Reon Verry
Former King Country River Care chair Reon Verry says farmers should be seen as stakeholders by Waikato Regional Council.
Verry, also Waikato Federated Farmers Meat and Wool chair who farms south of Te Kūiti, contributed to a debate at last month’s Waikato Federated Farmers executive meeting on how the relationship between the regional council and farmers could be better.
“We need to be seen as a stakeholder,” he said. “It’s not just regional council, it’s all district councils,” North Waikato Federated branch chair Chris Woolerton said.
Woolerton started the debate by bringing a remit before the executive asking for the organisation to initiate a joint management agreement with the council to ensure that the agricultural sector’s voice was fully heard.
Woolerton said farmers wanted a better relationship with the council.
Federated Farmers is expecting the outcome of its appeal against the council’s wide-sweeping set of rules for agricultural land use next month.
“May will see an interim Plan Change One decision which will find the Waikato Regional Council scrambling to get their house in order,” Verry said.
“It will take months for the decision to register with most farmers, if at all, and then there may be some angst.
“I’m not sure there will be anything finalised this year as far as actions from farmers are concerned.”
Plan Change One sought to improve freshwater quality in the Waikato and Waipā River catchments. It will apply to around 10,000 properties and a land area of 1.1 million hectares within the two catchments. The plan change is a requirement from a Parliamentary Act and River Iwi Treaty Settlement.
Federated Farmers appealed against which waterbodies stock should be excluded from, setback distances, how critical source areas are identified and managed, and how often fertiliser spreaders need to be calibrated.
Waikato Federated Farmers president Keith Holmes said Woolerton’s draft was applicable to all regional councils.
Vice president Phil Sherwood said Woolerton was really after a memorandum of understanding and asked for the remit to be redrafted and brought back to the provincial annual general meeting.
Sherwood also floated the idea of preparing a remit on pest boards.
“I am going to keep on about pest boards, as we have got so many of them,” he said.
Waikato Federated Farmers vice president and Ōhaupō dairy farmer Andrew Reymer’s remit requesting Federated Farmers be given a seat on the Ospri board recently failed.
Reymer asked Ospri to explain a $16.6 million write-off related to the failure of a major software project in January.
