Improving the economic and environmental performance of a New Zealand hill country farm catchment: 1. Goal development and assessment of current performance

Abstract

A multi‐stakeholder group including land managers, policy agencies and biophysical scientists was establishedto oversee a catchment scale project examining the economic and environmental performance of a representative North Island hill country catchment (296 ha Mangaotama catchment, Whatawhata) in the western Waikato region of New Zealand. The group first identified goals relevant to achieving a “well managed rural hill catchment”, including viable businesses, healthy ecosystems, protected landscape values, active partnerships, demonstrable environmental performance, and adequate rural services and infrastructure. The current state of the case study catchment was characterized by collecting data on key indicators chosen by the group to assess business viability and ecosystem health. Data included land use capability, vegetation cover, soil fertility, erosion, water quality, aquatic fauna, plant growth, terrestrial biodiversity, livestock enterprise performance, and economic farm surplus. The results were compared with a range of benchmarks, including adjacent catchments in different land use (water quality, biodiversity) and with hill country pastoral sector survey data (livestock performance and profitability). This comparison demonstrated that from both economic and environmental points of view, the catchment farm system was failing to meet the goals set by the management group. That result provided the impetus for the investigation of ways to improve performance.