North Otago farmers have been recognised for their environmental stewardship.
The North Otago Irrigation Company has presented its Awards for Environmental Excellence for 2013 and 2014 to representatives from nine properties. Each went through an on-farm inspection by the company's independent auditor to see how they handled their irrigation, riparian areas, soils, nutrients and effluent.
The auditor also looked for objective evidence that they met best management objectives, through data, observed practices, and interviews with the managers.
As a result, the awards were given to the Spite, Sanderson, McLeod, Miller, Thompson, Elliott, Dalziel and Aubrey families and Craigmore Farming and Francois Tillard.
''We wanted to create an opportunity to personally thank each of the owners and operators of these enterprises for their efforts,'' North Otago Irrigation Company chief executive Robyn Wells said.
''It takes hard work and real dedication to environmental stewardship of their land and we wanted to recognise those individuals as role models, and say to all our other shareholders you too can become a high performer.
''What is particularly pleasing is that we again had a good mix of operations represented from dairy to primarily sheep and beef, showing that instituting good management practices can produce the results expected by the community whatever the land use,'' Ms Wells said.
The company continued to revise its environmental performance assessments and had introduced a new compliance process that set the bar even higher than in previous years, Ms Wells said.
''That makes the performance of these properties even more exceptional, as they have matched their improved performance to our increased expectations.''
Every shareholder in the company had to have a farm plan before access to water was given. The plans were driven by collaboration with the Otago Regional Council and local iwi, Ms Wells said.
Shareholder audits had been carried out for the past eight years.
- by Sally Brooker