three of them were interviewed. Like European-titled farmers of small/medium sized properties throughout the Catchment, one of these interviewees expressed three aims for their property: to make a profit (short and long-term), to provide a satisfying way of making an income, and, because of a sense of attachment, to provide an enjoyable place to live. The other two interviewees were owners of farming portfolios and the emphasis here was on profitability and cash-flow.
While long-term financial viability is important, interviewed farmers that had decided to remain farming under the regulations described how their love of farming and of living in the Catchment encouraged them to stay. Sheep and beef farming is non-routine, takes place entirely outdoors and is constantly challenging. The enjoyment in sheep farming, according to one interviewee, is
measured in how well all the required activities are “…put together right” –so “…it’s a jigsaw puzzle”
with a new version to be solved each day. The outdoor lifestyle is important for both dairy and sheep farmers but, in the minds of interviewed sheep and beef farmers, dairy, with its set routines
and “…one mob of cows going round and round the farm”, compares unfavourably.
There are some things about milking (whether it be sheep or dairy) that are not attractive to sheep and beef farmers. Like being inside a shed, dealing with the effluent, the hours of work, the routine nature of the work. In sheep and beef many of the tasks happen only once a year … You only have lambing once a year, calving once a year, crutching.... every day is different. One of the ballot farmers alluded to the financial cost of this commitment to sheep and beef:
I farm sheep and beef because I like it. I enjoy dogs, I enjoy the lifestyle. I am a romantic - and what it costs, I don’t know.
Not all farmers were opposed to dairy farming. Several landowners in the Catchment are dairy farmers themselves or are associated with a dairy farm located outside of the Catchment. One dairy farmer, located in the northern sector described their aim as maintaining cash-flow but even so they were proud of their husbandry, and had undertaken an extensive beautification project on the farm. As the General Manager explained:
That block of dirt there is a very special block of dirt - in terms of… there are not many around there in terms of that size and scale and it’s a source of pride. My directors have planted a lot of those trees themselves and we know we have obligations to the environment.
But among some dairy farmers there was a feeling that further conversion inside the Catchment was unlikely because of public concern for the Lake. The quote below is from a dairy farmer whose dairy platform is located outside of the Catchment but who has run-off land inside the Catchment
boundary:
I wouldn’t put a milking platform in the Catchment. You probably can’t buy enough N now to do it and I don’t think that the public would let you.
Kerr & Olssen (2012), in their study of the relationship of land-use change to product price changes in New Zealand, found that there is a lag period before change takes place and that sheep and beef farmers are the slowest to respond to a change in their product price. Whereas 50% of the land-use adjustment that dairy farmers made to a permanent change to commodity prices occurred within two years, it was 12 years before 50% of sheep and beef (and cattle) farmers had made a similar change. A farmer interviewee expressed this lag in land-use change in the following way:
The stupid idiocy of farming is that those that are in it don’t want to get out – they don’t want to do anything else. They were born to be farmers - it is in their DNA – like me – and they don’t want to escape. I don’t encourage my children to go into farming.
In addition to the attachment to farming, interviewees expressed an attachment to their land and to its location. If they had been on the property for some time, the evidence of their husbandry was
always visible to them. His farm, one ballot farmer explained, is the “…measure of my success”, and
it is a felt attachment since “…it’s not even just to look and to touch”. Another farmer described the same type of attachment when he said that:
The farm is like gardening on a large scale – I can plant trees and I get a kick out of seeing them and the animals grow.
Farmers did not want to leave the area because they “…like it here”, particularly living close to the
Lake. The quote below is from one such farmer, but in this case he describes a neighbour’s reasons
And if it wasn't for where they are, the location, they probably wouldn't be farming here either. But they've got a bit of the ‘X factor’ - like you get on a farm overlooking the Lake or whatnot. You're not going to find a farm like that just anywhere.
Many farmers didn’t like the conversions of pasture to plantation pines that had already been
undertaken and considered them “…a disgrace”, that they “…give a dark and dank look” to a place
and that the pollen cloud that they created in spring was already unacceptably invasive. They were reluctant to see their hard work in building up the pasture wiped out through the establishment of trees. This aversion was common throughout the Catchment. This comment from a Trustee from the southern sector:
Most of the farm managers – they hate trees. So if, when, we’ve been planting paddocks with trees, the looks on their faces and the word around town was, “Those dumb Trustees, they’ve been planting up all this good farmland in trees and blah blah blah… And that’s the perception that a lot of people have. I look at the articles in some of the local papers about what a crime it is to see all this good farmland going into trees … unfortunately a lot of these people making commentary in the papers never bothered to ask us about it. They just wrote big long letters and they certainly didn’t look at the economics of it.
Farmers also expected the presence of forests to affect their ability to sell and, for one couple trying to sell their lifestyle block in the western sector, this proved to be the case:
When prospective buyers saw the trees so close to the boundary they made comments that they wanted to live in a farming community not a forest. We have received no offers since the trees were planted.
Some farmers, therefore, had a sense of attachment to the way of life, their property and the pastoral landscape. Thus there were compelling reasons for these farmers to remain on their land. New entrants, on the other hand, were drawn by the opportunities that were available. One new entrant, who arrived in 2004, had been hunting and fishing in the area for many years and so was keen to farm close to his favoured recreational sites (NZ Farm Environment Trust, 2014). A beef farming couple who moved into the northern sector of the Catchment were attracted by the cheapness of the land and the opportunity to semi-retire in an area close to town. Two other
interviewed new entrants were also attracted by land prices and the business opportunities provided by known environmental rules as well as the sale of large tracts of land because of the exit of