How to register
If you're associated with a farm or rural lifestyle property, we encourage you to register as a user on the FarmsOnLine website. FarmsOnLine provides a hub for rural information that is vital in a disease outbreak, like foot-and-mouth disease, or in a rural emergency, like a flood. Improving MPI response times in such events reduces the impact these events have on farmers’ livelihoods and on the New Zealand economy.
Once you register, it's critical to keep your information up to date. There are two ways you can do this:
- Web: FarmsOnLine
- Phone: 0800 43 65 69 (0800 4 FOLNZ)
FarmsOnLine is voluntary. However, by allowing your personal details to be used, you'll be supporting vital biosecurity initiatives. At any time you can ask for your personal information to be removed from the database.
FarmsOnLine helps farmers
FarmsOnLine is a government-owned information database. It collects important information about rural properties, including details on the following:
- ownership and management
- land use
- stock and crops.
Collecting information on rural properties is essential for a quick response to a biosecurity outbreak or a natural disaster. The information helps us:
- run surveillance programmes
- develop rural policy
- support biosecurity programmes run by a range of government and industry organisations.
A fast response minimises potential damage
FarmsOnLine allows MPI to respond quickly to a serious biosecurity outbreak or a natural disaster, with the aim of minimising potential damage.
Being able to contact rural landowners in these situations helps to protect stock, crops, farmers' livelihoods, and the New Zealand economy.
FarmsOnLine gives New Zealand’s trading partners increased confidence in our ability to respond to disease outbreaks. It also reduces the likelihood of trade restrictions that could cost us millions of dollars a day.
FarmsOnLine and the National Identification Tracing Scheme
National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) identifies and records the movements of individual animals from property to property. FarmsOnLine supplies the contact and location details of the farms, which is essential to supporting NAIT.