Beef Lamb New Zealand Lake Taupo Monitor Farm Programme

Key Funders

Beef+Lamb New Zealand
Firstlight Foods, BNZ Partners
Ravensdown

Consultants Involved

Darren McNae and Peter Livingston,

Project Brief

The programme is based around the highly successful Beef+Lamb New Zealand Monitor Farm Programme with the primary focus being on the issues faced by farmers within the Lake Taupo catchment and farming under Regional Plan Variation 5 (Environment Waikato) which limits farm nitrogen outputs.

Description of Project

The formation of the Lake Taupo Monitor Farm Programme was instigated by an approach to Meat and Wool New Zealand by members of the Taupo Lake Care group. The primary motivation behind this was to take the highly successful format of the monitor farm programme and use this as a means of investigating farming options within the catchment under the newly imposed nitrogen cap.
The Lake Taupo Monitor Farm Programme is set to become one of the leading monitor farm programmes in the country as we continue to see more pressure being put on sustainable farming systems at both a regional council and a consumer level.  Through the focus on farming sustainably within the programme, lessons will be learned that will provide a valuable insight into how New Zealand farmers can maintain the viability of their systems whilst proving to the world that their systems are sustainable in every sense.

Programme Goal

"To farm sustainably and profitably under the nitrogen cap and provide factual, actual and transparent information to all key stakeholders"
Our Definition of Sustainability: "The ability to continue operating farming businesses whilst providing positive benefits to the financial, environmental, social and cultural well being of the individual farms and the greater catchment".  The programme current involves two "case study farms", one medium scale owner operator and one large scale Maori owned operation, which provide the basis for on farm analysis and implications.

Progress of Project so Far

The programme has recently passed its half way mark with the focus to this point being on gaining a greater understanding of the implementation of the rules and the basic implications of the rules to be put in place.  There has also been work on helping farmers to gain a greater appreciation of the workings of Overseer® and how this will impact no their business sin the future.
Issues covered to date include, Overseer® sensitivity, Land retirement, Carbon Farming options, Targeted DCD use, Lake water quality, Farming systems returns, Nitrogen trading.