Encouraging Dairy Farmers To Lift Environmental Standards

Council’s work with Marlborough’s dairy industry is being stepped up as part of the battle for cleaner water for the region.

There are only 62 dairy farms in Marlborough yet livestock are a key source of faecal contamination of our rivers and also some beaches.

The Council has been working cooperatively with the dairy industry for several years now but Council’s environment committee chairman Peter Jerram says the time has come to step up the effort all round.

The Council has adopted a three-year strategy aimed at seeing more progress in lifting the environmental performance of the dairy industry.

Improvements to land management practices, like fencing off waterways, will be actively promoted through Federated Farmers. Subsidised environmental planning assistance will be available to farmers to help them plan and prioritise the work they need to do on their properties. Initially dairy units within the wider Marlborough Sounds area will be targeted as only 10 of these 43 farms currently have farm plans dealing with environmental issues.

New resource management plans, due in a few years, are likely to contain higher standards.

Councillor Jerram says all dairy farmers are being made aware of the Council’s three-year strategy to make faster progress before those new plans come into effect.

“This is the non-regulatory approach and I hope it’s going to achieve the results we need to see for the sake of our water quality. The Council has shown its faith in the industry by getting alongside farmers and encouraging them rather than taking a stick to them.  This is not without cost, but demonstrates Council’s wish to work with, rather than against, farmers,” he said.