Intensive dairy farming at double the current average stocking rate does not damage soil ecosystems, concludes a five-year study in Taranaki, the first research of its kind done in NZ. The results fill a critical knowledge gap and may challenge popular beliefs that intensive pastoral grazing causes gradual ecological decline.

The work was funded by the Taranaki Regional Council and conducted by the council’s terrestrial ecologist, Shay Dean, between 2002 and 2007 at the DairyNZ research farm at Whareroa, near Hawera. Reporting the results at a meeting on Tuesday, the TRC’s environment quality director, Gary Bedford, said the soil “held up markedly well. The biodiversity was actually best in some of the most intensively stocked pastures.” Councillor Michael Joyce said it was “refreshing to see a good news story rather than the bad news stories usually associated with intensive dairying” reports The Taranaki Daily.

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