Pitched as restoring common sense to freshwater farming rules, this National-led coalition policy stripped back the previous government's national regulations on intensive winter grazing (IWG) — the practice of break-feeding stock on forage crops like swedes, kale and fodder beet over winter — replacing prescriptive national consent requirements with a lighter, risk-based approach managed mainly through regional councils and farm plans.

The Policy: National Farming Environment Policy — 2023 Election →

What it does:

• Repeals the permitted, restricted-discretionary and discretionary IWG categories in the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater, along with the standalone national rules on pugging depth and ground cover, via the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2024.
• Removes the contentious "low slope map" so beef cattle and deer that are not intensively grazed no longer need to be fenced off from waterways under national rules, leaving councils and farmers to judge risk locally.
• Keeps just two national IWG rules: a 5-metre setback from any river, lake, wetland or drain (whether or not water is present), and protection of critical source areas (gullies and swales must stay ungrazed, vegetated and uncultivated).
• Removes the national requirement to get a resource consent for winter grazing that exceeded a threshold — a cost and paperwork burden farming groups had long opposed.
• Timed so the old rules and consents still applied for the 2024 winter, with the changes taking effect from the 2025 winter season.

Context — the scale: about 240,000 hectares were used for winter grazing nationally in 2018, concentrated in the South Island. The highest-risk IWG areas sit in Otago, Southland and Canterbury, where stripping vegetative cover from saturated soil can flush sediment, nitrogen, phosphorus and E. coli into waterways and raise animal-welfare concerns about stock standing in mud.

The result:

On its own terms the promise is delivered. The Bill passed its third reading on 23 October 2024 and the prescriptive national rules and consent regime were gone in time for winter 2025, which farming bodies welcomed as cutting compliance cost. Agriculture Minister Todd McClay framed it as removing "problematic" rules and the low slope map; Environment Minister Penny Simmonds said the changes align with working collaboratively with landowners rather than restricting them. Federated Farmers called it a win for common sense, and DairyNZ argued farmers can now focus on improving wintering practice through farm and catchment plans rather than national rules. Whether it improves outcomes is contested: critics say removing national backstops leaves protection patchy because it now depends on each regional council's plan, many of which lack their own IWG rules, so winter grazing can revert to being permitted by default.

The impacts to watch:

• Freshwater quality — Green MP Steve Abel and Greenpeace Aotearoa argue weaker national rules risk more sediment and nutrient run-off into rivers and estuaries, especially in Otago and Southland catchments.
• Patchwork regulation — with the low slope map gone and IWG rules devolved, protections now vary sharply by region; councils such as Otago were simultaneously constrained from notifying tougher freshwater plans.
• Animal welfare — mud and exposure during winter grazing remain governed by animal-welfare codes rather than the freshwater rules, so enforcement leans on monitoring that critics say has historically been thin.