Seeing red over Project Green

By IRENE CHAPPLE

The farming community is split over a national sustainability standard for export products.

When the idea was first touted two years ago it had solid backing.

Now, after $600,000 has been spent in development costs, it seems the rural sector wants the project dumped.

Supporters of the project, led by meat exporter Richmond, fear hopes for a national standard will die without more support.

The project - often called Project Green but known by Standards New Zealand as the Sustainable Livestock Production standard - is to implement a voluntary standard for agricultural exporters.

Project Green was started in December 2000 and is intended to be a traceable quality assurance system for fibre and livestock food exports.

If the standard was introduced, agriculture exports could be labelled to prove to buyers that they had been produced in an environmentally sustainable way.

The project has been steered by advisers from AgResearch, the veterinarians and Massey University, and has now chewed up around $600,000 in cash and farmers' time.

Funding has come from the Government's Sustainable Farming Fund, the Business Council for Sustainable Development and Richmond.

Project Green is said to be in line with Australian intentions, and with a standard in use in Malaysia.

It was due to be introduced in the middle of next year, but progress was interrupted last month when opponents went public and the annual meeting of Federated Farmers' meat and fibre delegates voted overwhelmingly against the idea.

Fonterra, which attended the first meetings on the project, is no longer participating. It said much of Project Green was irrelevant to the dairy industry and that it was satisfied with its own programme.

The Meat Industry Association has also withdrawn support - although Meat New Zealand remains cautiously in favour.

Standards NZ, which was drafting the standards, has frozen the project until it gets a clear mandate from the farming community.

Proponents of the scheme say they are disappointed, but, more than that, they seem somewhat flabbergasted at the response.

Rod Pearce, project leader and Richmond director, says it is unfair that the project has been judged and discarded by so many before it is even finished.

Rejection is largely based on the fear that it will effectively become a compulsory standard due to industry pressure.

The scheme's opponents say farmers already have quality.

Any more checks should be a commercial decision for individual producers.

"The programme is not fully developed," Pearce said.

"I do not see how people can judge it as too expensive or cumbersome or whatever."

Indeed, he argues the opposite is true - farms that are being used as test cases are proving the standard is commercially and practically viable.

Pearce says his own farm has raised production by 15 per cent since adopting the standard.

More importantly, he believes overseas moves towards similar standards means New Zealand will get left behind if it does not follow.

Pearce does not claim the standard will necessarily bring higher prices - although, in some niche markets, that could be possible.

Instead, the focus of the standard would be to present a unified front to the global markets. "Our standard would be accredited to a certain level," says Pearce. "It would be a minimum standard and organics, for example, could have a higher standard."

Murray Taggart, of Federated Farmers, led the vote that effectively killed the project.

He says if Richmond is so hot on the idea, it should go ahead by itself.

"[Implementing the standard] should be a commercial decision for each company. If [Richmond] supports it then let it put its money where its mouth is.

"If they've got it right, put it to the market and see what it does. If they've got it wrong the profits will suffer."