Ngai Tahu farm working towards a sustainable future

• Published date: 20 July 2022
• Publication title: Central Rural Life

It’s hard to picture this scene with just a remnant of the pine plantation remaining and billiard-table farmland, lanes and riparian planting stretching out as far as the eye can see

The Eyrewell block, called Te Whenua Hou, broadly runs parallel of the Waimakariri River over 4880 irrigated hectares.

This is broken down into 2480ha of dairy farms, 1300ha for dairy support and 1100ha for sheep and beef grazing.

Another 150ha is being restored in native bush, in keeping with the tribe’s strong environmental position.

On the dairy land are eight farms milking 8000 cows, while five dairy support farms have 2000 rising two-year-olds as well as 2200 calves and 150 carry-over cows, with 500ha in crops.

There’s about 28km from the bottom to the top of the farm, rising 200m in elevation.

After a massive conversion project, this all takes a team of just under 50 staff to operate, including 41 working on the dairy farms.

Farming and Forestry general manager Will Burrett says Te Whenua Hou profits go back to the tribe to be redistributed throughout the 18 Papatipu Runanga across the South Island.

Some of that is reinvested in farms so they work within the natural environment.

Running such a large operation comes down to people, he says.

‘‘It’s about having a very clear direction from your shareholder and we’ve got that from Ngai Tuahuriri (manawhenua), who have aspirations for us to demonstrate best practice and also try and formulate different ways in which we can lead and demonstrate to the wider sector how you can achieve that. So there’s big expectations on us, but it all comes back to the kaimahi (people), capability and clarity. We’ve got fantastic assets the tribe has invested in so it’s about optimising those within a set of expectations around our environmental kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and wai (water) use and nutrient use.’’

He says managing this isn’t as difficult as it might seem.

‘‘I don’t think it’s any different from anyone else’s expectations on themselves — we’ve just got absolute clarity that we can’t differ from that, so that gives us an absolute awareness of how we are to treat the whenua (land) and wai (water) relative to the kaitiakitanga, whanaungatanga (guardianship and close connection between people) and manaakitanga (care) values that we strive to achieve.’’

Ngai Tahu’s vision for water as both a regulator and farmer is to keep as much of it as possible in the river. This joint role is a strength as it allows the team to try new things with the...