tree-huggers who will be affected here, it is serious businesses with a lot to lose.”

I also challenged the hearings panel to recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi responsibilities by honouring the consistent call by tangata whenua to stop the pollution of their river.

The hearings panel applying our environmental protection laws need to send the companies a strong message that they need to take cultural and environmental responsibility, demonstrate best practice in the management of the mill, and stop the pollution.

The companies threaten to close the mill and cause job losses as soon as they are challenged to improve their practices. We must resist these threats – this bullying approach must not be rewarded by yet another “exceptional” 35-year consent to pollute the the beautiful Bay of Plenty.

Photo from NZHerald website

The Mohaka River has to be the jewel in the crown of Hawkes Bay trout fisheries, yet the upper reaches of this magnificent river are in decline due mainly to intense dairy farming and the subsequent effluent run-off.

One of its tributaries is the Taharua River, into which flows pollution from a large industrial dairy farm – a famous one in fact. Taharua Ltd’s owner Crafarms has been convicted multiple times, with the most recent just a fortnight ago.

To illustrate the effect of dairy pollution on waterways, a Hawke’s Bay Fish and Game officer has posted this video showing the change in water quality of the Mohaka River above and below where the Taharua flows into it.

As Baybuzz wrote yesterday:

The source? This small area [the Taharua catchment] is home to a third of the [HB] region’s total dairy herd, some 9,000 dairy cows. Saturate a free-draining pumice soil with that many cows and the situation is right for the increased nutrient levels observed in the upper reaches of the river. …

[Fish and Game officer] Maxwell notes that the Mohaka is the only river in Hawke’s Bay supposedly protected by a Water Protection Order, yet it appears to be deteriorating … in part because the Regional Council lacks the appropriate mechanisms in its Resource Management Plan to regulate the land use that is the suspected cause.

The solution? Upping pollution fines – one positive part of National’s first RMA Bill. Strengthening the RMA – the opposite to what the RMA Bill does. Strengthening and expanding Water Conservation Orders. And some political will to back up Ministers’ bark with some bite.

RadioNZ’s Insight doco at 8am was on carbon offsetting. Reporter Ian Telfer narrated a well-rounded look at the benefits and risks inherent in the largely-unregulated voluntary carbon market. Includes Jeanette Fitzsimons. Podcast here.

On TVNZ’s 9am Q&A show, Guyon Espiner interviewed Minister Smith on climate change targets. The show’s panel was well-informed – made up of  former Minister Simon Upton, political scientist Terese Arseneau and our own Jeanette Fitzsimons.

Frog will look in a later post at the new NZIER/Infometrics economic analysis of the ‘cost’ of a 40%announced by the Minister, but it seems to again ignore the economic benefits and opportunities of moving to a low-carbon economy, the long-term threat of climate change to the whole economy, and the threat to NZ’s premium brand if we don’t set a responsible 2020 target. Jeanette noted that the Government has yet to do an assessment of what NZ’s emissions reduction options are possible and their costs and benefits, so the economic analyses rolled out are just straw-men to make it all seem too hard. A bit like the All Blacks deciding to play for a draw just cause the Spingboks forward pack weighs more than theirs.

The Minister also pointed to the importance of supporting low-carbon technology transfer to developing countries, but seems reluctant to recognise that a responsible 2020 target would allow NZ to facilitate that through assisted emissions reductions offshore. Story and video here.

Last, RadioNZ’s Sunday Group panel on “Irrigating the Mackenzie Country” [not online yet, but will be here] held an informative debate about the impacts of massive irrigation in this iconic dryland landscape, including the threats to tourism, water quality, and biodiversity. Recommended listening.

So much good stuff, I might need a Sunday nap!

The Green MPs personally pay to offset their flights through carboNZero, choosing native forest regeneration projects like the Hinewai Reserve on Banks Peninsula as preferred use of the credits. Photo credit – EBEX21.

Federated Farmers believes the hypocrisy of environmental lobbyists has been revealed by their silence on urban pollution.

“Yesterday, farmers learned that raw sewerage and heavy metals are being pumped into Wellington Harbour. But environmentalists like ‘hook and bullet’ have only vented their fury today, not on dirty cities as you would expect, but on the tired dirty dairying lie,” says Lachlan McKenzie, Federated Farmers Dairy Chairman.

This despite ‘environmental lobbyist’ Russel Norman’s twin press releases – on dirty dairying and Wellington Harbour!

• Fonterra must act on dirty dairying to protect New Zealand commented on another conviction for dairy pollution and the need for Fonterra to take some responsibility.
• Central govt leaving councils in the poo commented specifically on Wellington Harbour and the need for Government to take some responsibility for such urban pollution issues.

Hunting and fishing advocate, Fish and Game, commented on the dirty dairying conviction, but not on the harbour sewage. However, their mandate is over freshwater fish and gamebird habitats, so it is only logical they didn’t comment on Wellington Harbour, just as they didn’t comment on bottom trawling either.

The Feds’ aggro response suggests they’re in denial. They repeated their selective hearing on water quality science, completely ignoring the latest report’s conclusion that:

The key findings … are that water quality is generally degraded in the selected dairy catchments, particularly with respect to faecal and nutrient contamination.

Yet dirty dairying is a lie, they claim. This, despite the evidence, despite various Ministers’ challenges to dairying to lift its environmental performance, and the National Government making reform of water management a priority because, amongst other things:

Water quality is declining in many areas, particularly in lowland rivers, streams, lakes and groundwaters, which threatens biodiversity, community and cultural values, the coastal environment, and freshwater and inshore fisheries.

‘Environmental lobbyists’ will accept criticism if we get our facts wrong or are genuinely one-eyed and anti-rural, but the fact is that we are constantly engaged in both rural and urban environmental issues, and we highlight good practice as well as bad.

It’s often acknowledged that the urban-rural divide is growing in New Zealand – e.g. in the recent climate change target meetings – but it is not helpful for the major farming lobby to seek to deepen the rift with such unreasonable attacks on those who advocate good management of public resources. Fortunately, reasoned collaboration in the Land and Water Forum, including both Fed Farmers and ‘environmental lobbyists’, are working together to find solutions to both urban and rural water issues.

The Talley boys’ colourful political views are quite well known, and they are hardly the poster-boys for sustainable wild fishing. For example, this insightful analogy for bottom-trawling – a practice that has caused UK supermarket Waitrose to destock our hoki today:

Fishermen… will be able to put it through the barn doors and pick the three or four biggest cows that he wants. And he will come out of the barn doors. If he likes the look of the farmer’s wife he might take her too. But every now and then, he might knock at the barn door. He might grab the pig and the goat in the corner – but it is far more selective than that analogy.

Ironically, the fish in the Talley’s ad is a yellow fin tuna. Tuna are not farmed in NZ , but they are a wild fishery in trouble and are included on the “red lists” of Greenpeace and Forest and Bird. F&B says:

The main concerns with this fishery are: uncertainty about the state of the stocks, the bycatch of sharks, seabirds and fur seals, and the lack of a stock assessment, catch limits or a management plan. The fishery assessment plenary report states: “On a regional level there are concerns relating to the current status of this stock and the level of fishing effort…. Current catches from the stock are not sustainable under average recruitment conditions.” (Sullivan et al, 2005, p786).

Yet, the Talley’s ad says:

Both captive and wild fisheries will come to realise that their long-term survival hinges completely on truly sustainable management of fish stocks, and much reduced impact on our marine animals. Consumers are demanding nothing less, as evidenced in Waitrose’s decision in the news yesterday.

Consumers even see through attempts to paint sustainability over the exploitative rot, such as our hoki fishery being Marine Stewardship Council certified, despite its use of bottom trawling techniques, despite the fact that 48% of last year’s catch in the largest fishing ground (Chatham Rise) were juveniles, and despite the fact that the fishery kills over 300 fur seals annually, as well as sea lions and dolphins.

I’m all for sustainable fishing, and using certification to market that, but we’re stretching credibility with the constant claims that our wild fisheries are all “responsibly managed for sustainable fishing”.

Metiria’s Marine Animals Protection Law Reform Bill is part of the solution to reducing fishing’s impact on marine mammals and seabirds. It gives the Government a chance to take a key step forward in ensuring the economic sustainability of our fisheries – wild and captive – when it is debated next week. Email your MP requesting their support for it.

Fed Farmers Dairy chairman Lachlan McKenzie addressed the organisation’s AGM  yesterday and made some quite ridiculous and irresponsible comments on the progress that farmers have made in cleaning up waterways.

This time last year, Fish and Game New Zealand was calling on the government to regulate production in the agricultural sector. My how the tables have turned. NIWA and DairyNZ’s last report showed that water quality is no longer declining in the intensive dairy catchments despite a major increase in animals. Now that the scientific evidence is on our side maybe Fish and Game can actually focus on its real job… All I can say is that it is a shame our most vocal critics suffer from selective hearing when it comes to the great strides dairy farmers have made in recent years.

Hmmm… selective hearing – that’s not good? Well, let’s have a look at the NIWA report that Mr McKenzie cites….

The results of the NIWA survey on river quality released last week show very clearly that as agricultural use of land increases, water quality is deteriorating. Of the 77 monitored sites tested, nitrogen levels rose at 52 sites and fell at none. Phosphorous levels increased at 22 sites and fell at only nine. Lead authors Deborah Ballantine and Robert Davies-Colley say that while there have been ‘spot’ improvements, overall the quality of water in New Zealand rivers continues to get worse. They say the links between deteriorating water quality and agriculture are clear.

Mr McKenzie is the one selectively reading the science. Just yesterday Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith released two new reports on freshwater quality, one of them a baseline study on at water quality in dairy farming catchments. The Minister himself shot-down Mr McKenzie argument:

There is a significant water quality issue emerging in areas of intensive farming, particularly dairying… It is no surprise that the report identifies degraded water quality in these areas and reinforces the need for further Government initiatives.

I don’t for a moment diss the great work that some farmers are doing to take responsibility for the impact of their stock on waterways. Jeanette has been visiting as many sustainable farming operations as she can in recent months to learn what responsible and innovative farmers are doing, and earlier this week, Kevin Hague blogged on a great community initiative in Golden Bay that has seen the Aorere River – a heavily farmed catchment – dramatically cleaned up to the point that aquaculture farms at the mouth of the river are healthy again.

Despite these initiatives, water quality in farmed catchments across the country is still declining. Until that trend genuinely reverses, there is no point using selective science to pretend otherwise. In fact it is grossly irresponsible to say that “the tables have turned”, and that “the scientific evidence is on our side’ when the trend is the opposite and in dire need of reversing. The Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture made this quite clear at the recent launch of the Dairy Strategy.

Mr McKenzie is doing NZ farmers a disservice with his misleading statements.

And, the Greens continue to promote a Green New Deal stimulus measure to spread fencing and planting across the country, to create jobs and restore waterways at the same time.

Today, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has research has provided further evidence of the benefits of such approaches. Over to NIWA [link to come]:

Animal fencing and trees needed for stream restoration

The importance of tree plantings along streams to provide shade for water environments and of fencing waterways off from animals has been reinforced in new NIWA research. …

Case studies published in the latest Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research show that it takes very little time to destroy riparian margins with loss of habitat for several invertebrate and fish species. However, it takes a long time, probably more than 20 years, to completely restore a native forest stream.

Three case studies demonstrate that, while water quality could be boosted relatively quickly, plants and animals were slower to take advantage of the better conditions, and colonisation was more rapid in smaller than larger streams. …

Planting riparian margins and fencing to keep out grazing stock was important to maintain aquatic habitats, the studies showed. Changing highly erodible land from pastoral use to forestry plantings also had beneficial impact on stream life, by providing shade, lowering stream temperature to levels plants and animals liked better, and by removing livestock impacts on the waterways.