Dairy firms defend plans for basin

The Mackenzie Basin could benefit by up to $100 million a year if 25,000 hectares of additional irrigation is provided, according to financial assessments for the Upper Waitaki area.

Dairy farming companies Williamson Holdings, Southdown Holdings and Five Rivers have lodged resource consent applications with Environment Canterbury, which were publicly notified at the weekend.

Should the applications be approved, the companies will collectively install more than a dozen free-standing dairy farms with about 17,000 cows.

Richard Peacocke, director of Williamson Holdings and Southdown Holdings, said his companies chose to move into dairy farming in the area because "we believe that, with irrigation, the Mackenzie Basin is capable of growing as much grass as coastal Canterbury but in a shorter timeframe".

"The reason for dairy as the land use is in response to economics. You cannot economically irrigate land for any other use, except some high quality seed crops."

Southdown Holdings has already lodged consent applications to take water to irrigate Glen Eyre Downs as part of the Upper Waitaki Consent processes and plans to establish six stand-alone dairy farms over more than 2100ha.

Should Williamson Holdings' consent application to establish a dairy farm at Killermont Station be accepted, it will cover more than 3600ha and have a maximum of 3850 cows, which will be indoors for most of the year.

Mr Peacocke said this was because the Mackenzie had a continental climate, not unlike Europe where cows were housed all year as normal practice.

The proposed farm management system, widely used in Europe, would enable the operator to limit the nutrient discharge from the cows to eliminate leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus, he said.

Urine patches and intensively grazing cows on crops in the winter were the highest risk factor for excessive N and P discharge to the environment. Keeping cows off the land during the times of low temperature and high soil water content would eliminate that risk.

Mr Peacocke agreed with scientist Dr John Keoghan's comments in yesterday's Timaru Herald that the area was fragile.

"The Mackenzie Basin is a fragile environment being eroded by wind and increasingly habituated by wilding pines and hieracium," Mr Peacocke said.

"To suggest that the Mackenzie is an unspoilt tussock-covered wilderness is illogical in the extreme if one ... looks closely at the ground cover."

He said that without continued grazing of the high country by merino wethers, "the infestation of wilding pines will run unabated and the high country will look more like Canada in 20 to 30 years".

- © Fairfax NZ News