FAQs about intensive farming

The Council’s draft changes to the current District Plan have intensive farming defined as a commercial activity which predominantly occurs indoors, or where the stock density or nature of the activity doesn’t maintain ground cover. The latter will be assessed on a common sense basis. It should also be noted that the draft National Planning Standards include a definition of ‘intensive primary production’ that the Council may need to adopt in the new District Plan if this term is confirmed in the final set of National Planning Standards. For more information on National Planning Standards visit the Ministry for the Environment website.

There is no specific guidance as to what an appropriate stock density for an intensive farm should be. The potential and actual effects from a farm are more complex than a simple density figure. Use of a density figure could lead to farms which are operating well with little or no effect being targeted by consent requirements due to an arbitrary density figure. This approach would also expose the Council to being powerless to address a permitted activity causing significant effects due to their compliance with a stock density figure. Having ground cover as a qualifier for whether or not farming of livestock is intensive, gives the Council the ability to manage actual effects.

No, draft changes to the current District Plan exclude small scale home production of pigs which involves no more than 25 weaned pigs or six sows.

While the draft changes to the District Plan are currently looking at making the establishment and expansion of existing intensive farms more permissive, any such farms would still need to obtain an air discharge consent from Environment Canterbury to address any odour or dust effects. Also the Proposed District Plan would require that new and expanding intensive farms meet certain permitted development standards, such as building characteristics, supplying location details, noise, transport and lighting. If a standard was breached then consent would be required.

The current situation can result in duplication of process between the district and regional councils. This can cause confusion and can also have significant cost and time implications on resource consent applicants, especially if multiple experts need to be enlisted to prepare and support any application.
This aspect also potentially extends to compliance and monitoring when considering which council should be following up on a complaint. Currently the district council is passing the majority of complaints on to the regional council which has the technical expertise and equipment to assess odour and dust discharges while the district council doesn’t.
The draft changes to the current Plan would still require an intensive farming activity to have its air discharge assessed by Environment Canterbury. Also other aspects of the farming would be controlled by permitted development standards in the District Plan. If a standard was breached then consent from the district council would also be required.
At this stage of the District Plan Review we’re only considering whether we should change how air discharges from intensive farming and other similar activities that cause dust and odour on a regular basis, for example quarrying and mushroom farming, are controlled. Before we draft the Proposed District Plan we want to hear what the public’s view is on this.

For more information about the Council’s preferred option for draft changes to intensive farming and all the work done to date as part of the review visit Council website where all the reports developed for the District Plan Review are kept.