Land use and Agriculture in New Zealand

1) Almost 90% of New Zealands land has become agriculture in some sort of form. About 5% is forest and the other 5% is urban and wetlands.


2) Monoculture: Pros of monoculture is that it is a lot cheaper and machines are used making it less labor. There's a high rate of productivity of successful commercial crops. Also, in the market its cheap to produce.
Cons are it can deplete nitrogen levels in the soils and diseases can spread very easily through the plants. It relies a lot on fossil fuels, chemicals and technology and it can cause a lot of environmental damage. Also, per acre of land it actually produces less food than usual and it can displace other local crops.

Polyculture: Unlike monoculture farming, one piece of land is devoted to more than one crop in polyculture farming. With polyculture a farmer can have the same yield of crops and a more efficient irrigation system on a smaller piece of land. Natural resources can be used more efficiently. Water and electricity can be used more effectively, which results in a better yield. Animal wastes can be used as fertilizers and manure for crops. The plants that grow near to other plants have a greater and stronger immunity, and fight off the bacteria faster than the plants in monoculture fields. Also, the income for the farmers is a lot more stable and consistent.
Cons are it becomes difficult for the farmers to control and supervise the activities going on in the farm since they have to check and look after every single plant. Planning polyculture farming can be very time consuming and planting it can make it a very laborious task. Also, it will need greater infrastructure to get the work done on a land for polyculture farming.

Slash and Burn: Pros are when Slash-and-Burn is practiced on a smaller land, it is not as harmful as burning down hundreds of square miles. If the technique has decades between each burn, it can actually be helpful for the enivorment and the soil. It is also very cheap to do. 

Cons can be very deadly in slash and burn, if they don't clear the animals out of the land before they set it aflame, the animals could get very wounded and or die. If this keeps happening, then animals can and will, become extinct. Also, slash and burn can cause super poor air quality because of all the smoke.

3) Pastoral farming is the major land use but there are increases in land area devoted to horticulture. In Northland, the major form of pastoral farming is beef cattle. In the Waikato and Taranaki areas, dairy cattle predominate. Through the rest of New Zealand, sheep farming is the major rural activity, with beef cattle farming in the hills and high country, and dairying increasing in Canterbury, Otago and Southland.