Steering land use change to meet water quality targets

This project aimed to estimate the scope of land practice and land use change over 20 years that might be required by regional councils to achieve the agreed water quality outcomes for degraded catchments, and validate if such changes are achievable by individual farm businesses.

Three catchments were investigated: Tukituki (Hawke’s Bay), Te Hoiere (Marlborough), and South Coastal Canterbury / Waihao (Canterbury). 71 farmers across the catchments were surveyed, and indicated a willingness to continue to adopt and implement a wide range of mitigations, including those that reduced productivity or took land away from productive use. Catchment-specific mitigation cost curves were then developed and adapted for use within catchment models to create scenarios of land management and land use change that would see national water quality targets achieved.

The scale and nature of the predicted land use change under scenarios is likely to be confronting. In the Tukituki catchment, the scenarios suggest around 78% of the catchment area may require land use change, including the complete loss of the sheep, beef and deer sectors, primarily replaced with exotic production forestry.

A feasibility analysis was conducted on the transition of five actual properties within the Tukituki catchment from their current state to potential futures with lower contaminant loads. The transition was considered unfeasible for most of the five case study farms, due to pre-existing level of debt, cadence of revenues from new land uses and the required speed of transition.

This study indicates that potential pathways to profitable water quality outcomes might exist, but the feasibility of the change required is potentially uncertain and might not always be possible to achieve. This should not be interpreted as grounds to dismiss action or targets as meaningless or misguided, but rather as an opportunity to continue to explore the pathways towards the better future our communities both desire and require.