Sustainable agriculture was cemented as a strategic theme for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, when Jim Sutton was Minister of Agriculture for nine months in 1990. Sutton continued championing the concept throughout his time in central government as the minister, including the period from 2002 until 2005, a point made by Sutton himself (Sutton interview,
2008) and by the Prime Minister Helen Clark at the time of Jim Sutton’s retirement:
A feature of his agriculture portfolio tenure in successive Labour Governments was the emergence of sustainability as the central theme of Agriculture Policy (Clark, 2006b). Initially proposed after MfE was established, the sustainable agriculture policy was developed, in large part (and in the opinion of a senior Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries official at the time Alan Walker) because,
Sutton wanted a foil to the Ministry for the Environment because no one quite understood what the scope of MfE tentacles was going to be because it was a new concept. That was the start of sustainable agriculture ... the main reason was to actually put a perspective which said it is not all about conservation nor is it all just about environment and MfE. We have to take into consideration there is another set of objectives that exist within the country (Walker interview, 2008).
Jim Sutton remembers the emergence of sustainable agriculture somewhat differently, recalling how during a meeting with senior Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries officials he:
thought that [the ministry] was changing ... for the last 100 to 150 years the raison
d’être of the Department [of Agriculture] and the Ministry of Agriculture was to make two blades of grass grow where one had grown before, but our mission henceforth was to be one of sustainability, making this a sustainable industry and sustainable in terms of environmental and social factors as well as economic factors (Sutton interview, 2008).
A Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries programme Sutton highlighted in particular, the FARM Partnership programme, that he was involved in developing in 1990, was in direct response to the damage wrought by Cyclone Bola on the East Coast of the North Island in 1988. Although not the agriculture minister at the time of Bola, Sutton had been involved with central
government’s response following the cyclone. Explicit recognition that the current land use on an extensive area of hill country prone to erosion on the East Coast of the North Island was not sustainable was made by central government after the cyclone. The FARM Partnership
programme was developed and promoted as a programme for sustainable land management (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1990). The name FARM was an acronym indicative of
the programme’s approach: Facilitation; Action; Risk Management; and Partnership. The
unique approach proposed was to form a partnership between central government, local government and individual farmers, to support and assist the redefinition of farm boundaries within affected and at risk catchments. The idea was to establish fewer but larger farms, which would be more sustainable, given the financial returns farmers were receiving and the
requirement for soil conservation works on-farm. The policy shift being undertaken within central government, as a whole at the time, was reflected in the programme with an emphasis placed not only on building community self-reliance, but also:
secure and sustainable farms, the protection and restoration of damaged land, and the implementation of land management systems that will allow farmers to continue with financial independence (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1990, p. 3).
Labour lost the election to National in November 1990 and although the FARM Partnership programme had the support of the new Minister of Agriculture, John Falloon, Ruth
Richardson’s ‘Mother of all Budgets’ of 1991 saw funding for the programme in the words of
Jim Sutton:
canned by Ruth Richardson. She simply got the new cabinet to agree that every programme the Labour Government had approved funding for since the last formal budget would be cancelled (Sutton interview, 2008).
The East Coast Forestry Programme emerged in 1991 as a scaled-back and modified version of the FARM Partnership programme.
Although policy work was initiated in the later 1980s, it was ‘May 1991, just before passage of the Resource Management Act’ that the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ‘released a
discussion paper entitled “Sustainable Agriculture: A Policy Proposal”’(Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1993, p. v). Drawing on the submissions a policy position paper was then
published in 1993. The definition of sustainable agriculture proposed by the Ministry in this paper (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1993, p. 4) is as follows:
Sustainable agriculture is the use of practices and systems which maintain or enhance:
the ability of people and communities to provide for their social and cultural well-being;
the economic viability of agriculture; the natural resource base of agriculture;
other ecosystems influenced by agricultural activities; and the quality and safety of food and fibre.
Land was identified as a resource management issue for New Zealand agriculture in the policy position paper. Specifically, ‘significant land instability and erosion problems in sedimentary
hill country in both the North and South Islands’ were identified as one of a number of problem
areas (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1993, p. 9). Consistent with the shift in central government approach during the mid-1980s, central government’s involvement in achieving sustainable land management would be guided by principles that included:
(a) efficient allocation of resources and the full accounting of all costs and benefits accruing to individuals and communities;
(b) increasing the capacity of individuals and communities for self help and
encouraging local responsibility for solving problems (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1993, p. 13).
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries’ role was clearly non-interventionist and it included
‘assisting the liberalisation of international agricultural trade’. It also had a role in preparedness
for adverse climatic events, natural resource management, research and education and information (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1993, p. 17).