The Bay of Plenty rural leader used the tool for her Master’s degree, in her private consultancy as former head of environment for Pāmu (Landcorp), on her own farm in the Rotorua Lakes Catchment and in providing farm system services for Wai Kōkopu, a community-led programme to revitalise the severely degraded Waihi Estuary at Maketū on the Bay of Plenty coast.

“We have to keep farmers on the journey, especially if they have multiple enterprises. OverseerFM has enabled us to analyse and get emissions profiles for those farms.”

“If you don’t know what your baseline or trajectory is, then you are flying blind. OverseerFM enables us to collect good data.”

“We are seeing farmers doing really good stuff. Currently, they are all captured in the same regulatory framework but it would be great to see those farmers rewarded and incentivised for the good work they are doing.”

Read more of this article published by Rural News NZ on 26 May 2023 here

*Alison Dewes is a fourth generation dairy farmer and a second generation veterinarian. She was awarded the NZ River Voice Award in 2019, a NEXT Foundation fellowship in 2020 and has been a finalist for NZI sustainability champion and Women of Influence Awards in Public Policy. She is the owner director of the Tipu Whenua consultancy, which focuses on the wellbeing of people, animals and ecosystems – supporting low footprint farming systems to operate profitably. Tipu Whenua provides farm system services for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)-funded Wai Kōkopu project, which began in 2021.