Abstract
The landscape of rural Canterbury, New Zealand, has evolved from tussock grasslands to one of the most productive dairying areas in the world. While these changes represent a boon for Canterbury’s economy, the visual impact of land-use change has been dramatic. In this paper, we evaluate which changes to the Canterbury landscape have been most pronounced, how people react to those changes, which aspects of the rural landscape are of greatest importance to both urban and rural residents of Canterbury, and whether cost-effective means of mitigating visual changes to the landscape exist. We find that the majority of Cantabrians hold unfavourable views of recent changes to the landscape—particularly with regard to dairying—a finding that is consistent across both urban and rural survey respondents. Using a visual assessment study with cross-classified random effect, we find that dairy cows, irrigators, and silage bales significantly reduce viewers’ subjective evaluations of landscapes while shelterbelts dramatically increase their subjective evaluations. Moreover, native New Zealand shelterbelts are preferred to exotic shelterbelts, but both are preferred to having no shelterbelts, suggesting that the negative visual impacts of dairy farming may be ameliorated by intensified tree planting.
Highlights
Agriculture represents a larger share of New Zealand’s economy than that of any other OECD country except Turkey [1]
We report on perceptions of changes to Canterbury’s rural landscape, focusing on those associated with dairying, and assess how the perceived economic importance of dairying affects these views
Survey results indicate that rural residents are 96% more likely than urban residents to identify dairy as being one of the two most important sectors for Canterbury’s economy (Figure 3)
Summary
Agriculture represents a larger share of New Zealand’s economy than that of any other OECD country except Turkey [1]. The agriculture, food, and forestry sectors generate 70% of New Zealand’s merchandise export earnings and around 12% of gross domestic product. New Zealand is the world’s largest dairy and sheep meat exporter [2]. Total exports are projected to grow over the decade, led by agriculture [3], and the New Zealand government has announced a target of doubling agricultural exports by 2025 [2]. Sheep in New Zealand once outnumbered people by a margin of 22 to 1. Dairy products alone comprise 27% of the total value of New Zealand’s exports, more than twice that derived from lamb and wool [7], and the dairy cooperative Fonterra, which is responsible for 30% of the world’s dairy exports, has become New Zealand’s single largest company
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