FarmsOnLine is a one stop shop for accurate up-to-date contact details for rural properties in New Zealand. It gives MPI instant access to information so it can respond quickly to a biosecurity alert or natural disaster.
It provides you with greater protection of your livelihood because a fast response by MPI to a serious biosecurity outbreak or natural disaster will minimise potential damage. The information will assist with surveillance programmes and the development of rural policy. It will be used to support biosecurity programmes run by a range of government and industry organisations.
You are welcome to register as a FarmsOnLine user if you are associated with a farm or rural property. Keeping the information up-to-date is critical, and MPI has established a FarmsOnLine Contact Centre to check and validate the information. You, however will have the most up to date information about your property and we would be grateful if you chose to share that through updating the information through this web-site, or calling the Contact Centre. You may receive a phone call from them seeking your assistance in checking and updating your information. Providing this information to the Data Maintenance Centre is purely voluntary.
Most of the information on FarmsOnLine is already available publicly such as your property location, address, title and land-use. The name of the owner, manager or occupier is not publicly available but is a critical part of FarmsOnLine. A proposed amendement to the Biosecurity Act will make this information available for biosecurity purposes. For more information on the ways your private information will be protected, click here.
Yes. Click here to register as a FarmsOnLine user to access the secure interface of the FarmsOnLine website.
There is no information on FarmsOnLine about disease status, individual stock or crop information or financial, commercial or land values.
Absolutely. In the event of the serious biosecurity outbreak MPI needs to contact all property owners regardless of how few stock they have.
National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) will identify and record the movements of individual animals from property to property. FarmsOnLine will supply the contact and location detail of the farms, which is essential to support NAIT. If you choose to participate in NAIT during the voluntary period you will have to give permission for NAIT to use your FarmsOnLine details. During the mandatory period, your personal information will be made available to NAIT. This will save you the inconvenience of having to resupply information that you have already made available to the AHB and FarmsOnLine.
At this stage, the government has decided that the farm level will not be the point of obligation for agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme. If that position was to change, FarmsOnLine data would not automatically be used to administer the Scheme. This is because access to personal information will be restricted to biosecurity, surveillance and pest and disease management. Any change to that would involve a full parliamentary process including consultation and select committee hearings.
It is not compulsory to allow your personal details to be used in FarmsOnLine. However, by allowing your personal details to be used you will be supporting vital biosecurity initiatives. At any time you will have the right to request that your personal information be removed from the database.