Farmers urged to clean up act

Synlait boss John Penno is urging the dairy industry to do more to influence farmers to improve their environmental record.

The industry's dairy companies should play a major role in this by ensuring their farmers produced their milk at a high environmental standard, he told farmers and environmentalists at the Lower Waitaki River Management Society's annual meeting in Glenavy.

They could provide incentives for farmers to make improvements by paying them a premium, he said.

Synlait were the first company to introduce financial penalties for farmers breaching resource consents as well as premiums for suppliers with higher levels of environmental performance.

Such measures were needed if New Zealand were to keep supplying milk products to overseas consumers such as the Chinese, he said.

"We have chucked farmers out of our supply base for not being at a high enough standard, because you can't be in these supply chains and targeting these sorts of customers if you don't have high standards."

There was growing concern from dairy farmers at the size of growth in the industry. This had resulted in deep community feeling, which was understandable.

"We are at the point now that in the last 10 years a dairy industry the size of Taranaki has been laid out across Canterbury, and it's caused a huge amount of change."

Mr Penno's company runs about 15,000 cows across Mid Canterbury and also collects milk from about 15 farm in South Canterbury. Most of the land they collect their milk from in Mid Canterbury has been converted to dairying.

Water was Canterbury's most important resource and the region had to get its management right as dairy farmers would be in the future the biggest user of water, Mr Penno said.

He urged the public not to hesitate in contacting the regional council if they believed there was farm effluent running off farms and polluting rivers.

"If there are farmers doing that, then the big stick needs to be there for them."

Dairy companies were taking a "reasonably sensible" approach to taking the milk supply from bad farmers, he said.

"One thing we do all see eye to eye on is the way we are going to treat bad farmers, so if any of us ends the supply because the farmer does not have a high enough environmental standard, there is an agreement between the companies that the other company won't take them on."

The bulk of dairy farmers were good farmers and were starting to lose patience with those hurting the reputation of the industry.

"The stick is getting bigger and bigger and that is appropriate."