B+LNZ update on environmental policy advocacy: August 2026

Here’s the latest information on yesterday’s major Government announcements on improvements to the Freshwater Farm Plans system and the RMA replacement legislation, including related changes to Waikato PC1 and Horizons PC2. Significant progress has been made as the Government has listened and responded to feedback.

Following that are updates on other key environmental policy advocacy areas – and our wider advocacy efforts. Apologies for the length – there’s lots to update you on.

B+LNZ supports farmers directly on farm, but pooling farmer levies means we can also work in areas where individual farmers can’t, such as having a voice with policymakers on key issues.

Freshwater Farm Plans

The Government has released further details of its Freshwater Farm Plans (FWFP) system. This has been a major area of focus for B+LNZ.

The intent is for FWFPs to replace rules and consents. We support this because it should be easier for farmers who would have needed a consent. However, most sheep and beef farmers don’t need consent to farm, so we’ve been working hard to ensure the farm plan requirements clearly differentiate between levels of risk – the system should be as light touch as possible for low-risk farms. Tailored approaches will always be better than costly blunt national and regional rules.

While we still need to see details, we’re pleased to see a number of changes to the system which will make it more practical and workable for farmers, which we’ve been pushing hard for. 

These include:

• Our position has been that very low risk farms should be excluded from doing a FWFP. We weren’t successful in getting an exclusion, but the current outcome is far better than what was originally proposed.
• Only high-risk farms will need a certified and audited FWFP. ‘High risk’ includes: dairy farming; commercial vegetable growing; feedlots; and intensive winter grazing on more than 50 hectares or 10 percent of a farm (whichever is greater) or irrigation on more than 50 hectares or 10 percent of a farm (whichever is greater).
• All other sheep and beef farmers will need to prepare and implement a FWFP but it won’t be required to be certified or audited under the national scheme.
• If part of a farm triggers the need for certification, only that part of the farm or that activity needs to be certified. This is another significant win for sheep and beef farmers that we’d been pushing hard for.
• If a plan needs to be certified and audited the frequency of these processes has been made less burdensome.
• The Government has created a pathway where existing industry assurance programmes can be approved to be equivalent to a national FWFP, meaning farmers will only have to do the process once.
• Farmers will have up to five years to complete their FWFP after the regulations are switched on next year.
• For more information on the changes see the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions & Transport factsheet.

Further info on B+LNZ’s position on farm plans:

• We’re not against farm management plans (we’ve previously referred to them as Land & Environment Plans or LEPs). We support farmers having a plan for how they manage their land, but plans should add value to a farm business – not simply be a compliance tool.
• The issue has always been the amount of regulation around freshwater plans.

Next steps:

• We’re awaiting the RMA reform replacement legislation to go through the House and need to see the Government’s intent around National Direction, which could be in the next few weeks.
• We’re working through how we’ll support farmers with Farm Planning and will keep you updated.

RMA reform – including Waikato PC1 and Horizons PC2

Yesterday the Government also announced:

• further changes to the Natural Environment Bill (one of the pieces of legislation that will replace the Resource Management Act)
• aspects of PC1 and PC2 have been pushed out to give farmers certainty.

The changes to the NEB:

• These follow a significant amount of work by B+LNZ and other sector groups, working constructively with Ministers, officials and Parliament to improve the legislation before it’s enacted.
• We welcome the latest proposed changes, including: the removal of resource caps; amendment of the ‘no net loss’ goal for biodiversity to the protection of significant indigenous biodiversity; and fixing of s70 and s107 in the current RMA (transitional arrangements).
• There are still areas that we believe need work including a number of provisions around how limits are met if they are breached; and stock drinking water being a permitted activity.
• The devil is always in the detail and we also need to ensure that the intent of the proposed changes is reflected in the secondary legislation such as the National Direction and National Standards, which are still to come.
• B+LNZ will continue to advocate for a practical and streamlined system that balances NZ’s economic, social and environmental needs.

Action on Waikato and Manawatū-Whanganui plans:

• It’s good to get some certainty around PC1 (Waikato) and PC2 (Horizons).
• Implementation has been pushed out to allow the new RMA system to be embedded.
• However, all farmers will be implementing the new national Freshwater Farm Plan system in the meantime.
• In the Waikato, the controls on land use change will remain in effect.
• For more information see the Government’s media release and related factsheet.

Next steps:

• These amendments will be debated by the House and could be passed into law in the coming weeks.
• We continue to advocate on the areas that still need attention and will keep farmers updated.

Climate change

We continue to advocate for enabling climate change policy – what farmers are asked to do must be fair and achievable.

Recent developments:

• We welcomed the European Union’s new livestock strategy taking a more balanced approach to livestock methane emissions, recognising farmers as valuable partners in delivering climate and food security outcomes. Importantly, there is no mention of methane reduction targets and/or mention of pricing agricultural emissions – instead the focus is on more accurately measuring on-farm emissions and rewarding farmers for reducing emissions through use of technologies or genetics. The EU strategy demonstrates NZ is not an outlier in our approach. For more information see our recent e-diary story.
• We also provided a submission outlining our views on the Climate Change Commission’s update of their recommended emissions reduction pathways as part of their advice on NZ’s Emissions Budget 4 (2036-2040) or EB4. Read the EB4 submission here.

Afforestation

B+LNZ continues to lead the conversation about the scale and pace of whole-farm sales for conversion to forestry, particularly for carbon farming.

Recent developments:

• Earlier this month we released updated research by Orme & Associates that showed while conversion of sheep and beef farms to forestry has slowed since the introduction of restrictions by the Government, food producing land is still at risk. With a further 30,000 hectares being confirmed as sold for forestry since the previous research was released in mid-2025, the total amount of whole sheep and beef farms sold for afforestation since 1 January 2017 is now almost 330,000 hectares – roughly six times the size of urban Auckland. For more information see our media release.

What B+LNZ is advocating for:

• B+LNZ is not anti-forestry. We strongly support the integration of trees within farms. However we’re concerned that too many pines are continuing to replace sustainable food production.

Further information

Other current advocacy-related work includes the following:

• Telling the story of our sector’s economic and social contribution. In June we released, with the Meat Industry Association (MIA), independent research by BERL that showed the red meat sector generates $48.7 billion in spending across the economy each year and supports one in 20 jobs. See this recent e-diary story on how we’re using this research to enhance social licence.
• We continue to meet with all political parties ahead of the General Election, using the red meat sector manifesto also developed with MIA. We’re planning a political debate in the upcoming months, with Federated Farmers and DairyNZ – keep an eye on e-diaries for more info about this.
• The United States safeguard investigation into its lamb imports – we’ve engaged specialised legal representation in Washington DC to support NZ’s involvement in the investigation and are working across the sector, particularly with MIA, and with the NZ Government and officials. For more info see the email we sent to farmers last month.
• We’ve taken part in foot and mouth disease readiness planning following farmer approval in 2025 for B+LNZ signing an Operational Agreement between the agricultural sector and the Government on foot and mouth disease readiness and response.

We’ll aim to send you another environment policy roundup in around three months’ time.

Keep an eye on B+LNZ e-diaries for the latest developments – if you’re not already signed up, log in to create an online account on our website and go to ‘Account settings’ then ‘Subscriptions’.

As always, please talk to one of us or your local B+LNZ farmer director if you have any questions or concerns.