A view from the farm-gate: farmers’ perspectives on water quality

Abstract

Regional and sub-regional policies and rules that set limits on diffuse nutrient losses from agricultural land are being put in place across New Zealand.  In Canterbury, it is expected that water quality and nutrient loss limits, and irrigation expansion within those limits, will be achieved by existing irrigators (and new entrants) adopting good management practice and, where it is deemed necessary, going beyond it to best management practice.  Research undertaken in North Canterbury shows that farmers’ understandings of the relationship between land and water are out-of-sync with the scientific framing of the land-water relationship embodied in the Hurunui Waiau River Regional Plan.  While easily dismissed as farmers’ lack of recognition of their cumulative effects or their misunderstanding of the science, it will be argued that acknowledging and recognising how farmers frame the water quality problem is an important starting point for working with them in the implementation of these new policies and rules and the achievement of good and best management practice.