The world they will inherit

When Hawke's Bay farmers Greg and Rachel Hart's eldest child, George, was born four years ago they began to think about the world he would inherit.

Gradually, they came to the realisation that if something wasn't done he and others of his generation would be left with a polluted planet dangerously depleted of its natural resources.

So they did something. They changed to organic fertiliser, took more care of their soils, planted more trees and began to spread the sustainability message through their community.

And they sent a speculative e-mail to Air New Zealand. "Planting was proving a costly business, so we wanted to know if we could swap our Airpoints for trees," Mr Hart says with a grin.

But the airline had a better idea. It was searching for ways to display its green credentials. Would the Harts like to help with that? They certainly would.

Talks led swiftly to firm plans and 42 days after sending that first e-mail, the Harts were guests of honour at a function in Auckland to launch the new Air New Zealand Environment Trust.

Now the airline's passengers can make a donation to the trust for projects such as the one on the Harts' farm that will line 40 hectares of an unstable gully with 85,000 native trees in the next three years.

To bring the connection between town and country closer, in two years, the Harts will open their farm at Patangata to the public to see the planting develop. In the meantime, people can follow progress on the couple's website – www.thefamilyfarm.net.nz – and sponsor more trees.

"We're concerned about the urban-rural rift," Mr Hart says. "We'd like people to come and see and touch the farm. They will see a working farm – a farm that's environmentally responsible and trying to achieve true sustainability."

And, most important of all, he wants to pass on a bigger message, that saving the environment is not just a farmer's problem.

He quotes from a book, Farms of Tomorrow Revisited by Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden: "The need to share the experience of farming with everyone who understands that our relationship with nature and the ways that we use the land will determine the future of the Earth."

It is books that have led the couple to this point. Already concerned for their children's future – a year after George they had twins Emma and Bill – they were given Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, a novel that sets out the lessons humanity must learn for its survival. "It was a revelation," Mr Hart says.

"It explained how eco-systems work and how there has to be a place for everyone and everything. It says humans have come to believe that the laws of nature no longer apply to us, but we can no more ignore them than we can the law of gravity."

Intrigued, they read more. A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright, demonstrated how previous civilisations had brought about their own downfall by not looking after the environment. "When their farmland became infertile they just moved somewhere else. We no longer have that luxury."

Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawken, followed. It explained the rise of the global environmental movement and the positive changes it has brought. And Plan B, by Lester Brown, a well- researched book that took stock of the planet's resources and laid out an alternative sustainable future.

At the same time, they began to read more on the Internet about global warming and the dangers of the overuse of water in the fast- growing Asian economies.

They went to night classes at Havelock North High School and learnt about permaculture, the design of sustainable systems for everyday living. At the finish of their course, they went home to the farm and planted a vegetable garden and fruit trees.

Then, when Arden Andersen, the American doctor who promotes low-chemical "biological" farming as a prescription for better human, animal and soil health, made one of his regular trips to New Zealand, they went to see him. "He made a lot of sense," Mr Hart says. "And I was impressed that he had the backing of some respected farmers."

They also joined the Sustaining Hawke's Bay Trust, administrator of the Hastings Environment Centre which runs classes in environmental awareness, and Mr Hart became a trustee.

Then last August, he was the only farmer at a three-day discussion in Taupo on Leadership in a Climate of Change, where he talked with Morgan Williams, the former parliamentary commissioner for the environment,

Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons and representatives of government departments and other agencies. "It put a bomb under me," Mr Hart says. "The seriousness of the issues really hit home."

Inspired, he organised a series of community meetings at the Patangata Hotel on climate change, peak oil and the Transition Network that proposes ways towns can tackle these problems. He spoke about a vision for a low-energy future, self-sufficiency and a more caring community in 2020, and "backcast" how to achieve it. Attendances were between 20 and 40, which he thought was great.

On the farm, they changed their fertiliser use, switching from manufactured superphosphate to the natural reactive phosphate rock and stopped applying nitrogen. They put on more lime and added humates, natural organic compounds recommended by Dr Andersen to improve the soil's uptake of nutrients and trace elements.

Mr Hart says these measures are only a stop-gap while he works on ways to better manage the soil sustainably. He realises the wider farming world is sceptical and would like mainstream science to settle the controversy around such alternative soil treatments with independent trials that look at a farm's environmental health as well as production improvements.

He describes the farm as "heading toward a more organic system" but is careful not to sacrifice stock health along the way. Conventional drenching for internal parasites remains for now but he says that is only while he is learning the techniques required to manage without them, while the soil health is improved and new mixed pastures are established.

After working as a farm consultant, in livestock exports and as a grain marketer, he bought into his parents' 610ha farm, Mangarara Station, in 1996. He embarked on extensive improvements, subdividing, regrassing and installing a new watering system, joined a progressive farm discussion group and pushed production "hard out".

But then he began to have second thoughts. "Pushing productivity to the max didn't tie up with what I was learning about sustainability."

The trees are the most tangible evidence of the couple's change in thinking. Wispy natives, poplars and willows, their tops poking out of protective plastic sheaths, line fences, stud hillsides and cluster together on exposed vantage points to provide future erosion protection, improved water quality, stock shelter, shade and emergency feed, and timber.

Bags of the first of the Air New Zealand trust's trees sit beside gates ready to be planted.

The property also has a 30ha lake, now fenced and planted to protect it from nutrient and erosion runoff, a 12ha Queen Elizabeth II National Trust-covenanted podocarp forest remnant and 17ha of pine forestry which is about to enter its second rotation.

They have suffered badly in the past two years of drought and carry fewer sheep and cattle than normal. They have 2300 Texel- Perendale-Finn ewes and finish all their lambs. They contract-graze beef cattle and have run dairy heifers.

They regard their environmental improvements as just the beginning but they have to be careful that they do not lower their income too much. "We have to get the balance right," Mr Hart says. "The reality is, there is a compromise about doing the best for the environment while still meeting our financial obligations."

He is wary of the forecast boom in food demand that economists see lifting New Zealand agriculture. "That's happening because standards of living are rising in China and India. But those people will just add to the stress on the world's finite natural resources. At the same time, food prices will keep on rising as the demand for oil which is integral to the industrial food production system we are part of outstrips supply."

He gives an example that will resonate with farmers. "Our agricultural economy is based on digging up phosphate on the other side of the world with oil-driven machinery, taking it to a port, shipping it here, trucking it to the manufacturing plant, putting it back on a truck to bring it to the farm and flying it on to paddocks.

"It's totally unsustainable and will not work if you put expensive oil into the equation."

The future availability of phosphate fertilisers is also in doubt, Mr Hart says. "This is another finite resource which has taken millions of years to form and will have been used up in just a few generations unless we re-evaluate the way we are producing food.

"Business as usual is not an option," he says. "We have to change. We owe it to our children."

- © Fairfax NZ News