Farming Within Limits

Global agricultural production is alarmingly unsustainable. Manipulating living beings, their genetics, and entire ecosystems to produce food has always been a technological feat. Advancements in farming technology have made it possible to surpass critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. Technological change in agriculture generates tension between those who benefit and those who bear the costs. Agriculture produces more than enough to feed the world’s human population, but the global economy allocates food inequitably among people and redirects food to industrial feedlots, biofuel refineries, and the waste stream. Technical solutions alone cannot fix the underlying socioeconomic systems that produce unjust and unsustainable food systems. Here we offer a starting point to guide the assessment of agricultural technology for both sustainability and justice, starting with their relationship to the logic of growth and domination that got us here. How can technology serve system change? And how can farming transform the unjust systems it literally feeds

The efficacy of a standoff pad wintering system to capture urine and mitigate nitrate leaching whilst maintaining acceptable levels of animal performance

Wintering of dairy cows on high yielding forage crops is a key contributor towards total farm nitrate leaching loses. High stocking density’s, and subsequent excretion of nitrogen- loaded urine, onto bare, saturated soils results in high nitrate leaching rates. Incorporation of standoff facilities into traditional in situ wintering systems has been suggested as a viable approach to mitigating nitrate leaching., but limited quantitative data exists for percentage of urine captured, and the performance of non-lactating dairy cows wintered under such systems. Two winter systems were compared between June and July 2017 at the Ashley Dene Research and Development Station (ADRDS). Both systems fed fodderbeet (7 KgDM/cow/day fodderbeet, 4 Kg DM/cow/day silage) but in the control system, cows spent 23 hours/day grazing fodderbeet in situ, with a one hour supplement allocation period on a concrete feedpad while the comparison was a standoff pad system, were cows were restricted to a 6 hour fodderbeet allocation period (plus one hour on the feedpad), and spent 17 hours/day on a variety of stand of pad surfaces (stones, sand, woodchip and carpet). To quantify variation in urine deposition between the two systems, PEETER urine sensors were attached to cows and used to measure urination frequency and volume. Urination behavior from eight cows were successfully measured for a period of 24 hours. To compare the suitability of the farms systems from a production perspective, fodderbeet and supplement utilization, cow liveweight, and body condition score were also measured throughout the trial. Results show there was no difference in dry matter utilization (94.2 + ±3.4%), and liveweight gain (580±6.7 gCow/day) between systems. Apparent energy consumption (123 MJME/cow/day) suggested that body condition score gain targets of 0.5 units would be achievable over a 60 day wintering period. Urination behavior was unaffected by wintering system, with average urination event volumes, urination event frequency’s, and total daily urine volumes of (1.8±1.03l/event), (8.37± 4.34 events/day) and (15.12±5.5l/cow/day) were recorded. The percentage of total urine captured under the standoff pad system (82±8.66%) suggest that the expected quantity captured is reflective of the duration of a stand off period. When compared to a 24 hour in situ system, the capture of 82% of urine reduced estimated urine coverage from 54.6% to 9.6% of total paddock area. Based on established leaching values under fodderbeet in stony, Canterbury soil types, this reduction in paddock urine coverage resulted in an estimated reduction in winter nitrate leaching of 31.4 Kg N/ha or 61.6%. It was therefore concluded that stand off pad systems can be effectively used to mitigate winter nitrate leaching whilst maintaining acceptable levels of cow performance

Economic resilience and environmental performance of dairy farms in the upper Waikato region

Dairy farming has impacts on receiving water bodies that have increased in New Zealand during the past two decades due to the intensification and expansion of the industry. As a result the industry has implemented a number of voluntary initiatives to address its environmental impacts. However, declining ecosystem health in the Waikato region means that these initiatives alone are unlikely to retard further decline. Farm system reconfiguration will be required to reduce diffuse nutrient, sediment and pathogen losses. This change will have to occur without significant disruption to farm profit and economic viability. To date most studies have considered single mitigations and the cost of change associated with each. The common notion held by farmers and industry is that if they are constrained by nitrogen leaching caps, business will become less viable. This study examined economic and environmental performance of 25 dairy farms in the Upper Waikato region. There were two components of the study: (1) the development of an environmental scorecard in order to quantify the risk to the receiving environment and (2) identification of relationships between environmental footprint based primarily on nitrogen (N) loss and economic resilience using Return on Capital (ROC) at a range of milk prices. I hypothesised that some farm configurations may result in lower environmental risk concurrently while demonstrating greater economic resilience. The participant group farmed in the Upper Waikato Catchment between Broadlands and Atiamuri on predominantly pumice soils where annual rainfall ranges from 1000 to 1350 mm. Overseer Version 6.0 was used to determine the nitrogen leaching from each of the farms, as a key measure of environmental performance. Nitrogen leached ranged from 15 to 48 kg N ha⁻¹, with an average of 31.8 kg N ha⁻¹. Low-risk farms were selected on the basis of leaching less than 30 kg N ha⁻¹ y⁻¹, as well as achieving a “low risk score” on the environmental scorecard. “Nutrient use efficiency” for the study farms ranged widely, from 18 to 60 kg milk solids (MS) kg⁻¹ N leached ha⁻¹, with an average of 39 kg MS kg⁻¹ N leached ha⁻¹. A range of agri-environmental indicators (AEIs) were selected to develop the scorecard to provide a comprehensive measure of the environmental risk associated with different farm management approaches. The AEIs were selected on the basis they were scientifically sound, quantifiable, referred to issues relevant at catchment scale, were acceptable to target groups, easy to interpret, and cost effective. Return on capital (ROC) was examined for the low-risk farms under a range of milk price scenarios, to test their economic resilience. Over two years (2010/11 and 2011/12) milk prices varied by ± 20%, and total pasture consumption altered by 10-30% due to seasonal effects. Profitability (ROC) for the 25 farms ranged from 2.5 to 9% at a $6.08 kg⁻¹ MS and N losses from 15-48 kg ha⁻¹ y⁻¹ with an average of 31.8 kg N ha⁻¹ year⁻¹. Pasture consumed per hectare ranged from 9.3 to 13 t DM ha.⁻¹ the study included three irrigated farms. The irrigated farms yielded an average of 20To assess how management regimes influenced both nitrogen leaching and profitability, key economic, efficiency and risk parameters were analysed using a regression of ROC on other variables such as stocking rate, milk production and pasture harvested. Twenty-two farms were suitable for this analysis. The only significant factor (p < 0.05) underpinning ROC was a low cost of production (R² =0.81). For milk prices of$5.50 to $6.08 kg⁻¹ MS, the more profitable farms also had a higher tonnage of pasture consumed per cow. This correlation was not apparent at a higher milk price ($7.50 kg⁻¹ MS), suggesting that more intensive systems (less pasture and more imported supplement per cow) can be profitable at times of high milk prices as long as feed costs are well managed. Milk prices have averaged $6.30 kg⁻¹ MS over the period of 1995-2014 and in recent years have fluctuated by 25-30% between seasons, suggesting that farming systems will have to adjust their systems quite quickly to adjust to downside risks. Resilience as it relates to dairy farming includes provision for unexpected events and accounts for volatility of feed, milk price and seasons. This study reinforced that the more intensive dairy systems carry more cow bodyweight per hectare, are dependent on more bought in feed, and can perform comparatively strongly in years of high milk price. These systems can also be more vulnerable, however, with increased environmental risk requiring advanced mitigation strategies such as herd homes, stand- off facilities, supplementary feeding infrastructure and advanced effluent management systems. They also require greater capital investment that can lead to increased debt, compounding business risk. Agricultural “growth agendas” have been based on the notion that policy approaches will not curb development and will provide more production contributing to a higher national GDP. New farm systems will have to demonstrate high resource use efficiency, minimal environmental risk and robust economic performance to endure in what will be more challenging and volatile conditions

The politics of sustainability in New Zealand: A critical evaluation of environmental policy, practice and prospects through a case study of the dairy industry

This thesis examines the politics of sustainability in New Zealand through a case study of the dairy industry. New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ image was bolstered by the passing of the Resource Management Act (RMA) (1991) to much international acclaim. Yet, since its adoption, the country has seen a dramatic expansion and intensification of dairy farming which has resulted in significant environmental decline. The thesis seeks to answer why this has occurred despite the provisions of New Zealand’s apparent world-leading environmental sustainability legislation. The thesis examines the history of agricultural practice and environmental legislation in New Zealand, contemporary environmental policy and its implementation, dairy industry responses to the challenge of sustainability, and a lakes restoration initiative. Informed by a critical discourse analysis approach, the thesis developed a discourse analytic framework to identify technological, ecological modernisation and sustainable development discourses within environmental policies and processes and dairy industry practice and explore the implications of these discourses. The framework is also applied to the analysis of stakeholder interviews, a Q-sort survey, and texts from a variety of governmental and nongovernmental organisations. The analysis offers insights into the disjuncture between the intentions of the RMA and actual environmental outcomes. The thesis found that policy practice was dominated by the ecological modernisation discourse. Despite the RMA being underpinned by a sustainable development normative framework, in practice the ecological modernisation discourse has informed the implementation mechanisms and social processes required by government and the dairy industry to realise primarily economic goals. The ecological modernisation discourse has enabled continued support for a productivist and utilitarian approach to the environment. The research also found there were small-scale instances of a different institutional approach, involving bottom-up initiatives and widespread community participation in decision processes, which offered an example of more environmentally sustainable policy and practice. Specifically, in the Central North Island lakes catchments, where dairying has led to a sharp decline of lake water quality, the policy response has been normatively and institutionally shaped by the sustainable development discourse. A critical outcome is that pastoral farmers within the lakes catchments are now required to farm within the limits of the carrying capacity of these regions. These comparative cases offer a powerful alternative, and a possible blueprint for the institutionalisation of sustainable agriculture into the rest of the country. A comparison of the findings of the larger dairy industry study and the small-scale study of the lakes reveals that despite the Resource Management Act offering the same legislative context in both instances, the ecological modernisation discourse predominates in the first instance and the sustainable development discourse in the latter case. The contrasting outcomes may be explained by a range of factors such as the political will to act on environmental degradation, the importance of the lakes to the tourism industry and hence presenting an economic imperative, and the desire of the local community including Maori, most significantly, to ensure the survival of the lakes. Such factors are not evident in the more diffused national context of the dairy industry. The lakes study and the Q-survey results also reveal that a sustainable development approach has the potential to lead to better long-term environmental sustainability results. Ultimately, the thesis demonstrates that different sustainability discourses shape different sustainability outcomes. It illuminates how nature-society relationships in New Zealand continue to be marked by power relations and power struggles that are shaped by political ideologies. The study concludes that an overwhelming emphasis by the government and the dairy industry on economic productivism has trumped any concern about environmental sustainability enshrined in the Resource Management Act, although interventions driven by a sustainable development discourse remain possible on a local scale

The financial costs of environmental compliance through reducing nitrate leaching for a range of Waikato dairy farm system intensities

The New Zealand dairy industry has grown significantly over the past decade through increasing both area farmed and the number of cows milked. Dairy farm systems have intensified as a result of the use of supplementary feeding, increased stocking rate and land use changes. Environmental regulations have been implemented as a means to limit and mitigate the negative environmental impacts of dairy under the National Policy Statement for Fresh Water. In the Waikato, regulation to date has predominatly been focused on effluent storage and application. As such, regulation has not yet shaped how Waikato farm systems are implemented. It is likely that future regulation for the Waikato will include nitrogen loss limits. Management of nutrient cycles will therefore become a high priority for effective farm management as well as being used to inform the adoption of changes to farming systems. Four nitrogen (N) loss mitigation strategies were modelled for Waikato dairy farm systems of low, medium and high input to show the changes in N leaching and economic farm surplus per hectare. Reductions in N leaching for farm environmental compliance were able to be achieved through farm management practices as well as through additional farm infrastructure. Large reductions of 20 percent and 17 percent were achieved through destocking and cow housing scenarios respectively. A corresponding lift in farm surplus per hectare of 1 percent and 11 percent was recorded. Similarly, moderate reductions in N leaching were achieved through winter grazing off farm (9 percent) and increased effluent management facilities (8 percent). However a 4 percent reduction in farm surplus was noted for the winter grazing scenario while increasing the effluent area had no material impact on farm working expenses or revenue. This research identified cow housing as farm infrastructure which for low, medium and high input farm systems was able to return a reduction in N leaching greater than 15 percent and increase farm surplus by greater than 9 percent. The implementation of cow housing was modelled for a large scale farm system in the Taharua catchment where N limits are currently being enforced. Results of the modelling show a cow housing facility for large scale dairy farming has a positive internal rate of return of 13 percent. Waikato dairy farmers were surveyed to gather data on the initial capital cost of compliance and the farm system implications of increased regulation to date. The survey illustrated that effluent compliance has been the focus of investment and highlights the significant cost to the dairy industry of internalising environmental impacts. Aggregated survey results indicate that the capital cost of environmental spending to date for the average Waikato farm system has totaled $1.02 per kgMS,$1487 per hectare or $404 per cow. This equates to an average investment of$110,000 per farm. A clear understanding of the impact of environmental regulation and the relative cost of compliance for different farm systems is needed to produce accurate measures of environmental performance and to improve the cost efficiency of dairy production systems. Importantly there is a need to understand how different farming systems can work together at a catchment, regional and national level to achieve both value creation and environmental sustainability as set out in the national policy frameworks

Industrial ecology Prosperity Game{trademark}

Industrial ecology (IE) is an emerging scientific field that views industrial activities and the environment as an interactive whole. The IE approach simultaneously optimizes activities with respect to cost, performance, and environmental impact. Industrial Ecology provides a dynamic systems-based framework that enables management of human activity on a sustainable basis by: minimizing energy and materials usage; insuring acceptable quality of life for people; minimizing the ecological impact of human activity to levels that natural systems can sustain; and maintaining the economic viability of systems for industry, trade and commerce. Industrial ecology applies systems science to industrial systems, defining the system boundary to incorporate the natural world. Its overall goal is to optimize industrial activities within the constraints imposed by ecological viability, globally and locally. In this context, Industrial systems applies not just to private sector manufacturing and services but also to government operations, including provision of infrastructure. Sandia conducted its seventeenth Prosperity Game{trademark} on May 23--25, 1997, at the Hyatt Dulles Hotel in Herndon, Virginia. The primary sponsors of the event were Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory, who were interested in using the format of a Prosperity Game to address some of the issues surrounding Industrial Ecology. Honorary game sponsors were: The National Science Foundation; the Committee on Environmental Improvement, American Chemical Society; the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Division, American Chemical Society; the US EPA--The Smart Growth Network, Office of Policy Development; and the US DOE-Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development

Wanting to live here: design after anthropocentric functionalism

Design research has recently turned to theoretical perspectives, including care ethics and posthumanism, to counter the industrial processes that have led to climate crisis. As design theorists and ethnographers of interaction, we researched experimental eco-farming in a community that shared many of these theoretical and ideological commitments. Our goal was not to offer an account of use and provide design implications in support of it. Instead, we chose to identify concrete practices and artifacts that embody the sorts of industrial transformations that we are seeking—even if they are manifest in an imperfect or partial form. We encountered practices focused on community building, local resilience to climate disruptions, experiments in eco-farming, economic survival, and attracting the next generation. One interlocutor translated these concerns into a simple binary, asking, “do we want to live here?” This paper contributes to a design research agenda that might (eventually) provide an affirmative answer

Assessing the consequences of the Lake Taupo Nitrogen Trading Programme in New Zealand, using a landscape approach

This thesis investigates the consequences of implementing a local policy regime that potentially enables a viable agricultural sector to operate within environmental limits. The Lake Taupo Nitrogen Trading Programme is an exemplar cap and trade regime located in New Zealand. It is the only cap and trade programme, to date, in which a limit on non-point source nitrogen discharges is applied at both the watershed and the farm levels. This study uses a landscape approach to assess the effects of this cap and trade implementation in order to achieve a rich understanding of the changes in land-use and farm practices that have occurred, the driving forces involved, and the five landscape paths that have evolved. The study finds that the cap and trade regime is insufficient on its own to achieve a viable agricultural sector in the regulated area. Investigation at different landscape scales, for instance, showed that factors such as the lack of low-nitrogen mitigations and land-uses, the gatekeeping role of the OVERSEER® programme and the perceived effect of nitrogen sales on land values discouraged on-farm innovation and nitrogen trading. These and other drivers have led some landowners to make adjustments that may not have been expected under a cap and trade regime, and some of these potentially make a negative contribution to developing a viable agricultural sector. The latter include: semi-retirement, investment outside of farming, reductions in productive capacity without apparent reinvestment, and relocation of part of the farm outside of the regulated area. Adjustments that may make a positive contribution include: secondary processing on farm, farm amalgamations, and investment in higher value land-uses (dairying, dairy support and carbon forests). Some farmers that have opted for business as usual were reluctant to sell nitrogen because of the potential negative effect on land values and the ability to sell, and so further significant land-use change as a result of trading nitrogen currently appears unlikely. Overall, land-use change that may make a negative contribution to a viable agricultural sector occurred on 42% of the land in the study area while changes that may contribute positively to a viable agricultural sector occurred on 32% of the land. Business as usual is estimated to have occurred on 25% of the study area. As a consequence, it currently appears that the future landscape trajectory for pastoral land in the Catchment is one of reduced production. Thus, complementary research and technology policies, and the capacity to find new ways of making a living from rural land, are essential additions to a cap and trade regime in order for a viable agricultural sector to operate under environmental limits

Denitrifying bioreactor technology to reduce nitrate discharges from artificial drainage - a novel tool to enable viable farming within limits?

Aims - Artificial drainage is essential for viable use of poorly drained soils, which account for approximately 40% of dairying land in New Zealand. However, subsurface and surface drains can also provide a pathway for fast and unattenuated nutrient transfers to our streams and rivers. A denitrifying bioreactor, fundamentally a pit filled with carbon source such as woodchips, is a recently developed technology for treating drainage water at the edge of the field (Schipper et al. 2010). Naturally occurring microorganisms utilise carbon in woodchips to transform nitrate in the drainage water into gaseous forms of nitrogen (largely N2) through the denitrification process. The technology has been widely adopted in cropped lands in the USA (Christianson et al. 2012). However, a different bioreactor design is necessary in New Zealand due to the shallower subsurface drainage systems in our flat pastoral lowland areas. While bioreactors have been found to effectively remove nitrate in the drainage water, possible pollution swapping (particularly N2O emissions) and other unwanted side effects (including high concentration of dissolved organic matter in the outflow) also need careful consideration (Schipper et al. 2010; Weigelhofer and Hein 2015). Thus the main objective of this research is to assess the applicability and performance of denitrifying bioreactor technology in reducing nitrate loads from subsurface drains in New Zealand pastoral lands. We aim to identify the factors affecting the performance as well as potentially occurring detrimental side effects of denitrifying bioreactor technology to optimise the cost and efficiency of future installations in New Zealand. Method - We designed and constructed a pilot-scale denitrifying bioreactor at a farm in the Hauraki Plains where high nitrate concentrations (>10 mg nitrate-N L-1) were found in the drainage water (Figure 1). The bioreactor has an effective volume of approximately 60 m3 filled with locally sourced untreated pine (Pinus radiata) woodchips. We route the drainage water from a lateral subsurface drain into the bioreactor through an inlet control structure and the flow rate through the bioreactor is controlled by the difference between the heights of weirs in the inlet and outlet control structures (Figure 2). The inlet control structure allows excess drainage water during high flow events to by-pass the bioreactor. We continuously monitor flow through the bioreactor and any by-pass flow, electrical conductivity at the inlet and outlet, temperature at the inlet, outlet and within the bioreactor, and rainfall at the site. Inlet and outlet waters are proportionally sampled for nitrogen and carbon species to assess the effectiveness of the bioreactor in attenuating nitrate and for a range of other analytes to investigate the possible occurrence of negative side effects. Results - We will present our approach to the design of the bioreactor for typical New Zealand subsurface drainage systems in comparison with the approach applied in other countries, such as the USA. Monitoring data from the first season of the bioreactor’s operation will also be presented to show the performance of the bioreactor in reducing nitrate in the subsurface drainage water and to assess any potentially occurring negative side effects