The New Zealand pork sector fears misinterpreted policy wording is threatening the future viability of pig farming.
The pork industry has expressed concern that the government’s National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) will prevent pig farming on productive land.
The directive on the policy was supposed to protect productive land from encroaching urbanisation such as housing.
Consultation on the proposed NPS-HPL stated the intention to protect highly productive land for primary production purposes.
This was to avoid the loss of HPL to two key risks – uncoordinated urban expansion and rural land fragmentation associated with rural lifestyle living, NZ Pork chief executive Brent Kleiss said.
NZ Pork supports this, Kleiss said, but the published version of the statement changed that wording to “land-based primary production”.
NZ Pork, which represents NZ’s commercial pig farmers, is concerned that the wording of the policy is now being interpreted to exclude pig farming from land suitable for agriculture.
“We believe the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and councils are saying land impacted by the policy should only be for certain types of farming, not including pig farming,” Kleiss said.
“This is being interpreted by MfE staff to mean that despite being a primary production food-producing activity, indoor primary production activities such as pig farms are an inappropriate land use on highly productive land.”
The pork industry is also seeing this interpretation from councils as they begin to implement the NPS-HPL.
“This interpretation of the policy will make it hard for new pig farms to be established and for existing farms to grow or change the way they do things.
“Pig farms are often part of bigger farms where they use the pig manure as a natural fertiliser on cropping or pastoral land,” Kleiss said.
This is why many pig farms are on land that’s considered good for farming under the policy.
If the policy isn’t changed, it could make it difficult for pig farmers to construct new buildings to meet any new welfare rules in the future.
“We believe the current interpretation of the policy is inconsistent with its original intent of protecting highly productive land for primary production and represents an overreach in a policy initially proposed to protect land valued for food production from urban activities.
“We have asked the government to change the policy to make sure it protects good farming land while still allowing for pig farming,” Kleiss said.
