The Country 15/09/25: David Clark talks to Jamie Mackay

A Mid Canterbury arable and sheep and beef farmer who’s fighting a nightmarish, bureaucratic battle with ECan, his local regional council.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's story that blew up social media over the weekend.
That comes from David Clark, former Federated Farmer's Mid Canterbury chair. David,
you came back from an overseas holiday with your lovely
wife and there on your arrival was an email I
think from e Can Man. Oh Man, I read your
post A bureaucratic nightmare, absolute road block, orange cone oratory

(00:22):
from e Can Why do they make life so hard
as a farmer?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Good Jamien, Great to talk to you today. Oh yeah,
absolutely right. Why that the farming is being made so
difficult and for what outcome? So yes, we did arrive home.
We'd had a long awaited trip overseas, came home to
a Section ninety two request from e CAN for further information.
So the background our lendue consent that we gained in

(00:49):
twenty seventeen here in Canterbury for our mixed durable and
sheep property. It was up for a newal It had
to be rolled over. Now we fought, given that we
have an A grade audit, we've previously been consented and
we are meeting all the zone reduction targets and there's
a series of new dairy farms being consented immediately around

(01:12):
us that rolling over the consent for a status quo
business would be a relatively straightforward process, but we've engaged
consultants to do this work for us. Put all the
information in BANG comes back for section ninety two a
report seven pages of it look delving back into absolutely
minw detail into our application and our overseer and our

(01:37):
baseline of all things. So a baseline is the two
thousand and nine to thirteen farming years which establishes the
nitrogen loss discharge through overseer, which then you're judged it
whether you're meeting the targets of reductions or not.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
But if you're not changing your farming practice, why can't
they just rub a stampus? And it does seem the
bizarre that you're getting put through the ringer and around
you brand new dairy farms are being consented and we're
hearing all sorts of numbers about how many dairy farms
are going to pop up in Canterbury. I would have

(02:14):
thought they might have had a bigger environmental footprint than
your arable mixed cropping and sheep operation.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
So that's a pretty hard thing to calibrate as to
why those dairy farms are being consented and out we're
having such a tough job. Look, that largely comes the
end of the way overseer operates in that it for
a long time has provided very high and loud results
for arable farm systems. It's never been a suitable tool

(02:44):
for the arable system, but for dairy ing. So long
as you've got plantain and you've got variable rad irrigation
in the water, appropes and things, it gives you quite
a low number. So whilst Overseer was never ever designed
to compare two different farming systems, that's what's being useful.
So you can run an overseer compared it to arable

(03:05):
and say well here i am, I can go drying
with a lower number, especially if you're send the cows
elsewhere the winter.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Do you think one of the reasons why this has
blown up on social media is that because there's lots
of farmers on the same boat as you. And it's
not only the Canterbury region we're hearing down. For instance,
in Southland, the local farmers down there having all sorts
of issues with regional counsels. Maybe the Prince of the
Province of Shane Jones might be your savior. He wants

(03:34):
rid of them.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, that's what we've got to look at, because we
can't keep going back and reltigating things like baselines. We've
got to put a line on the stand and say,
right with a stiguli stat we've agreed on that, let's
move forward. What's the impact of this operator of this business.
But then if you look at it at an individual
farm level, what are we achieving by it all? And
what really really got my back up in the letter

(03:57):
from e Kenja was that they said we've been working
days to respond to the request for information, and if
we didn't provide the information or it wasn't satisfactory, they
would fully publicly notify our call for public submissions, hold
a public hearing. And then they said at the bottom
of the letter, and your consent may be declined. So

(04:18):
I guess the question for all of your listeners and
all of us in agriculture and New Zealand is for
a farming family, what does declined look like? So if
we had declined, do they come and take my sheep away?
Do they confiscate the fertilizer sprinter? Do they take the
fusers out of the irrigators or do they just arrest me?

(04:40):
But what does decline look like? And if it's a
stated aim of sense increased agricultural revenues to try and
dig this country out of the financial mired that it's in,
how does that fit with what we're being put through
to continue farming our arable farming business here in Canterbury.
What confidence does that give us to reinvest in our business?

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, maybe you just need to do a dairy conversion.
It'll be a lot easier to get a consent. Can
I just also if this wasn't challenging enough, the Rununga
also identified that one of your blocks could be the
site of an historic Mari fishing cam site some four
to five hundred meters from the river. Were you aware
of this?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
No, long never ever heard of it before. Look, I
haven't got an ax to grind with EWEI as such
on this that if there was an historic site, which
there is absolutely no signs of it on the land,
But if there was, we're quite happy to give respect
to that. I've got no problem with that. But it's
more as though it's being used as yet another stick

(05:43):
to shoven the spokes by the regional council. So this
is actually not necessarily an overseer issue. This is not
an EWI issue. This is an issue around how regional
councils are doing everything they can to take an attitude
of no unless we are forced to say yes rather

(06:03):
than how can we help you do this now? The
regional plan that we have here in Kenderburry anything other
councils are the same. I've written these very complex, very
legalistic plans that all turn on oversere. The whole thing
is going to implode on itself and that is the

(06:25):
risk that we all have. And I guess that's why
it's had accord with so many one hundred thousands of
people on Facebook. Is farming. Families right across New Zealand
are facing this and it is time for it to stop,
and time for us to get to a regime where
we say, sorry.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
I'm just gonna have to wrap this.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
David.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
How much is this costing you?

Speaker 2 (06:43):
By the way, ah lord, we would expect this even
if we avoid a public hearing. We'll spend fifty thousand
on us to achieve absolutely nothing.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
I love on your Facebook post and I'm going to
leave it with us because I'm out of time. Your
final words. If this is the future, then this country isft,
absolutely and utterlyft, and I agree with you. David Clark.
Good luck with your bureaucratic battle with ECAN.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, thanks very much. Jamie, great to talk to you