 Naix Biha iara Chris Naix for inviting me So, maybe we could just start off If you could just introduce yourself to the audience and let us know a little bit about how you got involved in farming Right I was actually born and bred in the Littleby Pace Kotaerau in the middle of the Waikato I used to think that Auckland was the northern, most suburb of it but it's a population of about 800 people I left school then, went down to Christchurch Wai te neikraft engineering apprenticeship. So i became a qualified aircraft maintenance engineer. Ngai had 15 years doing that. And the land always kept on taking on us. So ended up buying a farm. It was just coming out of the soft prices that land had gone through after rojonomics, which was a major change in the New Zealand economy. So we bought just on 360 hectares of land and it had irrigation with it and we thought, oh, this is neat. How do you do that? So we got involved with what irrigation was, which was border diking, was water flowing down the paddocks between levees. And New Zealand had just come to a new act of parliament, which was the Resource Management Act, the new, I think it got rid of about 60-odd acts of parliament and put our resource-sustainable planning all together. Our resource consents came up as the first lot to the Environment Canterbury, who were just newly formed out of catchment boards. So it was really going into the unknown. So I got a little bit involved in water politics from that and then sort of moved through farming, then living right beside a small river. So there's a community river liaison group and that's where there's a rating district and community voices on how you do protect what's going on in the riverbed where the flood protection works. And then sort of moved through the School Board of Trustees and finally got into a bit of government politics through farming. So that was into the local branch of federated farmers and there's 26 branches up and down the country and wrong place, right time sort of thing, or right place, wrong time. Provincial presidents, job came around as just a consequence. So I thought I'd grab that and ran with that. And at the same time we had some naughty councillors who got sacked by the government for not putting a plan in place. So all that was happening as I was provincial president. So the environmental space came right to the forefront. So I was looking after that from our federated farmers mid Canterbury perspective. But I was also looking after North Canterbury, South Canterbury and some of that stuff because there's another leadership layer that we have within federated farmers. And then at the right time it sort of came about. We had a zone committee that was in the Ashburton area. So I've now got myself actually, I'm on the zone committee as a community member. Some think I'm there because I'm federated farmers. I'm not. I'm there as a community member to represent the interests of their community. Just so you can see it while I'm from federated farmers. But of that there's 10 targets that we're trying to look at. There's cultural targets, there's biodiversity targets, there's water quality, water quantity, a whole range. All trying to be done simultaneously are really hard discussion. And then the job came up where in federated farmers nationally, we ended up in a position where there was an at-large position. We don't represent, these two of us don't represent an industry group. So there's a dairy section, there's a meat and fibre, there's a cropping section, or could be bees or whatever. So I'm at-large. And coming through with a bit of an environmental background, I've picked up the environmental space. But that doesn't include climate change as my portfolio. We've got water, quality, quantity, biodiversity, all that sort of things are in my space. So over the last 12 months through the Land and Water Forum, I've spent a lot of time in that wonderful city called Wellington. And the Government are just announcing tomorrow some of the initiatives that have in the time I've been on the Land and Water Forum will hopefully be coming into policy with some caution hopefully. So that's where I've come from as my journey and how I've sort of got involved with water and from a farming perspective. So is it fair to characterise Federated Farmers as sort of an industry trade group that represents farmers from throughout New Zealand? It's a completely voluntary organisation. There is no levies on anyone, but there's a voluntary membership. And off that membership we supply all our advocacy people. There's 70 policy advisers from one end of the country. They're out in the provinces. There's a few that are in Wellington, but generally we're a provinces-based grassroots uptype organisation. We're not just about lobbying Government or district councils or regional councils. We're actually a really good-sounding place. A problem is actually halved when you talk about it. When you go along to your Federated Farmers meeting and you've got a problem on your farm and it might be nothing to do with the environment. It might be nothing else. But it's true and that there's a great voice of that. Where we have droughts or those adverse events, it's a network of people coming together like-minded trying to come up with solutions. And you mentioned water as an area that you've focused. And obviously water and farming are two sides of the same coin and interlinked so deeply. And there's been some challenges that we've faced throughout New Zealand, especially in the rivers and algal blooms and the like. Could you comment on some of the initiatives that are happening around water quality and things that are going forward to help address that issue? One of the things we're working on at a national level, and it's been all farmers should be operating a good management practice. So what is good management practice? Well, Canterbury, through water quality, they decided they wanted to go down this good management practice approach. So they got the industry groups where you do play levees and they set a level for what is a good management practice at what your peers would reasonably expect you to be able to do. So farmers are already doing it. It's not like it's a policy boffan who's come up with an idea and says you should be doing this. And to get everyone on that even playing field. But we started farming 20-odd years ago where we were doing certain practices. Those same practices now as new techniques come forward, so old school. Some people are still doing them. Most people are thinking for economic reasons I'm now doing the right things. But a good management practice is something really simple like that you've got a crop that you're growing. You want to grow a certain yield. What's the soil test telling you where you at? What's the yield you want to do? How much fertiliser do I need to put on? Not that my grandad used to put on 300 weight and I'm just going to carry on that sort of technique. So some of these good management practices are something that we're trying to get national policy and that's put through the Land and Water Forum to get that all farmers are on the same field. But we need to have good entrepreneurship of those out front who are actually really pushing the bounds. 10 years ago, if someone told me I would be putting moisture metres in the ground to work out when I should be scheduling my irrigation, I would have said to the bonkers, why would you be doing that? I could go out there, put a spade in the ground, feel the dirt and say it needs some water. All right, that's fine. Now we can look at two lines on a graph where we've got moisture probes and say, well, if we irrigate now, we're going to go to full capacity in the soil. When it rains, we're going to end up with a bigger drainage event. But if I keep it in this band here, I can save water, I can save energy and I can save quite a bit of time and maintenance. So all those things are positives for me but it took someone out 10 years ago which was actually a farm environment winner who was really passionate about it so that now I'm mainstream and I'm picking it up. But I'm a little bit ahead of the mainstream, there's a lot of people who aren't yet. But I've had to convince my wife that it's a good idea, it's not cheap, but at least I can actually look at my phone now and see should I be irrigating or not. Cool. So you mentioned the desire to create some national policy around these best practices. Does that mean as of now that there is no direct regulatory body that enforces these kind of best practices at a national level? The good management practices were established last year. That sort of work's done. It's how do you review them? How do you ensure that everyone does them? That there's the discussion that's going on with the Ministry for the Environment and Ministry for Primary Industries trying to work out how do you put that into a regulation framework. Most things are common sense, that's a good common strategy of how you actually encourage people to do it and then stick behind. So you just got to convince the benefits of doing it because we've got water quality issues we need to manage and lower our environmental footprint. So if the decisions are being driven largely from an economic basis for some of these practices, what benefits do you think might entice farmers to... So for example, we just purchased this dairy farm right here and I would say it wasn't being operated to the fullest best practices in previous ownership where the river ways weren't planted. The cows would just walk right through the river putting their effluent in their waste directly into the waterway which is, as my understanding, not sort of best practice where you would never really have them fenced. The reason why that was done was simply economics. So what can we do as New Zealand to create more buy-in from farmers who admittedly often just don't have the money to put in the fencing to do all the planting to take all these action steps which require time, capital, education and effort? The one thing I think we get a bit too focused on the sides of the rivers and whatever, we've got farmers who have come through a whole lifetime. They've been to university, they've learnt how to do their farming but farming systems, knowledge of the environmental impacts is growing and being learnt and like you guys are pushing the frontiers we've got to actually bring those guys along so that we're all heading in that same direction. We hear that all the time we should actually have waterways fenced and planted. If it's done the wrong way, you actually make a bigger mess than you started with and it's probably a bit provocative but an example is you fence it and you put a nice tall shelter belt right beside it. The stock used to go down and have a drink into the hills. Now you've given them the shelter right beside the waterway when it rains, all the nutrients that were sitting on the ground there have now flushed straight into it rather than come all the overland path down the waterway. So we've got to be really careful how we manage our footprint but encouraging good practices and through doing that we've got to make sure that we invest the time, the effort to understand what's going on. And make sure the actions that we take actually get the results that we're looking for and don't have these unintended side effects. We're not just looking at stock exclusion for the sake of it. We just want to make sure we make a difference to what is the endgame and it's good water quality. And how do we measure that as a nation and as an industry? How do we know if we're making progress on water quality? There's the usual way which we can actually go out there and take a water sample. I think one of the... The one thing I really believe in is having good consistent reporting from our district and regional councils. So the first thing I say is why haven't we got national swimming quality data? Well I think for the ministry environment haven't been able to actually get it consistently from the regional councils so they can report it nationally. Because some do it this way and some do it that way. So we're encouraging the ministry for the environment to go to the regional councils and district councils and get it standardised so you can report is that swimming hole where I used to swim always up to swimming standard. So we've got to make sure that we've got good data and environment aid to your roa as a report that was put out last year. A massive amount of work. We're a little bit of critical and one of two things that had some shortcomings, but it's a really good document to actually have a good basis for that. So we've got to look at that. We've got some really good introduced species of algae that Diddy Moe's a classic one. We've got to make sure that the stuff doesn't come to the North Island. It comes from the South Island and it really thrives where the water's cleanest and that there's getting right up into the mountain rivers as well. So by security across the strait here make sure you don't end up with here because look after what you've got. As a side note, if you get a chance to jump off the big high dives in Wellington Harbour I highly recommend it. The water is clearly safe. This provides I think a good opportunity to segue to talk about the innovation in farming. There's a lot of people here who work in high tech industries and the like and I think one thing that I've seen in my time living in New Zealand is that there's quite a bit of opportunity to bring new ideas and new technologies into the agricultural industry. I'd like to hear your thoughts on recent trends in agricultural innovation and where you see things going into the future. I've got a son who went through Lincoln. He did a year there. He's keen on doing IT type stuff and gizmos and electronics. So he's also brought up on a farm and he understands farming but he also understands code and apps and that sort of thing. And to me the innovation that we're starting to see the short term gain at the moment is that we need that data effectively and just a few years ago we had national regulation that said that we needed to have, for what our irrigation takes, needed to be meted. Well there was a bit of a thing we went up in the air and everyone said what's this going to cost us. Then there was talk about it had to be telemetred. Back then no one knew what telemetry was and how it was going to work or whatever. We've put an irrigation gate in that cost about $30,000. We could have bought a new car and whatever but this gate now I can operate it for my cell phone which my wife this morning said can you just alter the irrigation gate. So I can do that easier from Wellington or I could do it easier from California last year than I could actually from home. It used to take five minutes to log on to the computer and whatever because we needed an internet. But all those sort of things start adding up and then when you use telemetry at the same time as we're using it with moisture probes but putting the information in a format that we can all understand and we can start making some really informed decisions. At the moment we're using patch up type making systems that we're never really designed for to do a job that we need to but we also need that other real good science innovation and it is it the drought tolerant grasses do we mention genetic modification do we not mention genetic modification do we wait for things to evolve them up a lot but what we're finding on our farm is there's a lot of natural selections actually been improving and we can make some really good productivity gains but a few years ago we were talking about growing lambs at 200 grams a day on pasture, clover or whatever now with some of the brassicas that we're putting into our crops we're actually really cranking those things up but we've just got to make sure that we've got good evolution coming through on all the crops that we need but science, soils if you really wanted to invest in something soils what do we rely on for agriculture what do we need for nutrients what do we need for carbon sequestration all that stuff we don't have enough information on what our soils are doing and what the impacts they have because we want to be maintain ourselves as the most efficient producers in the world so your investment in that sort of technology is where I really be encouraging you guys to go yeah cool certainly agree investing in our soils is a good area of focus because we did mention it genetic modification certainly a topic that is in the zeitgeist and often quite controversial so of course we'll tackle it now I would like to hear from your perspective what is the state of genetic modification with regards to New Zealand farming whether that be from kind of splicing genes together or just very aggressively breeding or very specific traits and what do you see as the trend for GMOs in New Zealand one thing I will say that is right outside my field of expertise the GMO stuff but I'm actually involved in the feds through the biodiversity space and we all talk about our pests and to me that affects every farm every property in the country if we could use something that we could get away with some of the poisons but we could actually naturally stop some of our native and introduce pests from breeding whether it be rats, whether it be poisons but I don't think the Australians would like to hear too much about that but if we could stop these things from actually eating or destroying our native biodiversity I think there could be an opportunity there to do something the right way but are we ready for that discussion or I don't know what stage the technology is at but do we always have to talk about genetic modification for pasture species or animals or whatever and when we talk about it for reproductive inefficiency so that these animals don't actually become such a burden to our biodiversity I think that's something we'd need to start talking about but I'll just sort of put that idea out there Cool, I'm just taking the chance to connect the two nodes that last time that Lou from Department of Conservation spoke about how the introduced pests were a huge threat to the ecology and the biodiversity and now another voice of expertise is saying that pests are a huge issue for the economy of the country as well yet again the interlinking of these things where our planet and our economy are really one and so interconnected Let me just bring up my questions here Another question just bringing it a little bit to current events there's been a precipitous decline in the price of dairy over the last year I'd like to hear your thoughts about given that dairy is such an important part of the New Zealand farming industry and economy what do you see this doing to the farmers that you speak with in Christchurch and Canterbury and throughout the country what's this going to do to the industry? There's massive hardship for an individual farmer whether it be a husband or wife partnership whatever that's massive tension so we've got to keep an eye on that and the banks are a big part of supporting those guys the byproduct where you'll see it is in rural New Zealand it's the cities, other townships the schools, whatever the dairy farm might be employing another staff member that staff member might have one child or two children less coming to the local school it puts school roles under a little bit more pressure local business in Ashburton for example they might be selling the TV sets they might be selling the occasional new car all those things are going to start building up, the essentials will always be bought, the groceries and whatever but at some of those more discretionary spends will put a massive pressure under the rest of the communities now look for example in Ashburton which is halfway down the South Island it's a township of about 15,000 new sports centres gone on swimming pool, five courts whatever as people's jobs become not as much overtime and whatever and the rates burden whatever the less time to go do a bit more swimming so all those things that and it puts more and more pressure on our district council to where do they get their funds from it won't be coming from the rural community because everyone's got their backs against the wall that is where I say it'll be an insidious problem but then again it could turn around just like that but what I'm seeing is in California 18 months ago we could see the price of oil was through the shale fracking whatever was and America becoming more and more sustainable for the oil, we could see more grain was becoming surplus, it was going down the throats of dairy cows and producing we could sort of see that picture starting to build up and then with the Europeans now being able to come on line with export so we're going to be around for we-walt and now we've got the Saudis and whatever, they even got the managers spend on the meat so that's now actually another consequence that we're having coming through to the meat industry, so everything's all connected and the New Zealand grain industry so we're all connected in this one together but we haven't really got a big up at the moment except for beef which is going well and a lot of the horticultural products are going pretty well Glad the horticultural has been there to balance that Great, well thank you so much for your time and your contribution Thank you