Teaching the Bachelor of Environmental Science degree at the University of Canterbury, Professor Ann Brower is shaping the future of environmental science and resource management. One of her key teaching strategies is providing students with hands-on experience in freshwater farm planning – as critical component of sustainable environmental management.

To enhance their learning, Ann recently introduced the QCONZ FWFP tool, a decision inspired by a conversation with a farm environmental consultant at the Environmental Defence Society Conference. He told her he used the QCONZ FWFP tool for freshwater farm planning and described it as easy to use and rapidly becoming the industry standard. Intrigued, Ann reached out to QCONZ to learn more and soon decided to integrate it into her curriculum.

“It worked quite well,” Ann shares. “It was a good fit because it could handle multiple logins. The students appreciated its methodical and systematic approach to identifying risk areas and managing farm environments. They genuinely enjoyed using it.”

The impact of this change extends beyond the classroom. While students initially see the tool as just another workshop exercise, their perspective shifts once they enter the workforce. “After their internships, they recognize its real-world relevance. And in job interviews, when they mention experience in farm environmental planning, employers respond with ‘Oh, yes please!’” says Ann.
Tillie King, a 4th year Bachelor of Environmental Science with Honours student at UC was positive, “I think farm planning and learning about the tools available are super important to learn as budding environmental scientists. It was brand new to me that there were these types of tools available, and I think it is important to learn about why farm planning is important and how it can be beneficial. Using these tools as teaching tools has been a great experience, and I think it provides very useful skills and knowledge to take into the workplace and beyond.”

For Justin Moss, GM of Information Technology at QCONZ, this feedback is invaluable. “We love working with University of Canterbury on this. Seeing our tool play a role in educating the next generation of environmental professionals is incredibly rewarding.” He also acknowledges the dedicated QCONZ FWFP team, whose hard work has helped shape the FWFP tool into an essential industry resource.

Waimakariri Irrigation Ltd (WIL) is one of the largest run-of-river schemes in the South Island, supplying water for irrigation to farms between the Waimakariri River and the Ashley River / Rakahuri. WIL holds a nutrient discharge consent with Environment Canterbury covering a total area of 32,000 hectares. As part of this consent, all farms within the scheme must have a Farm Environment Plan (FEP). 

With over 200 shareholders within the scheme, most of whom are large-scale farm entities, WIL faces the challenge of monitoring and maintaining a considerable number of FEPs. With regulation and reporting requirements continuing to evolve, the challenge was how to reduce the work involved in collating and sharing farmer compliance information while at the same time increasing the utility and value of the data collected. 

WIL partnered with QCONZ and used their FWFP planning tool designed to simplify compliance while maximizing the value of collected data. Initially, WIL had a few reservations about whether the system could meet their needs. 

“I was initially a bit sceptical that QCONZ could do everything they said they could, given they were cutting new ground here. But we have seen them in action, they’ve managed to erase that doubt and have been working hard on improving the system,” says Ben Howden, Environmental Manager for WIL. “We wanted a tool that was accepted by the Regional Council, was able to simplify plan preparation, and was user friendly for anyone that required access to the plan.”  

Having a shared cloud-based farm planning tool that farmers can easily use and allows WIL to access farmers’ plans and aggregate data for reporting is a big benefit, Ben says. 

David Decan is the Chief Information Officer for WIL. He had been looking for a new system to record and track farmer plan compliance because their current system needed replacing. It was old technology, and it couldn’t do many of the things they needed. “We work with Waterforce, and they introduced us to QCONZ. We didn’t know anything about QCONZ’s capabilities. We talked to them for a while and saw they were good listeners and willing to make changes we needed, so decided to go ahead with a pilot. That went well and we saw the platform continually improve based on our feedback, so we decided to roll it out with all our members. We are up to about 45 of our farms that are being brought on to use the QCONZ FWFP tool and expect to have them all using it by the end of next year.” 

  “Anything that makes our job easier and the farmer’s job easier, is a good thing,” David says.