Top environment award for Matamata dairy farm

A beautifully maintained family-owned dairy farm near Matamata is the supreme winner of the 2010 Waikato Ballance Farm Environment Awards.

The Brown family, who own and run the 350-hectare farm milking 700 cows in Matai Rd, heard of their win at an award dinner at Mystery Creek last night after they scooped the Hill Laboratories Harvest Award and the PGG Wrightson Land and Life Award.

Wynn Brown, whose parents Tom and Barb bought the farm in 1970, said the family had decided to enter the awards after winning the Habitat Improvement Award in the 2001 competition.

"We entered again because our farm has grown considerably and we wanted to make sure that we were heading in the right direction," Mr Brown said. They did not set out to win the award, but learn from the experience.

He said his farm was not a clear winner for the award as so many other farmers were equally as good in his eyes.

"There's a lot of other good farmers out there," he said.

He didn't want to comment on the recent Clean Streams Accord report, which found 59 per cent of Waikato dairy farmers inspected did not comply with Environment Waikato's effluent management rules and 20 per cent were seriously non-compliant, because he had not read the report.

- © Fairfax NZ News