Ngā Mihi Maioha from Our Land and Water

Toitū te Whenua, Toiora te Wai, the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge has now ended.

For eight years, Our Land and Water worked to find new ways for our farmers, growers and food businesses to create a future where our land use is smarter, our waterways are healthier, and farmers are rewarded for their environmental stewardship.

We funded research to support people to take action to improve our water quality, collaborate in catchment groups, elevate the value of our food, and explore new land use opportunities.

We’ve demonstrated through place-based projects that there are pathways for farming in Aotearoa to become healthier, more prosperous and more resilient.

This couldn’t have been done without the insights and support of our governance group, stakeholder and science advisory panel, and our host AgResearch – and most importantly, the over 1000 people who were part of our research teams. They included scientists and researchers from our major research institutes and from small research consultancies, mātauranga Māori practitioners, and non-scientists with specialist skills and knowledge, including people from the organisations and groups that will apply the research in practice.

All who participated in these research projects had to learn new, inclusive, mission-led approaches, and we are grateful for the open-minded and curious perspectives that were taken. We are confident that many of these relationships and mindset shifts will endure to benefit future mission-led research. The team at Our Land and Water whole-heartedly thank you for your inspiring mahi and commitment to making a difference.

We recognise that there will be questions asked at the end of our work. Did we achieve our mission?

Our mission

Our mission was for all New Zealanders to be proud of our genuinely healthy land and water, and for Aotearoa to be world-renowned for its sustainable food and fibre production. Or, as the government Gazetted objective put it, “to enhance the production and productivity of New Zealand’s primary sector, while maintaining and improving the quality of the country’s land and water for future generations”.

We recognise that there will be questions asked at the end of our work. Did we achieve our mission?

It’s a hard question to answer. Our researchers have helped set in motion many changes, but systems – both environmental and social – are hard to shift, and eight years is not a long time to address complex, intertwined problems that were decades in the making. So-called ‘wicked problems’ are essentially big messes, and they’re a lot easier to prevent than tidy up.

We can state with confidence that primary sector productivity has improved during Our Land and Water’s eight-year lifetime.

The total export value for agriculture, fisheries and forestry in June 2014, when Our Land and Water’s objective was set, was $37.7 billion and this remained stable until June 2016, when Our Land and Water began funding research. In June 2024, MPI reported actual food and fibre sector export revenue of $57.4 billion in 2023, forecasting similar revenue for 2024. During Our Land and Water's lifetime, primary sector export revenue therefore grew by $19.7 billion (52%). Productivity also increased over this period, reaching an all-time high in 2023.

It is too early to expect to see significant water quality improvements arising from actions taken in response to our eight years of research. For the key contaminant nitrogen, for example, our research found an average five-year time lag between actions taken on the land and their effect on rivers, while groundwater will require over 30 years of monitoring (at current frequency) to detect change.

However, we do know that for the 20 years to 2020, over half of monitored streams and rivers showed trends of reducing phosphate and sediment, thanks to improvements in farm management. The number of dairy cows in New Zealand reduced by about 11% over Our Land and Water’s eight-year lifespan and, if this continues, we can expect to see reduction in E. coli and nitrate, the other two key contaminants.

Although it’s impossible to determine our contribution to these changes, we know Our Land and Water has already had tangible impacts in three key areas:

• the development and implementation of freshwater management policy;
• the actions and capabilities of catchment groups, farmers and farm advisors; and
• growing value for Māori and non-Māori agribusiness.

Systemic change at all levels of our export-focussed agrifood and fibre system is now needed to enable the pathways signposted by Our Land and Water to be followed at a national scale.

What should come next?

Our Land and Water research has clearly identified mitigations, land-use changes and pathways for implementation that would lead to improvements in the quality of our freshwaters.

The next step is to remove the obstacles that currently prevent farm-scale exemplars of what can be achieved from being scaled up. Systemic change at all levels of our export-focussed agrifood and fibre system is now needed to enable the pathways signposted by Our Land and Water to be followed at a national scale.

For example, current climate change policy is an obstacle to implementing more innovative and potentially more valuable land uses because it promotes farm conversion to exotic forestry, driving land-use change in a direction that is unacceptable to many rural communities.

A review of the implications of such policies for rural communities and our landscapes is needed, and research to support a better regulatory approach. 

It is also critical that water quality improvement is placed in a wider context of achieving improvements in soil health, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, farm resilience and climate change adaption.

The lack of good data for many of the less common land uses is also an obstacle to building on progress and so collection of such information would be a useful next step for research. The Data Supermarket should be utilised for this but requires funding for its data coverage to be extended and existing data to be kept up to date.

It has also become evident that our agri-food system, geared to export markets, does not serve New Zealanders well. There is inequitable access to healthy food at affordable prices and little incentive for farmers to produce for a domestic market when export markets are more lucrative. A National Food Strategy could be a useful tool to guide land-use change, increase food resilience and diversity, and encourage more local produce to be sold into local markets.

Our Land and Water has created almost 1000 resources that can help Aotearoa produce food with pride, knowing we are protecting New Zealand’s farming legacy and caring for our land and water. They will remain on our website until 2030 and be freely accessible to a global audience through Figshare. We hope you will use them and continue the relationships and lessons from Our Land and Water into the future.

Noho ora mai, toitū te whenua, toiora te wai,
The team at Our Land and Water

🌏 Discover the outcomes of Our Land and Water

🧭 Explore the 900+ tools and resources developed for all the different groups who care for our water

🎓 Learn more with Our Land and Water’s free online courses   

🔍 Find a DOI citation for all our resources (even the non-academic ones)

📆 FAQs about the end of Our Land and Water