OPINION: You've got to feel sorry for dairy leadership. Well you do. They're in mourning.

Grief is the only way to explain the strange and conflicting messages they've served up over the last six months. Their response to the water crisis could best be described as a backwards rolling maul behind their own try-line.

As Dipton farmer Peter McDonald put it : "Our farming leaders strategy of denial and defence is failing."

FAIRFAX NZ Nathan Guy says there is a limit to further dairy intensification.

Counsellors will tell you that there are five stages to the grieving process. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We've seen stunning examples of four of these since the crisis began.

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First, denial. How else would you describe the idea of urging dairy farmers to film themselves drinking from their own streams to prove that everything was ok?

Scientists say water quality at Hamilton Lake has improved.

Denial too, when Greenpeace ran controversial ads about the swimmability of rivers. DairyNZ complained to the advertising standards authority. They lost.

Anger set in. "Dairy NZ furious" said the headline. Chief executive Tim Mackle said: "The countryside is where the farmers live and work, and they are great stewards of their environment"

In their anger they missed the point. The issue is about water contamination, not farmers. There is a spectrum of ecological behaviour on dairy farms. Instead of acknowledging this diversity, DairyNZ framed any public criticism as a slur on every dairy farmer. In this way he threw the good farmers under the bus with the not so good ones.

KIRK HARGREAVES Upper reaches of the Rakaia River.

Then came the bargaining. DairyNZ now wanted to work hand in hand with environmentalists. After all, the industry was already 97 per cent on the way to fencing off waterways and planting stream banks with native bush. If we keep the cows out of streams, they won't defecate there and everything will be ok. You can all go back to your lattes.

It might have worked, except the debate matured. People realised there was another problem with our waterways not solved by riparian planting. The big N. Excess nitrogen from cow wees leaches into groundwater and aquifers, causing algal bloom - haven't we had a bumper summer of that - killing off native fish and other life.

When Greenpeace started calling for a reduction in cow numbers to cut nitrogen levels, DairyNZ continued trying to bargain. It fell back on its second line of defence. The old don't-mess-with-us-we-are-the-backbone-of the economy manoeuvre.

Then came the double whammy. Two international economic reports out the same day. One from the OECD talking about New Zealand agriculture reaching its environmental boundaries. The other from Vivid based in London which also suggested cutting cow numbers.

The Feds distinguished themselves, calling the OECD "another irrelevant hot air producing organisation". The Vivid report should be ignored because it was written by "pommy economists" and any MPs which supported it should be given "an uppercut". Tremendous. Way to deal with your grief.

In an autumn of water reports two more would follow. Last month there was the freshwater report produced by the Ministry for the Environment, showing nitrogen levels getting worse at 55 per cent of monitored sites. Nearly three quarters of reported native fish species are at risk of extinction.

Before that Sir Peter Gluckman the chief science adviser pointed to the rapid intensification of agriculture like dairy farming hitting waterways with nitrogen, phosphate and sediment.

"I'm well in my seventh decade of life," said Sir Peter, "I don't recall water ever being on the agenda like it is now." Something that had perhaps escaped the dairy leadership though I'm not sure how.

Then Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy just came out and said it. "There is a limit to further dairy intensification. There is no way we can double the number of cows in New Zealand."

By then depression had set in, evident in bizarre reactions to a prime time Sunday programme on TVNZ. It compared and contrasted two different types of dairy farmers. One conventional, the other biological who used regenerative methods to reduce her environmental footprint, like holistic grazing, cutting synthetic fertilisers, lowering stocking rates.

How did the leadership react? Sunday had made the conventional farmer look bad. It blamed shoddy biased journalism. There were even suggestions that farmers stop buying the brand of vehicles that sponsor the show.

What a waste. Instead, they might have pointed out how great it was that among their ranks were dairy farmers like this innovative woman taking on environmental challenges which we all face. They couldn't see it.

That is what it looks like, said another commentator, when an industry loses its social licence.

Acceptance of that loss is perhaps the first important step back.

Phil Vine is a journalist for Greenpeace New Zealand.