Data collection vital

 That’s the view of Dr Mike Scarsbrook, DairyNZ’s environmental policy manager, who produced a review of the first year’s operation of the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord. Launched in July 2013, it replaced the previous Clean Streams Accord first launched 2003.

Scarsbrook says last season they targeted getting nutrient management data from 85% of dairy farms but only managed to get 56%. In the 2014-15 season they are targeting 100%.

The nutrient management data is collected from farmers by their respective dairy companies and Scarsbrook says the way individual companies do this varies ‘a little bit’. 

“That was something identified by the auditors of the scheme and we are now working towards bringing the companies closer together in terms of the consistency of how that information is collected,” he says. 

“Essentially we are pushing towards getting the vast majority of farmers providing good information so that we can get good information out there on the current performance of dairy farms on such things as nitrogen leaching loss.”

Scarsbrook says the data can be used by farmers to benchmark their environmental performance against other farmers. But it has other big benefits for farmers.

“With the lower payout there are likely to be significant efficiency gains that farmers can make through looking at how they are using nutrients on farm. Part of the business of dairy farming is to look at environmental issues and most farmers that we work with are more than willing to do what’s needed,” he says.

But the receptiveness to supplying the data varies from region to region. Regions such as Manawatu and Canterbury tend to be better aware of need and value of supplying the data because their councils are heavily involved in this area. 

Scarsbrook says having access to the data requested can be of huge benefit to organisations such as DairyNZ when they deal with regional councils.

“When we talk to regional councils around policies for the future for dairy farmers we want as much as possible to provide for industry self-management,” he says.

“If we can provide robust, high quality information then the regional councils don’t need to collect that information, so that farmers don’t have to provide information to multiple parties. We can provide that information on behalf of farmers as required.”

One-year report card

While data collection remains a challenge, the report on the first year of the new accord shows significant progress.

Achievements noted include:

• Every dairy company having an assessment programme in place for new farm conversions
• Effluent assessment systems in place for farms across all dairy companies
• Stock exclusion from farm waterways across the country 
• Regionally-tailored waterway planting advice for farmers 

The report notes that 24,000km of waterways, representing 94% of all waterways are now fenced off to prevent stock from getting into streams or lakes.

“We’ve made meaningful progress in our first year of operation and we’d like to thank farmers for all the work they have done,” Mike Scarsbrook says.

“There is still a lot more to do but there are lots of examples where farmers are making a real contribution to improving water quality.”

Scarsbrook says over the three years a project has been running in the upper Waikato, sustainable milk plans have been rolled out to 600 farms. In almost all cases the farmers were keen to make changes.

“So they are improving environmental practice on farm because they can see that it’s going to have benefits in terms of water quality. I think if people work through issues this way, then almost all farmers are happy to change.”