Nitrogen use

New rules about the amount of synthetic nitrogen that can be applied to pastoral land of 20ha or more came into effect on 1 July 2021. The amount of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser you can apply must not exceed 190 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare, per year, averaged across your grazed land area.

To comply with the new rules, farmers are required to submit records of your synthetic nitrogen use to regional and unitary councils for them to report to the Ministry for the Environment. We have worked with Ballance and  Ravensdown on a straight-forward and consistent method for collecting the required data.

There are three nitrogen-use reporting tools that you can choose from to record your synthetic nitrogen use on grazed land in the twelve-month period from 1 July to 30 June in the following year. 

The three tools of choice are:

• Ravensdown’s HawkEye
• Ballance’s MyBallance
• The Regional Sector’s webform, named N-Cap

You will be able to submit your records through these tools from 29 August 2022.  

The rules require this reporting to be complete by 31 July 2022, however there will be no action taken for late  submission this year as we encouraged farmers to wait until these new national systems are available. We’ll contact you later in the year if they have still not received your data. 

HawkEye and MyBallance are existing tools which have had functionality added to allow data inputs to be used for calculating the synthetic nitrogen use by land-use area. You must have a digital farm map to use these tools. If you do not have this map, you can use the Regional Sector’s webform. When authorised by the person inputting the data it is  submitted securely to the appropriate regional and unitary council/s.

The Regional Sector webform (N-Cap) is a separate recording system that requires manual calculation of the same  information. A calculation spreadsheet is available for download which guides you through how to create the required records – this includes information such as the farm business entity, fertiliser purchases, landholding, land use along with dates, volume, and types of synthetic nitrogen application.  

This information is entered into the N-Cap webform and, just like the fertiliser company apps, data is then submitted securely to the appropriate regional and unitary council/s. For farmers who do not have access to a computer the point of contact is your regional council who can assist with recording your synthetic nitrogen application information.  

Please contact us if you have any questions. If you have problems entering your data after 29 August, please check the support information on the fertiliser company tool or the N-Cap webform website.