Agriculture Minister David Carter is to urge the Minister of Conservation to investigate whether the Fish & Game Council is spending the money it gets from licence fees appropriately.

Mr Carter says he has questions about the council's direction and leadership after it took legal action in the High Court to challenge whether High Country run-holders have exclusive rights to the land they lease from the Crown.

The High Court rejected the challenge.

Mr Carter says the money the Fish and Game gets from recreational hunters and fishermen would be better spent improving relationships with farmers.

He says a recent survey showed 92% of landowners do not mind granting access to recreational hunters and fishermen.

Fish & Game has said that by seeking clarification, it was fulfilling its obligation to hunters and fishermen who pay their licence fees.

It says one of its fundamental roles is to advocate access to wildlife and freshwater fisheries, which are not attached to land title.

The council says, in its view, the public has a right to expect access to them.

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Federated Farmers is holding a series of seminars in a bid to reduce the number of deaths from on-farm accidents.

They are being run with the Accident Compensation Corporation and rural insurance company FMG.

Statistics show there were 20 farm-related fatalities in New Zealand last year, which the federation attributes to poor on-farm risk analysis.

President Don Nicolson says the growing number of dairy farm conversions means new people have entered the industry with little previous experience about how to keep themselves safe.

He says many of the accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could have been avoided.

The seminars will run until early June.

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A new service has begun to recover and recycle silage wrap from farms.

An estimated 4000 tonnes of plastic wrapping are used on New Zealand farms every year.

The Agrecovery Foundation already oversees a recycling programme for plastic chemical containers collected from farms and orchards.

Recovering of baleage wrap to date has been limited to small local schemes which ship the plastic to China for processing.

Bruce Emerson, of the group which runs the Agrecovery programme says disposal of silage wrap is becoming a bigger issue as usage grows as it's generally burned or buried.

Farmers can join the silage wrap recovery programme by buying bags to store the used plastic wrap, which will then be collected.

Mr Emerson says Agrecovery is looking at new technology which would allow the wrap to be cleaned so it can be processed in New Zealand - rather than shipping it to China.