Environmental management systems on-farm versus catchment or regional level

Abstract

Catchment management planning has progressed a long way in the past decade. The question on many peoples' lips is how individual farms relate to catchment health. This is unclear in many cases and relies on logic to make the links. Many people see environmental management systems as an important tool to help farmers contribute to catchment health. Does increasing the complexity of what is looked at in a farm business, or how it is done, improve the outcome in terms of catchment health? A trial involving the dairy industry is discussed in this paper.