Big business dairy has been allowed to directly influence the regional councils and helped craft policy to protect their own corporate interests, to the detriment of their own shareholder farmers who have been made the scapegoats in the eyes of the public - particularly the urbanites.
It's a well-known fact that for collaboration to be successful there must be balanced representation at the table and any party with a hidden agenda or conflict of interest and not willing to accommodate the needs of others should be removed from the process. This has failed to happen.
So regional councils have tried to find 'common ground' with big business dairy, adoption of policy that includes the principle of grandparenting.
Big business dairy goes to great lengths never to use the G word - grandparenting - itself, preferring to cache it in phrases like "hold-the-line" thereby providing a smoke screen while ensuring they can keep their stainless steel topped up with the flow of more and more milk.
Through the principle of grandparenting, the high-leaching intensive farming systems can carry on business-as-usual in an unsustainable manner with many waterways now grossly polluted.
"So regional councils have tried to find 'common ground' with big business dairy, hence adoption of policy including the principle of grandparenting."
Other farmers who engage in farm systems with low nitrogen loss rates, primarily sheep and beef and low input dairy farmers, particularly those who are organic, have had their N-leaching capped at low levels. This locks them into a situation which gives no flexibility for system development or land-use change.
The low leachers effectively become the whipping boys, having to provide clean water to dilute the high leachers' pollution.
In my view grandparenting has no scientific base. It's a crude, expedient mechanism, a synthetic dial-up approach that simply rewards the polluters. So the hold-the-line smokescreen has failed to give the right signals to farmers to take responsibility for contaminants leaving their farms.
But central government and regional councils are tasked with the responsibility to act for the 'common good' of our communities, the economics of our farm systems and the environment in a balanced manner.
Regional councils are also tasked to create policy that meets the requirements of the RMA that is fair, equitable and sustainable. This is where there has been real failure.
To give my opinion credibility Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC recently published an article in the NZ Local Government Magazine, where he slams the performance of local government. Three points he made in his summary stand out for me:
¦Firstly ... 'The performance of local government in relation to the environment appears to be seriously deficient'.
¦Secondly ... 'Local government must not be pushed around by powerful economic interests whose activities pollute'.
¦Last ... 'What is at stake here are the interests of future generations whose interests the Resource Management Act is explicitly designed to protect.
Check out this link for the complete story. Local Govt Magazine Article - Sir Geoffrey Palmer - June 2017.pdf
In the Waikato, following the notification of Healthy Rivers Plan Change One (PC1), there have been 1000 submissions received in relation to Plan Change 1. The vast majority are against grandparenting, apart from two exceptions, Fonterra and Dairy NZ.
I recently visited Selwyn District in Canterbury and spoke to community folk and local farmers.
It became clearly evident that Canterbury, where grandparenting has been used by the regional council to manage nitrogen discharge, has been a failed experiment.
Under a grandparented regime promoted by Big Business - I believe dairy farmers have been led up the garden path by their own organisation, which failed to give them the right signals to transition down to sustainable ecosystem health limits. This has led to a continuing deterioration in fresh water quality which is now a threat to human health.
The farmers are getting the blame when in fact the blame should be directed squarely at Big Business Dairy who have prescribed an unsustainable recipe to their own farmers.
Now the farmers in Canterbury under Plan Change 5 are going to have to endure the pain of a massive reduction in contaminant load leaving their farms, which may put many of them out of business. Big Business Dairy has done a total injustice to their own farmers, who if had been given the right signals six to 10 years ago about the ecosystem health limits they needed to farm within, farmers would not have invested and chosen to develop some of the intensive farm systems within the region.
Big Business Dairy has not only failed their own farmers but failed the environment and now threatening our NZ '100% Pure' and 'Clean Green Brand'.
A recent publication in The Wall Street Journal, headline read: 'In the Land of Milk and Money, Dairy Boom Feeds Environmental Fears - New Zealand's waterways are suffering environmental damage, coinciding with an expansion of the country's dairy industry'.
Just this week Al Jazeera investigates New Zealand's freshwater crisis in a damning two-part documentary entitled New Zealand: Polluted Paradise.
This certainly must be hugely concerning for Tourism NZ and our leading exporters such as Zespri and the initiatives being embarked by our leading processors in the red meat sector about telling our NZ story in the marketplace about our sustainable farm systems including environment protection and animal welfare.
It appears to me the Fonterra leadership team are missing in action when our NZ brand is under siege.
Or perhaps their quest for increasing global presence is more important than fronting up at home and apologising to New Zealand for pushing Fonterra's production trip too far to the detriment of our environment and now our brand.
Has Fonterra forsaken its Kiwi farmers in its quest for global domination?
And where are our Ministers of the Crown Nick Smith and Nathan Guy in the murky mix? In my opinion, they are also culpable as they have not acted for the common good of New Zealanders - only for the common ground they have found with big business dairy.
Their quest for more irrigation to put more cows on the land is also part of the nitrogen overload.
The inability to make the connection between too many cows and polluted water is unbelievable. Consequently, they too have also failed our communities and the environment and now our New Zealand brand.
I would also suggest we should be demanding an apology from both honourable gentleman to the people of New Zealand.
Rick Burke is chairman of Farmers for Positive Change and 2014 Bay of Plenty supreme winner of the Ballance Environmental Awards.
