Used by date?
OPINION: This old mutt hears that the voices of dissent in sheep and beef farming circles are growing louder about what they believe is the (non) performance of Beef + Lamb NZ - especially its top executive and CEO Sam McIvor.
Feds first did this research last year in the Horizons region and found the information invaluable, it says. A survey of 900 farmers showed 166 had spent a total of $18.5 million on environmental projects.
DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle says the two groups have now set out to survey farmers in the rest of the country.
“It’s been difficult for the industry to quantify all the investment across the 12,000 dairy farms in New Zealand in areas like effluent systems, stock exclusion from waterways and riparian planting.
“All these individual businesses are doing what they need to do and getting on with the job but nobody knows how much money that’s involving. There are obviously costs to all this investment in responsible dairy farming and environmental stewardship and we want to put some numbers to it.
“If we want the public and the regulators to understand what is already happening out there, we need to know the facts and figures. We can only get those from farmers.”
Federated Farmers Dairy chair Andrew Hoggard says this will give the industry something to be proud of and show the public that farmers are serious about the environment.
“The more facts we have, the easier it is to tell how the industry has stepped up to play its part and, more importantly, the significant amount farmers are investing to do that.
“Meeting our commitments under the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord and industry strategy is a huge undertaking, in national resources and farmers’ time and money.
“We can’t tell the public or others what we don’t know, so we’re trying to understand that commitment to the environment.”
