"Action for Healthy Waterways" - What you need to know

Last year, the Government released its Action for Healthy Waterways discussion document. It outlined the much-anticipated proposed changes to our national freshwater management framework.  The discussion document resulted in over 12,000 submissions being received for consideration by a government appointed expert panel. 

The recommendations by the expert panel, and approved by Cabinet, were released at the end of May.  These are essentially a suite of broad policies.  They are final and therefore, no further opportunity exists to have input on them.  It would be fair to say that the recommendations overall result is a much more balanced, practical suite of changes, but there is still a lot of detail to come, as discussed later, and the odd quirk that wasn’t expected. 

The broad policies are as follows:

• Councils will be able to maintain water quality attributes below the national bottom line to “secure the benefits” of the existing structures in the Waikato, Tongariro, Waitaki, Manapouri, and Clutha hydro schemes.
• Limits will be defined and how they are to be expressed in planning documents.
• Water quantity limits must be linked to ecosystem health outcomes.
• Territorial authorities will be required to manage effects of urban land development on freshwater bodies and coastal marine environment.
• Clarification of what Te Mana o Te Wai means and how it is to be implemented, both nationally and regionally.
• Councils will be required to actively involve tangata whenua in council processes for policy and plan development and decision-making.
• Regional council policies and plans must include mahinga kai as a value.
• Amendments to ensure regional authorities manage all aspects of ecosystem health (not just water quality and quantity).
• New attributes with national bottom lines:
• Macroinvertebrates
• Submerged plants in lakes
• Dissolved oxygen
• Suspended sediment
• Deposited sediment
• E. coli at swimming sites during the bathing season
• New attributes without national bottom lines:
• Fish species
• Ecosystem metabolism
• Dissolved reactive phosphorous
• Existing national bottom lines for nitrate and ammonia toxicity attributes will be strengthened to protect 95% of species from toxic effects. Exceptions to this will be allowed in specific areas of the Pukekohe and Lake Horowhenua catchments, due to contribution to national food security (vegetable production).
• From mid-2020, technical standards, methods, and requirements for activities affecting streams and wetlands will be prescribed. This will include vegetation clearance, earthworks (including for drainage), and changes to water levels. Includes surrounding vicinity. Resource consents will be required for most of these activities.
• From mid-2020, minimum design standards for new weirs and culverts to provide for fish passage. Passive flap gates will be a non-complying activity. Regional councils will be required to gain information on current structures and adopt work programmes to address barriers to fish migration.
• Until 31 December 2024, resource consents will be required for:
• land-use change of more than 10 hectares to dairy
• land-use change of more than 10 hectares from woody vegetation or forestry to pastoral farming
• increases in irrigated pasture for dairy farming above 10 hectares
• increase in winter forage cropping area above annual highest 2014/15 – 2018/19
• increase in dairy support activities above highest annual 2014/15 – 2018/19
• From July 2021, there will be a national maximum of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer application of 190kg of nitrogen per hectare per year for dairy, dairy support, sheep, beef, deer farming. Dairy farmers must report applied amount to councils.
• From winter 2021, if you are winter grazing on areas that exceed the following thresholds, you will be require a resource consent:
• less than 50 hectares or 10% of property area (whichever is larger) is used for winter grazing
• minimum setback of five metres from waterways
• average slope of paddock 10 degrees or less
• Farm plans will be required for:
• pastoral farming totalling 20 hectares or more
• arable farming totalling 20 hectares or more
• horticulture totalling 5 hectares or more
• an agricultural purpose prescribed in the regulations (not yet determined)
• any combination of the above uses totalling 20 hectares or more.
• Water users with consents to take water over 5 litres per second will be required to measure water use every 15 minutes and provide electronic records to councils daily.

One thing that is notably missing is the national bottom lines for Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen (DIN).  This was proposed to be a limit of 1 mg/L and caused a huge amount of debate.  It has been kicked for touch and the need for a DIN limit will be reassessed in the future.  Also kicked for touch is water allocation and iwi rights and interests.  This is not a surprise – a complex, fraught debate that no government to date has had the balls to address. 

The nitrogen fertiliser cap was one of the quirks.  What they are hoping to achieve with this, I am not sure.  You can reduce its use, but to make up the feed shortfall, supplementary feed is used, which is a form of imported nitrogen, so you reduce nitrogen in fertiliser only to replace it in imported feed.  Very non-sensical.

So, what happens next?  Some of the specific regulations are still to be drafted.  This includes the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and National Environmental Standards.  Councils must give effect to these new documents by 31 December 2024.  It is indicated that there will be consultation with stakeholder groups (for instance in relation to the requirements for mandatory farm plans with freshwater modules), but the regulations are due to be presented to Cabinet for consideration in July, so there is not a lot of time.  As if often the case, the devil can be in the detail, so there may still be some sting in the tail in the drafting of the regulations.  

Watch this space. 

Keri Johnston - Irricon Resource Solutions

Now Find H2Grow on Social

As Albert Einstein once said, “Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” 

With that in mind the H2Grow team have reflected on how we initiate conversations and share knowledge, and have decided to extend our presence to social media where so many meaningful conversations are being had by food and fibre producers and consumers. 

So come and join us on Facebook and Instagram, search for @H2Grow.NZ - we look forward to seeing you soon!

Note we will still also be posting longer, more in-depth information on our blog, and available for workshops and field days at request. Just click on the email links to any of the team if you would like to know more. 

Keri, Jemma and Sarah

Maximising the Value of Irrigation

The H2Grow Team are excited to introduce Carolyn Hedley as our guest contributor, it is with great pleasure that we can share with you her valuable expertise. Carolyn is a Soil Scientist with Manaaki Whenua, based in Palmerston North, and lives on a small Kairanga farm with husband, Mike. Carolyn has combined her interests in soil science, proximal soil sensing and precision agriculture with on-farm studies of precision irrigation and soil carbon mapping. She has led several nationally funded projects in irrigation and soil carbon, including current leadership of the MBIE funded programme “Maximising the Value of Irrigation”.

Maximising the Value of Irrigation  -  Carolyn Hedley

Early in the new millennium I found out about EM mapping and in 2004 published a method in the Australian Journal of Soil Research to rapidly EM map soil variability on a basis of soil texture. I realised that EM mapping was a really useful new technology to rapidly survey soil variability. The EM map had picked the difference between a Kairanga silt loam and a Kairanga clay loam, and this had management implications for the farmer because the heavier textured soil would compact sooner when grazed in wet conditions.

I could see great potential in this new technology and so embarked on a PhD in proximal soil sensing and this is when I started to relate the EM map to soil available water holding capacity and realised how useful this could be for irrigation scheduling. But critics commented that irrigation systems cannot irrigate to such a complex pattern (example shown in Figure 1 below). Enter Stu Bradbury and George Ricketts, who had worked with me on some EM mapping projects when they were students at Massey University. There was an engineering solution to this problem – control the sprinkler system on a pivot to irrigate to any pattern – which led to the development of the Precision VRI system. Precision VRI, the world’s first true variable rate irrigation system, turned the heads of the global irrigation giants and as a result Lindsay Corporation acquired the technology development company founded by Stu and George.

Figure 1: Available Water-holding Capacity map derived from an EM map for a 100-ha area irrigated by a VRI linear move irrigation system

There was still work to be done though and a proposal put to the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment received six years funding in 2013 to further research methods to improve management of irrigated land. Now in its final year, the “Maximising the Value of Irrigation” programme has been able to refine methods to use proximal sensor data to create prescription maps for precision irrigation. It has developed soil and crop sensing methods that can inform in near real time the prescription map, and a prototype scheduling tool has been tested with participating farmers as a smart phone app. The in-field sensor monitoring methods have been used to support Lindsay further refine the software control features for the Precision VRI system, which is remotely managed through the FieldNET platform.

Ekanayake, J. and Hedley, C. (2018) Advances in Information Provision from Wireless Sensor Networks for Irrigated Crops. Wireless Sensor Network, 10, 71-92. 

Research into different soil management methods has identified correct tillage and soil surface management methods to store more water in the soil and reduce irrigation requirement and water losses. A spatial framework to run the APSIM model has been created to test the effect of different irrigation scenarios on yield, drainage and water use efficiency. Spatial-APSIM simultaneously runs the model for up to 1,400 grid cells for one irrigation system to compare results of different irrigation scenarios at spatial resolution < 50 m, over several decades.

The MBIE Programme “Maximising the Value of Irrigation” is now working closely with its industry advisory group to ensure that its findings are communicated effectively and to find ways to integrate new tools and support improved management of irrigated land in New Zealand.

Harvest 2019 is Upon Us!

Do you have yield mapping capabilities?

Are you storing your data in a secure location?

If your combine harvester is capable of yield mapping, do you use it? Yield map data is a powerful tool for making decisions on your farm. It is a record of how your crops reacted and performed under that season’s constraints. Constraints and variation may be apparent in your crops nutrient levels or application methods, or available water in the profile at critical times in the plant’s life cycle,and in most cases a combination of all the above!

I’ve been to many agronomy seminars where they always reiterate that when you sow your crop it starts at its maximum yield potential and everything from that point on reduces that potential. So, your yield data is a map of how well the crop has performed under that season’s conditions and how much variability there is in the soil profile within a paddock. Many arable farmers have paid for the technology but aren’t able to harness the power of the information that it provides. Agri Optics NZ are here to help with this.

Yield monitoring in any combine

One thing that isn’t stressed enough to growers with yield monitors is that they should capture the data regardless of whether they are able to use it at present or not. As having multiple years’ worth of data is far more useful than one year of data. The more years’ worth of data you have lessens the influence of a single seasons weather pattern or any out of the ordinary extremes. For example, in a wet year the lighter freer draining soils may be preferable for a higher yield and visa versa in a dry season. This process of compiling several years of data is called normalisation. Data is put into a relative scale and is compared across the years. Once data is normalised then we can identify common zones or production areas. These zones can be marked for future management decisions.

The difference between raw and processed data

Processing or “cleaning” the data is the key to successfully utilising the captured data. Raw yield points have a large amount of errors and “noise” that can significantly impact on the results. With these noisy bits removed and tidied up the data becomes more representative of the paddock. Some of the factors that impact on the data accuracy are cut width, flow delay and travel distance errors.

A processed yield map

Yield data can also be useful for identifying problems during the actual harvest of the crop. In one example a grower saw the results of him harvesting grass seed in the hottest part of the day. He was able to spot the mistake as recorded yield dropped in the swaths that he completed in the hottest temperatures. Ultimately the yield information informed him that the decision had cost him.

Making useful yield maps – the essential information

1. ‘Rubbish in equals rubbish out’ – you only get one opportunity to collect this data so ‘do it once and do it right’
2. Start the season with an empty data card - save a copy of all previous data to your computer and then ‘clean’ the card
3. Naming –use the same naming for the same paddock each year as this makes finding your data easier at the end of the season
4. Check the flow and moisture sensors – if these are not working properly then everything that follows may be a waste of time
5. Calibration – at the start of harvesting each grain type calibrate the flow sensor
6. Operation setup – make sure the cutter bar width is correct, as well as the flow delay is as accurate as possible
7. Card check and back-up – confirm data is being logged by importing it into your mapping software or sending it to your Precision Ag specialist once you start for the season...not at the end of this season! Backup the data as a raw format throughout the harvest season also.
8. If you collect the data as accurately as possible in the first place, then post-processing of the data to make it a useful resource is much simpler!

Yield data is the final measure of a seasons work. Yield data allows for insights into different management practices and the old adage “what gets measured gets managed” comes to mind. 

Have a good harvest!
Chris

Celebrating 10 years of Irrigation Innovation

It’s a classic story of Kiwi innovation.

One summer’s evening in 2004, two Massey University engineering graduates, Stu Bradbury and George Ricketts were working a summer job assembling irrigators on the South Wairarapa farm of Brian and Jo Bosch. 

Over a cuppa, Stu, George and Brian discussed the challenges on the Bosch’s farm caused by the limitations of the existing pivot irrigation system.

“Where the pivot went over the races was wet and mucky,” says Brian.  “We were also getting a number of lame cows, who got wet feet and bruising on the muddy race.”

Brian Bosch on his Wairarapa dairy farm

Blanket irrigation was the problem. They needed a way of irrigating specific areas that needed it but keeping vulnerable parts such as the race dry.

Back then nothing on the market could manage the water flow in targeted and controlled quantities, to specific parts of the farm depending on topography and soil type.

“We saw wet areas where crops weren’t growing, and dry areas without much water. So there was an obvious need for a system to specify where you needed water and how much,” says Stu.

Before long George had the solution and in 2006 they began developing the prototype that would become Precision VRI. VRI stands for variable rate irrigation, ensuring precise amounts of water or nutrients are delivered over multiple crops, soil types and terrains.

To make best use of the technology on paddocks with variable soil types and terrain electromagnetic (EM) soil mapping is recommended. EM mapping measures soil conductivity which is an indicator of soil texture (along with other characteristics) and therefore soil water holding capacity. The Precision VRI system can be easily programmed using the FieldNET app to customise irrigation according to the EM map.

The system can be used to ensure that only the areas that need water, get water, and at the right levels.

Over the past decade Precision VRI has enabled New Zealand’s farmers, food producers and agricultural contractors to achieve better results, driving efficiencies and saving money – to the benefit of agribusiness, not only for dairying, but in sheep, beef, horticulture and arable farming.

In 2011 global agribusiness leader Lindsay Corporation acquired the NZ company WMC Technology Ltd under which the Precision VRI technology was developed. Through doing so the not only gained the rights to market the award-winning technology but also provided significant backing for George, Stu and the team to continue developing irrigation solutions.

From the archives: George and Stu at a farm mapping job in 2010 (above). Stu, George and Paul (below) receiving the Supreme Award at the Manawatu Business Awards 2010, WMC Technology Ltd also won the Innovation Award and the Workplace Health and Safety Award.

“We are working on new iterations of the software,” says Stu.

“Now, everything needs to be mobile-friendly so that is where our efforts are focused.”

Future plans to market the system internationally will give farmers world-wide the advantages experienced by New Zealand farmers using the system.

To find out more about the Growsmart Precision VRI system call 0800 438 627 or visit www.lindsaynz.com.