Editorial: Beyond the tipping point

OPINION: The dismal report into the environmental performance of diary farmers and the decision to park an application to build three farms for 18,000 cows in the Upper Waitaki basin made interesting bedfellows when they were made public this week.

Farmers, as this newspaper has argued before, are the engine room of the economy and are certainly hugely important to this province. Dairy farmers in particular have been doing well, and the irrigation boom across Canterbury in the past two decades means they contribute a huge amount to this economy.

That said, the release of the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord 2008-2009 snapshot report shows that a number of dairy farmers in this region are letting themselves – and, more importantly, the environment – down. The snapshot showed that in the Canterbury region only 43 per cent of farmers were complying with their resource consents, down from 46 per cent the year before. This is abysmal. It effectively means that less than half of dairy farms comply with the law and the rate of compliance is getting worse. It makes a mockery of our system of environmental protection and even has Agriculture Minister David Carter talking tough.

Mr Carter said the figures showed the regional councils were not doing enough to enforce the legislation they have at their disposal and that the tipping point – where tougher legislation was needed – had not been reached yet. He's wrong.

The tipping point has been reached, we are now going backwards. If it looks like a tipping point and smells like a tipping point, it probably is one.

The figures are particularly concerning because they have been revealed at a time when the future of Environment Canterbury – whose job it is to try and get the majority of farmers who are not conforming into line – is swinging in the breeze. This region, and indeed the whole of Canterbury, has seen the biggest growth in dairy farming thanks to the irrigation boom and, as a direct result, is likely to be under the most intense environmental pressure.

The only positive that can be taken from the accord report is that Fonterra and its dairy farmers are not making any attempt to disguise how badly they are doing. On the contrary, they are open about their failings, which is refreshing.

Central Government, local authorities and the general public should be just as open about their disappointment with the dairy industry, and make it clear it is on notice to do better. Just because the goose has laid us a golden egg, doesn't mean the bird is exempt from its environmental responsibilities and in the long run, the cooking pot.

News that an application to build an 18,000 cow dairy farming powerhouse in the Upper Waitaki basin had been parked followed hard on the heels of the damning environment report. The developers blamed the prohibitive cost of the application process, but in truth they were facing a massive uphill battle against public opinion by attempting to intensify farming to an unacceptably high degree in a delicate part of the South Island.

It was, and remains, a step too far.

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