We've got it - so when do we start to flaunt it?

OPINION: NZ needs to make the most of what it's got if it's going to match or beat Australia on the economic front, writes Don Nicolson.

Yes, Australia is beloved of God. It's sprinkled with minerals but, unlike Alan Bollard, Federated Farmers doesn't see it as a latter-day El Dorado.

El Dorado is, in fact, New Zealand. We've got the means to pass Australia but do we have the will?

Weta's Richard Taylor and Sir Peter Jackson are great achievers but they're the icing on our economic cake. The substance of that cake will come from developing the biological economy with sensible mineral exploitation.

If New Zealand is the tortoise to Australia's hare, we've got something it lacks. Lots of water. Water is a necessity of all life and dovetails with the economic backbone, which is the agricultural sector.

Whether it's mohair fibre or stunning Central Otago pinot noir, we all need security of water to grow economically. The potential is immense.

One prominent commentator claimed last year that we'd run out of productive land. We haven't, as the Mackenzie Basin applications show. That's why the Mackenzie Basin is an economic development test for this Government.

If we take just the Canterbury region, there is enough water storage potential there to irrigate a land area larger than Samoa.

That, by the way, will take just 12 per cent of the water in Canterbury that currently runs out to sea.

The award-winning Opuha Dam proves that water storage works commercially with its economic payback of 8:1. More water, more productive land, more exports. It's a simple equation but demands a mind shift in Government from passive to active.

Give us the policy and practical tools and our farmers, winemakers, fishers and foresters will win economically. The agricultural sector needs a Crown agency dedicated to agricultural infrastructure, like the Land Transport Agency is to transport.

Water is at the top of our list and it's about future proofing the economy while maximising our most productive seasons.

While water is one side of the primary coin, pasture is the other. Modelling by Business and Economic Research Limited, for the Pasture Renewal Charitable Trust, indicates refurbishing farm pastures has the potential to increase pastoral agriculture's direct contribution to total GDP by $2.2 billion.

The Government, along with Federated Farmers and the industry bodies, has a educative role to play as it's an easy economic win.

Before the Greens predictably belittle agriculture because of its supposed environmental impact, here's a challenge. What's the environmental impact of New Zealand's third most numerous large mammal - you and I? Cows and sheep don't use detergents, they don't use most of the 3.8 million registered vehicles and they don't need landfill. Individually, each Kiwi will generate 99,000 litres of wastewater in a single year and there's 4.3 million of us.

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Yet it's not all about the land. According to Ernst & Young, aquaculture could be worth up to $2.2b to the New Zealand economy. That's conservative. Norway exports $4.5b worth of salmon and trout each year and controls much of the Scottish and Chilean production.

Aquaculture is to Chile what sheep are to New Zealand - a $3b dollar industry. It would take 10 Avatars each year to generate this amount for our economy, and more without film subsidies.

Trout is another test of economic resolve. Trout can easily be farmed in saltwater or fresh and, if the Government is serious about exports, lifting the commercial prohibition is a must.

Trout alone could be worth US$50m within five seasons and much more after that. It's the tip of an iceberg. What aquaculture needs is direct policy support, and research and development investment. In fact, research for the entire agricultural sector is vital. New Zealand needs to get serious and target a sustained investment of 3 per cent of GDP by 2029.

Yet a "quick start" to passing the lucky country means unleashing our mineral wealth. Our on-land mineral reserves are estimated at $140b - if we have the political will to sensibly extract it. The DOC estate doesn't mean open-cast mining around Milford Sound, but that'll be the shrill claim of opponents.

In Southland, there is a 650-year supply of lignite that has the potential to generate the equivalent of $1.5b in export equivalent income each year. Yet few people are aware of just how vast New Zealand really is. We "own" 5.7 million kilometres squared of seafloor - equivalent to two-thirds of Australia's landmass.

The estimated mineral wealth in just 4 million km2 of that area has been estimated by Canterbury University at half a trillion dollars. Additional seafloor added last year potentially contains hundreds of billions of dollars more.

The technologies for deep sea mining, embryonic as they are, do exist. New Zealand ought to be at the vanguard of developing this technology - it's a gamebreaker if done sensibly.

Australia only became the lucky country because of China's insatiable appetite for minerals. It rode the commodities boom led by coal - its largest but most unsexy export.

New Zealand has three things that give us a unique competitive advantage over the so-called "lucky country" - water, grass and dirt. True economic success is not running your economy like Usain Bolt, it's more like chess.

Australia without water is arid and inhospitable. Our Government must go for checkmate by reducing its spending while backing our true biological and mineral advantage.

Don Nicolson is president of Federated Farmers.