Listen Now: 
Five Hauraki iwi are counting the financial, environmental and social benefits of a $53 million investment in the region’s largest dairy farm.
Ngati Maru, Ngati Paoa, Ngati Tamatera, Ngati Tara Tokanui and Te Patukirikiri have bought Landcorp’s 2200 hectare Pouarua dairy complex near Ngatea with an advance on their treaty settlement.
Landcorp will run the eight dairy units for the next five seasons on a sharemilking arrangement, supplying the Open Country plant at Waharoa.
Hauraki Collective chair Paul Majurey says the iwi are already getting milk cheques, but as important is the reconnection with their whenua.
"While it is a dairy farm, there are opportunities there for the expression of our kaitiakitanga in terms of plantings and riparian plantings and different parts of the land that are important to us and as you would expect we want to have our people on the farm so the training opportunities to get our people upskilled for that type of dairy operation, given that it is on peat land, is an important kaupapa for us," he says.
Copyright © 2013, UMA Broadcasting Ltd
