National farm advisory firm AgFirst has been tasked with helping one of New Zealand’s largest land management organisations develop farm environment plans that are as easily implemented, as they are compliant with regional council demands.
Te Tumu Paeroa (TTP) oversees the management and administration of over 100,000ha of Maori land throughout New Zealand, and is answerable to 100,000 individual owners.
Ensuring Maori and under TTP’s stewardship have the required farm environment plans completed is no small job given the variety of farm types and the geographical spread of that land from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
In order to meet regional council expectations on environmental management and to help owners trace a simple, achievable pathway to better environmental outcomes, TTP has contracted AgFirst consultants to utilise the FarmIQ templated farm environment plan module.
The module’s origin has a strong connection to AgFirst.
Director James Allen and environmental consultant Erica van Reenen sought several years ago to develop a digitised, accessible method to record farm environment plans. This has ultimately formed the basis of today’s FarmIQ environment module.
The portfolio of properties managed by TTP covers the spectrum of farm types, with over 1000 parcels of property will require environment plans to be completed.
FarmIQ business manager Garth Nielsen-Vold said as the contracted consultants, AgFirst needed to have a FEP template that was accessible to its many consultants around New Zealand.
“It needed to be a system that they could all use, with standardised inputs and outcomes, regardless of which part of the country they were operating in.”
The environment plan template has been distilled to easily answered questions, often only requiring a yes/no response.
The electronic template is linked to the regional council the farm falls within, and the FarmIQ platform has questions adopted to the requirements of each regional council, with no two councils proving to be quite the same.
“The module also determines tasks that come out of the plan process – these are forwarded to TTP’s calendar for attention of either management or staff on that particular property.”
James Allen of AgFirst welcomes the ability to collate multiple farm environment plans onto one templated software system.
“While it is still early days, the FarmIQ farm environment module provides AgFirst with a repeatable and scalable process that the entire team can use and access.”
TTP is currently working through contacting all its leases and any queries can be directed to fep@tetumupaeroa.co.nz.
