Federated Farmers: Auditing just futile bureaucracy

Canterbury farmers need to redo their Overseer assessment every year, whether or not there have been any significant changes on-farm.

So much time and energy is spent managing land and water at present, with decisions around rules only the first step.

What those rules look like and how much they will cost farmers and the community to implement also needs close scrutiny. Take a couple of examples from Canterbury.

Overseer; like it or hate it, Canterbury farmers are required to record an estimate of their nitrogen losses using Overseer. Personally I don't have an issue with that.

What I do have a problem with are the rules which require farmers to redo their Overseer assessment every year, whether or not there have been any significant changes on the farm.

Then you keep that filed away in case the council ever wants to see it.

Sounds like a dolly -- until you start looking at the cost. I've been given estimates for annual Overseer assessments (from certified practitioners) ranging from $1000-$1500 for a simple farming operation to $5000-$10,000 for more complex arable and mixed farming systems.

So assuming the 7000-odd farmers in Canterbury were all 'simple' Overseer assessments, that rule is costing $7-10.5 million per annum, but probably a lot more.

Call me a pragmatic greenie but I would much rather money was spent actually doing something constructive on the ground; and keeping the Overseer assessments for when they're needed.

Some catchment plans require all farms to have a Farm Environment Plan (FEP).

Now don't get me wrong, I happen to think farm plans are a useful tool, and there are some excellent industry programmes.

My beef is rules requiring all farmers to have an audited FEP irrespective of whether there are any potential issues with water quality.

North Canterbury Federated Farmers raised this matter in a recent hearing in Canterbury and the rules in that catchment plan were revised as a result.

My favourite example has to be a water plan in Canterbury which requires all farmers to enter into some sort of binding collective by 2017 or get resource consent to keep farming.

Each collective must have an Environmental Management Strategy, farm plans for all members, and must be audited.

The logistics and costs of establishing these collectives, doing the work required and the auditing don't appear to have been thought through; nor the sociology of farming communities. Farmers do not tell each other how to farm and we don't police each other.

I was told the purpose of the collectives is to enable the community to find their own solutions to water quality issues. Laudable in theory but surely there is a more efficient way?

No doubt as the planning environment around water matures things will be refined, but it would be good if we could avoid some of the more futile bureaucracy.

As my nanna always said, "the devil's in the detail".

Councils are required to assess the appropriateness of their proposals under the RMA, and that extends to looking at the efficiency and effectiveness of each rule. We need to hold them to account.