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4. Looking to the future

For the 2007/2008 season, Fonterra will continue to work with suppliers, the fertiliser industry and Accord partners to support suppliers:

  • to accelerate the development of on-farm management plans and the use of nutrient budgets

  • to develop sound understanding of environmentally sustainable management practices

  • to achieve higher levels of compliance with resource consent requirements.

Ensure adoption of environmental management plans

For the 2006/2007 season, Fonterra farmers with stock access to Accord waterways and/or crossings which need a culvert or bridge had to complete the relevant section of their environmental improvement plan. Significant gains can be made from ensuring all farms have environmental improvement plans, therefore ongoing promotion and monitoring of existing plans will become part of the Annual Farm Dairy Assessment.

Increase farmer knowledge about nutrient management

Nutrient management continued to be a key focus for the dairy industry in 2006/2007. The general lack of understanding of what a nutrient budget is, and what it is for, makes sharing information with farmers and promoting correct nutrient management practices a high priority.

Fonterra has been working with fertiliser companies to communicate the benefits of nutrient budgeting to farmers. An extensive programme of work in priority catchments to improve nutrient management is underway, with the support of Fonterra, DairyNZ, regional councils and fertiliser companies. The programme will involve working individually with farmers to maximise environmental and financial benefits from using their nutrient budget to develop and implement a nutrient management plan.

From the 2006/2007 season, assessors asked to see a farm’s nutrient budget. A second visit will be carried out in 2007/2008 and, if a budget is still not provided, suppliers may incur a penalty. The fertiliser industry is developing a strategy that will significantly improve advisory services to farmers for better utilisation of nutrient budgets.

Target full, national dairy effluent compliance

Given the results of the previous seasons, another key focus in 2007/2008 will be improving compliance with resource consent and regional plan requirements for dairy-shed effluent discharges. This will include:

  • standardising the definitions for “significant” and “moderate”, and “minor” non-compliance to enable more robust comparisons to be made across the country

  • identifying and implementing regionally specific best practice initiatives for councils to improve farmer compliance

  • continuing to improve technical information on issues such as effluent system requirements, and ensure this is easily accessible to farmers to enable compliance requirements to be met

  • Fonterra monitoring progress during the first year of implementing the Effluent Indicator System

  • Accord partners working more closely to identify and work with the poor performing, non-complying farmers.

Dairy Industry Strategy for Sustainable Environmental Management

The Dairy Industry Strategy for Sustainable Environmental Management sets out a plan of action to reduce the industry’s environmental impact while maintaining industry viability over the next 10 years. There are important linkages between the Strategy and the Accord. Implementation and monitoring is guided by a Dairy and Environment Leadership Group made up of high-level representatives from Fonterra, government, regional councils and DairyNZ.

In addition, the dairy industry has been collaborating with others in the pastoral sector on a plan of action to accelerate the achievement of environmental objectives. This document will be released in the first quarter of 2008

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