Proponents are thrilled New Zealand’s highly productive food-growing land will finally be protected from “urban sprawl”, with nationally important regions like Canterbury already carved up by decades of development.
On Sunday, the Government released new rules to enhance protections for the country’s most productive land, in a bid to provide security for domestic food supply and primary exports.
The National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) will protect land from inappropriate subdivision, use and development, Environment Minister David Parker said.
“We need to house our people and to feed them too. Our cities and towns need to grow but not at the expense of the land that’s best suited to grow our food.”
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Parker said councils, in limited circumstances, would still be able to rezone highly-productive land for urban housing if less productive land was not available, or if certain tests could be met.
“However, the NPS-HPL will introduce strong restrictions on the use of highly productive land for new rural lifestyle developments.”
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said the country’s most fertile and versatile land – especially in major food production areas like Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato, Hawke’s Bay and Horowhenua – needed protecting.
“Over the last 20 years, about 35,000 hectares of our highly productive land has been carved up for urban or rural residential development, while 170,000ha of this land has been converted to lifestyle blocks.
“Once land is built on, it can no longer be used to grow food and fibre.”
Under the land use capability system, farmland is split into eight classes. Councils will have to classify areas made up of mostly class 1, 2, and 3 land as highly-productive.
Manaaki Whenua/Landcare Research soil scientist Sam Carrick said class 1 land was the most versatile.
“[It’s where] you can grow the most crops with the least limitation.”
High-class land needed stone-free topsoil, free or well-draining soils, and needed to be relatively flat, he said. Canterbury in particular was a goldmine.
“Canterbury is a nationally important area of highly productive land… It’s quite rare in New Zealand, [we have] lots of rolling hills.”
But there had been cumulative loss over the past few decades, and what was left was becoming increasingly fragmented by development, he said.
Local Green MP Eugenie Sage said an operational NPS to protect it was long overdue.
“We have seen too many hectares of highly productive soils lost to single-storey urban sprawl, roads and lifestyle blocks, especially in the Selwyn and Waimakariri districts.
The NPS-HPL would sit alongside the recent National Policy Statement for urban development (NPS-UD), she said, “to protect elite food growing soils and encourage more intensification close to transport routes and urban hubs to encourage compact cities and towns with lower transport emissions”.
“If the exception provisions are too widely drawn we will be no further ahead.”
Selwyn had been especially hit-hard by “inefficient” private plan changes, which were out of sync with areas its district council had identified for housing and infrastructure investment, Sage said.
Sage said the new NPS-HPL could help groups fighting to stop development on farmland, like Canterbury’s Lincoln Voice – as exceptions to the rules appeared to only include council-initiated or adopted plan changes – not private plan change requests.
In June, the Selwyn council approved a plan change to rezone 186ha of rural land outside Lincoln to residential land, nearly doubling it in size.
Expert evidence on the quality of the soil beneath the proposed subdivision is disputed, but some soil scientists have said at least half the lot was made up of highly productive farmland, and residents vowed to fight the development.
Lincoln Voice spokesperson Jo Brady said the group would consult with its lawyers this week to understand what affect the NPS could have on it Environment Court appeal.
“We are pleased the national directive to preserve the land that provides our food is out and ensures a balance in council decision-making.”
Under the new legislation, regional councils would need to identify, map and manage highly productive land to ensure it is available for growing vegetables, fruit and other primary production.
Regional councils will need to complete their mapping and notify a proposed regional policy statement within the next three years.
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