Crafars have to come clean

On the third occasion a farm his family owned was convicted for dirty dairying last year, Alan Crafar announced he had appointed one of his sons as an effluent manager, responsible for ensuring systems on all his farms were "right".

The former Fonterra shareholder council member said he was looking at setting up the 14 farms that make up the CraFarm group in such a way that the cowsheds could not be milked until the effluent had been properly stored. On Friday, after another CraFarm company south of Taupo was fined for the same offence, there were calls for more punitive action to be taken. The Green Party believes the penalties are not high enough to discourage mega-farm operations from taking shortcuts. Fish and Game called on Fonterra to put a moratorium on CraFarm milk collections as a punishment.

The fine for the latest breach is reportedly the biggest ever handed out to a New Zealand dairy farm, though the combined fines in 2005 for a Maungatautari farmer who converted from drystock to dairy was more than $40,000. In Napier, Judge Craig Thompson said the fine must send a deterrent to both the general population and specifically to the Crafar Group of Companies. His ceiling was $200,000 and his selection of a total of $37,500 left Green co-leader Russell Norman suggesting it would not make a dent in their profit margin. Dr Norman said that though the fine was the largest recorded for a single dairy effluent discharge, the fact the CraFarm farmers had repeatedly breached consents in discharging effluents into rivers and streams indicated that the fines were not working. He has a point. Taharua Farm is estimated to have generated enough milk in the last year to earn a payout of about $5 million. Dr Norman's suggestion that it may require a change in the law is wide of the mark, though. The laws already provide judges with the tools to hand out heavy punishments for farmers who neglect the environment.

The latest incident involved the discharging of 188 cubic metres of effluent from Taharua Farm's cowshed. It was permitted to discharge 80. Judge Thompson said those managing the company "must have been aware of the high importance of compliance with resource consents". Equally disturbing was that the company was caught only after its award-winning manager told the media he was running 4500 head on the farm. That was more than the resource consent allowed and resulted in the Hawke's Bay Regional Council checking the property out.

It is inevitable in a country so heavily reliant on the dairy industry that there will be accidents. But major effluent breaches by the same company are not acceptable. The company may well consider that having been fined $35,000 last November for dirty dairying in Reporoa, it was fortunate to be hit with a fine just $2500 more for the latest offence. Fonterra says it is working through the problems with CraFarm. Let's hope so. While it would be counter-productive to stop accepting milk from a company which controls herds totalling 20,000 head, Fonterra must be seen to be taking the dirty dairying issue seriously.

- © Fairfax NZ News