\n<\/p>\n
Cate Faehrmann, a Greens member of the New South Wales legislative council, will move a private member\u2019s bill next week to give councils more power to regulate blueberry and other berry farms which are expanding throughout the mid-north coast, leading to serious frictions with other landholders.<\/p>\n
Separately, the state Labor government is considering an inquiry into alleged <\/strong><\/em>worker abuse in the region. Most states regulate labour hire companies, which serve as intermediaries between farmers and seasonal workers, but NSW does not.<\/p>\n Guardian Australia has reported on allegations of underpayment, poor living conditions and exploitation, particularly of workers who arrived on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (Palm) scheme but left their employers, often allegedly <\/strong><\/em>as a result of worker exploitation.<\/p>\n Faehrmann\u2019s bill aims to address the environmental impacts of intensive berry farming.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople move into these beautiful valleys for the lifestyle and the environment but then wake up one day and within months they are looking at an industrial-scale blueberry farm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt beggars belief that you can erect hectares of poles [and] white netting without telling your neighbours or getting council approval, but people have to apply to put up a carport.\u201d<\/p>\n Faehrmann said there was a \u201cdeliberate massive carve-out\u201d for the berry industry from planning laws that was \u201cunfathomable\u201d. She called on Labor to fix the problems, which she attributed to previous National party influence on policy.<\/p>\n Faehrmann\u2019s bill will call for mandated buffers between intensive horticulture farms and homes and waterways, as well as strict controls on spraying, runoff and irrigation and greater monitoring of produce for pesticides.<\/p>\n She also wants to see councils given greater powers to regulate blueberry farms after the Coffs Harbour council lost in the NSW land and environment court last week.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/p>\n The council had brought a case against two raspberry farmers at Bonville who had challenged a stop-work order that the council had imposed on their raspberry farm.<\/p>\n The council said polytunnels under construction required development approval. The tunnels \u2013 constructed with metal tubing and hoops to create tunnels 2.5 metres high and up to 60 metres long \u2013 were farm buildings within their local environment plan (LEP) and required approval. The tunnels covered 4 hectares.<\/p>\n The farmers said they were part of \u201cintensive horticulture\u201d which does not require a development application under the Coffs Harbour LEP.<\/p>\n The court upheld the farmers\u2019 case, agreeing that these were not farm buildings, because they could be disassembled and stored when not in use.<\/p>\n \u201cThe legal prerequisites for the order do not exist,\u201d the court said. \u201cThe appropriate course, if there were an ambition to require polytunnels and the like to be subject to development consent, would have been to make intensive plant agriculture a use permissible subject to development consent.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Locals are concerned that runoff from blueberry farms could affect the environment.<\/span> Photograph: Zahn Pithers<\/p>\n The chief executive of Berries Australia, Rachel Mackenzie, told Guardian Australia in October that the proposal for DAs was not supported by the planning department or the state government, and that \u201cvalidates the industry\u2019s position\u201d.<\/p>\n At Scotts Head, people are concerned about the proximity of new blueberry farms to waterways and South Beach national park. Blueberry farming is rapidly expanding beyond Coffs Harbour, where it began several decades ago, into the Nambucca Valley and the Kempsey area to the south, and west toward Grafton and Bellingen.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been in the area for a while and it\u2019s just devastating when blueberry farms arrive,\u201d Zahn Pithers, a local photographer said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt devalues the land because no one wants to live next to a blueberry farm \u2013 except another blueberry farm.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are losing farming families who have been here for generations. The blueberry investors come in and just lowball them because they know there aren\u2019t any other buyers once there is a blueberry farm next door.\u201d<\/p>\n Pithers is particularly concerned about the proximity of a very large blueberry farm next to Warrell Creek and the South Beach national park and the beach.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople from Nambucca fish here and eat crabs out of the creek. Where does the spray drift go? What\u2019s happening with the runoff? This farm is built on sand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Pithers has asked the EPA to investigate but there are no results as yet. Previous monitoring in the Nambucca Valley by the EPA detected three different pesticides in low levels in three creeks, suggesting water quality in the area was not being impacted by excessive amounts of pesticides.<\/p>\n In November 2024, Nambucca Valley council asked the NSW planning department to include a requirement for blueberry farms to seek development approval as part of its LEP. The planning department rejected the requirement, saying it was not supported by sufficient evidence.<\/p>\n <\/span>A blueberry farm near Warrell Creek and Gaagal Wanggaan (South Beach) national park on the NSW mid north coast.<\/span> Photograph: Zahn Pithers<\/p>\n The council is now working on a second proposal for the planning department, but is struggling to agree on whether issues like buffer zones should be left to self-regulation rather than mandated.<\/p>\n The state minister for planning, Paul Scully, said it was open to councils to seek changes to their LEPs so they could require horticulture providers to seek development approval.<\/p>\n The current standard LEP, developed by the state government, says that intensive agriculture in RU1 primary production and RU4 primary production small lots zones must be permitted without a development approval. However, councils can choose to regulate the RU2 rural landscape zone.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no one-size-fits-all approach but requiring mandatory development applications across all rural zones would hinder efforts to reduce regulatory burdens and support modern farming practices across NSW,\u201d Scully said.<\/p>\n \u201cOverly restrictive local planning controls may delay or prevent necessary farm upgrades, deter investment, and create uncertainty for landholders looking to modernise their operations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cate Faehrmann, a Greens member of the New South Wales legislative council, will move a private member\u2019s bill next week to give councils more power to regulate blueberry and other berry farms which are expanding throughout the mid-north coast, leading to serious frictions with other landholders. Separately, the state Labor government is considering an inquiry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[13117,142,3771,1013,2593,1601,1545,1294,112,124,1683,12594,122,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-43359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-berry","9":"tag-bill","10":"tag-continues","11":"tag-councils","12":"tag-expansion","13":"tag-greens","14":"tag-industry","15":"tag-move","16":"tag-nsw","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-rapid","19":"tag-regulate","20":"tag-south","21":"tag-wales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}