Balancing profit and kaitiakitanga

How does Nga¯i Tahu navigate protecting land and freshwater resources while managing a financially viable farming enterprise,

As a kid, my dad used to pull ko¯ whitiwhiti (watercress) out of the ditches around Tuahiwi Pa¯ , between Rangiora and Kaiapoi, north of Christchurch.

You just boil it up and eat it, he’d say. Cheap Nga¯ i Tahu meal.

He doesn’t do that any more. Not because he’s pushing 60, he’d be right in there if he spotted any watercress growing in the waterways. It’s because we’d get sick if we’re not careful where we harvest from.

We’d swim in there and catch fish over there, Dad would say, indicating with his arms all the places where the water used to run clear.

I grew up hearing all about how farming and industry were polluting our waterways.

This summer was the first time I swam in my awa, Rakahuri, also known as the Ashley River. I think it was the most connected I’ve felt to my whenua. With the Canterbury sun blazing above, I let the water wash over me like a baptism.

But it was a sad moment, too. It took 25 years for me to get there, to be able to bathe in my awa. Will my kids be able to do this, or will the awa be too polluted by then?

My iwi hasn’t been silent about the state of our wai ma¯ ori, our freshwater. Nga¯ i Tahu is in the middle of a lawsuit against the Crown, seeking recognition of its rangatiratanga (authority) over the freshwater/wai ma¯ ori in its rohe to address the degradation caused by what it sees as

the mismanagement of the environment.

Alongside the lawsuit, and while I swam in Rakahuri, about 30 kilometres down the road, Nga¯ i Tahu Farming’s dairy hub chugged away.

It begged the question: How does Nga¯i Tahu navigate kaitiakitanga of the whenua and wai ma¯ ori while managing a financially viable farming enterprise?

Dr Te Maire Tau says our wha¯ nau used to camp by the Rakahuri Awa just after winter to catch whitebait.

U¯ poko (head) of Nga¯i Tu¯a¯huriri and chair of Te Kura Taka Pini, Nga¯ i Tahu’s freshwater group, Tau tells me we were pushed into poverty when our land was reduced to a reservation, so to survive we followed mahinga kai and ate from the rivers.

‘‘We all had our huts there. All of our people went to live on the Ashley [Rakahuri] River. The land and the farmer idea, that’s not our culture, our culture is from the waterways.’’

The condition of the awa, and its ability to support the fish that have fed our people, has declined over the past 30 years with water taken to feed the surrounding farms and nitrates flooding its system following the boost in agriculture in the Canterbury region.

Nitrate, a chemical made of nitrogen and oxygen, occurs naturally in soil and is a major source of nitrogen for plants, helping them grow. When the soil contains more nitrate than plants can use, the excess can be washed through the soil by rainwater

and carried into the underlying groundwater, according to Environment Canterbury. Farming is a major contributor to excess nitrate on the whenua, which is then washed into the waterways.

Tau says that the steps taken by the Crown to protect wai ma¯ ori, such as the Resource Management Act, have done little to protect mahinga kai and, in turn, Nga¯ i Tahu’s culture.

‘‘Our waterways underpin our culture within Canterbury and within the tribe. That is where our identity comes from. Straight out of the rivers and the land.’’

That is why Nga¯ i Tahu has taken the Crown to court to have its rangatiratanga recognised in legislation and have its voice heard in the decision-making process, not through consultation, but with the authority that was agreed upon in its 1998 Treaty of Waitangi settlement.

‘‘The tribe doesn’t have faith,’’ Tau says, ‘‘And we need to be involved in governing and regulating water.’’

The pollution that enters the waterways, which is the lifeline of Nga¯ i Tahu and its hapu¯ , has come at a cost, but not one that industry has had to pay.

‘‘Profit speaks to the failure of the Resource Management Act, and the Government allows markets to operate in an unregulated manner.

‘‘The reason you’ve got a state of crisis of the waterways now is because they’ve failed, and they’ve failed at a local government level and a Crown level. But the market’s also failed, because the agricultural industry and every other industry has been allowed to function in a way that doesn’t care for the environment.’’

But Nga¯ i Tahu Farming must also be polluting, right?

It’s a tension Otago University Professor Merata Kawharu says many iwi-led organisations are grappling with – the balance between profit and kaitiakitanga.

Having focused her research in this area, Kawharu (Nga¯ ti Wha¯ tua, Nga¯ puhi) has seen how difficult it can be for iwi farms to turn a profit while trying to be protectors of the whenua and waterways.

‘‘Kaitiakitanga, which is our Ma¯ ori view and values or principles, and Western values of profit and commercialism – they’re two tangential opposites.

‘‘You can actually address the tension in a way that is still maintaining a sensitivity towards Papatu¯a¯nuku, but it’s a difficult one. You have to utilise the tools that we have both in the Western world and in te ao Ma¯ ori to do that right thing for waterway health, for people, and land to maintain the right balance of health.’’

What’s key is centring mauri – or, as she calls it, equilibrium – in the organisation, Kawharu says.

The reciprocal relationship between land, water and people is well understood by Ma¯ ori. What is taken must be given back, and what is given will have a consequence on the taiao (environment).

For Canterbury, Kawharu says the imbalance in the waterways is shown by the poisoning of mahinga kai, the lowering of water levels through extraction, and the nitrate concentrations leeching into waterways, spurring on the growth of algae.

‘‘Your rivers down here in the South Island are so incredibly polluted, they are some of the most polluted rivers in the country, but look at it even at an international scale, oh my goodness. It’s so, so sad.’’

Environment Canterbury has documented the increase in nitrate concentration and degradations of the environment for the past 30 years, collating it in the Long Term Trends Surface Water Natural Environment Committee report presented in April 2022.

It showed 63% of sites have seen increases in nitrogen in rivers, and that nitrate-nitrite concentrations in Canterbury’s groundwater have been increasing since farming began in the region, with concentration levels already being well above the natural state in the 1970s.

ECan groundwater science manager Carl Hanson, who took part in the report, says farming will always have an impact on the environment, but measures can be taken to mitigate this by farmers if they work hard.

‘‘To see large changes, large reductions in the amount of nitrate leaching is going to require some quite drastic changes on farms by everybody.’’

Kawharu agrees. It needs to be environment before anything else.

‘‘That’s where I’d say that kaitiakitanga, which has at its heart, mauri, would be the best model for any enterprise that has land use as its purpose.’’

For Will Burrett, there is no other option. It’s kaitiakitanga first, money second.

As general manager of Nga¯ i Tahu Farming, Burrett says the first three of four bottom line pou – social, environmental and cultural – must be met before the farms can make economic decisions on their more than 100,000 hectares across Canterbury.

‘‘It’s got to cut across the quadruple bottom line, and if it doesn’t, the financial one isn’t even considered anyway.’’

Te Whenua Hou got its mandate to operate in Nga¯i Tu¯a¯huriri’s takiwa¯ (area) from the hapu¯ in 2013. It’s what guides the decisions made on farm, he says.

Sitting in his car at Te Whenua Hou, Nga¯ i Tahu’s Dairy Hub in Canterbury’s Eyrewell Forrest, Burrett takes me through the ins and outs of the farm’s 6757ha. There’s irrigation and fertilisers, but there’s also technology that Burrett says has been used to ensure the best possible outcomes for the environment, whether that’s resource use or loss.

The farm reuses effluent to irrigate the land to reduce synthetic nutrients, and has tools to project when wet weather is coming to limit the use of water on the land, therefore reducing the amount of extraction of water and prevent excessive runoff of fertilisers into waterways.

And rather than model their nitrate loss, Te Whenua Hou measures it in what he says are the most sophisticated commercial lysimeters in the southern hemisphere. Annually they lose 42.2kg per hectare.

According to a Ministry for Primary Industries 2021 report into the estimates of nitrogen leaching, dairy farms in the Canterbury Marlborough area leach on average 71kg per hectare annually based on the OVERSEER modelling system. However, a science advisory panel has since reported it lacked confidence in the system to accurately model nitrate loss.

Burrett’s realistic. Nga¯ i Tahu Farming doesn’t always get it right, but trial and error is part of finding new ways of working. Burrett says the organisation can help ‘‘pave the way’’ for others working towards reducing their environmental impact, but Tau says the system needs to change before others can.

‘‘Ultimately they’re a corporation where they have to make profit, which means all the goodwill in the world in the end is strained by the need to make profit,’’ Tau says.

‘‘People do the best they can, but the framework they work within doesn’t encourage the protection of the environment.’’

Tau says there’s no reason farmers, including Nga¯ i Tahu farmers, can’t save the environment. The technology and science is there, what’s not are the regulations needed to preserve and enhance the mauri of wai ma¯ ori.