It will take 80 years to clean up the Waikato River.

[harm_less]

I'm not sure how the whole dairy farming process works but it seems to me they should be able to capture all the effluent runoff and transfer it to septic tanks - it works for humans...

The problem with that strategy is that from what I've read a cow produces the equivalent effluent to about 70 humans. Combine that with them excreting that effluent direct onto the pasture in concentrated areas due to break feeding practices, in most cases except where stand-off pads are used, so it cannot be 'captured' and much of it finds its way into ground water systems, and from there into the nearest waterway (particularly the urine). Add to that the significant and increasing amounts of soluble fertilizers such as urea and super phosphate which leech down into the water tables and the problem is huge and not easily dealt with.

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Many many farmers are doing what they can with plantings to filter water going into drains and creeks etc but, yes, there is a lot more to be done. Meanwhile we complain about the cost of food going up. We can't have it both ways. If farmers are to spend the insurmountable costs in fully cleaning up their act, we won't be able to complain about prices skyrocketing.

And at least farmers are productive - feeding us and providing export income. I think our biggest problem is number of people. If people just stopped to to think before they bred, and if we stopped inviting tourists in to wreck the environment we would achieve more than making life hard for farmers.

We should note the lessons we have learned in the pandemic - that we rely far to much on ephemeral businesses and not enough on core essentials. That we rely too much on other countries instead of working to produce our own. I think farmers get far too much criticism - they are trying, but many others don't put in anywhere near as much effort.

Riparian plantings pretty much only address surface run-off of effluent. The intensity of our agricultural (particularly dairying) farming is far too high for as the farmers need to continually upscale their operations in order to maintain economic viability. We are after all producing enough to feed around 40 million people so in effect we are suffering the environmental degradation to the advantage of our international customers. The situation has far less to do with visitors to our country than it does with our contribution to international food production. If our produce becomes more expensive, both to us and our export markets, it may better reflect the true cost of producing that food rather than ignoring the environmental costs we bare in doing so.

Our reliance on internationally imported goods is now being brought home to roost as oil prices rise and chemical fertilizer supplies decrease and rise in price. Those costs will of course be borne by consumers which in turn will contribute to rising inflation worldwide.

In our own lives we are largely self sufficient in fruit, veges, meat and electricity generation. We're not 'preppers' as such but are definitely sensitive to outlaying our hard earned money on someone else's production. Perhaps NZ would do well to move towards a similar strategy. We are after all blessed with a very benign climate and naturally fertile soils. Why waste our natural reources in a race to the bottom against the world's cheapest producers?