CHANGING LAND USE
The practice of irrigating land and setting up a dairy farm on it is becoming more and more common in Canterbury. It means farmers can keep more animals on each hectare of land, and make more money. They use more fertiliser and work the land more intensively by ploughing and re-sowing. As a result our rivers and lakes are becoming sick.
In 1999 it was recognised that 50% of our lowland rivers and streams were in poor or very poor health. By 2005, that's gone up to around 80%. Our biggest lowland lake, Ellesmere, has recently been described by an Environment Court judge as in a ‘shocking’ state.
URBANISATION & LIFESTYLE BLOCKS
Cities and towns are growing and spreading outwards. All people create some pollution as they go about their work and leisure, and some of this finds its way into the streams and rivers.
INDUSTRY
All industries and businesses creates pressures on the environment but some activities are worse than others. Water Rights Trust argues that there is no long-term future in unsustainable farming practices catering for international commodity markets. We need to look more to sustainable farming practices and the knowledge economy.
PRIMARY INDUSTRY
Sheep and Cattle
Intensive modern farming often means more fertiliser, dung and urine, and muddied-up ground from all the animals walking on it. The old way of sheep farming was not nearly so harmful.
With so many animals on the land, it gets trodden over more and the ground gets stirred up more, so after rain it gets muddy. This mud gets washed into the streams.
Stock walk into the streams to drink, to cross and sometimes to feed on vegetation. Cattle are the worst offenders. If you have ever walked along a river which is not fenced off from the surrounding farm paddocks, you will have seen the incredible mess this causes along the riverbank. But that’s not all. Cattle also muddy up the river bottom, and drop urine and dung in the water. This kills off freshwater life and pollutes the water. Nowadays the water in many streams is no longer safe to drink. Some rivers are not even safe to swim in.
Horticulture
Crops grown on the Canterbury plains include fruit, vegetables and grain (for food and for seed). They all require space, fertiliser and sometimes sprays to protect them from pests and diseases. Some require irrigation water too. The land has to be worked with machinery. All this puts pressure on the environment.
Dairying
Most dairy farms used to be small family-owned operations with no more than a couple of hundred cows. They were usually located in the wetter regions of New Zealand where the natural rainfall made it possible to grow plenty of grass under the natural rainfall without supplementary watering. Irrigation wasn’t needed. In the drier parts of the country, such as Canterbury, most farmers did not keep dairy cows, but farmed sheep or beef cattle which ranged over a big area of land at low stocking densities.
Nowadays that has all changed. Modern irrigation practices have made it possible to grow much more grass and keep dairy cattle almost anywhere – including the Canterbury plains. Dairying has become big business and many farms are no longer family-owned. Many are business units owned by a big company, and run by a manager and staff who are paid wages. Often they have 3000 or more cows and the owner has a number of such farms. These are ‘agri-business units’ rather than farms. Businesses are setting up more corporate dairy farms every year, and in more places. Even the arid Mackenzie Country now has irrigated dairy farms. Canterbury’s dairy cow population has increased 4 fold since 1991 to stand at around 600,000 and continues to increase, with some projections suggesting a further doubling to around 1 million over the coming 10 to 15 years.
Of course all this is creating wealth … for some. But at what cost? Whose water are they using and who is paying for the long-term damage done?