Federated Farmers: It pays to check rule changes often

Check the rules before growing produce like maize.

Farming is increasingly regulated and rules change all the time.

So it pays to check them regularly, even if something has always been done a certain way in the past. Existing use rights do exist under the Resource Management Act, but they are tightly defined and difficult to prove.

Existing use rights are slightly different to the temporary grace period that allows time to apply for consent after a rule change.

If something was permitted under the district plan in the past and rules change to make resource consent necessary, you usually have six months to apply, but can continue the activity until the decision on that consent is made. Existing use rights, on the other hand, protect your ability to continue activities that were allowed before the RMA came in, under certain conditions.

Existing use rights decay over time; if an activity has stopped for more than 12 months, you may lose the right to continue.

To qualify, they must also be similar in scale, intensity and character to previous activities. The farmer, not the council, must prove they have existing use rights. However, establishing these rights can be very difficult, as many activities on farm are not documented.

A recent court action shows how complex these issues are.

A farmer planted maize on land that had been rezoned from 'rural' to 'residential'.

Farming was no longer allowed in that zone under the district plan, so the farmer relied on existing use rights. This meant proving that maize had been grown on the property, in the same or similar way, since before 1991.

There were arguments about whether the activity had changed in intensity, scale or character, whether crops had been grown recently and how the effects of cropping were different to those of livestock farming. In the end, existing use rights could be neither proven nor disproven.

The message is that it pays to keep up with changes in regulation, through your rural professional, Federated Farmers or other industry group. And if you are in any doubt about whether something is allowed, ring the council and ask.