A nationwide MAF online farm information service that will ensure that up-to-date information on New Zealand farms is available, if there is a serious biosecurity outbreak or natural disaster, is due to go live next month.

FarmsOnline has been developed by MAF Biosecurity. It pulls together rural property, land use and ownership information.

Design Manager Clifton King says testing is complete. Coverage of 98 per cent of farms has been achieved and the service will be launched on April 13.

“Knowing where farms are and how to contact the managers of those farms is critical to running an efficient and effective biosecurity response operation.

“Diseases like foot and mouth disease move really quickly, we don’t have time to spend time figuring out where the farms are and how to contact the farmers."

Clifton King says security of the information held by the system has been a very important aspect of its development.

“Prior to farms online a lot of good farms information was available in multiple datasets with government and industry bodies, but we haven’t had a single dataset of farms to support biosecurity and farms online will address that.”