This debate, however, requires an informed discussion around the positives and negatives. In Central Otago, just under a third of the district's full time employment and GDP are primary production orientated.
An additional and significant proportion of the remaining economy relies on the downstream benefits of primary production. Good decisions require both a sharpening of the existing tools and ensuring they are readily available in a form that the public can understand.
Take economic analysis of the costs and benefits of resource use needed to inform what the acceptable limits of resource use should be.
Despite what some may think there is no central planning of land use. Farmer decisions on land use are driven by economic realities.
The key constraint to land use change in Otago is the impact upon the water resource. It was more than useful to have Otago Regional Council's chair, Stephen Woodhead, say that the new regional water quality frame- work should address water quality concerns.
The second issue highlighted by the meeting centred on important natural values which exist on private land, and when, if, or how these should be protected.
When considering positive amenity values on private land, a slightly different approach is needed.
The Central Otago discussion focussed on whether land use constraints were necessary to ensure public values are protected. For Central Otago farmers, these constraints are potentially significant in both scale and cost. Generally, only the landowner will face the cost of foregoing the use of their land, fencing it and designing farm buildings or changing the entire farming operation to meet rules set by other's expectations.
Private landowners should not obviously disregard positive values existing on their property. After all, most of these remain because the farmer has voluntarily identified and protected them.
If everyone gets as ay on how much of the positive stuff gets protected, but only an individual or as mall group bear the full cost of these expectations, then this has some important implications for that community discussion.
The Resource Management Act arguably provides a starting point for discussion. However, it's less useful where restrictions are placed on private land to protect positive amenities as these costs are almost always imposed on the landowner.
Nationally, Federated Farmers is working on this. In the interim, council responses need to recognise this issue. First by ensuring 'how much do we need to protect?' is answered objectively and justified scientifically.
Secondly, by appropriately informing the community about the true social and economic ramifications of what protection actually means.
The public meeting was a good first step towards the district plan review and many councils will be doing the same, but there's still a lot of work to be done to inform the discussion with facts.
