Farmers are being let down by Wellington bureaucracy

I read it from the perspective of a farmer, who enthusiastically joined the local catchment group focused on improving water quality. What information, I asked myself, would such a farmer expect to see, or wish to see in such a report?

The 2023 report begins cautiously:

“Many of the issues identified by the Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment in his 2019 system review still challenge current reporting. These issues are evident in the content of Our Freshwater 2023: there continues to be gaps in data, inconsistencies in methods and monitoring, lack of accessibility…”

So, what did the Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment (PCE) have to say in 2019?

“Despite attempts over more than two decades, no agreement has ever been reached on a set of core environmental indicators. This has to happen. Consistent and authoritative time series coupled with improved spatial coverage are essential if we are to detect trends. Only then will we be able to judge confidently whether we are making progress or going backwards.” He was also critical of the ability of reporting agencies like MfE to “prioritise and interpret the data and research they commission.”

This 2023 report by MfE was preceded by a similar report in 2020 (Fresh Water 2020). This report was torn to shreds by Federated Farmers. Their summary says it all:

“Notwithstanding the breadth and depth of data available to support national reporting and pressure-state-impact analysis, FW2020 falls well short of being a robust and authoritative source of national statistics and apolitical interpretive analysis. Instead FW2020 presents headlines which are not supported by the evidence relied on; it highlights minority findings, but not the majority findings; it fails to engage with the depth of data available and presents only ‘selected’ and misleading statistics and graphics.”

The effect of this… “was to significantly distort public and political understanding of national state and trends.”

Given this background what improvements have been made in this latest 2023 report?

Firstly, it is mostly narrative: To the casual reader it is a bunch of stories about the environment, presented with little hard data or evidence. In other words, a bunch of meaningless aphorisms like: “Evidence shows the health of freshwater ecosystems around Aotearoa are variable. Some places and measures got better and others go worse.” And: “Land-based human activities contribute to excess nutrients and sediments in our fresh water.”

Collectively, such statements, and there are many of them in the report, give the impression that all is not well. Further, while they may contain a grain of truth, they are not very useful to my farmer and his catchment group who want to know whether their efforts; riparian planting, restoring wetlands or fencing off waterways, are having any effect on water quality.

My farmer will be disappointedto learn in the section “Data and Research Gaps” that we need a better understanding of “…..how quickly our freshwater ecosystems are changing in response to pressures, and how resilient they are to the ongoing effects of our activities.” And that “The Ministry for the Environment in conjunction with sector partners, are embarking on a significant programme of work to reform the foundations of the system. This will include developing core indicators for monitoring our environment, designing the analytical architecture required to assess and interpret the data, and the blueprint design of a national monitoring network.”

So, while my farmer and his catchment group have been doing the “hard yards” the bureaucrats in Wellington are still procrastinating about what they should do!!! Despite the forewarning of the PCE, in 2019, this does not sound like progress to me!

I decided to dig a little further.

Behind both the 2020 and 2023 MfE reports there are large datasets complied by Statistics NZ, which mainly come from regional councils and NIWA. These cover a wide range of factors which affect water quality. I homed in on two river quality indicators, which I thought my farmer would like to know about: the trends in nitrogen and phosphorous. We learn that the 20 year trends up to 2020 are: for P (77% improving, 14% worsening, and 10% indeterminate) and for N (41% improving, 51% worse and 9% indeterminate). At last, a few specs of gold!

It seems to me that these data reflect what has been happening on farms in the last 20 years. Catchment groups, fencing of rivers, riparian planting, wetland restoration – all of these things reduce P runoff and hence the loading into waterways. My farmer would be encouraged to know that things are improving.

Nitrogen (N) is a more difficult beast to tame. N leaches down through the soil and reducing this requires either reducing the N concentration in urine or the number of urination per unit area. Research is underway in this space but in the meantime some farmers have ‘bitten the bullet’ and reduced stock numbers. In any case the trends in N do not spell disaster.

Why was this data not highlighted in the 2023 report?

We are back to the criticism, made by Federated Farmers of the FW 2020 report, that it was biased, the effect of which… “was to significantly distort public and political understanding of national state and trends.”

So, there you have it Mr Farmer. Keep doing all those good things as per your catchment group and for heaven’s sake allow time for Wellington to catch up!

Doug Edmeades spent 20 years as a MAF soil scientist at Ruakura and in 1997 established his own science consulting business agKnowledge.