Compliance. The very word often generates a non-verbal reaction – the body stiffens, arms are crossed and smiles are replaced with frowns. Is it because we’ve been flogged to the brink with government regulations or the mere vision of a uniformed official with a clipboard poking their way around our shed adds more layers of anxiety? Both probably.
But what if there’s a better, friendlier way to ‘do’ compliance? A way that not only rewards our efforts with real cash and that immensely satisfying ‘job-done’ feeling, but streamlines and consolidates (almost) every regulated and non-regulated requirement in a one-to-many scenario?
How would it feel to easily show all the evidence and information required during a supply agreement audit or to your banker at your kitchen table for a finance application? For a resource consent, environmental funding, or my personal favourite, when entering competitions such as the Ballance Farm Environment Awards or Ahuwhenua Trophy? Pretty good, right?
Let us present the Farm Assurance Programme (FAP).
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FAPs come in all shapes and sizes and, to paraphrase George Orwell’s wise words, some are more equal than others. They all have common categories – environment, animal health, people, food safety and biosecurity, but it’s the detail of the individual requirements within these categories that sets them apart in their value back to the farm gate.
The most recent FAP to emerge is the New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme PLUS (NZFAP PLUS). Many of you will be familiar with NZFAP certification as a common condition of supply for many red meat and fibre processors, and the NZFAP PLUS is its big sister that includes additional categories covering farm environment plans, people and biosecurity. Not only does it cover categories within MPI’s Integrated Farm Planning (IFP) as well as (from what we know currently) Freshwater Farm Plans and Intensive Winter Grazing Plans, NZFAP PLUS goes way above the minimum standard. Before you inhale too sharply though, hear me out.
The thing with going ‘above and beyond’ minimum standard today means that you’re future-proofing your business for tomorrow (and saving heaps), because above and beyond minimum standard today will be simply what’s expected as normal tomorrow.
How does NZFAP PLUS and other top notch FAPs such as Synlait’s Lead with Pride™ go above and beyond minimum return for our businesses though? For all the perceived extra effort there needs to be something in it for us. Back to my earlier point about the compliance one-to-many scenario.
Compare any on-farm audit, assessment or application requirements and they’re all the same, e.g. most ask for evidence that you have proper employment agreements for staff. Again, the value is in the detail and we’ll find that as quality programmes like NZFAP PLUS increase the number of certified farms, the more organisations that employ quality assurance criteria in their policy, products and services will look to them as the provisioning source. For example, Rabobank assess a farm’s GHG management practices for green loans and will consider the same GHG plan you’ve done within your FAP as evidence.
Furthermore, a key objective for many FAPs is to become an Industry Assurance Programme or IAP – a government blessed FAP that allows the certified farmer to say ‘I’m [NZFAP PLUS] certified, therefore I’m compliant’.
This type of statement is where the gold is for farmers and their stakeholders because it’s a true demonstration of a one-to-many scenario where everyone wins.
Job done.
If you want to learn more about how we’re helping farmers and their advisors with FAPs, especially NZFAP PLUS, get in touch now.
By Alison Worth - Subject Matter Expert: Environment & Compliance
