Dairying - the battle on the ground

The battle for the environment has entered a new phase here in Southland.
The report on water by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has been released and immediately described in terms that are damning for the dairy industry. And for good reason. Dirty Dairying is back, the media proclaim, in fact they say it never went away, despite the best efforts of the industry to repackage dairying as the darling of the country, as beloved as the All Blacks. Dr Jan Wright's report says otherwise, particularly in regard Southland.
"Southland is dramatically changing...unfortunately this investigation has shown the clear link between expanding dairy farming and increasing stress on water quality", she said. (Southland Times "Report damns dirty dairying").
Dr Wright is right. Along with her straight-shooting descriptions of the negative effects of dairying, she describes 3 options for remedying the harm dairying causes: housing cows indoors over winter, the Regional Council curbing the amount of dairy farms and thirdly, decreasing the number of cows per hectare, limiting stock numbers in other words. I can sense the outrage from dairy farmers already. I can  picture too, the headshaking from many councillors on Environment Southland as well, those who have declared loud and clear that they oppose the latter two suggestions from the Commissioner; restricting farm numbers and especially putting a limit on stock numbers. There is a problem with the council, and that is those councillors who are ideologically opposed to regulating through setting limits and rules, those two things. "You can't tell farmers what to do", is the catch-cry I hear often, "You've got to take them with you." A significant number of the councillors on ES won't do what they are elected to do, in my opinion, and that is, set rules, regulate and govern responsibly. We are a regulatory body. Rule setting is a tool we are required to use. "Governing" means controlling behaviour and the tools we have been issued with by legislation mean we are required and able to set the limits. This trueism is not accepted by all councillors by any means and the move to so-called collaboration with the farming industry that is being promoted by those councillors, our chairman included, is their means of moving even further away from our function as regulators, effectively handing over the responsibility to the very industry that the Parliamentary Commissioner says is responsible for the degradation of our water.
Not surprisingly, Federated Farmers chairman Russel McPherson sings from the same song-sheet as those councillors. He's anti-rules, saying they would cause all manner of harm to the dairy industry. Focus on science and innovation, McPherson says, not rules and regulations. It's uncanny how closely his words echo those of the anti-rule and regulation councillors. And there's a new phrase in the air around the boardroom table, "the market" is being cited as the new 'regulator'. We mustn't set the rules, goes this new talk, the market is the mechanism for that. This from our newest councillor, Lloyd McCallum, dairy farmer and member of the Fonterra Shareholders Association - draw your own conclusions.
Lloyd is wrong. Our chairman is wrong. The farmer/councillors who throw up their hands at the suggestion that we should set rules are wrong.
This is going to be a very turbulent three years on the council of Environment Southland. Jan Wright's report and the heated discussions around it are just the start of this important round of the battle for Southland's environmental well-being.