Cowboys with egg on their faces

That's disappointing. Dairy industry heads will be feeling like heels at the moment, following the revelation that their cow men in the Aorere Valley, Golden Bay, have been spinning a yarn about the environmental protection activities they have been citing as powerful reason for regional councils to hand over the management and regulation to the industry and lay aside their 'big sticks', in favour of industry audits and control.
Turns out, the farmers were being considerably less than truthful about their provisions and have had their claims refuted by an audit by MAF. Several times, in the ES boardroom, industry representatives have drawn our attention to the fabulous example of the Aorere Valley farmers and made it clear that the work done there shows that the dairy industry doesn't need a regulatory agency like a regional council, telling it what to do - it can do everything by itself, thank you very much. The discovery of wrongful reporting by dairy farmers will be a slap in the face for Fonterra and DairyNZ, so keen on managing the activities of its suppliers.
The editorial in today's Southland Times makes the picture clear for the casual reader and insider alike.
Bad cockies!

OPINION: The news that a snap audit by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF ) found a huge discrepancy between what dairy farmers say they do and what they actually do makes for a disappointing start to the new year.
In the lead-up to last November's general election, as part of its Making Water Count series, this newspaper canvassed a wide range of opinions on what was causing the decline in water quality in the region's lakes and rivers. Most commentators agreed with the reports by Environment Southland that the principal cause was the intensification of farming, dairying in particular.
Responding to those criticisms, farming and dairying spokespeople told us that the problem was acknowledged and that great strides were being made to remedy it. Dairy farmers were, among other measures, fencing off waterways to exclude stock from them.
DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle said there had been a "real sea-change" in the attitude of dairy farmers in the past five years. "Farmers have cottoned on to the agenda. They may not always know what to do – and it is our job in helping them to farm better and to meet the community's expectations as well as those of their customers."
Mr Mackle would have been looking to the results of surveys done as part of the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord to back his assertion of a sea-change. It is the accuracy of those surveys, based on self-reporting by farmers, that have been called into question.
In December, Fonterra, MAF, the Ministry for the Environment and Local Government New Zealand published The Dairying and Clean Streams Accord: Snapshot of Progress 2010/2011. That report said that dairy cattle were now excluded from waterways "deeper than a Red Band gumboot and wider than a stride" on 84 per cent of farms supplying Fonterra.
But a representative audit by MAF found that nationally, only 42 per cent of 587 farms inspected excluded stock from such waterways, just half what Fonterra's farmer survey found.
Fish and Game New Zealand chief executive Bryce Johnson described the discrepancy as a "woeful indictment" on the legitimacy of the accord, and on the industry's claim that self-policing was the way towards achieving improved water quality. His Nelson-Marlborough colleague, Neil Deans, went further, saying the gap between what farmers said they did and what MAF had found was too big to put down to a mistake and it was clear some farmers were "pulling the wool".
Another part of our Making Water Count series was a challenge to the region's political candidates to tell us what they intended to do to fix the problem. Each said how important water was to them and how committed they were to sorting it out. They differed on how to do it.

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National candidates Bill English and Eric Roy talked up the Government's National Policy Statement on fresh water, saying this document and the Land and Water Forum that stood behind it would start to turn the tide of polluting effluent. Other candidates, including Labour's Lesley Soper and Green candidates Dave Kennedy and Rachael Goldsmith, said the statement lacked teeth.
National emerged the winner on November 26. Many in Southland and around the country will be waiting to see how the new Government will advance the fight to clean up our waterways.
In the wake of MAF's snap audit results, Prime Minister John Key and his team would be advised to take further results from industry-sourced compliance surveys with a hefty grain of salt.
- © Fairfax NZ News