Southland Farm Plan FAQ

Southland Farm Plans are a tool designed to stop further decline in freshwater quality, make water quality improvements within five years, and begin to reverse past damage to our waterways. They will identify practical on-farm actions to help improve local waterways. Actions will be tailored to a particular farm’s physical environment and what the challenges are in the catchment that the farm is in.

All farms with the following land uses will require a freshwater farm plan:

• All pastoral or arable land use of more than 20 hectares.
• All horticultural land use of five hectares or more.
• Any combination of these land uses equal to or greater than 20 hectares.

We encourage you to start thinking about developing your own farm plan.

The plans will be property-specific and give farmers the flexibility to find the right solutions for their farm and catchment area. In Southland on-farm actions need to be tailored to the farm’s unique environment and our goals for achieving Southland’s freshwater outcomes.

Once certified and audited, your farm plan will need to be recertified within 5 years.

All farmers will have until mid-2026 to submit their farm plan for certification with a qualified certifier.

We're here to support you to develop your farm plan. Reach out if we can help.

Your farm plan will likely need to be updated to fit the requirements of the Southland Water and Land Plan.

There are a number of tools and support available to help you develop and check your farm plan. You will be able to get your catchment context, challenges and values information from the geospatial tool developed by Environment Southland. See the catchment context page.

Farm operators are welcome to produce their own farm plan for certification. Guidance will be available to support farmers to do this. However, we expect that many farm operators will choose to engage a rural professional to create the bulk of their first plan to ensure it meets the minimum requirements. Your processor or industry group may have options to help you with farm plan development as well.

You may need to employ a consultant to complete the nutrient budget for you. The land sustainability team at Environment Southland is available to assist with information and maps that are required for your farm plan.

We are working with industry to provide guidance and support to the farming community.

The cost of developing a plan will vary for each farming operation and will be dependent on whether the farm operator completes it themselves or works with a consultant. Certifiers and auditors will set their own costs for farmers to cover. We want the focus to remain on environmental outcomes and understand that there is potential for significant cost for developing and certifying a farm plan. We are committed to finding ways to find full participation from our farm operators and we are working to make this process as accessible as possible for you.

We are working with industry to ensure they have the tools and training to help develop Farm Plans. We have provided the catchment context, challenges and values information in an online tool on our website.

You may need to employ a consultant to complete the nutrient budget for you. The land sustainability team at Environment Southland is available to assist with information and maps that are required for your farm plan.

Every farm is part of a wider catchment and linking on-farm actions to the catchment is critical to delivering improved environmental and cultural outcomes for freshwater and in putting water at the centre of the freshwater farm plan. Considering your catchment context will help you to create an action plan that protects your catchment’s unique cultural practices and recreational sites for future generations, as well as the environment. Farmers do not need to gather this information; it will be provided on the Catchment Context, Challenges and Values tool available on the Environment Southland website so farmers can consider and integrate as part of their risk assessment.

Once a Southland Farm Plan is certified on your property you may still need an intensive winter grazing resource consent depending on how and where you are planning to undertake your grazing. This is because of the requirements in the Southland Water and Land Plan.

Certifiers and auditors are appointed by Environment Southland. They are required to meet a set of criteria and complete national and regional training. Farm operators are responsible for engaging the certifier and auditor. Check out the list of approved certifiers here.

If you disagree with any aspect of the certifier’s draft decision or assessment report you can provide comments to the certifier in writing within 10 days of receiving them. They must then consider these comments and provide a preliminary decision and assessment report. This will let you know whether the plan has been certified or needs to be amended to achieve certification. You must notify the certifier if you disagree with the preliminary results within 10 days of receiving them. You are then able to engage a second certifier who will need all the information you provided the first certifier as well as the preliminary decision and assessment report they provided. You must inform the first certifier (within 10 days) if you engage a second certifier.

You will need to get your plan re-certified every five years. However, it will need to be re-certified within 12 months if the farm has any new significant vulnerabilities, more land is added to the farm that requires different catchment information, the farm operator undertakes significant changes in farming activities or the farm operator changes and does not adopt the existing plan.

Yes.

No, an auditor cannot audit a farm plan if they have given advice in the preparation of the plan in the last two years or if they certified the plan.

Our focus is ensuring the system is fit for purpose. We will be exploring options that maximise efficiency for farmers and keep focus on environmental outcomes.

You can pass this onto the new owner to adopt if they wish. If the new owner adopts the property’s existing plan they must arrange for an auditor to audit it within 12 months of taking over the farm. A new farm operator is not responsible for the failure of the previous farm operator to meet actions within the timeframes required in the action plan, meet timeframes for submitting the plan for recertification or any existing timeframes for auditing.

Yes, once certified your farm plan will be able to take the place of a Farm Environmental Management Plan for any consent application that needs one.

The freshwater farm plan system comes back to the idea that every farm and every catchment is different. Farm plans will be tailored to the size of the farm, and farmers will be able to identify and manage their individual risks.

Smaller farms will need to consider what's relevant in their catchment and what they need to do to address these issues over time. Farm plans enable farmers to plan, over a number of years, the risks they need to manage and the investments they need to make. Irrespective of whether a farm is large or small, they will be able to develop a tailored plan.

Any landholding over 20ha will need a nutrient budget as part of your freshwater farm plan.

You will need to have a nutrient budget prepared initially and then for any material change on your property that means your activity might not meet the objectives of a farm plan. This could include a change in crop area, crop rotation length, type of crops grown, stocking rate or stock type. The nutrient budget will need to be prepared at the end of the year in which the change occurs. However, you will also need to update this every three years after the change occurs.