Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Colin Hurst: Federated Farmers President on the Government's changes to the Freshwater Farm Plans

Transcript

Colin Hurst: Federated Farmers President on the Government's changes to the Freshwater Farm Plans · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Governments revealed what it's going to do about the new
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: freshwater farm plans. This is the replacement for the resource consenting.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Now certification will only be required for farms where high
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: risk activity occurs. That's things like dairy farming, grazing pigs,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and commercial veggie growing. Colin Hurst, fed Farmer's President with
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: me this morning.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Hey Colin, Yeah, good morning Colin here.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good to have you on the show. Colin, Hey,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: just tell me what's actually changed here.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Well, essentially what's happened is the game have come out
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: with these new settings. Essentially, these freshwater farm plans are
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: going to replace resource contents for farming. So this is
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: something the industry has been working on for quite a
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: number of years and essentially it's all about reducing regulation
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: for farmers and making sure these plans are proportionate to
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: what's actually going on on the farm. So that type
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: What's the how do you know what's a high risk activity?
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: What's the where's the threshold?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well it seems like raising with in the winter.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: You know, that's because we grow the feed and there's
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: quite a lot of feed and that can be really
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: problematic if it's done poorly. So making sure that farmers
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: undertaking those practices properly and appropriately. Irrigation tends to lead
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: to intensification, so just making sure that you've got a
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: farm like that. And dairy farming is the other one
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: that there's quite a lot of focus on dairy farming,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: so just making sure that there's a more oversight on
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: those activities on farms.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: The cost was always the problem, speaking to farmers at well,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the complication and the cost of doing farm plans and
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: freshwater farm plans. Do you know what the difference would
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: be between the old system what was proposed and this
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: one in terms of cost of farms.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, the previous system it was every farm across
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: the country over twenty eight years. Now it's only farms
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that actually that haven't potentially have an impact on the environment.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: So that's a huge reduction there. Farmers will better undertake
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the farm planning requirement's a lot more themselves to try
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and work through it with lots of a consultant and
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: that type of thing, and we're expecting the cry to
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: help help a lot. Well. The other key part of
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: this RYAN is it's always utilizing existing plans that are
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: already in existence, like FMPIRA farmers have their to Hockey plan,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: so I think there's activity going on there to try
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and work out how they can move the two systems together.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Some regional councils already have a farm environmental planning system,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: so just making sure we only have one across the
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: country is probably the key one there. So it's getting
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: rid of duplication of different activities like that. So yeah,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: we're really welcoming with a different approach. It's quite refreshing
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: and farmers have five years to get these farm plans
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: up and up to speed and hid in existence, so
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: we're saying the costs will be quite sicently lower than
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the previous system.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Colin good to have your views, Colin Hurst, fed Farmer's President.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 3:13
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• 3:16
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