Farmer agribusiness cooperatives as corporate agents in landscape management in New Zealand

Abstract

Global integration of food supply chains and associated environmental effects of agricultural intensification are prompting a search for effective models of sustainable landscape management Limitations of conventional regulatory and neo-liberal market based approaches have stimulated emergence of new forms of hybrid environmental governance involving self-organisation, co-management and partnership. In New Zealand, many agri-food businesses are constituted as co-operatives, owned and controlled by farmers. The effect of this form of self-organisation on rural environmental governance and landscape outcomes is critically examined based on analysis of the dairy industry, the largest single NZ export sector. Dairy sector expansion has been linked to degradation of lowland landscape, particularly water quality, and the sector has promoted voluntary landscape management practices since 2003. However data from a range of sources including key informant interviews suggests that some successes in promoting environmental programmes though agribusiness-farmer cooperatives are offset by significant shortfalls in science knowledge, farmer uptake, and implementation, and that cumulative landscape-ecological effects of intensification remain unresolved. Producer owned agribusiness cooperatives are an essential part of the pathway to sustainable landscape management but need complementary action from policy and regulatory agencies, where new co-­governance models are also being developed.