Good farming in New Zealand should be celebrated - no matter what approach a farmer takes.
That is the message from Prof Henrik Moller from the Centre for Sustainability: Agriculture, Food, Energy, Environment at the University of Otago.
Prof Moller is part of the Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (Argos), a joint venture between the AgriBusiness Group, Lincoln University and the University of Otago.
Since 2003, Argos has been studying organic, conventional and integrated farm systems, trying to identify the relative performance of each system.
It aimed to investigate the pathways to sustainable agriculture, comparing economic, environmental and sociocultural dimensions of land-based production in New Zealand.
And while there were some differences found between conventional, integrated and organic, those differences were not as major as anticipated, Jon Manhire, from the AgriBusiness Group, who has been involved with Argos since its inception, said.
The first six years of results showed that no single kind of farming system was better in every way than another, Mr Manhire said.
Instead of "going out like scientists and doing a whole lot of plots in the paddock", the Argos team based the study around real families and real farms, Prof Moller said.
They selected farming families who were organic, or used integrated management, or had neither approach to farming.
Ranging from low-intensity to high-intensity properties, the project covered sheep and beef, dairy, kiwifruit, Ngai Tahu land holdings and high-country stations.
The rarest were organic, so the team found organic farmers willing to co-operate and then found a nearby farm that used integrated management and then a non-accredited farm to form the third in the cluster.
It was "big picture thinking" that was required, with all the pressures and opportunities that farming families were confronted with that needed to be considered, he said.
Farmers were very open and welcoming and the Argos team was surprised by how those busy farming families were willing to trust "boffins from town" and tell them what they were trying to achieve, Prof Moller said.
Each sector had a field manager who carried out a lot of the face-to-face contact with the farmers.
The project was originally for six years - and there were originally 108 families - but has since kept going for a further three.
The project's main funders were Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (which has morphed into the Ministry of Science and Innovation), and co-funding from Zespri, Fonterra, Merino Inc, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu and a South Island-based meat-processing company.
The farmers involved reflected the normal population and, at one level or another, they had a stewardship ethic and approach to farming.
Although the "bottom line" was important, it was definitely not the only value, Mr Manhire said.
He believed the project had been so useful and such good data had been generated that it would be valuable to continue.
Dr Catriona MacLeod, an ecologist based at Landcare Research in Dunedin, led the environmental team which set out to look at what might be good indicators of good stewardship of the land.
There was a range of potential indicators and three main suites were chosen: conditions of soils, stream water quality and birds.
The idea was trying to start to build a long-term history of what was happening in land in general, information that had been lacking in New Zealand.
There was evidence generally that organic farming supported better quality soils and more diverse and abundant native bird populations.
Research showed that farms which embraced only some of the principles of organic farming, without necessarily fully converting, could still help biodiversity.
There was no evidence of a difference in the bottom line between organic and non-organic farms, although if organics did not have the premiums it would be different, Prof Moller said.
Organic farmers invested less energy back into the land but got less out. The amount of return for the energy put in was about the same.
Prof Moller believed New Zealand needed to examine whether many farms could be scaled back in intensification.
That was another "big picture lesson". It was not just about production and productivity, although that was what farmers were predominantly rewarded for.
The suggestion was that farmers work smarter, not longer, to put less in but get almost as much out. That required farmers to think beyond just productivity statistics, he said.
There was a real role for strong leadership in the agricultural industry. The Argos team was "blown away" by what it saw in the kiwifruit industry, which was "beautifully led" by a very active group. There was a real sense that growers were part of a club. Their own people told and enhanced the story concerning product quality.
The sheep and beef industry was less cohesive, not working collectively to create "the New Zealand club" of sheep and beef producers.
Securing the long-term reputation of New Zealand farming and product safety was something that would cost every year but would pay dividends in the long run.
He would like to see audits become cheaper, more robust and going beyond compliance into being used to enable "raising the bar" for New Zealand farming sustainability.