Country-Wide January 2022

BACKING FARMERS

SHEDDING sheep

Waikato’s Kim Robinson manages 42,000su and has made the change, p44

PREVENT. PROTECT. PERFORM.

A range of sheep vaccines made for New Zealand conditions.

For nearly 80 years, MSD have been developing sheep vaccines for New Zealand farmers. We have a extensive range of vaccines to help you protect your stock and improve flock performance. Vaccines that help protect against losses from Toxoplasma, Campylobacter, Salmonella, and that are proven to increase lamb numbers1,2,3 And we’ve developed them right here in New Zealand, specifically for our sheep and our conditions.

ASK FOR MSD SHEEP VACCINES

ACVM No’s A934, A935, A11311 & A11766. AVAILABLE ONLY UNDER VETERINARY AUTHORISATION

ACVM No’s: A4769, A9535, A7886, A9927, A9028. Schering-Plough Animal Health Ltd. Phone: 0800 800 543. www.msd-animal-health.co.nz NZ-CVX-211000002 © 2021 Intervet International B.V. All Rights Reserved.

1. Wilkins M, O’Connell E. (1992) Vaccination of sheep against Toxoplasma abortion, Surveillance, 19:4,20-23

2.Anderson, P (2001) The implications of Campylobacter Infections in Ewe Flocks. Proc 31st Annual Seminar, Society of Sheep and Beef Cattle Veterinarians., NZVA p31-40

3.Geldard, H, Scaramuzzi, R.J., & Wilkins, J.F. (1984) Immunization against polyandroalbumin leads to increases in lambing and tailing percentages. New Zealand Veterinary Journal, 32:1-2, 2-5

4.Baron Audit Data, June 2021

Taking a calculated risk

AWEDDING IS A GREAT WAY TO celebrate especially this year with all the Covid disruptions.

A niece was recently married after debate about whether it should go ahead or not due to the uncertainty caused by Covid. Unlike some cancelled events and closures where the easier option was taken, they took a calculated risk.

So despite Covid and the threat of rain it was held on a farm with the ceremony in the garden and the reception in a big shed. Vaccine passes were checked, family and friends pitched in to serve the catered food and drink. It was a wonderful occasion.

Two weeks earlier Groundswell held its ‘Mother of all Protests’.

There was a lot of talk and fear about the protests being hijacked by anti-vax protestors with warnings from within the ag sector against it going ahead. Masterton’s protest was cancelled.

My 18-year-old daughter, a university student, was keen to join the protest and made signs for the drive through Timaru. She made three but gave one to a signless couple. We slowly drove up and down the main street, utes and tractors tooting. People in the vehicles waving to the bystanders, them waving back. It was all good fun. There was a feeling of camaraderie and achievement. Getting into town and protesting must be a great mental health tonic for farmers.

Protest hijackers didn’t appear in Timaru nor it seems anywhere else, apart from a minor disturbance in Wellington. The day before the protest we passed through Oamaru and antivaxers lined the street. Among the signs one read, ‘Toot for farmers’. A pre-emptive attack by a farmer supporter?

The Groundswell protest organisers and supporters took a calculated risk. Several farmers later told me they regretted not going. How

many others regret not joining in?

My daughter now wants to go to the Wellington protest in February. She’s not off a farm, but has extended family farming and loves visiting the family farm.

Farming is part of her culture and she embraces it.

As 2021 draws to a close, is there any better way to celebrate the good work of the CountryWide journalist team than by winning the Rongo, agricultural journalism’s supreme award?

It was for our series investigating regenerative agriculture from November 2020 to June 2021. This is the second win in three years and both wins were based on good, fundamental and credible journalism.

Reputation is everything in journalism. After 32 years as a journalist I am dismayed at the state of NZ journalism. There is a lack of oversight of journalists who don’t seem to understand their profession. They appear biased and/or to be political activists.

A journalist should gather the facts without fear or favour to bring the reader closer to the truth.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone. Thank you for your support in 2021 and we are looking forward to working for you in 2022.

44 PULLING THE

WOOL

A growing number of sheep farmers are making the switch to shedding breeds.

26

AGE-OLD BATTLE FOR FOOD

The battle between sustainable intensification and agroecology.

84 YOUNG COUNTRY: LEARNING THE CLASSER TRADE

10 BOUNDARIES

HOME BLOCK

12 Don’t climb trees for cats, Robert Carter advises

13 Paul Burt sees a threat to a Kiwi cultural treasure

14 He waka - what the? reckons Mark Chamberlain

15 Richard Gavigan’s pasture is just how the lambs like it

16 Tractor driving has lost its allure for Suzie Corboy

17 Nick Loughnan reflects on the stresses of 2021

BUSINESS

18 Nicola Dennis reviews 2021

22 Carbon forestry: Forestry fears fuel concern

24 Busting a nutrient myth

18

2021: YEAR IN REVIEW

OUR COVER

Waikato’s Kim Robertson: Farming wool-shedding Wiltshire sheep ‘like farming Angus cattle’.

Photo: Emma McCarthy.

30

IT’S FROM NEW ZEALAND, AND?

Post-Covid-19, country of origin no longer has the cachet it once did for China’s consumers.

80

CHEAPER BY THE THOUSANDS

Peter Arthur offers advice on tree selection, costs and care.

Country-Wide is published by NZ Farm Life Media PO Box 218, Feilding 4740

General enquiries: Toll free 0800 2AG SUB (0800 224 782) www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

Editor Terry Brosnahan 03 471 5272 | 027 249 0200 terry.brosnahan@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Publisher Tony Leggett 06 280 3162 | 0274 746 093 tony.leggett@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Sub editor Andy Maciver 06 280 3166 andy.maciver@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Design and production

Lead design: Emily Rees 06 280 3167 emily.rees@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Jo Hannam 06 280 3168

Writers

Anne Hardie 03 540 3635

Lynda Gray 027 465 3726

Robert Pattison 027 889 8444

Sandra Taylor 021 151 8685

James Hoban 027 251 1986

Russell Priest 06 328 9852

Jo Cuttance 03 976 5599

Joanna Grigg 027 275 4031

Partnership Managers

Janine Aish | Auckland, Waikato, BOP 027 890 0015 janine.aish@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Angus Kebbell

South Island, Lower North Island, Livestock 022 052 3268 angus.kebbell@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Tony Leggett | International 027 474 6093 tony.leggett@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Subscriptions nzfarmlife.co.nz/shop | 0800 224 782 subs@nzfarmlife.co.nz

Printed by Ovato Print NZ Ltd

ISSN 1179-9854 (Print) ISSN 2253-2307 (Online)

42 THE CHANGING FACE OF FARMING

WE’VE DONATED TO MEAT THE NEED

Thanks to the fantastic and loyal support of our advertisers in 2021, we’re able to donate $1800 to help Meat the Need deliver more meat to struggling households across New Zealand.

Meat donated by farmers is processed, packed and delivered through Meat the Need to city missions and foodbanks for delivery to families struggling to put food on their tables.

Want to help?

Hop over to meattheneed.org to make a livestock or monetary donation of your own and help Meat the Need reach their target of 1,000,000 meals.

You can play your part too by supporting the companies that have advertised in Country-Wide during 2021:

50 Shades of Green

Advanced Romney Designer Genetics

Advantage Feeders

Adworx

AgCo Australia Ltd

Agilis Vet

Agrarian

Agricon Products

AgriHealth NZ

Agrivantage

Alleva Animal Health

Allflex NZ

Alliance Group

Angus New Zealand

Animal Health Direct

Anui Romney

Araawa Lowline Stud

Armidale Merino Stud

Arvidson Wiltshire

ASB Bank

Ashby Stud

AsureQuality Limited

Atahua Angus

Attivo (Harvey Cameron and

Rainmakers)

Avalon Farming

Awapiko Perendales

Beef + Lamb NZ Genetics

BASF

Bayer Crop Science

Bayleys Real Estate Gisborne

BBQ Ranch

Beef + Lamb New Zealand

Below Sea Level Speckle Park

Benmore Station

Bettle and Associates

BHQ Performance

Bidr

Big Save Limited

Black Ridge Angus

Blairich Station

Boehringer Ingelheim

Boma New Zealand

Bremworth

Brookwood Angus

Burrows Genetics

C B Farms

Carat

Carthew Genetics

Case - IH New Zealand

Norwood

Ceva Animal Health

Charolais Breeders NZ

Cheviot Sheep Society

Clifton Downs

Cloud Yards

Combi Clamp

Convergence

Coopworth Genetics NZ

CopRice

Corteva

Craigmore Polled Herefords

Cropmark Seeds

Dairy Women’s Network

DairyNZ

Dandaleith Angus

Dandaloo Stud

Daniel Wheeler Limited

DataCarter

Datamars

Deer Industry NZ

Diamond Media

Dominion Salt

Dryland Carbon

Dynamo

Earnscleugh Station

Eastgate Farming (Black Ridge)

Elanco Animal Health

Enfield Genetics

F.E. Gold

FCB Media

Fernvale Genetics

Fertco

Flagstaff Hereford Stud

FMG

Focus Genetics

Foulden Hill Herefords

Gallagher Group

Galloway Cattle Society of NZ

Gelbvieh Cattle Breeders Society

Genetic Choice

Genetic Technologies

Germinal Seeds

Gladstone Gelbvieh

Glen Orkney Poll Merino

Glenanthony Simmental

Glenbrae Stud

Glengarry Poll Dorsets

Gleniti Romneys

Glenloe Dohne

Glenmore Station

Goldstream Farm

Grassendale

H and T Agronomics

Handypiece

Hautere Perendales

Hazeldale Perendales

Hemingford

Highgrounds Texels

Hildreth Romneys

Hinenui Genetics

Hustler Equipment

Ipurua South Devon

Ironclad

J. Dee Media

Jurox NZ

Kaharau Angus

Kaimoa South Devons

Kaipapa Red Devon

Kaitake

Kaiwara Angus Stud

Kakahu Farm

Kay Jay Angus

Kellogg Leadership Programme

Kelso Genetics Ltd

Kenhardt

King Street Advertising

Kirikau Coopworths

Kiwitahi Romneys

Koanui Polled Herefords

Laithwaites Wine People

Landpower New Zealand

Latitude Strategy and Communication

Leafland Simmental

LIC

Longdowns Premium Sheep Genetics

Longfield Corriedale

Lonza

Lowland Park

Lynda Gray

Maclaka Southdown

Mahuta Herefords

Mangapiko

Maniototo Homestead

Marlow Hill

Massey University

Masterpet Corporation

Matarae Station

Maungahina Stud

Maxum Foods

MBM

Meadowslea Stud

Mediacom

Middlehurst

Milligans Food Group

Mitre 10

Moanaroa Angus and Romney

Morrison Hereford

Morton Shorthorn

Motu-nui Rams

Mount Linton Farms

Moutere Downs

MSD Animal Health

Mt Guardian Perendales

Mt Mable Angus

Muller Station

Nedap Livestock Management

Nestle Purina Petcare

New Zealand Forest Leasing

Newhaven Farms

Ngaputahi Angus

Nikau Coopworth

Nithdale Genetics

Blue Sky Speckle Park

North Island Lowline Group

Perendale Flock Ram Sale

Nufarm NZ

Nurture Farming

NZ Beef Shorthorn Association

NZ Farm Source

NZ Farmers Livestock

NZ Hereford Association

NZ Murray Grey Beef Cattle Society

NZ Sheepbreeders Association

NZ Texel Breeders

NZR Real Estate

Okaka Angus

Okawa Poll Hereford

OMD

Onfire Design

Orari Gorge Station

Oregon Angus

Otapawa Herefords and

Perendale

Our-Media Australia

Pahiwi Stud

Paki-iti Farm

Paparata Farms

Pasture Summit Conference

Performance Beef Breeders NZ

Peak Lowline

Pearman Media

Perendale Sheep Society NZ

Peters Farms

PGG Wrightson Agricom

PGG Wrightson Wool

Pine Park Stud

Pokaroa Speckle Park

Poll Dorset Breed Society

Power Farming Wholesale

PPP Industries

Premier Suftex

Primary ITO

Puke-Nui Angus

Puketotara Stud

Rancho Radiata

Rangatira Angus

Rangiora Trust

Ranui W Rangitatau Farm

Ratapiko Dorpers

Raupuha Studs

Ravensdown

Redwood Texels

Ridley Corporation

Riverlee Downs

Romani Farms

Royal Canin New Zealand

Rural Coach

Rural People

Seven Hills Farming

Shearwell NZ

Shian Stud

Silver Fern Farms

Silverdale Hayden Farms

Silverstream Charolais

Simmental NZ

Snowdon Station

Southdown Society

St Leger Superior Genetics

Stokman Farm Trust

Storth Oaks Angus

Stronghold

Suffolk Breeders Society

Tahuna and Hiwiroa Shorthorns

Takapoto Angus

Tangihau Station

Kerrah Simmentals

Tararua Breeding Centre

Te Atarangi Angus

Te Mania Angus

Te Pari Products

Te Taumata

Terraquip NZ

The Digital Cafe

The Grampians

The Gullies

The Gums Partnership

The Media Dept

Tim Coombs Transport

Tracta

Turanganui Romneys

Turihaua Angus

Turiroa Angus Stud

Hallmark Angus

Twin River Charolais

UPL New Zealand

Virbac New Zealand

Waigroup Angus NZ

Waimai Limited

Waimouri Red Devons

Wairarapa Romney

Improvement Group

Wairarapa Texel Developments

Wairere Angus

Wairere

Wairiri Rams

Waitangi Angus

Waiteika Station

Waiterenui Ltd

Waiwhero Angus

Waterton Rams

Whangara Angus

Wharetoa Genetics

Wilfield Stud

Willowglen Farms

Woodleigh Belgian Blues

Woolstone Park

WormFEC Gold Group

Xero NZ

Zoetis New Zealand.

History in a slab hut

BY: MALCOLM PULLMAN

NEVILLE LEWIS CAN REMEMBER CRAWLING with his father through dense gorse to get to the back of the derelict farm they were looking to buy in the Utakura Valley west of Okaihau in 1972.

Years later with the farm largely reclaimed from gorse Neville and his wife Linda, by then the owners, turned their attention to a derelict building.

The Cottage had a totara growing out of the chimney, unstable foundations, lean-to additions beyond repair. It was truly derelict, full of rubbish and hay from previous owners with leftovers where cattle had camped inside.

“It was either pull it down or fix it up,” Linda says. Demolition would have been easy, instead the family and close friends embarked on a lengthy restoration project.

“We got bits and pieces like doors and windows of a similar era from around the district and then the hunt began to find who had lived there. A lot of searching the phone book and talking to aged locals from Okaihau put me on the right track.”

The slab hut had been built by English migrants James and Lizzie Moors who arrived in the remote valley in 1910.

It is defined as a slab hut because the heart totara cladding has been split with an axe, with the outside and inside walls overlapped for weather proofing. Remarkably, these boards remain solid although intricately patterned with moss and lichens.

The slab hut has now been restocked as a miniature living museum with period furniture and appliances and occasionally people get to stay there.

Included among the visitors have been descendants of James and Lizzie whose family left the valley after a devastating flood in 1935.

• More on the Lewis farming operation p53.

GET PEDALLING

More cyclists and fewer farm animals is what New Zealand needs, according to the Climate Change Commission.

In a paper to Cabinet, the commission’s proposal was the number of cyclists needs to rise 170% by 2030 and 340% by 2035, Radio NZ recently reported.

The commission said sheep and beef herd numbers would need to fall 10% by 2025; 14%, 2030 and 17%, 2035.

Sheep and beef land use needs to drop 521,000 hectares by 2025: 600,000ha, 2030 and 750,000ha, 2035.

Dairy herd numbers will have to decrease 7% by 2025, 13% by 2030 and 18%, 2035. Dairying land use has to fall by 16,000ha, 37,000ha and 56,000ha.

STILL WORKING

Shannon farmers Diana and Gilbert Timms had planned an end-ofmortgage party when Gilbert turned 80, but he’s put it off till he’s 96.

When the couple, now 74 and 77, bought their latest block in the Tararua foothills, he says the bank manager wasn’t fazed.

“She said if I could service the loan it was a no-brainer because it would work in so well with our hill block.”

The long-time fencing contractor reckons having a mortgage keeps you young.

“And I’ve no intention of retiring.”

• See Mortgage the fountain of youth, page 63

A woman tries stepping onto a bus, but realizes her skirt is too tight to step that high. Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking it would give her enough slack to raise her leg, but it wasn’t enough.

With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to make the step.

After becoming frustrated and embarrassed, she once again attempted to unzip her skirt more.

About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus. She turned to the would-be Samaritan and yelled “How dare you touch my body! I don’t even know who you are!”

The Texan smiled and drawled “Well ma’am, normally I would agree with you but after you unzipped my fly three times I kinda figured we were friends.”

THE PERFECT BREAK

A surf therapy initiative which is helping improve mental health and wellbeing in New Zealand rural communities is set to return at beaches across the country. Surfing for Farmers is back for its fourth season across 21 locations this summer.

Launched in Gisborne in 2018 by Stephen Thomson, thousands of farmers around the country have taken part in the initiative. The programme gives farmers and growers the opportunity to step away from what can be allconsuming business, get out on the water for a surf, enjoy a barbeque and share stories with others in the rural community.

All equipment and coaching is provided free of charge.

“Over the winter months everyone has been busy organizing all the logistics in the background. It’s amazing to see the growth of Surfing for Farmers running in 21 locations all over New Zealand coastlines.”

Mental health of those in the rural community continues to be an issue.

“It’s been heartening to get such positive feedback from farmers and growers who tell us what a difference getting off the farm and into the surf can make.”

Surfing for Farmers is supported by premium sponsors Ballance Agri-nutrients, Bayley’s, Beef + Lamb NZ, Meridian Energy, Jarden and Rabobank. Thomson is keen to see numbers grow even further this summer.

Country-Wide magazine recently won this year’s Rongo, the supreme award for agricultural journalism. The award recognises exceptional storytelling and depth of quality research. The team, Joanne Cuttance, Andrew Swallow and Joanna Grigg, wrote a series of articles investigating regenerative agriculture. Grigg also won the AgResearch Science Writers Award. Pictured at the New Zealand Guild of Agricultural Journalists and Communicators awards in Wellington are: Joanna Grigg, Joanne Cuttance and magazine designer Emily Rees.

DID YOU KNOW ?

“As we approach the kick off of our fourth season, we are excited to be back, bigger and better than last year,” Thomson says.

“We hope our regulars will pick up a neighbour and bring them down –and for first timers - come and have a go.“

Visit www.surfingforfarmers.com

WAGE SUBSIDY DATABASE

It is a common misconception that bees always die after they sting. In reality, bees can sting other creatures multiple times, but the barbs of the bees stinger get trapped in the elastic skin of mammals. Left undisturbed, the bee will eventually wiggle enough to get its stinger back out of the skin and fly away unharmed, but humans tend to swat the bee off while it is trapped which rips the bee apart.

Country-Wide has received access to the latest wage subsidy database from the Ministry of Social Development. The list includes some 90,000 employers who have received the Wage Subsidy due to loss of revenue during the Covid-19 Lockdown and restrictions at Alert Levels Two, Three and Four. Visit www.nzfarmlife.co.nz/wagesubsidy-directory

Surfing for Farmers: Paul Fisken and Sonny Aiaraisa (back).

Don’t climb trees for cats

WHEN YOU HAVE SPENT MORE than 20 years operating a local business, what do you do when the socalled retirement time comes around?

This was the question facing Ken and Gill McCann when they finally sold their local sports shop. “Seriously Outdoors”.

A few weeks off to catch their breath and time to contemplate the future led Ken and Gill to develop a plan.

Both love the outdoors and keeping fit, they also love the natural flora and fauna of New Zealand as well as keeping in touch with close friends.

One evening a TV programme about predator-free NZ came on and Ken had a brainwave.

Very quickly a plan was brought to fruition whereby the McCanns would develop a predator control and elimination strategy for The Poplars Farm at Kirikau, owned by their close friends, Suzanne and me.

The Poplars farm has always had a strong focus on the environment being a past winner of a Horizons region Ballance farm environment award.

We could not believe their luck in having Ken and Gill get involved as it had always been a dream of theirs to lift the game further and reduce the numbers of unwanted critters.

The Poplars has a population of Kereru, Kiwi, Toutouwai, Korimako, Tui, Parera, Pekapeka as well as Quail, Pheasants, Blue Heron and Ruru.

Ken has made new traps, reconditioned old ones and developed a very thorough method of determining which trap goes where.

There is now a network of traplines all over the farm and, a few months into the campaign, there is an impressive list of dead wee nasty bitey little critters.

The yield is impressive, wild cats, ship rats, Norway rats, mice, hedgehogs, as well as weasels.

One of our fox terriers, Cod, is in heaven, as

finally he has playmates who go around the farm all day doing what he loves to do.

Cod has abandoned us for Gill, he’s found true love and wants to move in with Ken and Gill but it has been decided that a “fully hunt-programmed” fox terrier may not be fully appreciated in town.

On the days when Ken and Gill are not on duty Cod comes with me and we check a few things out on my farm rounds.

The other day I was spot-spraying thistles and there was a “red alert” in some big native fuchsia trees.

Cod had chased another wild cat and this “dirty Harry” was well up the tree and I had no shooting iron with me.

I decided, foolishly, to climb the tree and shake the bastard out to the waiting foxies.

Well up the tree, I reached for the cat’s tail and at the crucial moment the branch I was on collapsed and I fell five or so metres to the ground.

Luckily the tree was on a slope and I washed off the speed with flailing arms and emphatic short words down into a creek.

It was too much for the cat and it high-tailed off further down the gully with squeaking foxies in hot pursuit.

The dogs lost the cat to a far horizon and came back to me with a look that said, “You are bloody useless, the sooner Ken and Gill come back the better!”

Needless to say, I reflected on my good luck in having no injuries.

The interesting thing about this is, to date my wife Suzanne is unaware of my re-enactment of Richard Pearse’s original flight and will only find out once she reads this!

I will be in trouble.

Merry Christmas everyone I hope you have a nice time with your loved ones as well as a few coldies and a bit of time out.

A couple have taken retirement to heart with a project to rid a farm of its pest population, writes Robert Carter.

“I decided, foolishly, to climb the tree and shake the bastard out to the waiting foxies.”

Ken and Gill McCann and Cod the fox terrier, heading out on another trapping mission.

Threat to a Kiwi cultural treasure

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT till it’s gone” is an expression familiar to many people and most would agree there is a ring of truth to it. Sadly, we have at present a raft of policymakers and politicians whose recent actions will produce consequences, which, if left unchecked, will modify forever part of New Zealands’ culture.

If a person of national importance was making that claim and if the heritage was linked to Tangata Whenua there might be some further consideration. But, I fear, no balance will be forthcoming as we are discussing the largely European culture of hill country pastoral farming and despite its one and a half centuries of toil and trouble, to some, it still has a whiff of capitalist elitism.

Michael King, in his “History of New Zealand” makes the point, “Pakeha culture (like that of Maori) is no longer the culture of origin from which it sprang. It has become, in fact, a second indigenous culture by the same processes by which people of East Polynesia developed Maori culture.” My take on those words is that both cultures deserve equal consideration and respect.

These thoughts were sparked by a photo in the real estate section of the NZ Farmers Weekly depicting the vast Huiarua Station on the East Coast of the North Island along the flanks of the Raukumara Range. In total over 6000 hectares of iconic farming history is up for sale and the likelihood of it becoming a radiata pine forest is very high.

Recent sales of hill country in that area have shown forestry interests (fuelled largely by the hype of carbon farming) have been willing to pay premiums of 20% above sensible sheep and cattle farming bids. It would take a very altruistic vendor to stand by his principles and turn that windfall down.

Carbon farming investment syndicates are offering returns of 10 to 13% at present and if you are blind to the artificial construct of the ETS carbon market and if you don’t care that food production will be sacrificed to merely postpone global warming or that you are aiding the destruction of communities and landscapes, why would you not invest?

This accelerating situation is occurring at the current carbon price of $65 per tonne. Climate Change Minister James Shaw says he will be comfortable watching the price rise to over $100/t when (he grins with satisfaction) his policies will really start having an effect. Is the potential afforestation of land like Huiarua collateral damage from a process that is inevitable or is it political vandalism?

In my memory, Governments on both sides of the house have an appalling record when it comes to driving land use policy. Think of the destructive Land Development Encouragement schemes of the late 1970s and the large scale forest to farm dairy conversions on the Volcanic Plateau. Both schemes had traction at their inception but quickly showed their deficiencies.

Hill country farming in NZ is a cultural treasure. The sheep and its wool provided the financial clout for our development as a nation. Our national character is based on the resourceful, dependable, good humoured outdoorsman. Our identifying imagery is as much about pastoral scenery as it is mountains, lakes and native forests.

The sacrifice and sweat of the pioneers built the foundation, modern science and practice refined the industry and Rogernomics forced us to front up and perform. All the while we’ve quietly paid our share of the bills for a country that frequently undervalues us and pays as little for its food as it can get away with.

Hill farmers are proud to be unsubsidised and are as progressive and productive as any in the world. We can handle punishing workloads, high debt burdens, fickle markets and climate change. Our tie to the landscape we have shaped is genuinely indigenous and having learned from our mistakes we are becoming true guardians of the natural environment.

What we won’t be able to survive is a voracious, well-funded land grab that could turn out to be as ruthless and ephemeral as any gold rush and could, in a comparable way, leave an irretrievably altered landscape in its wake.

NB: 15% of our farm is on its second rotation of production radiata forest.

Carbon forests pose a threat to the longestablished Kiwi culture of hill country pastoral farming, writes Paul Burt.

"Recent sales of hill country in that area have shown forestry interests (fuelled largely by the hype of carbon farming) have been willing to pay premiums of 20% above sensible sheep and cattle farming bids. "

HOME BLOCK Matata

“Hill country farming in NZ is a cultural treasure.”

EARLY LAST CENTURY, THE FAMOUS

Irish republican hero, Michael Collins evaded capture from the British by simply hiding in plain sight. He cleverly dressed as a dapper man about town, while the British pursued a working-class man.

He waka eke noa, translates to mean ‘we are all in this canoe together’ and is a modern-day ‘hiding in plain sight’. If you want to be sneaky, give an innocuous name to what is going to be an incredibly complicated, serious, and expensive problem. Point in case, most farmers who I have spoken to have heard of it but appear to have switched off. Perhaps calling it ‘a new tax for farmers’ may have engaged them more.

Allow me to explain it in broad terms.

He waka eke noa, was formed because the Emissions Trading Scheme was going to cripple farmers. Eleven primary produce groups, along with the Government and of course Maori and Iwi, decided to get together to create something more palatable.

Looking at the profiles of the people representing these groups, may impress some of you. With a gaggle of liberal, educated elites; along with an ‘importance’ of directorships – all designed in part for us mere mortals to stay in our collective lanes, and to not question them as we dare not touch the sun.

I am not overly impressed as all I see are people more likely to suffer paper cuts than a callus. People more accustomed to a long-white on an early Friday afternoon knock-off rather than the perfect longblow on the last run of the day.

Make no mistake about it, a new tax is on its way to the rural people of New Zealand. However, this mostly academic urban cluster, after many months and dollars, can still not decide if your carbon sequestering riparian and shelterbelt plantings can be considered in their mathematical musings.

You may ask yourself, why is grass not added into the equation? Quite simply, it doesn’t suit their

argument. You see, this is where I channel my inner Greta – it’s all blah, blah, blah.

I am sure everyone fondly remembers learning about the magic of photosynthesis, at a young age, and how important carbon is. But if the elites cannot agree that trees and grass sequester carbon and therefore cannot be part of the equation by morning smoko, then this could quite possibly be, the most ludicrous academic circular firing squad, that has ever been assembled in NZ. Or, perhaps more likely, they have a premeditated agenda.

One option is to collect the tax at the processors. The other way is a logistical nightmare, at an individual farm level. A bureaucrats’ dream.

The draft document’s modelling suggests for dairy; 4 cents kg milksolids (MS), by 2025. It magically multiplies to 16c by 2030.

But wait, there’s more. There is an entire section dedicated to achieving an equitable outcome for Maori. The proposal basically states that Maori will have ‘oversight of the implementation programme, including decisions on revenue distribution and monitoring’.

There is more devil in the detail that follows in the document, which basically implies that nothing shall disadvantage Maori or Maori land. Some may say that this is racist, that it is separatist – but I believe that it is just plain unhelpful. It is insulting, not to me, but to the many hardworking and successful Maori farmers and farming operations that we have in NZ.

There is no denying there are changes coming and we must adapt but you can’t ignore parts of the equation that don’t suit your argument. Otherwise, it simply looks like creative accounting, done by a drunken sailor.

Because you see, be it a cow or a plough – it is ignorant of your heritage, skin colour or situation. And yet again, it comes down to words and deeds, because the title really says it all; He waka eke noa is just words. Because, in reality, we are not all in the canoe together.

We’re not all in the canoe together, reckons Mark Chamberlain.

He waka - what the?

“I am not overly impressed as all I see are people more likely to suffer paper cuts than a callus. ”

The canoe crew are perhaps the most ludicrous academic circular firing squad assembled in NZ.

HOME BLOCK Gore

Woolshed and a gym

THE DOCKING IS DONE FOR 2021 AND it’s not a record result. Last year we did 152% lambs docked to ewes mated, our best ever. This year, despite a lift in scanning, we slipped to 142%.

Tight feed conditions during late pregnancy and lambing, the result of slow pasture growth and Porina damage, didn’t help. More significant was the effect of continuous cold, wet, windy weather during lambing.

My neighbour, Don, summed it up. “We didn’t even have a pet lamb this year,” he said. “The weather was too rough to go round them. If we’d gone out and disturbed the ewes and lambs we’d have done even more damage. As it was there were a fair few dead lambs behind rush bushes.”

We now need to focus on making the most of this year’s lamb crop. Pastures are high quality with the clover coming away, but the low covers have affected ewe lactation performance and lamb growth. With this in mind we decided to try weaning an early lambing mob of 300 cull ewes at around 70 days, with the lambs heading off to new grass on our equity partners’ property just down the road. The process has been successful, with both the ewes and lambs now doing well, and me feeling much better having made some decisions and taken positive action.

Back to the docking: in an operational sense it actually went pretty well. One highlight for me was Edward and his dogs. Edward is the 25-year-old son of our equity partners and has been working on his home farm for the last couple of years. He’s a Massey Agricultural Science graduate and likes stock work. It was most enjoyable watching the confidence with which Edward handled his young huntaway and two heading dogs during docking. In contrast, my pack of part-timers, at times, gave new meaning to the word “unleashed”.

This confidence that often seems to be associated with youth amazes me. We’ve been watching quite a lot of rugby lately as our 19-year-old son, Joseph, is playing for the Manawatu Turbos in the Bunnings NPC.

Joe is a loosehead prop and, like my dogs, has been chomping at the bit to get some game time. He got good minutes against Taranaki in Inglewood, coming

Richard Gavigan farms 320ha of medium/steep hill country 8km south of Pahiatua. 2100 ewes are put to the ram. Docking target is 150% and most lambs are sold store. They winter around 120 R2yr steers.

off the bench before half time and acquitted himself well.

An enthusiastic student of scrummaging, he was heard to say before the game that he wouldn’t mind having a go against the starting Taranaki tighthead. I did some research and discovered that Michael Bent had played 11 games for the Hurricanes, 135 games for Leinster and four tests for Ireland. This obviously didn’t faze Joseph - he was confident and keen to get stuck in.

Joe’s youthful confidence appears to have rubbed off on his sister, Bridget, who despite only having two years’ rugby experience has lined up for the Wairarapa Bush women’s team this year. I’m sure there’s a lesson in this for all of us, regardless of age. If you have done the hard work and believe that you are good enough then have a go!

I must admit, though, that due to some lower back pain a couple of months ago I was starting to feel less confident in my ability to keep up with the physical requirements of farming than I used to be. But a new approach to an old routine has fixed me up a treat.

Back in my younger days I was very keen on lifting weights and although I hadn’t touched it for years, all my old gym gear is set up in the woolshed for Joseph. It was invaluable during the Covid-19 lockdowns, as Joe was able to hit the weights in his woolshed gym and make good progress while others struggled to keep in shape.

It’s also turned my physical fitness around as my lower back issues were simply the result of weak core muscles. I’ve got into the routine of doing some core and other strength exercises in the woolshed every time I go down to feed the dogs or give them a run, with the result that my lower back problems have virtually disappeared.

Full of new-found enthusiasm, I had the great idea that this sort of approach to training for farm work could be an add-on to the Farmstrong programme – “Farmfit” I’d call it. But when I searched up Farmstrong I found they’d beaten me to it.

Farmstrong already has a farm fit component, including a ‘Turn on Your Core’ four-week challenge for farmers. You don’t need a woolshed gym to take it on and it will help set you up for the busy season on the farm. Give it a go!

Pastures are short but very high quality with clover coming away – just how the lambs like it, writes Richard Gavigan.

"If we’d gone out and disturbed the ewes and lambs we’d have done even more damage."

HOME BLOCK Pahiatua

Time for a Christmas break

AFTER 25 YEARS OF FARMING together I know better than to ask or tell Paul how many sleeps there are until Christmas.

November and December are always a rush to get tractor work done and get new grass sown and winter crops in the ground before a much-needed, and longed-for, few days off for Christmas.

I admit tractor work is no longer my favourite way to spend my time, unlike when I was younger, and enjoyed spending days on the tractor, so I am guilty of trying to avoid doing many hours at the wheel and as a result Paul does nearly all the cultivation work. They are still making days after December 25, but if we don’t get a short break before the beginning of January there is no time before we start weaning and drenching lambs, mouthing and dagging ewes and all the necessary jobs that suddenly become urgent and essential.

I haven’t written a column since lambing and calving so a quick update.

Calving our 125 heifers went well with less than 10% assisted calvings and apart from one poor decision on my timing of intervention we had good survival from calving those that needed help, and no vets required. Although I did wonder if I had made the right decision on at least one occasion, and question if the calf was going to fit through the small pelvis that was hurting my hand as I guided its large frame into the world.

Lambing was average, not as good as I had hoped, but not as bad as I feared after the one day that the tailing contractor was here.

We get most of the lambs tailed by the gang, and Paul and I do the few small mobs that aren’t worth setting up a big set of yards for, so we just walk them to the covered yards. Thankfully those few hundred lambs we did ourselves soon add up. Not to 150% which we would be happy with, but well

over 140% which I pessimistically anticipated. Hogget lambing was not good, not even achieving 70% to the ram. We knew at scanning there were not many lambs, with hogget scanning being down 30% on the previous year. Sadly we haven’t yet achieved that elusive 100% hogget lambing that, when we reach it, Paul has told me we are allowed to retire.

Modern wives don’t listen to their husbands anyway do they? Every lambing I threaten that this will be my last, especially when I can’t catch an ignorant hogget that quite obviously needs my help, or I am lambing a ewe that was missed yesterday and the dead lamb is not quite as fresh as it would have been yesterday. I think you all know what I mean. For some reason I keep coming back for more.

Our fodder beet crop fed the yearling cattle and 70 older finishing steers and heifers, until late October. The cattle had good weight gains in about six weeks of grazing it, and we killed quite a few straight off the crop, and only a handful are left now, and all but three of them could be killed if we were short of feed, and those three were very light cattle prior to winter. Next season’s fodder beet was sown in late October, the earliest ever for us, so, as long as the weather delivers the necessary heat and moisture, and we get all the timing of the necessary sprays and fertiliser correct, then we should produce another good crop.

Life beyond the farm gate in 2021 has been different, but apparently the new normal. I still forget my mask when I leave the ute to go into a shop or eatery, as I don’t frequent town very often, and life on the farm is very sheltered from Covid.

I hope 2022 is a good one for us all and that prices remain buoyant and all the hassles of Covid do not become unbearable. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

The fun of tractor driving has lost its attraction for Suzie Corboy on her Owaka farm.

“Modern wives don’t listen to their husbands anyway, do they?”

Cattle had good weight gains and only a handful are left now.

Closing out the year

SEEING ANOTHER CALENDAR YEAR drawing to a close at the end of December never seems to be the right time to call it finished when all the seasonal stuff on the farm is anything but.

With the longest day right on us as well, it’s always full on with pastures, crops and animals hopefully in peak production mode, alongside the necessary work to keep it all happening. And the traditional end-of-year Christmas thing is always an extra that has to be fitted around whatever else needs attention on the farm as well.

The real time for hanging back from a busy and productive year surely has to be in autumn. The pressure is off, the harvests are over, the lambs trucked off, and the weather here in Central Otago is usually stunningly beautiful, often with weeks of calm and settled days as the changing foliage colours display such a striking contrast beneath the bluest of clear open skies.

I’ve always thought the Americans had it right with the timing of their Thanksgiving traditions. They wrap their harvest celebrations in with the start of their ‘holiday season’ which also includes Black Friday to kick off the Christmas shopping burst for retailers.

Rural and urban folk can all ease back together, and it’s healthy that city people there still acknowledge the importance of harvest.

So here in New Zealand, we just follow along with whatever’s going on around the world. Christmas cards, with deep white snow on rooftops and chimney pots that the fat red man has to squeeze down, all seem pretty odd to be giving when it’s approaching mid summer.

Yet it will be great to put 2021 behind us. It has been an extraordinary year, and NZ is not alone in the high levels of growing discontent showing up in populations worldwide. The parallels between behaviours in any species are understood intuitively by livestock farmers. Put too many animals together

for too long under tight conditions and the stresses soon begin to surface.

As farmers, we can make all sorts of calls on the way we run our livestock. The choices of species, breeds and stocking rates, animal health remedies including the often very necessary use of vaccines, and sire selection for desirable traits are all at our disposal.

Not so for the human population unfortunately! Rampant population growth and failure to manage how those populations are all able to access such basic needs as adequate food, clean water, shelter, healthcare and education is delivering major challenges to our world leaders on so many fronts. Little wonder that democracies are also struggling, especially in countries where the ‘market’ is left to deliver these social outcomes.

And now with a digital soapbox available to everyone with a connection, those noises of discontent, misinformation, and all sorts of other nonsense under the guise of free speech can be spread far and wide.

But if nothing else, we humans are a resilient species, and our intelligence gives us the capability to solve problems at many levels. Goodness knows that we have the odd pressing one to be worked on.

And beneath it all, we need to wake up each day with something to look forward to. We all need hope. It’s what leads us all along. Hope for ourselves, our families, our communities that we live in, our country and our world.

So whether you’re a glass half empty, or a glass half full type of person, just find the time to top the thing right up at year’s end and enjoy yourself. Here’s to the future!

Put too many animals together for too long under tight conditions and the stresses soon begin to surface. It’s the same with people, Nick Loughnan writes.

"...now with a digital soapbox available to everyone with a connection, those noises of discontent, misinformation, and all sorts of other nonsense under the guise of free speech can be spread far and wide."

YEAR IN REVIEW

Nicola Dennis sorts the wheat from the chaff of events in a topsyturvy 2021.

JANUARY

It’s Brexit, honey

After four and a half years of will-they-won’t-they, the United Kingdom and the European Union finally break up. The rest of the world struggles to care. We are too busy worrying about shipping delays and their potential to upend meat processing. The horrors of the January 2021 slaughter backlog still ring in our ears. But, the grass continues to grow for everyone outside of the Northland region. The sky does not fall in. So, we moan about the lack of sunshine instead.

Stoush of the month: NZ beekeepers vs the Japanese authorities regarding how much herbicide is acceptable in honey.

FEBRUARY

Lead and low slope maps

Covid-19 is back and all the introverts are rewarded with a three-day lockdown on Valentine’s day. Auckland does it all over again on the 28th. Medsafe approves the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and we are to expect our first vaccine shipment in April. Exciting!

Nearly 300 farmers take up the Ministry of Environment’s invitation to point out errors in its “low slope” map. The map is supposed to show which parcels of land are flat enough to fence cattle and deer out of waterways. But, like many constructed from satellite data in a bureaucrat’s office, it has some distance from reality. In some cases, containing land only accessible via helicopter. The Government eventually backs down (in July) with a much less-ambitious map and watered-down stock exclusion rules for waterways.

Summer has finally begun, but it’s already too much for Northland and the Hawke’s Bay where farmers nervously wait for rain. Gore shearer, Megan Whitehead breaks the women’s world shearing record with 661 lambs shorn in nine hours.

Stoush of the month: The Dunedin City Council forgets to check its emails over the holidays and overlooks that lead levels in the rural Otago towns of Waikouaiti and Karitane are nearly 40 times the acceptable limit. Residents will be carting water from tankers until August when residents are allowed to drink from their taps once more. Although, it’s still a mystery where the lead came from.

MARCH

Regulations, depopulations and the Suez Canal

The Aucklanders are allowed out of their houses on the 7th. There is a Tsunami warning but nothing happens. Three cheers for NZ, we have a world-leading response to Covid and tsunamis.

MPI issued a press release saying it will depopulate the Five Star Beef feedlot as part of the Mycoplasma bovis eradication campaign. This appears to be news to ANZCO/Five Star Beef and it doesn’t happen. In other government news: we are to expect a free trade agreement between NZ and the freshly divorced UK any minute now (see October) and the government agrees to defer it’s new “Intensive Grazing” regulations for a year.

Stoush of the month: The tiny digger vs the giant ship wedged in the Suez Canal.

APRIL

Why hello, Australia

Australia pops our bubble, we are allowed out of the country now and we celebrate this with a bizarre balloon dance. It hasn’t rained in a while along the east coast. Banks Peninsula is toasted. Can we use the word “drought” yet? No, not until the 28th.

Meat companies are sweating through record high cattle kills, shipping delays and labour shortages, but they manage to keep the wheels from falling off, somehow. The lamb price starts going crazy, but in a good way.

Stoush of the month: The government announces a ban on live exports, commencing 2023. The animal activists rejoice. Those involved in the live export industry are less than pleased.

SO LONG 2021. ANOTHER YEAR GONE AND STILL NO FLYING CARS. BUT, LET’S PAT OURSELVES ON THE BACK FOR GETTING THROUGH ANOTHER CONFUSING YEAR. SADDLE UP, WE ARE TAKING A QUICK TRIP DOWN RECENT MEMORY LANE...

MAY

Floods, stabbings and cyber attacks

Staff and shoppers are stabbed in a Dunedin supermarket. It’s the worst thing ever to happen in a NZ supermarket until September when it happens all over again. The Waikato District Health Board forgets to update it’s software for 12 years straight and is overthrown by a cyberattack on its Windows 7 computers. Canterbury is in drought until it suffers a 100-year flood. We get quarantine-free travel to the Cook Islands.

Bremworth announces it will ditch synthetics and only manufacture wool carpets. There is a 563km vintage tractor trek to raise money for the Southland Charity Hospital.

Stoush of the month: There is a letter writing campaign to get the Government to ease border restrictions for agricultural staff. Although it is a bit overshadowed by the biblical floods and shopper stabbings.

JUNE

Phew, halfway there

Ashburton starts the month in a mess after the floods. Without the Ashburton bridge connecting it to the rest of the country, the lower South Island gets to fulfill some fantasies about being its own republic. Auckland is hit by a tornado.

All hail the power of the mighty pen, there are some border class exemptions issued for 200 dairy workers and 50 vets. The Climate Change Commission releases its final recommendations and we all pretend we’ve read them.

Our Australian cousins beat us to a free trade agreement with the UK (nah, nah, nee, nah nah), but they are also in a tense political battle with China via the World Trade Organisation (sad trombone noise). Would NZ please step in to help Australia and China be friends again? All sphincters tighten.

Stoush of the month: Two words: “ute” and “tax”.

JULY

It snows, it’s fine It snowed, which is now newsworthy during the warmest June-July period on record.

The Government condemns “malicious cyber activity” from hackers aligned with the Chinese state. “Zip it” say the NZ exporters worried about losing the country’s largest trading partner.

The Bales4Blair campaign, which initially asked farmers to donate 200 bales of wool to insulate the Southland Charity Hospital, rings in the wool donations at 421 bales. This earns $78,500 for the hospital.

The 2020 Olympic Games finally kick off. A $10 lamb slaughter contract is released for September and prices for store lambs are now hotter than the Auckland real estate market. The trans-Tasman travel bubble is put on pause as Australian Covid cases get out of control.

Stoush of the month: Groundswell’s Howl of Protest. Are farmers all racist misogynists? No, seriously guys, the Government says they are listening to farmer concerns. Why would they lie?

AUGUST

Stay at home and watch the Olympics Covid is back, but no matter, we will simply have a short, sharp lockdown and carry on our merry way. Sit back and enjoy the Olympics, or read the Commerce Commission’s damning report on the lack of competition for supermarket food prices. Or, perhaps catch up on one of the many governmental reforms taking place. Definitely don’t go to the Cook Islands for quarantine-free travel, that’s off the cards.

A Government-appointed scientific advisory panel concludes that Overseer is not an appropriate tool for regulating real-time farm nutrient losses. A fact that could have been gleaned over a single cup of tea with a farmer and their consultant. The Government also takes a backstep on winter grazing regulations, abandoning the pugging depth and resowing rules. Which, again, could have been a cup-of-tea conversation.

Stoush of the month: How many plastic bag equivalents are in a house lot of synthetic carpet?

Bremworth says 22,000 while advertising their woollen carpets. Godfrey Hirst threatens legal action.

SEPTEMBER Terrorism and pests

A man stabs people at an Auckland supermarket, during a lockdown, while under active police surveillance. This stabbing is labelled a terrorist attack, as opposed to the earlier supermarket knife attack which was labelled as something other than terrorising.

In more positive news, most of us are allowed out of lockdown. Unless you live in Auckland, or sometimes also Waikato and Northland. Scientists toilet-train cows. University of Waikato announces a bachelor degree in climate change.

The chilled lamb season is a bit of a short-lived affair given there are few lambs to process and even fewer ships to take them to the European Christmas markets.

Stoush of the month: After a rough ride into winter and a slow start to spring, feed is tight and it’s farmers vs the pests that want to eat the nonexistent pasture.

OCTOBER

UK and NZ are friends again

On the 18th, the Government is advised that there is a risk of this Covid outbreak getting out of control. “Oh now it’s getting out of control?” ask the Aucklanders who have been in a short, sharp lockdown for two months at this point. A free trade agreement with the UK is agreed in principle. We will be sending them honey and apples in exchange for bulldozers and buses. There is a snow storm during lambing, which is not fine.

Stoush of the month: It’s sheep vs pine trees as the carbon price hits $65/tonne.

NOVEMBER

Picnics for Aucklanders

Auckland is allowed takeaways and picnics with their ongoing lockdown. They also get a promise that they can soon come out to play with us. We want to know what happens in the likely event that they disease us. Can we isolate ourselves on our farms? Federated Farmers encourage us to make a list of dogs in case we get carted away. The MIQ lottery is getting on everyone’s nerves.

The Government steamrolls over local councils to mandate its much-maligned Three Waters policy. Groundswell has another protest which everyone worries will be hijacked by anti-vaxxers (it isn’t). The mainstream media start reporting that vaccine mandates could trigger an(other) terrorist attack. Thanks guys, that’s super helpful.

Stoush of the month: Judith Collins and Simon Bridges won’t stop bickering, so the National Party turns the damn car around and drives home.

DECEMBER

Let’s guess I am going to give you a sneak peak behind the curtain of the glamorous life of a columnist. I am writing this in early December so I don’t actually know what this month has dealt us. As far as Covid goes, December looks to be another actionpacked month. There’s a traffic light system, a new variant with a name that sounds an awful lot like the baddie from ‘Transformers’, and we will soon have rapid antigen tests available via pharmacies. We will also have Aucklanders among us after the 15th.

The grass is growing for most of us (not you, Wairarapa) and I assume lots of other interesting things are happening too. The Government wants us reassured that Santa is double-vaxxed and kitted out with a vaccine pass. Excellent, that was weighing on my mind.

Stoush of the month: The hospitality sector vs the vaccine mandates. Probably.

“How many plastic bag equivalents are in a house load of synthetic carpet? Bremworth says 22,000...”

FORESTRY FEARS FUEL CONCERN

BY: GLENYS CHRISTIAN

Sheep and beef farmers’ increasing concerns about productive farmland being sold to be planted in trees for carbon credits have seen a number of recent initiatives putting the issue under the spotlight.

Back in July 2019 Country-Wide ran an award-winning series on the effect farm sales to forestry were having on rural communities. It was estimated 68,000 fewer stock units were being carried and there were warnings that if the price of carbon, then about $25 a tonne shifted up to $35/t land use change would really start to happen. Last year’s (2021) early December auction under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) saw it hit a record $68/t.

In August 2019 a report commissioned by Beef + Lamb NZ from Baker Ag compared sheep and beef farming with forestry in the Wairoa district where in the previous two years almost 8500ha of pastoral land was sold into forestry. Its modeling showed that while carbon

economic contribution. Sheep and beef farms’ spending was consistently higher and more jobs were created.

In August 2021 BakerAg was asked to update the land conversion information on a national scale, and found between the start of 2017 and the end of 2020 these land sales totalled 92,118ha.

It estimated 26,547ha, or 34%, of those sales were to carbon farming companies or forestry not intended to be harvested. Adding in a further 47,382ha of farmland approved for planting under the One Billion Trees programme or the Crown Forestry Joint Ventures scheme, 139,500ha was planted or will be in the near future.

Nearly 90% of land sold into forestry was in land use classes (LUC) 6 and 7, and 64% had a low to moderate erosion risk, making it highly productive sheep or beef country for breeding replacement stock. An estimated 700,000 sheep are likely to have been lost due to conversions.

Beef + Lamb NZ recently backed the formation of the Native Forest Coalition, noting a growing chorus of voices against

The coalition is calling for changes to the ETS, more long-term thinking across Government policies to tackle climate change, and prioritising native afforestation over offshore projects.

Beef + Lamb NZ chief executive Sam McIvor said the Government needed to take a holistic approach across water, biodiversity and climate as well as sustainable food production.

The sheep and beef sector was committed to playing its part to meet international climate change commitments, through involvement in He Waka Eke Noa, linking the primary sector, the Government and Maori, and its championing the integration of forestry on farms.

“Without urgent action, the sale of sheep and beef farms into forestry will only accelerate as the carbon price increases,” he said.

In early December it joined a group of 14 local councils and Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) to fund a report on exactly what was happening around the country. It was due to be released before Christmas with a February meeting planned to discuss its findings.

LGNZ wants the Government to find ways to incentivise planting of permanent indigenous forests, possibly with a carbon price differential between pine and native forestry.

Federated Farmers wants Government to remove policies it says are distorting rural land markets and wants an increase in funding for the Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) National Trust.

Minister for Primary Industries (MPI) Damien O’Connor was in MIQ isolation but a statement from his office said he supported the right tree in the right place.

research adviser to New Zealand Carbon Farming (NZCF) which owns or leases an planted in trees, but he now questions its

He was aware of farmer concerns but said while forestry rates had increased the forest estate was still about 70,000ha smaller than it was in 2000. And 89% of land registered in the ETS was on land classes 6, 7 and 8 which tended to

“Without urgent action, the sale of sheep and beef farms into forestry will only accelerate as the carbon price increases.”

run few stock per hectare and was more susceptible to erosion. The New Zealand Forest Service promoted the idea of mixed model farming/forestry with farmers able to plant erosion-prone or less productive land in trees while keeping their prime farmland intact.

In early July 2020 Stuart Nash, who is now Minister of Forestry, promised that a legislation change to require resource

consent for plantation or carbon forests on LUC 1-5 above 50ha a farm would take place within the first six months of Labour winning the election.

Opposition agriculture spokesperson, Barbara Kuriger said she was very uncomfortable with good farmland being planted out in forestry, which if not managed well could end up as biomass. That would come at the cost of food

Breeding country devoured

WAIRARAPA SHEEP AND BEEF farmer, Roger Barton, knows of two large farms locally which have recently been sold to be planted in forestry and a third which is likely to have gone the same way. They would have been running about 30,000 stock units, supplying lambs to other local farmers.

“We are losing our breeding country,” he said.

He also worries about a last-manstanding scenario if only one farmer is left on a rural road after all their neighbours’ land has gone into forestry.

“Our infrastructure is thinning out,” he said.

“These are quite scaleable farms and that’s really concerning from a New Zealand Inc point of view.”

From early 2021 he believes there’s been a massive shift in land prices of up to $5000 a hectare, all driven by carbon price hikes. But people forget with forestry there’s only one generation of income over the life of the trees planted, he believes.

“So who’s going to pay the rates?”

Barton runs 960 breeding ewes, 230 replacement hoggets and about 200 head of cattle. Despite having 243 hectares of bush under a QEII Trust he earns no carbon credits and thinks suggestions of NZ buying carbon credits from overseas countries are ridiculous. He estimates he contributes an unpaid $16,000 a year to biodiversity through fencing maintenance and pest control in the bush, “that’s not growing me one more lamb”.

While he views the report commissioned recently into the situation as a great initiative and hopes change will come out of the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan to be released in May, he isn’t holding his breath.

“It’s the bulk planting of a whole lot of trees I object to,” he said.

“We will see paralysis of the pastoral industry if there’s a greater momentum.”

Dan Ramsden, a retired Dannevirke farmer (Country-Wide, October 21, pages 152-155), said buying land for carbon farming was continuing in the area with three farms recently sold.

“They’re good, healthy sheep and beef country,” he said.

He understood some land values had increased from $8500/ha last year up to $16,000.

“Farming just won’t be able to cope. It will make it harder for the next generation to find the extra money. And once it goes into carbon farming it’s locked up. NZ is going to regret it in the future.”

Bay of Islands sheep and beef farmer, Roger Ludbrook, has done the figures and decided to put 100ha of his 350ha farm into forestry. At a carbon price of $100 the Northland Federated Farmers’ meat and wool chair believes that after four years he will be earning about $4000/ha.

“Why should I work my butt off to make $300-500/ha profit when by doing nothing I can earn 10 times that? Farmers should be into it like there’s no tomorrow.”

He knows of about 2000ha going into

production where overseas countries would take up any opportunities available.

She said it was important that decisions were made at a regional, local or catchment level as these were likely to have better outcomes.

National’s agriculture policy group was meeting in early December and policy would be formulated for release early in the new year.

forestry in Northland at present and of two real estate agents actively trying to find sheep and beef farms for more planting.

While the deal looks good for individual farmers he’s tried to talk to local iwi about the impact on local communities and employment. His planting will see him drop 160 of the 1000 cattle he runs, or half a day’s kill at the Moerewa meatworks. He calculates that will mean a $70,000 decline in Northland’s income and an estimated $270,000 reduction in the country’s export production.

He’s still nervous about making the land use change, saying the projected returns seem too good to be true and he worries the Government may change its mind five years down the track.

“This is money for jam but I’m not sure what happens at the end of it,” he said.

“Maybe once meatworks start closing down people will take notice.”

‘We will see paralysis of the pastoral industry if there’s a greater momentum.’

BUSTING A NUTRIENT MYTH

Repeated statements of a falsehood does not make the falsehood true. Yet these days it appears the more something is said (or repeated on social media), the more people seem to believe it. Lewis Carrol termed the phenomenon the Snark Syndrome. In The Hunting of the Snark, the Bellman says “What I tell you three times is true”.

In psychology, it’s termed the illusory truth effect – the tendency to believe false information after repeated exposure. You start to believe it because ‘everybody knows’.

We see the effect in people reluctant to be vaccinated with the most tested vaccine in history.

We see it in pushback against

agrichemicals that are enabling people to have access to affordable food supply.

We see it in the nutrient density myth –modern agriculture is robbing you of the healthy food you deserve.

And now there is a research programme that is apparently going to show that food grown regeneratively is tastier and healthier for people than conventionally produced food. The programme will show that regeneratively produced will have greater nutrient density - the amount of a particular nutrient in a food per calorie or kilojoule consumed.

Note that science does not generally ‘set out to prove’, instead it tests hypotheses, thereby retaining an open mind.

As science has not managed to prove

Differences in nutrient concentration are to do with soil and climate (terroir), stage of harvesting and cultivar or breed, not production methods. By Jacqueline Rowarth.

any consistent differences in food produced in different farming systems in the past, it is unclear why anybody would think throwing more money at the non-issue will do so in the future.

Repeated meta-analyses and reviews can find no credible research showing that nutrient concentration in food produced organically or conventionally differs substantively. The same goes for modern food compared with 50 years ago. The occasional small difference is nothing in context with the full diet.

Differences in nutrient concentration are to do with soil and climate (terroir), stage of harvesting and cultivar or breed. There are also some differences between now and the past due to increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere – but there aren’t differences between organic and conventional grown in the same year in the same soil.

Why would results differ?

Given that regenerative agriculture is part of the spectrum between organic and conventional, along with agro-ecology and conservation agriculture, why would the results be different?

Note that the ‘no difference’ is before the farm, orchard or market garden gate.

Food grown at home tastes better than the alternative because it is fresher – you harvest it at its best and eat it immediately. But the home gardener mostly cannot provide the variety of fruit and vegetables available all year round from the supermarket.

Once the food leaves the producer, and goes to the processor and distributor, things change.

Post-harvest treatment is critical. Snapfrozen peas frequently have more sweetness than fresh peas (unless grown at home) because they are harvested at the peak of perfection, frozen within a four-hour window of harvest, and the transport and waiting to be bought occurs when the peas are already preserved.

Processing often adds components to the original product and dilutes the ‘nutrient density’. Potatoes contain a considerable number of nutrients. Deep-fried and salted the value reduces. The same goes for oats turned into muesli bars with fat and sugar.

The debate about milk and meat is slightly different. Within a species, breed does make a difference. Milk from Jersey cows is higher in fat than that from Holstein Friesians. Processors in New Zealand collect the milk and blend it to ensure a consistent quality, then meet consumer demand with low fat, high calcium, chocolate...

This is nothing to do with the production system of the farmer or grower but does change nutrient density.

Similarly, many differences have been recorded in meat from pasture-fed animals in comparison with grain-fed. In particular, the Omega 3s are higher (up to five times) in grass-fed meat, just as they are in grassfed milk. If, however, you are deficient in Omega 3s, switching to ‘grass-fed’ won’t make much difference to your health (particularly in NZ where the norm is pasture) - you will need supplements.

The suggestion that slower growing leads to better-tasting meat may well be the case overseas where hormones are given to animals to increase growth rates. In NZ they are not given additional hormones; they respond to their own hormones and genetic potential, reaching weight according to food quality and quantity.

On pasture, if animals grow slowly the implication is that there is something wrong, perhaps health or food restriction (quantity and/or quality).

More greenhouse gases

The environmental concern is that greenhouse gases (GHG) produced per kilogram of food are increased in slowgrowing animals because of the extra time taken to reach weight and the maintenance costs.

GHGs are an important factor when suggesting that organics, regenerative or whatever are ‘kinder’ to the environment than conventional systems. Considerable research has shown that per unit of food produced, conventional agriculture has lower impact on the environment than any other system because yields are higher per unit of input.

The converse is that yields are lower per hectare with regenerative or organic farming in comparison with conventional farming which means more land is required to feed a given population. Deforestation is the consequence.

What drives food demand is mouths and there are more and more of them on the planet.

NZ food is in demand because it is high quality and is produced with lower environmental impact than most other countries can manage.

What happens to the raw product before it reaches the consumer is a matter of consumer choice. Make the decision to purchase unprocessed food and nutrient density will be as high as in the past.

The illusory truth effect is allowing people to blame poor nutrient density on farming practices rather than their personal food choices. It is also encouraging the belief that a return to past production systems will cure everything.

Success would require a return to past population as well.

• Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, adjunct Professor Lincoln University, is a farmer-elected Director of DairyNZ and Ravensdown. The analysis and conclusions are her own. jsrowarth@gmail.com

“The illusory truth effect is allowing people to blame poor nutrient density on farming practices rather than their personal food choices.”

AGE-OLD BATTLE FOR FOOD

BY: JO CUTTANCE

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE (RA) IS

the next iteration of an age-old battle about food production. The battle between sustainable intensification and agroecology.

The terms may have changed but the same principles applied, Professor Derrick Moot said, when he presented a talk about RA at the 2021 New Zealand Seed Trade Association conference recently.

The Lincoln University agronomy professor said regenerative agriculture was a new term which had come along to deal with the questions raised about food production.

How do we actually feed people? How do we produce food? Do we use agrichemicals, fertiliser and irrigation versus sustainable agriculture and organics?

The choice between using a high-input system or a low-input system, and an evidence-based process or a faith-based process.

“This is really a battle that has been going on for quite some time but at the heart of it is how do we feed 10 or 11 billion people,” Moot said.

Historically, we increased food production, and quite dramatically from about 1960, he said.

In 1940 the population of the world was about two billion, by 1960 it had increased to about three billion. To feed these people, basically land was deforested and turned into arable production, cropping, whether it be wheat or rice or something else.

“We essentially deforested the land to feed the people until the 1960s,” Moot said.

From then, the area of land being deforested flattened off quite dramatically, he said. Through to the 1970s there was a large intensification of the arable land that had already been deforested. The land started to produce more because it was irrigated and nitrogen fertiliser was used.

“Nitrogen fertiliser allowed us to produce more grain from the land area that had already been cleared,” Moot said.

By 1970 the yield from rice fields had increased from about two tonnes to 5t/h and there was a similar trend for wheat, barley and maize.

Now, with a world population of close to eight billion people, a little more deforestation was occurring as intensification and nitrogen fertiliser dropped off.

Nitrogen use had not increased, but land area had increased and that was a consequence of using less nitrogen fertiliser while population growth continued to increase, Moot said.

“That becomes an issue. We have to either intensify the land area or we are going to cause more deforestation.”

Moot said we can feed everybody on the planet today. But the way we feed them was either going to be an increase in the land area we have or an increase in intensification of the areas we are already producing food off.

Work done within Our Land and Water National Science Challenge found people in the agricultural sector believed climate change was going to be the big thing that affected NZ agriculture, particularly greenhouse gas emissions but also consumer preferences. With NZ a major exporter of product we had to be aware of what our overseas consumer wanted and how they perceived NZ agricultural systems.

• More see p74.

“This is really a battle that has been going on for quite some time but at the heart of it is how do we feed 10 or 11 billion people.”

Investigation wins top award

BY: TERRY BROSNAHAN

FIVE YEARS AGO THE WORDS

‘regenerative agriculture’ would not have caused a stir.

Now it is promoted as the answer to New Zealand agriculture’s problems, but top ag scientists say what problems?

Regen ag promoters have convinced people there was a crisis when there was none.

The scientists said NZ had developed world-leading pastoral production systems backed by proven science.

Regen ag started in the United States as a reaction to degraded soils and spread to Australia.

Scientists said NZ didn’t need to follow regen ag which was a faith-based ideal and exploitative. Farmers were being sold products based on pseudo-science.

Regen ag proponents have been active in recent years and gained a growing

following including politicians.

The Ministry for Primary Industries has shelled out millions of dollars for regen ag including $1.86 million to Quorum Sense, a trust promoting the practice.

Country-Wide recently won the Rongo, the supreme prize in agricultural journalism for a series of articles investigating regenerative ag from November 2020 to June 2021. It included Landcare’s white paper, a report on regen ag which scientists criticised for a lack of research, questionable science and emotive language.

Landcare complained about the coverage and the complaint was later upheld by the Media council. The council found the April issue’s article and editor’s note were unfair to white paper lead author Gwen Grelet (August p31). Country-Wide revealed Grelet was on the board of Quorum Sense

Fas a technical adviser. This was not highlighted in the white paper. Grelet is now listed as a technical adviser for Calm the Farm which helps farmers transition to regen ag.

Scientist Dr Doug Edmeades said regen ag supporters made claims which were not backed with scientific evidence, rather it was pseudo-science. Regen ag was trying to discredit conventional farming with claims soils were degenerating when production was increasing year on year. Surveys in 2014 and 2017 showed NZ ag soils, apart from a few exceptions, were in good order.

When a power struggle develops There will most probably be huge respect for each other and they will normally enjoy each other’s company. Because after all, the apple does not fall far from the tree. But they start to butt heads.

Unfortunately, a power struggle can develop, and depending on who you listen to, the owner is a stubborn old bastard and the successor a spoilt, selfish prat. More often than not, neither is true.

In reality, the successor will be very grateful for the opportunity they have been given and the owner will be grateful someone from the family wants to pick up the baton. It is just that no thought was given to the passing of control and how that will need to change over time. Where it is done well it can be a roaring success. The owner, a proud mentor with a gentle nudging hand and the successor, a respectful and grateful recipient.

In any succession plan, there are significant constraints, but they can be overcome, or at worst if they can’t, at least front up to them. Those that build a strong business will have more options than those who don’t. Work out what fair is through talking, listening and understanding. When you have achieved all of that there needs to be a transition of not only ownership but also of control.

Admittedly it can be challenging. So before you enter into a partnership with a family member, understand the dangers of control or lack of. Regardless of whether you are an owner or a successor, do some honest self-analysis.

How am I going to cope if I don’t have full control? At the outset, that will be fine, but what about in five years. It will not resolve itself. So have full and frank discussions at the start and constantly review the situation. If it is becoming an issue, it needs to be addressed before the “horse of reason has bolted”. The last thing you want is a family rift. The solution probably lies within.

Control is an important issue to address

and so is ownership. As I said above, transfer of some or all ownership is going to be important and needs to be part of a well communicated plan. Your lawyer and accountant will guide you through the actual process. At some point, passing of ownership will need to occur. It doesn’t necessarily have to happen immediately, but it does need to happen. If transfer of ownership is to be delayed, the reasons for doing so and the plan to allow it to happen eventually needs to be fully understood by all family members.

Failure for a lack of clarity

I have seen succession plans fail due to a fight for control and I have also seen them fail for a lack of clarity around ownership transfer.

I have seen instances where the owners have basically retired and have left all management and governance decisions to the successor. The successor essentially has full control and may well be improving the farm’s productive capacity and therefore capital value.

The successor is left wondering, “who am I doing this for?” I’m improving the farm and it is becoming more valuable and therefore through my own efforts it is going to cost me more to buy out my siblings.

The successor sees they are doing a great

job and have full control, but they are lacking financial security and that is as frustrating and worrying as having little or no control. Therefore, it is important to get both right.

Over the last few articles I have pointed out the pitfalls and there are a few. I have been involved with families where succession becomes just too challenging. Partly because attention to succession came too late. It may have been the business never got to be strong enough, or there was a lack of communication and if there was a plan it wasn’t fair. However, if you can get it right the financial, physical and emotional rewards are huge.

I recently arrived at a client’s place and there were three generations of red bands at the front door. The generations aged from mid 70s down to about a 10 year old. I remember thinking that’s pretty cool. The outcome everyone wants is for continued family ownership, financial security for everyone, the generations getting on, siblings enjoying each other and first cousins being mates. None of that will happen by accident. If you can get it right, the satisfaction can be immense.

• Peter Flannery is a Southland and Otagobased agribusiness consultant, specialising in business planning, financial management and family succession.

"A

raise in my allowance is fine, Dad. But what I'm really after is power of attorney."

IT’S FROM NEW ZEALAND... AND?

Post-Covid-19, country of origin no longer has the cachet it once did for China’s consumers. By Hunter McGregor.

One of the great things about living and operating a business in China is the speed of change. This creates a lot of challenges and plenty of opportunities. The opportunities are the part I enjoy.

One of the biggest changes I have seen in consumer behaviour during my nearly 14 years of living in China, is the massive change in perception of country of origin. Chinese-made or produced products are now trendy and the imported foreign products are not always seen as better.

When I arrived in China in 2007 it was very clear that most things imported (especially food) were perceived to be far superior to local products. The best example of this at the time was wine. Any imported wine was

Top restaurants in Shanghai are using local products more due to a major improvement in quality.

better than the locally produced wine. Many Chinese consumers did not really understand what was good or bad wine.

I remember once going to a bar in a small town in the Ningxia province in 2009. The red carpet was rolled out by the bar owner, as they did not often get many foreign visitors. The owner wanted us to drink some of the most expensive “French” red wine with him.

If someone else was shouting, then it was fine with me. They opened a couple of bottles and then proceeded to ask us which mixer we would like - green tea, coke or sprite? After tasting the wine, it needed some sprite to make it drinkable!

Now the Ningxia region is the home of many very good wineries, which compete well on the international stage. Mixing anything into wine these days is not commonplace, as the evolution of the Chinese wine consumer has now moved well past this. From many welltravelled consumers in the big cities, it’s all about taste, quality and brands.

The Covid-19 environment has pushed forward a preference of local over imported products for many Chinese consumers.

You only need to look at the menus of the top Michelin Star or Black Pearl (local equivalent to Michelin star) restaurants around Shanghai. There is more and more local produce on the menus than in the past. This is led by a major improvement in quality of the local products, and consumers’ willingness to pay for high-quality local products.

When I started selling New Zealand venison (about six years ago) in China, I did think that “Brand New Zealand” got me in the door, and then it was up to me with the product to close the deal. I no longer think this and the market has moved so much everyone is

now looking beyond the country of origin.

The Chinese consumer understands the product comes from NZ, but expects to get other benefits by buying these products.

One of the best examples from a NZ company in China doing this is Zespri. The focus is on building that strong brand around the products being healthy. They are one of the leading fruit brands in China and their marketing is not advertising NZ branding.

They do sell kiwifruit from Italy in the NZ off-season but the focus is on health. Also Chinese consumers like sweeter fruit so this is why gold kiwifruit is a good fit for the market. They also have a big team on the ground focusing and understanding the market.

Another good example is the Te Mana Lamb brand, with a focus on product quality. The product is linked back to the production environment but the marketing is also built around the product attributes like high in healthy Omega-3 fats, and the 21-day aging process. This sounds good, but the key to all of this is the product performance. It must perform on the plate for the chefs at the top end restaurants, and from what I have seen and heard it does this very well.

Brand NZ is always going to give NZ products advantages but this is reducing. The challenge for NZ companies is now to move past a major focus on NZ branding to dig a bit deeper into what the consumer is looking for. This is a major challenge and an exciting opportunity I am looking forward to.

• Hunter McGregor is a Chinese-speaking Kiwi based in Shanghai selling NZ meat into China.

Above: The Chinese script on this sales stand is all about health, and only NZ mentioned on the sale signs.

Feminine farmer group continues

BY: JOANNA GRIGG

A WOMEN-ONLY ACTION GROUP IN MARLBOROUGH is one of 100 being renewed.

The Northern South Island group was formally funded by the Red Meat Profit Partnership, but is now operating under Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) funding.

It submitted an extension plan for 2021/22 to B+LNZ. This was approved, giving access to $2000 of funding from the levyfunded organisation.

Former facilitator and group member, Ellie Cranswick, of Kekerengu, says group members expect the $2000 will cover administration and some facilitation costs. Members are also looking to commit a nominal sum (for example under $800 each per year) to continue with the traditional action group model with a trained facilitator and a subject matter expert.

Caroline Houghton, rural insurer and group member, stepped up to take on the administration role when then facilitator and farmer Cranswick went on maternity leave. Together they now run group administration. Houghton organized the recent day in her personal capacity.

She says being in the group is a great way to develop her understanding of farming.

“After my first trip to Bluff Station I realised it was gold to have time spent onfarm with women.”

They have found there are skill sets within the group to have a meaningful day, without paying for a guest speaker for a topic each time. Cranswick said the aim is to have a subject matter expert each meeting. However, it is possible to find good speakers that don’t charge.

“It can be win-win where it is also providing air time for the rural professional and their business too.”

Cranswick says a core number of group members often bring along guests – for example daughters, female staff members or neighbours, and this works well at keeping attendance up towards 14.

“Sometimes members can’t make it, with ill children for example.

“We are keen to follow the small-group model but the nature of the group means that we have slightly higher membership, which equates to a suitable number at each meeting.

Ladies only

Cranswick says the reason we focus on being a ladies group is to provide an opportunity to have our own time off farm to work on ourselves or the business - to prioritise ourselves. Most discussion groups are set up for couples and often women don’t feel confident to speak up,” Cranswick said.

The group has toured to Canterbury – to the Zinos’ farm, a horticulture business on Conway Flat, and the NZ Merino Company as well as joining with other action groups on a tour through Wairarapa. Visits have been made to local sheep and

Boost your lamb numbers and overall flock performance2. Androvax® plus instantly increases lambing percentages by an average of 20%.

Ask your vet about how Androvax plus can help you lift your lambing percentages.

beef farms Leefield and Tempello.

The Marlborough Group’s extension plan lists four days planned for 2022. This is slightly fewer than under RMPP but more sustainable for the group, Cranswick said.

B+LNZ South Island general manager John Ladley says more than 100 action groups and others are continuing to work on a self-funded basis. He didn’t have exact numbers, but said, at the end of the RMPP programme 40% of action groups indicated they planned to self-fund. They are not signed on via B+LNZ so are not listed.

Each new action group is eligible for a B+LNZ kick-start funding of $2000 to pay for their facilitator. Funding for existing groups is contingent on submitting an extension plan and completing a survey at the 10-month anniversary. Funding is in place until September 2023.

It is estimated B+LNZ spends a further $2000 in kind in staff time in supporting each group.

Ladley says facilitator training has continued with 32 new facilitators trained at Dunedin and Napier courses. Three more sessions are planned for early 2022 and

there is a waiting list, perhaps due to an attractive MPI subsidy for the course. An alumni programme for trained facilitators is also under way, Ladley said at its height 229 RMPP groups were running.

Sheep replace cattle

In November the Northern South Island Agri Action Group visited the Allans’ new Awatere purchase, The Downs.

They saw the results of a big effort to clean out ‘difficult-to-muster’ cattle first hand, as well as improvements made to neighboring Ballochdale which was bought by the Allans in 2014. All up, with the original hill farm Corleggy, Kelly and Grant farm 3300 hectares. It is run as one farming business with Ballochdale (438ha), Corleggy (2200ha) and the Downs (700ha) now

forming a tidy square parcel of land.

Kelly and Grant are helped by stock manager Wiremu Jarrett and casual musterer Greg Salton.

Kelly helps manage the 1800 mixed age Corriedale ewes, 400 hoggets and 180 cattle at the lowland end of the farm. It’s a 45 minute drive for her, but fits with dropping their three boys to school at Seddon. Corleggy runs 2500 Merino ewes and 190 cattle and the homestead is in the Medway, further up the Awatere.

Controlling cattle numbers at The Downs has seen a huge bounce back in feed and, combined with the high clover pastures at Ballochdale, ewes are set to wean impressive lambs. The Corriedale ewes lamb September 1. Any store lambs are sold back to the Wilfield Stud lamb programme, as Wilfield Stud supplies sires.

Kelly is a keen member of her action group and said it is great to have the group back together.

“There has been a huge amount of learning since I joined and increased confidence to apply what I have learnt to our farm business.”

The action group, from left: Caroline Houghton, Trudi Roberts, Nicky Stevenson, Rhianon Murray, Sandra Jermyn, Siobhan Allen (Director, Merrill and Ring NZ), Ally Avery, Ellie Cranswick, Kelly Allan, Louise Stevenson, Viniana Culleton, Melanie Stevenson, Bridget Crabbe.

“After my first trip to Bluff Station I realised it was gold to have time spent onfarm with women.”

WHAT ?

where the debate exists is about how much. The sceptic’s view is that humans have a minor effect only, whereas the IPCC and Government’s policy relates to the assumption that CO2 from human activities is the main driver of climate and warming.

Certainly well meaning policies of net zero by 2050 seem unattainable with existing technologies.

In declaring a Climate Emergency, the PM states “it is a matter of life or death”.

Yes, there has been an increase in the world temperature by about 1.1 degrees C since the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) which was very cold indeed. Also in future we can expect some more modest warming, perhaps another degree C, if CO2 in the atmosphere doubles.

I note that warming does cause some additional deaths, but these are far outweighed by substantial reductions previously due to cold.

Human-caused global warming has been government policy since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when about 150 countries signed on to UN concern about future warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988, has a mandate “the assessment of the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change”, only looking for human effects.

It is clear that humans do cause some warming,

1979 to 2021. No indication of rapid increases.

The IPCC and many thousands of contributing scientists keep emphasising, with ever-increasing hysteria, about an existential crisis. If they didn’t there would be no need for the continuing billions and billions of dollars allocated to education, science and bureaucracy being dedicated to the non-productive pastime of measuring emissions.

Figure 1: Atmospheric temperature

Roy Spencer, PhD (drroyspencer.com)

It is an unpopular view but Dr Jock Allison writes there is no Climate Emergency, in fact, human emissions have very little to do with temperature.

GREENHOUSE GASES (GHGS)

• Water vapour: To directly quote the IPCC (AR5), “water vapour is the primary GHG in the Earth’s atmosphere”. This is responsible for 80-90% of the warming effect.

• Carbon dioxide: The essential plant food which the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, and others refer to as a pollutant.

• Additional CO2 can have minimal effect on warming but will be positive for plant growth.

A one degree rise from the Little Ice Age isn’t much considering world temperatures range between +50 to -60C, and from day to night usually over a range of 20C.

If we look at the most accurate measurement of lower atmospheric temperature, we can see the Earth isn’t warming much. Nothing to worry about.

GHG have only a minor effect

In a climate tutorial for a Californian judge, three prominent university professors summarised the situation thus:

1. The climate is always changing; changes like those of the past half-century are common in the geologic record, driven by powerful natural phenomena

2. Human influences on the climate are a small (1%) perturbation to natural energy flows

3. It is not possible to tell how much of the modest recent warming can be ascribed to human influences

4. There have been no detrimental changes observed in the most salient climate variables, and today’s projections of future changes are highly uncertain.

be forgiven for thinking they are not on the side of the New Zealand farmer.

The Paris 2015 Agreement, Article 2,1,b which reads: “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production…”

Much of NZ’s legislative and regulatory emphasis is about reducing methane, which has a negligible effect on warming, this certainly threatens food production. Our Government, all officials and the producer organisations are illiterate to this point. Some understanding of climate science by the agricultural producer organisations would be a good start.

Humanity has never been better off, by any measure:

• Life expectancy

• Infant mortality

• Per capita income

• Adequate nutrition

• Access to clean water,

• Crop yields still increasing, These are all at the highest levels since measurement began.

Figure 2: Sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere. Ruminants are 14% of the total.

Happer Koonin Lindzen climate Tutorial.pdf (heartland.org)

A further useful assessment is in the link Microsoft Word - (04-10-2018) Replies to Judge Alsup Eight Questions.docx (heartland.org)

Note: “Natural Variation” in weather and climate seems to have disappeared and in the past two decades there has been more emphasis on adverse weather events, storms, droughts, floods, wildfires/bush fires, etc. Any major climate event is and has been blamed on humans. We must reduce GHG emissions to get us back to a “stable climate” is the cry, I assume the reader will know what that is?

None of these claims are justified and several comprehensive reviews are testament to that.

Methane and nitrous oxide

KEY POINTS:

• CO2 is the gas of life.

• Net zero is a disastrous solution to a nonexistent problem.

• Doubling of CO2 would be great for plant growth and food production.

Ruminant methane is only 13% of all the world’s methane emissions, or 20% of human emissions of this gas (see Figure 2). Further, all methane is considered to be about 16% of the human GHG effect, thus ruminant methane is 0.20 x 0.16 or 3.2% only of the human GHG effect. As 85% of the GHG effect is water vapour, then other human GHGs make up the remainder, with CO2 about 70% of this. Methane, nitrous oxide and CFCs make up the rest. Thus, the real effect of methane is a maximum of about 0.5%, of the total greenhouse warming. This is much lower than claims methane and nitrous oxide cause 23% of all warming, made in a recent modelling study by Kiwis Andy Reisinger, vice-chair of the IPCC, and Harry Clark, our Climate Commissioner. You could

Why do we want to inhibit further progress by restricting cheap fossil fuel energy to developing countries, and by doing so confer a billion or two people to continuing poverty?

Emissions reductions will have no measurable effect on either the atmospheric CO2, weather, or climate. In spite of 26 COP conferences, agreements to reduce emissions etc, for 30 years plus, no effects are evident. In fact, world emissions have increased almost 60% since 1990.

Net zero seems to be a mirage.

Costs of Net Zero

Governments everywhere are very coy about costs. We do know these are huge, and further surveys indicate about 80% of taxpayers aren’t prepared to pay more than $10/month for climate mitigation (which won’t happen anyway).

Already the cost of shutting down gas exploration in Taranaki is about $8000/taxpayer. The cost of net zero, about $200 billion by 2050, is about $50/week for workers.

What can be done?

Some understanding of climate science in your producer organisations would be a big help.

The only way forward is to shake up politics through protest, soundly based on science, of course. This is already happening in France, Holland, Germany, and Chile, as well as at home with Groundswell.

• Dr Allison is a scientist and former director of MAF Invermay and says he can provide documentary proof of the contentions made to interested readers.

jock.allison85@gmail.com

Wool diploma draws numbers

BY: RICHARD GAVIGAN

I’m finding it difficult not to get just a little bit excited about what’s happening with wool at the moment.

I know - prices are still a long, long way from where they need to be, but they are up from the level best described as abysmal operating this time last year.

When we sold wool in 2020 after second shearing the ewes in July, we received 145c/ kg greasy in the shed. About 12 months later our price for the same wool type was 230c/kg greasy, up a whopping 59%.

We’re still not breaking-even on the cost of harvesting, but if you view winter shearing as a useful animal health treatment then only having to pay 20c/head this year compared with $1.90/head last year makes you feel a lot better.

Prices aside, there is a good feeling in the wool industry at the moment. Almost every day I see something written about the positive attributes of wool or some exciting new initiative.

The facts are undeniable: wool is natural; it is biodegradable; it is renewable; it is flame, odour and stain resistant and it’s a lot of other good things as well. If a new product had even two of these qualities it would probably have a strong business case.

Also exciting is the number of people choosing to study wool at a tertiary level again.

For the last 18 months I’ve been helping long-time wool tutor Laurie Boniface teach the New Zealand certificate of wool technology and classing offered by the Telford faculty of the Southern Institute of Technology.

The only course of its type in New Zealand, the certificate is a refined version of what used to be taught at Massey and Lincoln Universities and is a prerequisite to becoming a registered wool classer. It is NZQA accredited, is endorsed by the NZ Wool Classers Association and can be studied part-time online with hands-on block courses run in both the North and South Islands.

Student numbers have more than doubled during the past two years to more than 60 students enrolled. There’s a pressing need to put even more people through the course as an increase in activity and an ageing staff in many wool businesses calls for more graduates with some wool in their CV.

Boniface is Telford’s senior tutor in wool technology. Based at Massey University, he has been teaching wool technology for more

Connect. Grow. Lead.

Programme Facilitator, Prof. Hamish Gow.

Applications for the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme close 14 November, 2021.

Applications close 20 March 2022.

To find out more, or to register your interest, visit ruralleaders.co.nz/value-chain/

Step up in 2022 as an agri-sector leader of change. Register now at ruralleaders.co.nz/kellogg/

Take an immersive dive into value chain analysis, design and innovation.

“The Value Chain Innovation Programme will allow participants to lift the lid on New Zealand’s leading value chains, exploring their working components and how they create value.”

than 35 years, starting at Massey in 1985 after previously working as a wool buyer.

Now something of an industry icon, Boniface has been the caretaker of a course that has survived wool’s past 30 turbulent years. He has taught several thousand students, including agricultural science and veterinary science undergraduates.

“Our students have always come from a lot of different sectors of the wool industry,” Boniface says.

“Farmers, wool handlers, and people working for wool brokers, private merchants, scours, spinners and even meatworks have all done the course.

“We used to get a lot of groups from the Chinese Textile Resource Corporation’s huge processing mills coming to New Zealand and spending time with us.

“I really enjoyed working with these groups and it led to me making a very memorable five-week lecture tour of China in 1992. China was only just starting to get going back then – there were very few cars on the road and just one McDonalds in Beijing.”

Boniface has come a long way since starting work fresh out of school with a Palmerston North wool buyer in December 1964. His first job was to fill and tramp the top box of an early electric wool press and act as smoko-boy at the store. He recalls that after completing his wool studies at Massey University he went to see his employer in his office and politely told him that he was

now fully qualified, had been offered a wool classer’s position at a wool broker’s store in Napier and deserved a pay rise.

“He asked me how much the other outfit was going to pay me and, like the young fool that I was, I didn’t add to it but told him the exact amount. My boss hesitated momentarily, then said to me that yes, he would pay me the new rate.

“Just managing to contain my excitement I accepted his offer, thanked him and turned to leave. As I was heading out the office door, he added that he would also be docking me a day’s pay for going in to see the opposition!”

Boniface is confident that wool has an excellent future. He has just re-carpeted his entire home with high-quality 100% wool carpet and reckons he only paid a couple of hundred dollars more than he would have for a plastic alternative. He is still backing wool as a career-choice, just as he did in 1964.

“Like a lot of other industries we’re starting to experience a real shortage of trained staff and there are good employment opportunities out there,” Boniface says.

“None of us are getting any younger, and the previous years of poor returns have made wool look unattractive as a career.”

• Richard Gavigan is a farmer and wool technology teacher.

Long-time wool tutor Laurie Boniface (left) and Richard Gavigan teach the only wool diploma in New Zealand. Photo: Bridget Gavigan.

“...he added that he would also be docking me a day’s pay for going in to see the opposition!”

Banking on the land

Despite some compelling arguments in defence of banks’ being overly watchful with agri lending, there are now some factors that should encourage banks to have lending discussions with farmers.

As 2021 draws to a close the prospects for farming couldn’t be rosier. But they also couldn’t be gloomier. That’s an interpretation of sentiment in the sector if on one hand you consider export markets signalling a near future of elevated farmgate prices, with ongoing contraction of bank lending to the agri sector on the other.

The latter is potentially denying farmers the opportunity to capitalise on unprecedented levels of market support, and likely to be the cause for at least some of the gloom. Having farmers and banks able to better understand how they can succeed together might start to reduce those contrasting attitudes.

The discrepancy between the existence

By Phil Edmonds.

of positive export market conditions and falling confidence among farmers is not new. But the contradiction was especially present in the findings of the Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey published at the end of September, where farmers were more embittered despite commodity prices rising with little sign of downside risk. Indeed, in October both ANZ and Westpac upgraded their 2021-22 farmgate milk price forecasts to $8.20kg and $8.50kg milksolids (MS) respectively and farmgate prices for lambs exceeded $9kg with further firming predicted.

Some of the pessimism expressed through these surveys can be attributed to short-term disenchantment with the Government. But the component that

specifically considers investment intentions is a more telling assessment of where longer-term confidence sits.

In the recent Rabobank survey sheep and beef farmers were found to have some increasing appetite for investing (possibly due to a sense of having new land-use options with the rising demand for carbon farming), but dairy farmers (where the majority of the rural sector lending is concentrated, and where revenue growth appears to be more secure), a dwindling appetite.

Is it the farming sectors’ weak appetite to invest, or the appetite of banks with the means to fund capital spending that is causing this sub-optimal situation?

Farmers’ faith in their banks has been

waning. The most-recently published Federated Farmers’ Banking Survey found the proportion of farmers satisfied with their banks has continued to fall, part of a steady trend of eroding satisfaction over the past five years.

Expecting tighter credit

One-in-four farmers noted that their lending conditions had changed in the past six months, with more experiencing tougher conditions than easier. This was further evidenced in the ANZ Business Outlook survey for August which showed that despite a small drop, the majority of farmers (65%) still expect it to become more difficult to obtain credit.

That doesn’t square with improved economy-wide lending conditions (until very recently, interest rates at record lows) and more importantly, noises from the top suggesting there are some reasons for banks to become more optimistic in managing their agri portfolios.

In its last six-monthly Financial Stability Report, the Reserve Bank noted strong commodity prices are supporting ongoing debt consolidation and risk deleveraging in the dairy industry.

“While dairy’s share of banks’ agricultural sector lending remains considerable, it has declined from 69% to 63% in recent years… the number of dairy farmers identified by banks as being stressed or potentially stressed has continued to decline.”

This trend was evidenced when Westpac identified its stressed exposures as part of its 2021 financial result presentation. It noted the proportion of its agri portfolio considered to be impaired had fallen from 0.48% in September 2020 to 0.29% in March 2021. Westpac concluded its overall dairy portfolio remained sound with risk profiles improving.

At the same time however, Westpac also reported a fall in its agri assets as a proportion of its total tangible capital. This is not only a Westpac phenomenon. Last month KPMG’s quarterly report on banking performance in New Zealand found

agricultural lending had further declined as a proportion of all lending – down from over 14% two years ago to 12.5% in June 2021. In its sector lending summary for September, the Reserve Bank reported total agricultural lending fell $57 million for the month, and the annual growth rate for lending to farmers was -1.3%.

This suggests that even though agri lending is becoming less risky, banks are still nervous and possibly looking to consolidate their positions even further.

Why is that?

First off, banks might argue that their hands are effectively still tied. With the new Reserve Bank capital retention rules which will be progressively implemented from next year, incentives to focus competitive efforts on the housing market are unchanged. Housing is considered a safer (less risky) investment and therefore requires less capital to be held by banks.

Arguably, there may now be less motivation to lend to the productive sectors of the economy such as farms. There’s still a sense that in some areas there are no obvious gains to be made by increasing lending to those who are already indebted, particularly without the ‘old normal’ of ever-increasing land prices.

Following the new rules

Those latter elements of uncertainty are underpinning banks’ caution.

But perhaps more than that, banks are trying to work out what a lowerrisk primary sector looks like in the future. Much of this relates to how new environmental rules will shape individual farm viability.

So far banks have not wanted or felt able to go out and assess farms for likely compliance without definitive criteria.

Some rules around nutrient regulations are known, and some are still being developed. The measurement and accounting for greenhouse gases (GHGs) is still to come. Some processors have decided how they will financially incentivise farmers for meeting environmental and other standards, while others are considering it.

The likes of Fonterra coming out with a set of rules around what suppliers need to do in order to obtain a premium on their payout would almost certainly give banks an easier means to assess what a viable operation looks like.

ANZ agricultural economist Susan Kilsby says “As these kinds of programmes evolve, whether it be local government regulation or processing company rules, it will become much clearer for banks to know which farmers are going to earn a bit more, but also be less likely to come up against regulatory problems and become noncompliant. Bank confidence would then likely rise, with a better handle on what the potential looks like for individual farm businesses.”

Elsewhere, some have pointed to signs of a rejuvenated rural property market as a cause for banks to take a more optimistic view of the sector.

This seems unlikely, at least in the short term. Having been burned in the era of over-reliance on capital gain to assure debt repayment, banks would want to see a booming market, rather than an incubating one.

The RIENZ farm sales report for the three months to September identified volatility rather than momentum as the key take out. Sales were down against the same period in 2020 but the median price per hectare was up 22%. REINZ Rural Spokesman Brian Peacocke noted the dairy category recorded

“...even though agri lending is becoming less risky, banks are still nervous and possibly looking to consolidate their positions even further.”

31 sales for the 2021 September quarter, up from 11 last year.

“The numbers in themselves are not too dramatic. Nevertheless, it does signal an emerging degree of support for the dairy industry.”

Equally, though, this uplift could also be simply down to farmers who had wanted to exit over the past few years now doing so with more buyers creating a bit of competition.

Banks too cautious

Despite some compelling arguments in defence of banks’ being overly watchful, there are now some factors that should, and will be encouraging banks to have lending discussions with farmers they may not have been proactively seeking in recent years.

NZ AgriBrokers director Andrew Laming says “Aside from better profitability and results in the sector, we have a feature we haven’t seen for decades where ongoing debt repayments are outpacing new loans being written. This means that banks are seeking more loans to ensure they don’t lose any further ground on their

agri portfolios, affecting their own cash earnings.” This development suggests banks have been too cautious for their own good.

Laming also says farmers’ balance sheets are about to turn a corner as well. “They’ve been hit hard with land values down about 10-15% from their peak. But over the past three years farmers have repaid a lot of debt and this will start to repair a lot of previously unbankable positions.”

It won’t be enough to have paid down debt to bring the banks back to the table though – not least for all the reasons identified above. Andrew Laming suggests times have changed, with two different groups of farmers emerging, one bankable, and one less so.

“There are those who recognise that running a great farming business is much different than what it used to be where ‘big bang’ capital gain was made. This group of farmers have strategies and forward planning for all eventualities, great people and advice around them, continuous operational improvement, an environmental enhancement mindset and significant retained earnings to cope with

volatility. The other group doesn’t have these attributes.”

The first group will now have the confidence of banks, and better still, will potentially be in a position to negotiate across suitors – based on their greater ability to capture the export market price gains identified earlier. Those who have less certainty about their own business operation and are unable to show they fully understand the risks will struggle to sway the banks out of their retrenched thinking.

Does this now mean there is only a partial and defined number of farmers able to fuel growth with bank debt?

Not necessarily, Laming says. None of the attributes identified in the winners list are unobtainable. “It doesn’t have to be hard for farmers, as long as they have the right advice alongside them. Banking is as much subjective (judgement and story) as it is objective (numbers) and understanding what is important to a bank can go a long way.”

• First published in NZ Dairy Exporter, November 2021.

“...This means that banks are seeking more loans to ensure they don’t lose any further ground on their agri portfolios, affecting their own cash earnings.”

JAB, NO JOB

ovid-19 has impacted the lives of every single New Zealander. The Government has stated that it considers vaccination to be the best form of protection against the virus and has already mandated that employees are vaccinated in several industries where it considers the risk of spreading the virus

Primary industries have not yet been mandated, but it is possible that new industries

With the increased transmissibility of the Delta variant, the spread of Covid-19 within rural workplaces could have a significant impact not only on the affected businesses, but also on the economy. Employers whose workplaces are not yet covered by the Government’s vaccination mandate (including farms) should still consider what measures they should be taking to protect their workers. The first step is often to ask employees to disclose their vaccination status.

Employers can ask employees for their vaccination status if they have a genuine need for the information and they collect, store, and share the information in accordance with the Privacy

Employees do not have to provide their vaccination status to their employer, however, if they choose not to disclose this, the employer may let them know that they’ll therefore assume that they are unvaccinated (and the employer should inform the employee of this assumption).

Employers can also undertake a health and safety risk assessment to determine whether certain roles within their business should be undertaken by a vaccinated employee. Such an assessment includes considering the likelihood of employees being exposed to Covid-19 in their workplace and the potential consequences of that exposure for others, alongside possible control measures. WorkSafe New Zealand has published guidance on how to undertake a risk assessment and the Government has indicated that they will soon introduce a risk assessment process in law. If the outcome of the risk assessment indicates there is low risk associated with these factors, the employer may allow unvaccinated employees to continue in their role.

If the outcome of the assessment indicates that there is high risk associated with the relevant factors, the employer may decide to mandate vaccinations for individual roles. This can be done by introducing a mandatory vaccination policy. However, before any decisions are made to introduce such a policy, the employer must first consult with employees about that proposal and

how they might be impacted.

If a mandatory vaccination policy is introduced, and if employees are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated, employers will need to tread carefully and before terminating employment consider whether there are available alternatives to termination of employment, such as redeployment into a lower risk role or working remotely. As the dairy industry has its own unique factors to consider - like shared accommodation - these can also be addressed in a policy.

The risk assessment will assist to justify the outcome, whether it is to require vaccination or not. Therefore, it is an important step in the process either way.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, employers have a duty to keep their employees safe at work. This includes identifying hazards that could give rise to reasonably foreseeable risks to health and safety. When it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate the risk, to implement control measures to minimise risks to health and safety.

To uphold this legislative requirement, employers should ensure that any employee required to self-isolate due to testing positive to Covid-19, or being a close contact, does so, as this should reduce the spread of Covid-19 to other employees. Similarly, employers should ask an employee to get tested for Covid-19, if they suspect they may be positive.

A farmer may also determine it is prudent to implement a mandatory vaccination policy requiring all persons entering their farm to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to protect those onfarm from risks to their health and safety. Prior to implementing such a policy, however, careful advice and process steps should be followed including engaging with those frequently visiting the farm to explain the reasons for the proposed policy and to discuss the implications.

If you have any questions in relation to the above information, please feel free to email amanda.douglas@wynnwilliams.co.nz

• Amanda Douglas is a partner at Wynn Williams and leads the firm’s Employment Law Team.

• First published in Dairy Exporter, December 2021.

“...if employees are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated, employers will need to tread carefully...”

AMANDA DOUGLAS

THE CHANGING FACE OF FARMING

About half the total area of New Zealand is taken up with farming, forestry and housing. The other half is in native land cover and mountains.

On the farmed area over the past two decades Statistics NZ says the total number of holdings has decreased from 70,000 to 50,000 with a 13% decrease in the area farmed to 13.5 million hectares. About 13% of our population lives on farms.

It seems a similar trend is happening world-wide. The United Nations predicts internationally an additional 3.3 million hectares of prime agricultural land will be taken up by urbanisation between 2000 and 2030. More corporate ownership, vertically and horizontally integrated to own the whole food system, will see a decline in family farms and rural communities.

Along with the declining farm numbers and area farmed in NZ, livestock numbers over the same period have been somewhat erratic with an overall steady decline. An 82% increase in dairy cattle to just under seven million by 2012 then dropped back to

Onfarm diversification can bring both motivational and economic stimulation to the benefit of your farming operation. By Ken Geenty.

6.3m by 2021. Beef cattle fell 15% from 4.6m to 3.9m and sheep fell 54% from 58m to 27m.

The overall change during the two decades in total sheep and cattle with the 13% shrinking of farmed area has been a 20% reduction in total stock units from 93m to 74m.

The proportionately greater reduction in stock units suggests lower stocking rates and/or diversification on farms to other land uses such as cropping, horticulture and trees. These trends have a variety of potentially positive influences for sheep and cattle farmers.

It should be remembered that stocking rates on the conservative side generally have advantages such as less greenhouse gases and fewer animal health worries with better feeding. At the other end of the scale greater fine tuning is needed with feeding and animal health when carrying higher stocking rates.

Seek input from a savvy adviser

Stock carried per hectare will vary greatly between farms according to different livestock, land and climate factors. Nevertheless it’s an important element of your farming which needs constant review.

The farm stocking rate dilemma is challenging with the economic sweet spot on a stocking rate vs net dollar returns per hectare graph, shown in Fig. 1, often difficult to hit. Achieving maximum returns means striking a stocking rate balance which maximises net returns per hectare. Having pride in high per head performance on one hand or alternatively sacrificing this with higher stocking rates and the risk of diminishing returns, can both miss the mark. The sweet spot will differ between farms and clearly needs regular consideration with input from an

economically savvy adviser.

The probability that the above trends in farmed areas and livestock numbers is associated with increased diversification on farms has potential positives.

Diversifying to other farming enterprises such as horticulture, or something very different like tourism, can not only spread risk but add interest and energy to the farming operation. Similarly taking up a part-time hobby such as beekeeping or vehicle restoration can provide better personal and business balance and renewed motivation.

Spinoffs of native tree planting

Similarly the many native tree planting programmes on farms, often supported by local councils and other organisations, can have many satisfying spin-offs. Some recently publicised native tree planting farm projects with the likes of totara for potential timber harvesting by future generations show wonderful foresight.

Not surprisingly tree planting on farms is gaining momentum. Of about 8.5 million hectares of sheep and beef farms it’s estimated the 1.7 million ha in trees will grow to 2 million ha by 2028. Some argue a growing proportion of these plantings are pine monocultures with detrimental environmental and farming consequences.

An important part of the overall area in trees is the 187,000ha in QEII covenants with onfarm areas protected in perpetuity by the QEII National Trust set up in 1977. This protection may also include the likes of valued wetlands, tussock grasslands and unique landscapes.

Tree planting can include marginal areas on farms or up to 30-metre-wide riparian strips protecting waterways. With 42ha of growing trees mitigating equivalent greenhouse gas emissions from some 600 sheep or 100 cattle, large areas are needed in the quest for carbon neutrality. Increasing trees is undoubtedly changing the landscape on our hill country farms with valuable environmental benefits including better biodiversity and expanding habitat for desirable native animals and birds.

Tourism opportunities

An already mentioned means of diversification on farms is development of tourism opportunities such as nature walks and/or novel accommodation facilities. As well as providing the already mentioned benefits, diversifying in this direction can provide great interest and satisfaction from meeting and getting to know a whole new range of people from different walks of life. The increasing opportunities can be seen by searching on Google for ‘farm walks’ and ‘farm-stays’. Also thrown into the mix of possible opportunities is offfarm business or leisure activities. In a similar way to onfarm diversification these interests can provide both motivational and economic stimulation to the benefit of your farming operation. As the old saying goes ‘variety is the spice of life’! And it’s a key ingredient for good life balance.

Fig. 1: Stylised relationship between stocking rate and net profit per hectare

“The overall change during the two decades in total sheep and cattle with the 13% shrinking of farmed area has been a 20% reduction in total stock units from 93m to 74m.”

Frustrated by continuing poor returns for strong wool, Tim Mehrtens has started the move to shedding sheep.

SHEDDING SHEEP

PULLING THE WOOL

A combination of low wool prices and drench resistance is encouraging growing numbers of sheep farmers to switch to shedding breeds. Sandra Taylor reports. Photos by Chris Sullivan and Emma McCarthy.

Continuing poor returns for crossbred wool coupled with the emergence of triple drench resistance is driving an increasing number of farmers to consider a shift to low-input shedding sheep.

Veterinary consultant Trevor Cook says he is seeing an increasing number of his clients moving away from wool production, but he believes the sheep industry is yet to realise there is a major train wreck coming its way with drenches failing.

“It means farms have to change systems or change to sheep that don’t need drenching.”

Trevor hypothesises that there is an association with wool production and susceptibility to internal parasites as there appears to be no production costs associated with worm burdens in shedding sheep.

Most of the world’s sheep breeds are hair sheep, he points out, it is humans that have, over centuries, bred some sheep for wool production.

Farmers who have started towards shedding sheep are reporting these sheep require fewer drenches, although Trevor stresses that the biggest factor affecting sheep performance is the way they are fed.

Shedding costs

While no-one disputes wool’s outstanding qualities, its production is coming at a cost many farmers are no longer prepared to bear.

Once considered the sheep of choice for alternative

lifestylers, genetics such as Wiltshires are finding a place on large-scale commercial farms.

Aside from shearing, the costs of crutching, dagging and flystrike are all eliminated with shedding sheep and these sheep have more resistance and resilience to internal parasites than their wooly counterparts.

For Waimate farmer Tim Mehrtens, the shift to Wiltshire genetics was driven by frustration with poor returns for wool, but he says if they don’t tick all the boxes in terms of production and profitability, he will go to an all cattle system.

Tim, who along with his partner Leah and daughters Elie and Briar, farms 215 hectares of rolling hill country running 1480 ewes alongside cattle. He has been running a solely terminal operation in that all lambs are sold prime and ewe lamb replacements are bought in.

Typically, he sells 50% of his lamb crop prime at weaning. Last year was an exception with an extended dry period forcing him to sell store lambs.

Tim admits he is taking a leap of faith with buying Wiltshires. While he has been buying very good composite ewe lambs, last year the difference between the wool cheque and shearing costs was $3500.

“It’s been going on for the 25 years I’ve been farming. Every year I think it’s going to get better, but in all that time, there was only one year that the price of wool went up and we got a decent wool cheque. Since then, it’s been a downhill race to the bottom.”

Even if the long-predicted renaissance for wool were to occur, Tim says shearer availability is becoming increasingly difficult and he suspects that in the not too distant future, our markets will no longer accept tail docking as a management practice. Wiltshires have shorter tails with no wool.

He had been thinking about making the shift to shedding sheep for three or four years and finally took the first step by buying 180 ewe lambs and rams at North

Canterbury’s Mt Cass’s inaugural Wiltshire sale.

He had not intended to buy rams and went to the sale specifically to buy ewe lambs, however the prices for lambs were so strong, he decided the best option was to buy rams and a limited number of ewe lambs.

As well as eliminating the costs associated with wool production, Tim wants a lowinput sheep that is able to perform with minimal drenching.

With the first crop of pure Wiltshire and Wiltshire cross lambs on the ground now, he says he has been pleasantly surprised at the pre-weaning growth rates and their mothering ability.

The hoggets ate noticeably less feed over winter – which was not what Tim was expecting – and he is pleased with their conformation and body type.

While they have a reputation for being a bit wild, Tim found they were very settled under a traditional strip grazing, feeding-out

“...there was only one year that the price of wool went up and we got a decent wool cheque. Since then, it’s been a downhill race to the bottom.”

The ewes have proven to be good mothers and Tim has been impressed with pre-weaning growth rates.

wintering routine and have been very good mothers – standing up to any dogs that venture too close.

He put 730 crossbred ewes to the Wiltshire rams which did make him nervous as it exceeded his 1:100 ram to ewe ratio, but the ewes scanned a pleasing 175%.

So far, the lamb crop looks particularly uniform.

Tim admits he is reluctantly moving back to breeding replacements, so he will be comparing the lambs’ performance with his terminal lambs from a Poll Dorset Texel sire.

In late November, he couldn’t tell the difference between the maternal and terminal lambs.

“They’ve got me intrigued at the moment.”

He has had a small amount of scald in the terminal lambs – but none in the Wiltshires and he was looking forward to running the ewes and lambs over the scales at weaning.

“But so far so good.”

Ironically, Waikato farmer Kim Robinson was busy with shearing when CountryWide talked to him about a move to no-shear sheep. All going well, the time taken up shearing will soon be a thing of the past.

Kim is the general manager of Lochiel Farmlands, a 3600ha mixed-terrain property near Glen Murray, carrying 42,000 stock units.

These are made up of 10,500 Coopworth ewes, 4000 hoggets and 3000 cattle which includes 550 Angus breeding cows.

Kim says he has always taken pride in his wool clip and wool production was part of

Left: Tim admits he has made a leap of faith, but has been impressed with the Wiltshires performance.

Below: Wiltshire ewes and lambs. Surprisingly the ewes ate noticeably less feed over winter.

his selection criteria, but two years ago at the main shearing they produced 257 bales of wool which was worth $67,000 including GST. The shearing bill came in at $87,000 GST inclusive, so they were out of pocket by $20,000.

Losses of this sort were just not sustainable.

What frustrates Kim is the money that has been wasted within the industry.

“Think about how much money the industry has spent marketing wool to get to $1.60-$1.80, which is what it was worth then.”

From a business point of view, it made no financial sense to continue producing wool and Kim decided to move to a shedding sheep.

Kim briefly considered Dorper, but ruled them out due to the Waikato’s wet climate. “Dorpers just wouldn’t suit our country.”

Wiltshires were the obvious choice

Above: Kim has always taken pride in his wool clip but poor returns and rising shearing costs making growing wool unsustainable. Top: Wallabies? The Wiltshires can be a bit racy and test the shepherds’ patience.

and Kim dipped his toe in the water two years ago by mating 500 five-year ewes to Wiltshires.

This year he went all out and put Wiltshires across Lochiel Farmland’s entire ewe flock.

“We started the process, but it will be slow.”

So far, he has been pleased with the outcome of that first cross, with some starting to shed already, which is a reflection of the strong heritability of that trait.

Facial eczema can be a significant challenge to stock performance in the Waikato and Kim says last autumn was particularly bad. While Wiltshires have not had the years of tolerance testing that

breeds such as Coopworths have had, Kim was pleasantly surprised at how many of the rams appeared to be inherently tolerant, although he did lose a couple.

Kim says the Wiltshires also handle worm burdens well, although they do still drench them.

“They seem to be pretty tough like that.”

By introducing Wiltshires, Kim does not want to be compromising on performance, so along with a group of other farmers, he is importing genetics from the United Kingdom to help improve the breed’s genetic base in this country.

Kim admits that as a breed, the Wiltshires can be a bit racy and test the shepherds’ patience, but ultimately, once established the breed should save the business a

significant amount of money.

“Once in place we’ll be able to drop a labour unit, it will be like farming Angus cattle.”

“I’m quite excited about it.

“It is going to be slow progress and if it doesn’t work, we can always go back.”

Making the move

Veterinary consultant Trevor Cook says farmers transitioning to shedding sheep can make a lot of progress in five years.

There are two or three genes involved with shedding, so progress is fast and while the first cross sheep will still require shearing, there may be an opportunity to negotiate with the shearers as the clip is much smaller and quicker to shear, he says.

The shearing bill came in at $87,000 gst inclusive, so they were out of pocket by $20,000.

Working dogs need powerful nutrition to help maintain vitality, energy and overall good health. Give them the fuel they need to do the job you need.

Speak to your vet clinic about ROYAL CANIN® Energy 4800

www.royalcanin.com/nz

On average, by year four, the sheep won’t require shearing. Cook recommends farmers looking to move to shedding sheep consider the following factors:

1. Ram source: Look for a ram that has production records behind it. While breeds such as Wiltshires don’t have 50 years of selection behind them, it is still important to ensure the ram does have production records and genetic selection is based on performance.

2. Conformation: It is important that sires are structurally sound. This is often sacrificed in new breeds.

3. Get a clear understanding of what the stud is selecting for, how they are selecting their ewe replacements, hogget mating performance, lamb growth rates and footrot tolerance.

4. Know that sheep like Wiltshires behave differently, particularly in the way they cope with worm burdens. The results of monitoring programmes, such as faecal egg counts, will need to be interpreted differently.

Right from the first cross, the combination of genetics should see improvements in internal parasite management, lamb survival and longevity.

He says value the experience, not just the end result.

“Right from the first cross, the combination of genetics should see improvements in internal parasite management, lamb survival and longevity.” – Trevor Cook.

Once the shedding genetics are in place, the farm will be able to drop a labour unit.

Toxins lurking in the grass

BY: SARA SUTHERLAND

Those of us north of Cook Strait are familiar with the clinical signs of facial eczema in sheep and cattle.

Photosensitivity presents as peeling skin, droopy ears, scabs on their faces, red teats, even peeling tongues. Severe cases can be terribly painful and debilitating.

As we know, these clinical signs are only the tip of the iceberg with FE – there are always a number of cases that don’t show clinical signs but are still affected. This can result in sudden death, high empty rate, or animals that can’t cope with the metabolic demands of lambing or calving.

Facial eczema is caused by a toxin released by a fungus. Liver damage from the toxin means the liver can’t process the bits in grass that react to sunlight. When these bits travel close to the skin they react to sunlight and burn the skin causing the clinical signs. The other effects are due to the liver damage.

The fungus only grows when the temperature is warm enough and the humidity level high enough. That means facial eczema is very seasonal. So what causes those classic signs of photosensitivity at other times of year?

Broadly speaking, there are two types of causes.

Like facial eczema, some things can cause liver damage, resulting in photosensitivity. Otherwise, some plants release something that reacts with sunlight, burning the skin directly.

Why does it matter? Liver damage takes a lot longer to heal, and animals might recover from the skin damage but succumb to the liver damage later. Again if liver damage is the cause, you need to expect and manage a number of cases that aren’t showing peeling red skin but

are still affected.

Where liver damage is not involved animals usually don’t show long-term effects once they have recovered from the skin damage.

Blood tests can narrow down whether or not liver damage is involved.

Some of the plants that cause photosensitivity directly include St John's Wort, Musky Storksbill, and Buckwheat.

Rape scald in lambs (usually but not always from grazing rape when it is immature) is also in this category. Rape scald can also be caused by other brassicas or even a flush of clover.

We also see cases of “spring eczema” – which can occur any time of the year. This condition is probably not due to liver damage per se but the substances in grass overwhelming the capacity of the liver.

Gradual introduction to new feed can help prevent this.

Again with these types of photosensitivity liver damage is not a feature so if they recover they shouldn’t have long-term effects.

Plants that cause photosensitivity following liver damage include the native ngaio, inkweed, panicum, and lantana. Some types of algae can also cause liver damage.

Similar to rape scald in lambs, turnip toxicity in cattle causes photosensitivity from liver damage.

If you have time, go on to Google Images and type in the names of these weeds and look at the photos – then you will be able to see whether these weeds are present on your pastures.

My experience with plant poisonings in general is that the plants can be present for years and animals never touch them. Then one day an animal tries it to see what it tastes like and the others see that one eating the plant and follow suit. So after not having issues for a long time all of a sudden you have a number of animals affected.

Regardless of the cause, affected animals need to get out of the sun and they're not always smart enough to do this on their own. They benefit from antiinflammatories and antibiotics - talk to your vet.

Photosensitivity is a serious animal welfare issue – it is extremely painful as well as causing tissue damage and predisposition to flystrike. If you can’t treat affected animals you do need to put them down.

• Sarah Sutherland is a veterinarian for Veterinary Services Wairarapa.

LIVESTOCK Facial eczema

Musky Storksbill can cause photosensitivity directly.

Rape scald can also be caused by other brassicas or even a flush of clover.

MAKING THE SHIFT TO A

FINER CLIP

A South Island trip more than 20 years ago led not only to an enduring friendship but two passionate Northland advocates for Merino genetics. Story by Glenys Christian. Photos: Malcolm Pullman.

Despite challenges from weather and animal health issues, Bay of Islands’ farmers Neville and Linda Lewis are keen to earn more from their wool clip.

They also want to get other farmers in their area farming sheep.

Five years ago they started using MerinoRomney rams north over a percentage of their 1500 Romney flock.

The best of 130kg earned $11/kg, so buoyed by these results for the past two years, six to eight quarter bred Benmore Station rams have come on to the farm to continue the shift to a finer clip.

There are now about 300 sheep on the farm with a touch of Merino with all of their 900 white-face sheep going to the breed this year.

Being 30 minutes drive inland from the Bay of Islands and three hours south of Cape Reinga, they know they are at the other end of the country to be doing what they’re doing.

“But it’s worth a try,” Neville said.

“We have hit some good prices.”

Neville’s father, Harold bought their 363-hectare farm, initially H. Lewis & Sons Ltd in 1972, meaning the half century mark is fast approaching in February. Another 159ha was bought in 1982 and is now run as Stoney Creek Valley Farm, near Okaihau.

“My father was a shearer and always had sheep,” Neville says.

He describes the farm, which covers flat to rolling to steep country, as being derelict when they arrived, with a

lot of development work to be carried out, clearing gorse, manuka, fern and blackberry, putting in fences.

About 380ha is effective.

“It looks nice now.”

Following in his father’s footsteps after taking over the farm, he’s always been interested in wool. And Linda always wears wool in preference to microfleece.

Taking their family south to tramp the Kepler Track saw them make a detour to Lake Middleton, mainly because it was Linda’s maiden name.

“We didn’t know it existed,” he says.

That saw the couple buy a section and build a house which was destroyed in last year’s Twizel area fire.

They became friends with Bill and Kate Sutherland, owners of nearby Benmore Station and in 2004, after Bill had surgery putting him out of farming action for six months, Neville was asked to work there as a general hand with Andrew, Bill’s brother, and his wife Deidre.

Years later after another visit down south, talking over a beer, Bill asked Neville about trialing some of their halfbred rams. So when he came back to the north he started to think seriously about the benefits of introducing those genetics on the farm. He had regularly complained to Bill about the poor crossbred wool prices he was receiving and the direction the strong wool industry was taking.

“Crossbred wool is hopeless,” he says.

“It used to pay for the farm’s fertiliser but now it doesn’t even pay for shearing. And when you’re out of pocket for that it makes it hard. So that’s how it started.”

In the first year of their trial five years ago Bill sent six

Linda and Neville Lewis on the high point at the very back of their Okaihau farm.

halfbred Merino-Romney rams north to be put over a percentage of their 1500 Romney flock just to see how they stacked up.

“We kept it quiet because we knew we would come up against a lot of criticism,” Linda says.

“When you mention Merinos, Northland sheep farmers throw their hands up in the air and say, ‘footrot’.”

They fully expected to have problems but despite humid and wet weather and some boggy pastures it wasn’t an issue. Ironically lameness had occasionally been a problem in their Romney and blackface rams.

A further six halfbred rams came on to the farm the next year with the quality of first-cross weaned lambs and wool clip both giving them a pleasant surprise.

Bill came north to class the 130 kilograms of wool produced which tested at about 26 microns.

“That showed the potential,” Neville says.

About 300 five-year-old Romney ewes are bred to terminal sires of either Charollais

Texel-cross or Suffolks, lambing at the end of June. All lambs are finished going off the farm in October or November at an average of 18kg off their mothers.

The main flock follows up with lambing in the first week of August. None of the ewes have been bred to straight Romney rams this year in order to get more lambs with some Merino genetics as rapidly as possible.

“If we get more on the ground, we can get a better selection to breed from,’’ he says.

Linda says Neville grows “seriously good” sheep and has continued his mantra of trying to do the basics well. Putting his welltrained eye across an unfamiliar breed of sheep was a learning curve and something he had to adjust to.

It’s also been a struggle having the numbers to select from in order to make the improvements they would like to see.

“We’re trying to keep the numbers up so we’ve kept some we wouldn’t normally breed from,” he says.

“That’s been a bit of a challenge.”

Northland’s not a good place for any sheep to be in summer due to viral pneumonia, facial eczema and its usual drought conditions. But facial eczema hasn’t been the issue they thought it could have been.

Last year’s lambs went into the spring with very little feed, but this year’s spring and early summer’s unusually high rainfall has meant a test of a different type.

“We’ve had a serious amount of rain

“When you mention Merinos, Northland sheep farmers throw their hands up in the air and say, ‘footrot’.”

Romney ewe with half bred lamb in front, black face lamb to the right.

which we haven’t had in recent years,” he says.

In October up to 650 millimetres fell on the farm when usually they would expect around 250mm.

“It was horrendous. The weather could be our biggest enemy as dry weather is good for halfbred Merinos. But this spring is one of the wettest we’ve had and as a result we had a huge amount of grass.”

Hoggets usually shorn in October were only shorn in November due to the continual rain.

Getting sheep dry was a challenge.

“In hindsight we should have shorn earlier, with the wool clip resulting in a bit of colour which is scourable. We just have to adjust.”

They used to shear the ewes at weaning along with the lambs in order to put weight back on to both, never worrying about the length of the wool.

Bill’s suggestion was to wait in order to get longer lambs’ fleece length of higher value. But delaying until March or April meant they ended up with fleece with a lot of vegetable matter, so now they’ve brought shearing forward to February which has seen a correction of that problem. The clip is now down to an average of 26 microns, coarsening as the sheep age.

But the timing of shearing remains an issue. With unpredictable weather getting sheep dry with shearers organised can be a challenge.

FARM FACTS

• Neville and Linda Lewis, Okaihau, Bay of Islands

• 522ha, 380 effective

• 1500 Romneys, 300 with a touch of Merino

• Past 5 years halfbred and quarterbred Merino rams used

• All 900 whiteface ewes going to the breed this year

• Returns for 26 micron wool estimated to be $10/kg.

In the past the consistency of quality wool handlers has been an issue as with the strong wool price so low some farmers just swept it into a heap. And with farmers turning away from sheep there wasn’t enough work for wool handlers so they headed south for work.

“Wool classers up here are scarce, but we have been lucky in the past to have had one who worked in Australia with mid-micron wool,” Linda says.

“You have to work your butts off in the shearing shed because you’ve got to do things right. Presentation is key. It’s a lot more work but if you get the returns, it’s worth it.”

Neville says they can grow good quality, white, bright wool.

“You need to get management and shearing right to optimise soundness, colour, length and also get less vegetable matter.”

As well as the sheep, 180 Angus cows are run using Angus bulls and some terminal Charolais.

“We used to finish them on another property but now we just finish heifers and sell the rest store,” Neville says.

A pasture improvement programme has been underway for the last four years. On one large subdivided 30ha paddock which has recently been fenced and provided with a water supply, chicory and raphno have been used which has put good weights on their lambs.

“It does seriously well in Northland,” Neville says.

Above: Linda with some of the 60 beehives she produces her own brand of honey from. Top: ‘Bunky’, the Lewis’s backpackers accommodation high on a ridge above the Twin Coast cycle way that passes through the Utakura Valley on their farm.

After cropping, the land will be sown in permanent pasture, a ryegrass clover mix. Their fertiliser programme, which has been sparse because of the lack of wool income in recent times, is 94 tonnes of combined of serpentine super, potash, selenium, molybdenum, sulphur and Sustain which goes on as maintenance with top-ups of 50t of super 10, DAP, potash and boron. The soil pH ranges from 5.8 to 6.1 with Olsen P from 7 to 27. Their hill country has not seen fertiliser for many years.

About 140ha of the farm has been fenced off and retired, comprising some

virgin bush and regenerating native bush. Wetlands have also been fenced with manuka, flaxes and other natives and poplars planted all through these areas.

Neville and Linda have always allowed four-wheel drive and motorbike enthusiasts as well as horse trekkers for community fund-raising events to use the property as long as they respect it.

In the last 10 years two and a half kilometres of the Pou Herenga Tai Twin coast cycle trail has been put through their land following the Utakura river. A number of local landowners grouped together to fence off bush and plant flax to attract tui

Above: Neville Lewis. Behind him is an area of bush and slumping land which was fenced off and planted with thousands of manuka this year. Nearly all the native bush remaining in the farm’s extensive gully systems has been fenced off, with some assistance from the Northland Regional Council.

Opposite page: The historic Totara Slab hut.

with the aim of making the route from which runs in four sections from Opua to Horeke, one of the best cycle trails in the country. Neville is a trustee on Pou Herenga Tai Twin Coast Cycle Trail trust and they also offer off-grid farmstay accommodation.

For the future they strongly believe halfbred Merinos have more to offer the north.

“Other farms in the north have tried purebred but it’s not been successful,” he says.

He’s a keen member of Last Sheep Standing, a Red Meat Profit Partnership

(RMPP) which has a like-minded membership of seven local farmers.

“They’re all interested in what we’re doing,” he says.

“But there are not enough enthusiastic farmers producing wool up here and that’s frustrating.”

With larger properties employing managers the interest is stronger in meat production, as they have to justify why they would try something different. But he’s still keen for some of them to give Merino genetics a try.

Their wool, strong and mid-micron, is sold through New Zealand Merino.

“It’s great being able to see results in testing from micron to colour and vegetable matter, resulting in better management all round,” he said.

“Being ZQ accredited we know where our wool is going into the world market and what it’s used for as well as those buying it knowing where it has come from.”

Covid-19 has made it difficult for NZ Merino representatives to come and visit in recent times.

He believes the wool on lambs on the ground now, if it meets the right specifications, will return $10 a kilogram.

“It’s proven to be worth doing.”

LIVESTOCK Finishing

THE LAMB SELLING DECISION

BY: DWAYNE COWIN

As the lamb schedule begins its seasonal decline as we enter the peak lamb kill and processing period, this year farmers have the added benefit of the lamb schedule starting from record pricing levels of more than $9.50/kg carcaseweight.

Based on the recent record schedule pricing, a common question being asked at the moment is “when should I sell my lambs?” What seems a relatively simple question is often much more complicated to answer in isolation. It requires consideration of the wider farm system and recent performance achieved by the farm.

For some farmers who have robust and repeatable systems, and are able to achieve consistently good levels of finishing performance, without impacting on the subsequent year’s reproductive performance, the answer might be as simple as “stick to your knitting” and continue with their normal lamb sales pattern.

With the high schedule pricing, a 17.5kg lamb could this year achieve close to $150/ head, based on an $8.50/kg schedule price. Under last season’s average schedule pricing of $6.50/kg, the same lamb yielded an average of $114/head. A close to $35/ head lift in lamb sale price this year for no change in system or management is certainly something that would have

farmers smiling all the way to the bank. For other farmers though, this season could present an opportune time to potentially capture value from their current season’s lamb crop, while at the same time moving towards a system where reproductive and finishing performance can deliver more consistent medium and longerterm results.

In order to identify potential refinements to the lamb finishing system, a review can be undertaken to assess where performance levels are. It may be as simple as reviewing last year’s (or this year’s if weaning has already been completed) results and asking some of the following questions:

• How was my lambing percentage, relative to previous years, and/ or other farms in the same year? (This can help understand the flock reproductive performance).

• What percentage of lambs were sold prime off mum to the works? (To gain an idea of ‘weaning weight’).

• What is my average lamb kill date? (This provides an insight to postweaning growth rates).

Based on the review, and any potential gaps that may have been identified, a plan can be implemented to address any potential limitations within our system. There should be two main areas of focus – maximising this year’s lamb crop revenue, without compromising next year’s reproductive performance potential. With the dynamic and unpredictable nature of farming, actual results are rarely going to be a mirror image reflection of best laid plans. However a robust plan outline allows objective decisions to be made, potentially well ahead of when a decision would have otherwise been made.

While feed might be of abundance, we rarely meet a farmer who has too few lambs on the farm as the season progresses towards February and March, and next season’s rapidly approaching mating date.

If we look at the example of taking ‘the bird in the hand’ value of a 16kg CW lamb at weaning on an $8.50/kg CW schedule (giving a lamb value of $136/head), Table 1 shows the corresponding lamb carcase weight required in order to match the lamb’s current value.

As Table 1 shows, to maintain our $136/ head lamb value, at a $7.50/kg schedule we would need a 18.1kg carcase (or an extra 5kg of lamb liveweight). A $1 drop in

A close to $35/head lift in lamb sale price this year for no change in system or management is certainly something that would have farmers smiling all the way to the bank.

schedule pricing could equate to a $0.20 weekly decline for the five weeks postweaning, and the lamb would need to grow at 142g/day just to ‘beat the schedule decline’ and maintain its value.

A key question for the farmer at this point is “do I know how fast my lambs grow?” To achieve this liveweight gain, lambs should be offered at least 1.5kg DM/head/day of high quality feed. Some simple liveweight monitoring of the mob will also help the farmer know if the targeted liveweight gains are being achieved, and will allow a proactive measurement to assess if the targeted number of lambs to be sold prime at the next draft will be achieved.

Table 1 also shows the extra value generated if a lamb liveweight gain of 142g/day is achieved under two different schedule prices. If the schedule only dropped $0.10 a week for five weeks, we would lift our lamb value by $9/head, and generate a return on the feed consumed of $0.19/kg DM.

Based on Table 1, a few conclusions can be made which may help us execute our

plan. If we have the feed available, and we can grow the lamb at over 142g/day, and we think the schedule will drop by less than $1/kg, it makes good financial sense to finish our lamb to a higher kill weight. If not, careful consideration needs to be given as to the rationale behind retaining the lamb on the farm when it could be sold at its current value.

Lamb crop value maximisation is the first focus, but before we enter a period of a feed quality deficit and finishing stock start to compete with breeding stock for feed, we need to make sure that this is not the determinant of next year’s performance.

Lifting BCS benefits

The benefits of lifting light body condition scoring ewes have been well-documented in recent times. Quantifying the benefit of doing so can help ease the pain of selling a lamb at a supposedly sub-par weight to make way for a light ewe to consume feed. Although there will be some degree of variation between breed and type of sheep, a general rule of thumb is a ewe

needs to gain between 7kg to 9kg of liveweight to lift their BCS from 2.0 to 3.0. Assuming just over 100 days from mating to weaning, and 7kg gained, this equates to an average liveweight gain requirement of 65g per day.

Table 2 shows the financial return from utilising feed to lift a ewes BCS from 2.0 to 3.0. Based on a 2% lift in reproductive performance potential per kilogram of liveweight gain, and a 20% scanning to weaning loss, lifting ewe BCS from 2.0 to 3.0 could generate an, or extra 0.11 lambs per ewe whose BCS has been lifted (or a corresponding 11% lift in lambing percentage).

A 32c/kg DM return

Based on an average lamb value at weaning of $100/head (28kg x 42% of an $8.50/kg schedule), and extra $11.20 per ewe could be generated, and a return on feed consumed of $0.32/kg DM.

Based on the return generated from lifting ewe BCS, we would need a pretty much static schedule pricing (or much faster growth rate than 142g/day) to compete with lamb finishing returns. If this is not possible, and feed quality and/or quantity is limiting, again serious consideration needs to be given to the lamb’s presence onfarm during this period. While this season presents many challenges with international logistics disruptions, and the ever-looming threat of Covid-19 and the impact that could have on processing and/or market access, there is also a prime opportunity for farmers.

This season’s lamb crop value has the potential to generate solid financial returns. It is also an opportune time to review and evaluate the lamb finishing strategy and performance. A chance to implement some strategies to futureproof the farm system so next year’s, and beyond, lamb crop delivers consistently strong financial returns back to farmers.

Simple measurements such as a lamb liveweight gain, or knowing the ewes which are below BCS 3.0 allow decisions to be made more proactively than would otherwise be possible. With the current schedule pricing, the benefit of getting decisions made in a timely fashion can have a significant impact on bottom line financial performance to the farm.

• Dwayne Cowin, is a senior consultant with Perrin Ag.

Table 1: Effect of schedule pricing of required lamb weight, and lamb values under different schedule pricings.

Table 2: Financial return from lifting ewe BCS from 2.0 to 3.0 pricings.

LIVESTOCK Onfarm

MORTGAGE THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

By Russell Priest.

by Brad Hanson.

At the ages of 77 and 74 respectively, Shannon farming identities Gilbert and Diana Timms are still relishing the challenge of investing in significant pieces of land. Gilbert was planning on having a party when he reached 80 and was mortgage free, however he says he’ll have to live to 96 to achieve this now.

“Having a mortgage keeps you young and I’ve no intention of retiring,” he says. “We both get up in the morning looking forward to a day’s work.”

The Timms’ most recently bought 80 hectares of easy country in the foothills of the Tararua Ranges about 25km south-west of Palmerston North for $2.3 million.

“When I applied to my bank manager for a loan to buy the place she didn’t even come out to look at it. She said if I could service the loan it was a no-brainer because it would work in so well with our hill block,” Gilbert says.

It adjoins their 591ha (486ha effective) hill block lying between the Tokomaru and Mangahao Rivers, bought in partnership with son Craig 12 years ago for $1.3 million. The partnership property required considerable work to bring it up to scratch as it had been leased out.

“I told Craig when we bought it that I would look after the stock for the first five years, but here I am 12 years later still looking after the stock.”

As a fencing contractor, Craig’s expertise has been invaluable on the hill block, in particular establishing a laneway from front to back.

“We were lucky buying the fence posts,” Gilbert says. “A vineyard had gone broke near Hastings so we took two trucks and a trailer up there and returned with a thousand 2.4 metre posts costing $3 each.”

Gilbert describes the low-fertility greywacke-based country as the toughest hill country in the lower North Island, only capable of running 5-6.25 su/ha. Infestations of porina also present an ongoing challenge.

Having negotiated the extremely steep, inhospitable west-facing hills one is treated unexpectedly to a 60ha easy-contoured basin

A lifetime in farming has not put a Horowhenua couple off expanding and developing their business operations.

Photos

which rises from 370m to the highest point on the farm. Much of this is cultivable however it’s a bleak place in the winter receiving the odd fall of snow and exposed to winds from all directions.

“If the farm hadn’t had this basin we wouldn’t have been interested in buying it,” Gilbert says.

Bought by tender from the Ryder family who had farmed it for 102 years, the farm contour is predominantly steep except for the basin country and some associated medium hills. The Ryder family were acquainted with the Timms and were keen for the block to continue being farmed.

When the Timms took possession in August the farm had to be mustered by the new owners to get tallies and decide which stock to keep.

The animals were in light condition with the ewe hoggets averaging 34kg.

They decided to buy the Romney ewes and Angus cows but passed on the ewe hoggets because of their size.

Having sold all their home-bred Cheviot and Perendale rams the Timms were forced to mate their newly acquired Romney ewes with their home-bred Romney rams. For the following three years the Romney ewes were mated to the Timms’ Cheviot rams and their female progeny then mated to Perendale rams.

Ewe hoggets in shearing comp

Last year the Timms’ commercial Perendale ewe hoggets off the hill block were used for the Levin shearing competition indicating how quickly the quality of their commercial sheep had improved.

Although the new 80ha block is wet as a result of the runoff from the hill block it complements it extremely well.

“We used to progressively sell our cryptorchid lambs store in Feilding starting with the first sale of the year and having to accept what the market offered. Our cull ewe lambs were also sold store but later in the

“Having a mortgage keeps you young and I’ve no intention of retiring. We both get up in the morning looking forward to a day’s work.”

Diana and her Hereford cows and calves.

Gilbert Timms is still very active on the farm.

summer/autumn. Now we fatten a lot of them on the new block getting them to 2021kg by March/April,” Gilbert says.

The 200 cast-for-age five- and six-year ewes were previously sold off the hills for what Gilbert described as ‘bugger all money” but are now retained and mated to Southdown and Doofer terminal sires.

“We get some unbelievable lambs out of them,” Diana says.

The hill block supports 1500 Perendale ewes plus 400 replacement hoggets as well as 80 Hereford Angus breeding cows. Only yearling and R2 cattle are run on the finishing block.

The Angus breeding cows were small and in poor condition which was reflected in their price of $450 (going rate for cows at the time was $700-$800).

“They had been worked with dogs and were absolutely mad,” Gilbert says.

Crossing these with their homebred Hereford bulls with an occasional backcross to a Willie Phillip’s Angus bull has resulted in large, quiet, predominantly whitehead cows.

Last year the Timms made $857 for their weaner steers in April and $1040 for their 320kg cull heifers in early October.

The role of the cow herd is to maintain pasture quality for other stock and to clean up any roughage that has accumulated over the summer and autumn post-weaning. Over winter they are set stocked lightly until late August when they go onto their calving paddocks which have been shut up for three months. The stocking rate is one cow to 0.8ha.

Calving problems and cow losses are rare with no metabolic problems experienced. Bull-out date is December 1 with two bulls being run with one mob and a single bull with another giving a ratio of bulls to cows of 1:20-25.

“We’ve got plenty of bull power so we don’t skimp on bulls,” Gilbert says.

“We also shut up paddocks for mating. You’ve always got to be thinking ahead in farming.”

Since taking over the hill block the quality of the stock and their health has improved immensely.

“Our ewe death rate is about 3% and this year between set stocking for lambing and docking we’ve only lost 28 ewes out of 1600,” Gilbert says.

Gilbert attributes his low incidence of animal health problems to his dicalcicbased fertiliser from Te Awamutu-based TerraCare Fertilisers. This is applied aerially in March at 250kg/ha. They have been using this fertiliser for many years with good results.

“We can’t afford to fertilise the whole farm each year so we concentrate on those areas where we believe we will get the best response. Those areas that miss out one year will get done the next,” Gilbert says.

Facial eczema a threat

Animal health issues that do cause concern are internal parasites, particularly Barbers Pole worms. Ewes receive a long-acting drench before lambing while lambs are drenched at docking, weaning and thereafter monthly until June/July when they get a Startech Exit drench. Two drenches 10 days apart in the autumn deal

Perendale sires.

FARM FACTS

• Gilbert and Diana Timms.

• Both experienced breeders of rams and bulls.

• Farm/lease 880ha in the northern Horowhenua.

• In the last 12 years bought 670ha as a commercial unit.

• Farm Perendale ewes and Hereford Angus cows.

• Sheep and cattle breeding and finishing enterprise.

• Finish all lambs, sell weaner steers and surplus yearling heifers.

with any sudden rise in Barber’s pole worm numbers.

Facial eczema is a threat in the summer/ autumn although the Timms have seen few clinical cases in their stock. Gilbert believes his use of lime-based fertiliser helps to keep spore counts down.

“We’ve lived with eczema all our lives so I’m always conscious of it and take precautions with our ram hoggets by feeding them on long pasture, crops or sprayed paddocks.”

Gilbert has considered breeding eczematolerant sheep. He says there are no eczematolerant breeding programmes being conducted in NZ for the Cheviots and the three meat breeds they run. He can’t buy any eczema-tolerant rams for these breeds.

His grandson Corey was keen to start breeding for it and Gilbert said he would fully support him.

The original hill block Romneys have been replaced with Gilbert’s beloved Perendales as the mobility, production and easy-care nature of this breed suit the predominantly steep hill country.

They aim for 120%, normally docking between 110-114%, however storms during lambing can be devastating.

It is late country so the Perendale rams don’t go out until April 8 for three cycles. However with more finishing country available Gilbert may put Perendales out for two cycles and terminals for the third. The intention is to plant finishing swards like chicory/plantain and clover on the new block to get their lambs away earlier or to take them on to bigger weights.

Much of the basin area on the hill block is cultivable so swede and kale crops (5-6ha a year) have been sown as part of a pasture renewal programme and used to winter the hoggets.

The ewes are mob-stocked during mating and over the winter (this year in two mobs) before being set stocked (2.5 ewes/ ha for twins and 3/ha for singles) three weeks before lambing. If feed is tight, ewes are set stocked earlier. Scanning is early July followed by pre-lamb crutching in mid-August when all ewes are given a long-acting drench. Immediately before set

Panorama of the upper part of the farm.

stocking they are vaccinated with 5-in-1 containing vitamin B12.

Scanning identifies the multiple and single bearing ewes as well as the late lambers. These are lambed separately to avoid delays at docking.

Twin-bearing ewes get the north-facing lambing paddocks while single-bearing ewes lamb on the steeper, more exposed paddocks.

Docking takes place in the satellite yards in the basin area with the laneway system enabling easy movement of stock. This same system is invaluable in moving mobs of ewes and lambs down the steep westfacing hill country to the bottom yards for weaning and shearing at the end of December. Both ewes and lambs are shorn with the male lambs weaned on to the new 80ha block and the ewe lambs left on their mothers in the lambing paddocks.

Two weeks later the ewes and their ewe lambs are mustered into the satellite yards and weaned.

“The ewe lambs have to return to the hills anyway so it’s easier for them to go

back there with their mothers and they settle down better when weaned onto paddocks where they were born.”

Gilbert is a fan of condition scoring but doesn’t weigh any of their mature stock because he believes it can be misleading.

“I’ve been condition scoring all my life on the drafting gate and whenever the ewes are in the yards the lighter ones are pulled off and given extra feed.”

Keeping a detailed diary has been an important part of Gilbert’s life so he’s bemused when he receives an account for $1200 for his grandson Corey’s use of the Farm IQ software package.

“I record all that stuff in my diary and it costs me nothing.”

A breeding legacy

The Timms family are avid breeders of stud stock. Gilbert has been breeding Cheviots for 55 years and Perendales for 50. Diana was brought up on a 97ha farm near Levin where her mother farmed 400 stud Southdown ewes which Diana subsequently took over.

The stud is now in the hands of her 30-year-old grandson Corey who farms Diana’s home block. Diana also has a small Romney stud and runs a 65-cow Hereford cattle stud on their 109ha home block, sourcing her sires from the Robbies’ Otapawa stud at Tiraumea. She later purchased and amalgamated these with cows from the Laws’ Hereford stud. Corey has bought a few of her cows carrying on the family tradition.

Diana sells 25-30 yearling bulls a year mainly to dairy farmers for $2000 which Gilbert says is too cheap so will be going up next year. When selecting herd sires she focuses strongly on temperament, fineness of shoulder and head and the direct calving ease EBV.

Gilbert also breeds Poll Dorset and Doofer (stands for “do for anything”) rams, the latter a terminal sire resulting from crossing extremely long Suffolk rams over Cheviot ewes.

Gilbert sells about 164 Perendale, Cheviot, Poll Dorset and Doofer rams between $600 and $750. Numbers will

5-in-1 + 2mg Vitamin B12 + 2mg Selenium

Whether standard, boosted with Vitamin B12 or Selenised, the Multine range makes sure your lambs’ essential vitamin, mineral and clostridial needs are covered. MULTINE is New Zealand’s leading 5-in-1 clostridial vaccine range1 for good reason. Made in New Zealand specifically for New Zealand conditions, with Multine you get precisely what you require for your sheep and your unique situation. Get a vaccination programme that works for you. Available from leading veterinary clinics and rural retailers.

Our farms are different, which is why we use different vaccination programmes to protect our sheep.

With a range of supplementation options to choose from, using MULTINE® ensures you get everything you need – and nothing you don’t.

increase next year to 200 due to demand for Cheviots for hogget mating and terminals on the back of a much improved schedule.

Corey sells about 36 Southdowns rams a year.

Last year one of Gilberts’ Perendale rams was judged to be the best Perendale at the Gore annual ram sale. It later sold for $5500.

The Timms have been showing sheep for 60 years with Gilbert clocking up 60 years of stewardship with the sheep section of the Horowhenua AP&I. Gilbert is a life member of the Perendale and Cheviot breed societies and was awarded a QSM for services to agriculture and the community in 2017.

Gilbert was born in 1944 near Pongaroa but the family moved to a farm at Tapuae in the northern Manawatu in 1946 then Levin in 1953 because of his father’s ill-health. While at secondary school Gilbert took on a contract fencing job at one pound and 10 shillings a chain.

He left school at 15 and at 17 went to work for Perendale breeder David Law who farmed a hill country block south of where Gilbert and Diana live today. This block stretches from some easier country up into

the Tararua Ranges and is of similar contour and altitude to the blocks the Timms own.

David introduced Gilbert to Perendales, selling him 10 aged ewes in 1971 which became the foundation females of the Ashby Perendale stud. David allowed him to run up to 100 ewes as well as a small Cheviot stud which Gilbert had also acquired.

“We used to go and have cups of tea with Sir Geoffrey Peren at Massey University,” Gilbert says.

He worked for the Laws until he was 40, breaking in horses, shepherding, fencing and shearing. He married Diana, David’s niece, and together they leased land around the area while Gilbert worked for the Laws.

At the weekends he would shear and fence which helped the couple buy a 21ha block near Shannon in 1977 and pay it off in five years.

In 1984 the Timms bought their easycontoured 93ha home block. A 16ha block across the road was added in 1989. While Gilbert continued to lease land, shear and fence Diana established a dairy farm on their home block milking 100 Jersey cows by herself for 19 years. The couple have leased Diana’s 80ha family farm since 1985,where grandson Corey runs his stud Southdowns and Herefords.

Gilbert and Diana have four children; Vicky (55), Carol (51), Craig (50), and Jill (46) and eight grand-children all of whom live within a 16km radius of the home farm.

The Timms are immensely proud of the recent arrival of the fourth generation of the family (a son to Corey and Kylie).

“We’ll have to wait a year or two before he starts working on the farm,” Gilbert says.

Diana with a Hereford bull.

“We were lucky buying the fence posts. A vineyard had gone broke near Hastings so we took two trucks and a trailer up there and returned with a thousand 2.4m posts costing $3 each.”

WHY NOT 30KG

CARCASE LAMBS?

BY: KERRY DWYER

New Zealand has a constant decline in sheep numbers, but total sheep meat production has compensated for lower numbers to some extent by increasing average lamb carcase weight from about 14kg in 1990 to over 19kg in 2020. Can this trend continue?

Looking at a meat company schedule for November 2021, the target for most farmers will be about a 20kg carcase, allowing for some spread of weight within a mob that safely keeps below the 25kg maximum before downgrading. If you overshoot and have a 26kg carcase classed as mutton the drop in price was $44/hd at that time.

Meat company schedules penalise lambs because they don’t have the markets for them, but neither did they have the same markets for over 20kg lambs in 1990, so the market and production development have to be linked to make this proposition feasible. If NZ sheep farmers and meat companies are to move to larger lamb carcase weights then some production issues will have to be looked at:

Genetics

Most of the sheep genetics available in NZ can be grown to larger weights, as agreed by various others in this publication.

While selection has been targeting a 20kg carcase with acceptable fat cover, meat yield and growth rates, those genetics project the animals to higher weights in good stead. Higher carcase weights are a win for farmers who reduce stocking rates for environmental or economic reasons.

Gender

Selling 20kg ram lambs might be acceptable but how does a 30kg ram carcase fit the customer requirements? Australia does not deal with ram lambs, rather it is wethers and ewes only. Wethers and ewes tend to be fatter than rams, so what cost of additional processing to remove undesirable subcutaneous fat?

Fat Levels

Fat levels increase with age and weight, depending on genetics and feeding levels. However, the intramuscular fat increases as well as subcutaneous, and that can improve the eating quality of the larger carcases. As Suffolk breeders we have ewe hoggets averaging 70kg liveweight with a GR equivalent of 12mm, which fits current limits.

Feeding regimes

The economic issue for farmers is whether taking lambs heavier is profitable. For most producers, pricing does not reward past 25kg. Taking lambs heavier will lower the number finished on a set area or feed quantity, and lower proportionate transaction and transport costs. It might also spread the finishing time depending on growth rate achieved.

The simplistic cost calculation to look at taking lambs to heavier weight is calculating the drymatter requirement (kg DM) but in reality you will be juggling feed quality as well as quantity.

20kg carcaseweight 25kg carcaseweight 30kg carcaseweight

To grow lambs at 300g/hd/day requires feed quality of 12MJME/kg DM minimum, which is not always achievable in the field; by comparison growing lambs at 100g/hd/day is possible with a 10MJME/ kg DM minimum which is why so many lambs take longer to finish i.e. they are reflecting the available feed quality.

As shown in Table 1 it takes less overall feed to grow stock faster to a set weight than slower, because more energy is channelled into growth relative to maintenance. Maintenance is directly related to liveweight so the increased demand for maintenance as liveweight increases is not disproportionately limiting growth.

As said above, feed quality is a key issue in manipulating growth rate. In our pastoral systems we can grow specialist finishing feeds e.g. chicory/plantain/ clover mixes, or winter maintenance feeds to get animals through to peakquality spring pasture times. In Australia and the United States grain finishing is commonplace, where they might have a four-week feedlot regime which can achieve 500g/day growth rates.

Grain mixes with high MJME/kg DM are profitable when their price is cheap relative to product prices e.g. feed barley in Australia currently A$265/tonne onfarm relative to A$9/kg CW.

The NZ economics of grain feeding are not so good with feed barley at $490/t relative to $9.50/kg CW. Grain feeding here has a price of well over 40c/kg DM.

Table 2 shows possible income levels for taking lambs heavier.

20kg carcaseweight 25kg carcaseweight 30kg carcaseweight

mid-November 2021 $175/head $210/head $195/head downgraded as mutton

Approximate value

Growing from 20 to 25kg carcase $35/head

If grown at 100g/day = 17c/kg DM

If grown at 300g/day = 35c/kg DM

The profitability of taking lambs to heavier weight depends on the market reward being in place, rather than a discount. If the lamb schedules were linear past 25kg CW the marginal return would be similar to selling at current target weights. We have the genetics and grazing systems to enable this and with constant reduction in breeding stock it may be our future reality.

Growing from 25 to 30kg carcase

Negative $15/head on current pricing

If a flat schedule then a sale price $245/head

If grown at 100g/day = 17c/kg DM

If grown at 300g/day = 32c/kg DM

“Meat company schedules penalise lambs because they don’t have the markets for them, but neither did they have the same markets for over 20kg lambs in 1990.”

Table 1: Feed requirements for carcaseweights

Table 2: Per head prices relative to carcaseweight

• Kerry Dwyer is a North Otago farm consultant and farmer.

FUTURE SHEEP OF THE

BY: LYNDA GRAY

The potential of minor sheep breeds and the best strategy to breed the sheep of the future is the topic of ‘Sheep of the future’, a literature review by AgResearch scientists.

The 27.3 million sheep in New Zealand are genetically diverse with a wide array of characteristics. However, there needs to be more investigation and development of desirable traits within the flock to keep the sheep industry profitable and one that meets consumer expectations. That will mean that some of the flock will need to change from the traditionally farmed breeds through the introgression of new and minority breed traits.

Desirable traits

Lead author Patricia Johnson said people across the sheep industry were in general agreement as to the key attributes of the ideal future sheep; they needed to be highly productive; short tailed; disease tolerant; with no wool or a high value fleece, and with a reduced environmental footprint.

But how to genetically achieve the perfect sheep is the big question.

Part of the solution was to further investigate the potential of minority breeds already within NZ such as the Australian White, Awassi, Damara, Dorper, East Friesian, Ezicare, Finnish Landrace, Hampshire Down, Lacaune, Manech, Meatmaster and the New Zealand Wiltshire.

Many had desirable traits such as the fleece moulting of the Wiltshire. Other examples are the Finnish Landrace and Texel, genetically wired for shorter-length tails. The heat-tolerant Dorper and Awassi could become important considerations with climate change and global warming.

“There’s a need to find out more about the background of minority breeds, and if they look promising, the next question is how to develop a breeding programme that won’t compromise what’s already been achieved,” Johnson says.

Overseas breeds

There are also overseas breeds of interest: Afrikaners, Assaf, Barbados Blackbelly, Black-Headed Persian or Van Rooy, as well as composites such as Exlana, Katahdin, Cashmore Nudies, Low Footprint Lamb, Ultrawhites and Wiltipoll.

Over the last year, semen straws of three new composites from Australia and at least one from the United Kingdom have been introduced. All had specific traits of interest, but it was unknown as to how they would cope in NZ’s environment.

Genetic selection

Genetics and genomic technology will play a key role, and in some cases are the only solutions for achieving aspects of the ideal sheep.

“Facial Eczema is an example of a disease that is difficult to manage at best, so genetic selection is the only solution. It’s slow but cumulative and a long-term way of ensuring we breed a sheep that can thrive without excessive chemical or management interventions.”

Some of the desirable traits such as shorter tail length, bare belly and breech were being further investigated to see if the gene mutations responsible could be identified.

It’s unlikely that a one-for-one breed substitution with any of the current breeds will occur. Instead, crossbreeding programmes and introgression of traits of interest will lead to the rise of sheep suited to particular environments and conditions. An example could be no-wool sheep, particularly in the upper half of the North Island and other parts of the country prone to issues such as facial eczema.

However, the rise of the future sheep will be a slow burn with predictive modelling estimating that it would take 12-15 years of crossbreeding to achieve a fully-shedding flock when transitioning from a purebred Romney to fully shedding Wiltshire-Romney crossbred.

Aside from the possible genetic pathways to the sheep of future, the paper acknowledges that buy-in from breeders will be needed which could be confronting for some who had spent decades developing breeds.

“We appreciate that it’s a big call to ask breeders to perhaps change their breeding direction. The psychology of change is a big thing but if we as an industry don’t start making the changes now, we’ll eventually be forced by market forces.”

“There’s a need to find out more about the background of minority breeds, and if they look promising, the next question is how to develop a breeding programme that won’t compromise what’s already been achieved.”

WEANING FOR BETTER PROFIT

BY: TREVOR COOK

The sheep industry has never had meat prices as high as they are now. A high-performing sheep flock run at or above average stocking rates is very profitable. It justifies the use of better land that previously would have been the preserve of trading stock, even bulls.

I recently did the budgets for a summer dry farm of easy contour that the prospective buyer thought bulls-only would earn most. The mixture of an early lambing flock and bulls was in that analysis the most profitable, driven not just on sheep meat prices but a policy that consumed the most of the pasture grown.

The profitability of enterprises cannot be taken in isolation. It’s as much about how they fit with other enterprises. A key driver of profitability is how much of the pasture grown is consumed.

As weaning approaches of sheep flocks the outcome of management decisions going as far back as last autumn become apparent. While the slow onset spring for many will have had a significant effect, so will ewe condition and past feeding.

We know that a big proportion of ewes that are off the pace with body condition at lambing were lighter going into winter. We also know that multiple ewes lambing in lighter condition will have poorer lactation so have lower lamb weaning weight.

For those summer dry areas those lighter ewes in May often stem from being lighter at weaning last year. So the old adage, next year's production begins at weaning is very valid.

I talked last month about the high lamb survival flocks sharing a management background. The consistently high lamb weaning weight flocks are the same.

Fixed-time approach

For some farmers weaning is a fixed-time event and the overall farm management is set around this. Labour, markets, paddock allocations, shearing and holidays can all be anticipated. There are so many benefits from this approach.

The downside is that every spring is different and adjusting weaning date to the variables should deliver better outcomes. The bigger the farming system the more attractive the fixed time approach just because the logistics very often do not accommodate variation.

Feed conditions, lamb growth, ewe condition, weather predictions and market signals are all different each year which justify varying weaning dates. This year I have come across more farmers than usual planning to wean early because lambs are behind. Giving lambs first access to the declining pasture quality should give them a boost.

However, on an East Coast farm last week on which pasture is abundant the decision had been made to delay weaning on the basis that the lambs are still growing and ewes still putting

on condition, so why not let this continue a bit longer. As for so much of farming, no decision is absolutely correct. But there are some factors that should be taken into account. Young ewes have a shorter lactation curve than mature ewes so will cease contributing to lamb growth rate earlier. Often these young age class ewes, ewe hoggets and two-tooths, struggle to maintain body condition the longer lactation is being stimulated to go.

In general for mixed-age ewes, once beyond 90 days mean lactation, the milk is adding little to lamb growth rate. Usually by then the lamb is competing with its mother for access to declining quality pasture.

Again on another East Coast farm the 90-day mean lamb age was January 2. To wean pre Christmas the mean lamb age would be 70-odd days. To wean that early requires planning and must allow for later lambers to not be weaned. Christmas and New Year are significant obstacles to efficient flock management for later-lambing flocks. Given that cost, should lambing dates be tweaked to allow more flexibility?

Farmers in the United Kingdom very often quoted their image of New Zealand sheep farmers as: wean, drench and shear before Christmas and go to the beach. Some truth in this, but often the driver is not having to be bothered about fly, drenching and shearing over that time.

Interestingly many of those same UK farmers now wean as much as a month earlier than they used to in their newly perfected pasture-based systems. For them a huge change delivering not bigger lambs but much lower cost lambs. In fact for many the lambs are as heavy when they get to that previous weaning age.

The sentiment of being free to relax over Christmas is very valid and applies to farmers almost more than to most. For a vocation that can be demanding every day, is intrinsically coupled with family life and can often be lonely, creating free time is so valuable it justifies taking some short cuts or compromises to get there.

Weaning at a fixed time on large farms is because the logistics often do not accommodate variation.

N DRIVES PRODUCTION AND LOWERS CO2

BY: JO CUTTANCE

Feeding the growing world population is a choice between an increase in area of farm land or intensification of existing areas, Lincoln University agronomy professor Derrick Moot says.

Moot said New Zealand started to increase its use of fertiliser from the 1990s. When urea became available in the 1960s, NZ was not really a user of nitrogen fertiliser.

On the Canterbury Plains were mixed cropping systems, which were rotated with a white clover seed crop, which might be followed with a wheat crop, then it could be a barley crop, then it might go into pastures for the next two or three years. This mixed cropping system did not use much nitrogen fertiliser. The nitrogen came from red clover or white clover seed crops.

The increased use in nitrogen fertiliser

coincided with the development of central pivot irrigation which enabled the conversion to dairy farming. One issue associated with application of nitrogen fertiliser was the loss of nitrous oxide, one of the greenhouse gases. Now the Government has limited how much nitrogen fertiliser could be used, as they tried to deal with the issue of NZ’s contribution to climate change from agriculture.

The idea was to reduce inputs into the sector, and one tool was to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertiliser farmers could use. This would eventually lead to a reduction in stocking rate on the Canterbury Plains, which would then feedback into the amount of methane produced.

Moot has researched the effects of

Huge productivity gains on sheep and beef farms has meant it is the only NZ sector which has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions.

nitrogen for decades. During the 1990s, after returning from a sabbatical in Europe where he looked at climate change and the impact for European agriculture, Moot noticed a large amount of land on the Canterbury Plains was being converted into dairy farming.

He began an experiment which looked into the impact from taking an area which was summer dry, to adding just irrigation, the impact of adding irrigation and nitrogen, and of adding only nitrogen to a pasture which received no moisture.

Moot was most intrigued with the pastures which only had nitrogen put on, the ones which were not irrigated. He found when there was more nitrogen in the system it increased pasture production from 6.3 tonnes to 16t DM/ha. The scientists found they were dealing with what was limiting production on the plains.

Moot said if he asked most people to suggest in the summer prior to irrigation, what was the most limiting factor on the plains, most would have said moisture. But it was nitrogen. In essence, it was because with the exception of legumes, all plants are nitrogen-deficient all of the time. This meant nitrogen was the most limiting nutrient regardless of what was being grown, unless it was a legume.

Legume yields were affected by the fact that they fixed nitrogen and the plant had to use about 20% of the carbon that it photosynthesized in a day for the nitrogen fixation process, so legume crops would never yield as much as cereal crops.

The ability to increase the production of plants by getting nitrogen into dryland systems generated further research.

The Hill Country Futures experiment on a drylands system on Banks Peninsula compared unimproved versus improved pasture production. The resident pasture verses lucerne as the improved component.

What they saw over the past two years was the unimproved system produced about 5.4t, and most of that was in spring before it ran out in the autumn. The lucerne produced more than three times that amount of feed, essentially because lucerne was never nitrogen deficient. Because of nitrogen fixation it could utilise the spring moisture which was the only moisture readily available. Not only was there a big difference in the amount of feed but also in the timing of feed.

Moot said in NZ sheep and beef systems the main feed demand was in the spring. With lactating ewes with lambs, there were a lot of mouths to feed. The lucerne

produced more feed in that early spring period then the resident pasture.

“It is producing feed at a time when onfarm demand for feed is actually increasing quite dramatically.”

NZ has developed farming systems that utilised lucerne directly in this feed situation. Having high-quality feed as a direct intake meant animals grew quickly which resulted in a reduced methane output.

A lot of people were doing a lot of work to reduce methane production from the agricultural sector in NZ, to date most of those had not been successful or led to an onfarm application.

A lamb which was 25kg at weaning, needed to be 35kg and was growing at 100g/head/day, would take 100 days on the farm, consume 1300MJ of energy and

With the exception of legumes all plants are nitrogendeficient all of the time.

produce 303g of methane per kilogram. But if it could be grown faster, at least 200g/ head/day, then it would be on the farm for half the time and consume a lot less in total energy, so there was a reduction in its methane production.

Fast growth cuts methane

One way to reduce the carbon footprint of agricultural systems was to be more productive, Moot said.

The business of NZ pastoral farming was growing animals as rapidly as possible and getting them off farm. This was particularly important in the Drylands Pastures Research systems that Moot had been working with because they ran out of water. If there were still animals on the farm and there was no feed, then feed needed to be brought in.

Less feed, more methane

With less feed animals grew more slowly so their methane production for a kilogram of liveweight gain was a lot more. Intensifying the spring production had been the main aspect Moot and his team of scientists had used to reduce methane production. They tried to be sympathetic with the environment by having a deep-rooted plant like lucerne in the areas where there were some deep soils, and tried to maintain soil

“..if it (a lamb) could be grown faster, at least 200g/head/day, then it would be on the farm for half the time and consume a lot less in total energy, so there was a reduction in its methane production...”

cover or ground cover in areas where there were shallow soils over the steeper faces. The reason there was more soil in the valley was because it had fallen off the hills.

“Erosion is a natural process that we can’t stop but we can reduce the rate at which it occurs but over thousands of years we will find that gravity will bring silt to the valleys.”

At the Bonavaree farm site they had taken advantage of this intensification by planting the deeprooted lucerne in the valley. They fenced off and planted the shallow faces with not much topsoil and retired these areas into trees.

Moot said one of the things that had happened in the NZ sheep and beef sector had been a move to planting areas which were not very productive in a pastoral sense into woody vegetation. Depending on who you asked, that offset was between 63 or 118% (Case & Ryan 2020) of the total emissions coming out of the sheep and beef sector.

Over time in the NZ sheep industry CO2 emissions from livestock had been offset by retiring land into either native or exotic plantings. There had been a reduction in NZ sheep numbers from about 60 million in the 1990s to just under 30m now, and therefore also a drop in the number of lambs marketed.

What was often overlooked in these figures was the increase in productivity that had occurred. Some of that was from intensification, from increased genetics, but also from feeding those animals. This had raised the lambing percentage from about 100% on average to 130%. At the same time the carcaseweight of those animals was increasing from around 14.5 to 18kg per animal.

What that had done was reduce the methane production, Moot said.

AgResearch research showed huge productivity changes had occurred in the sheep and beef sector, Moot said. This was the only sector in NZ which had actually reduced its greenhouse gas emissions or its environmental footprint to this extent.

A matter of difference in soils

BY: JO CUTTANCE

Soil organic matter and soil carbon are different from an agronomist perspective, Lincoln University professor and agronomist Derrick Moot said. It was very important people understood that because the terms were often used interchangeably.

Moot said when people saw plant residue, it was crop stubble or some root biomass in the soil. Most plant residues broke down, the part which was easily degradable and broke down quickly, was called litter. These were the leaves and roots from a crop harvest and some stem. Often farmers either burnt it or turned it over. The soil biological activity would be such that the bacteria in the soil broke it down. Decomposition from microbial biomass occurred rapidly and converted some of the easily degradable carbon tied

up in the litter into carbon dioxide.

He said the intermediate and the resistant faction remained in the soil over time. The microbial biomass did not change very much but it worked more and more on the plant residues and converted them from plant residue into CO2. The process of respiration from the soil microbial biomass was actually the sameit broke down the sugars that were in those plant parts. It took weeks or months to break that down, and convert those plant residues back into atmospheric CO2. This process was ongoing and there was only a small resistant faction that took longer and longer.

“The microbial biomass here is not really changing, but it was taking longer, and eventually converting some of the plant residues into carbon dioxide.”

NZ soils have a lot of organic matter and the ability to have a lot of nutrient cycling because they were predominantly pastoral-based.

Eventually all of that ended up back in the atmosphere.

From a New Zealand perspective, storing soil carbon would be a short-term gain. This was because most data suggested NZ had a saturation of soils for carbon.

Moot said the result of that breakdown or returning to residuals was thatch. Thatch occurred on a lot of pastures and this was not soil carbon. It was organic matter.

“At this stage it’s got a carbon to nitrogen ratio of about 40:1.”

A lot of NZ’s grazed pastures had thatch on the top of them. This thatch tied up nitrogen and stopped biological activity. To get nutrient cycling in these systems farmers often applied nitrogen fertiliser or put in a rye corn or barley crop, and grazed that crop over a year or two. The urine returns went back in and allowed nitrogen cycling to occur. This ratio of carbon to nitrogen needed to be about 20:1 for the breakdown of that organic matter and the release of nutrients.

NZ soils had a lot of organic matter and the ability to have a lot of nutrient cycling because they were predominantly pastoralbased.

“Carbon storage is generally saturated in many NZ soils, carbon storage rate is low and temporary, particularly for cropping systems.”

Soil organic matter only increased yield of crops if there was a nutrient limitation. The idea of getting more soil organic matter into a soil to increase yields would only occur if the nutrient limiting the system was put in.

“Nutrients do not up-well. We do not bring nutrients from a long way below ground if they are not available.”

When it was no longer possible to identify what the plant was, and there was a gooey stabilised mass, this was called humus. This was a natural process which took longer to occur and was more resistant to the breakdown of the bacterial mass. This was a by-product of that microbial activity which got more humus into the soil. It eventually decomposed and the soil humus ended up back in the atmosphere.

“What we are really dealing with here is the time frame by which we get our plant residuals back into the atmosphere.”

The only carbon from the organic matter that remained in the soil was the carbon particles which were stuck to the soil particles. That was soil carbon. This process happened under pastures. All sites that

could be occupied by soil carbon became occupied over decades of time and created a build-up of soil carbon.

If that paddock was ploughed and put into an arable cropping system, where it might be ploughed every year, then there was a breakdown of that soil carbon which was stuck very tightly to the mineral particles of the soil.

“That is really where the idea of being able to capture carbon has come from.”

He gave the example, if a farmer had been cropping in the Midwest of the United States for almost a century, a lot of the soil carbon had been broken down or removed, as well as, the easily degradable and plant residue component of the plant material that had been put into the soil system.

Nutrients generally occurred in the area where there was a lot of soil biological activity. Roots from trees that went a long way down into the ground would put some carbon into an area where there had not been any carbon before.

This was the idea many regenerative agriculture practitioners talked about of having deep tap-rooted species that put carbon deep into the soil beyond where grasses grow. Deep-rooted lucerne could have its roots down six metres whereas a grass grown in the same soil might only have roots down to about a metre.

“But in neither case do we actually get any upwelling of nutrients.”

Moot said if we wanted to have a system based on nitrogen fixation then we needed to ensure other nutrients were not limiting.

“Carbon storage is generally saturated in many New Zealand soils, carbon storage rate is low and temporary, particularly for cropping systems.”

Twelve years of torture

BY: ANNE LEE

Plant breeding has given farmers a range of ryegrass cultivars to suit just about any situation but it’s important they understand that if they’re heavily focused on one aspect there may be compromises on others.

If yield and cool season growth are the top priorities then there are cultivars that can give outstanding results but it may be that same pasture will need renewal in less than five years.

Barenbrug science officer Dr Colin Eady describes it as a push and pull kind of paradigm when it comes to breeding some characteristics. Lowering the amount of crude protein is another good example.

Much of the plant’s protein is in the enzyme RuBisCO which incorporates CO2

into the plant and is integral to the function of photosynthesis.

“There might be excess protein in the ryegrass for the animal eating it but if we try and lower it to solve a nitrogen excretion issue, we’re going to compromise the very photosynthetic machinery that’s going to capture the carbon and build the sugars the plant needs to grow and achieve plant yield.

“That’s the push and pull we see so often and what breeders are working with all the time.

“Most farmers would say the ideal ryegrass would be one that’s very high yielding, maintains quality and is very persistent.

“But persistence and yield are inherently pulling in opposite directions.

“To be more persistent the plant is putting more of it’s resources into being robust

Farmer. Kellogger. Leader.

Applications are open for the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programmes based in Whanganui and Lincoln, beginning May and June 2022.

Step up in 2022 as an agri-sector leader of change. Register now at ruralleaders.co.nz/kellogg/

rather than growing an abundance of soft, tender leaves.”

Barenbrug marketing manager Graham Kerr says the true perennial characteristics of ryegrass are what drive it to be hardy while annual varieties are “the party animals” here to grow as fast and as vigorously as they can.

“Annuals aren’t programmed to put energy into reserves, they put it all into immediate regrowth whereas the perennial is programmed to come back year after year and will sacrifice some of this year’s activities to have the reserves for next year,” he says.

“What we’ve done in plant breeding is to create a continuum between the two extremes.

“So, we have hybrids – the cross between the perennial Lolium perenne and the

short-term Lolium multiflorum, also known as the Italian.

“That also gives us a shot of hybrid vigour.

“Then we have the crosses back from the hybrids to either the perennial or annual to give intermediates.

“That’s creating this continuum in growth and persistence,” Graham says.

Warmer temperatures and farmers moving calving dates earlier over the past 20 years has pushed up late-winter/spring feed demand so cultivars with strong cool season growth are increasingly being used.

Environmental concerns with nitrogen leaching are also driving the use of cool season active varieties.

They use up nitrogen through the cooler months that was deposited over autumn and could otherwise be potentially leached in wetter winter conditions.

“I think we’ll see that trend continue –where farmers are chasing more and more of that winter/cool season growth the hybrids can give.”

Plant breeding is a long-term game with about 12 years from first cross to a commercial cultivar being ready to go.

Barenbrug plant breeder Dr Will Clayton says the challenge is to anticipate what farmers will be looking for as their major drivers 12 years out.

“Our objectives are always going to be yield, maintaining quality and persistence. Those things are givens, but issues like climate change, changing pest challenges, environmental aims – they can mean quite rapid shifts in what farmers’ needs are,” he says.

Farmers can be sure that new varieties have been put through their paces before they become available.

“It’s basically a torture test for 12 years – they’re exposed to insects, heat, low nitrogen, low rainfall – they’re not pampered.”

They’re grown around the country, pitted against other varieties, grown on commercial farms and grazed.

Plant breeding is all done using natural, traditional methods and while it takes time, it’s become efficient in terms of costs and results, Colin says.

Genomic selection like that used for dairy cattle is being explored but unlike the structured global dairy cattle population

ryegrass is open-pollinated producing much more variable populations which, combined with lower margins, makes them a less attractive proposition for expensive genomic selection methodologies.

“It’s something we are involved in and it is starting to supplement our traditional breeding methods, but will still require considerable innovation before it becomes a principle approach,” Colin says.

Genomic selection requires the identification of gene markers for specific traits.

If a cross is made the plant can be DNA tested and predictions made on its physical traits based on the gene markers identified rather than growing it out and putting it through its paces.

The technology could dramatically speed up genetic gain and enable breeding programmes to come up with new varieties in a more rapidly changing environment.

But, unlike dairy cattle there isn’t a wide number of traits recorded over a long period to kick start the huge data base needed to make genomic predictions.

“There’s plenty of yield data but we don’t have big data bases on crosses made over the traditional breeding programme period on traits like lipid levels or water-soluble

carbohydrate levels.”

Then there’s the complication of endophyte selection.

Endophytes are ryegrass’ valuable friend. They’re asexual fungi and exist symbiotically in the plant, making their way to the seed so they can move onto the next plant generation with the plant.

They are discovered not bred and not all endophytes are compatible with all cultivars of ryegrass.

They create alkaloids which deter pest insects but can also contain substances that can potentially cause animal health problems such as heat stress and staggers.

Finding endophytes with the right balance of those substances which are also compatible with a new cultivar is another challenge for the plant breeders.

New varieties can be inoculated with known endophytes but not all will exist happily together.

“There are technologies that can and are helping us with all of the challenges we see in plant breeding and we will see more of those technologies make a difference over time,” Colin says.

• First published in the NZ Dairy Exporter December 2021.

Colin Eady and Graham Kerr – the continuum from annual to perennial means ryegrass has something for everyone.

“Most farmers would say the ideal ryegrass would be one that’s very high yielding, maintains quality and is very persistent.”

CHEAPER BY THE THOUSANDS

If you are planning to plant trees next autumn or winter, now is the time to decide what species you want, and where you are going to plant them. Then put your order in.

I get mine from Appletons Nursery, near Nelson who supply plants bare-rooted from June till August but many lines are quickly sold out so it pays to order early.

You have to order a minimum of 10 for any given tree but the price per tree is very cheap. For example, Scarlet oaks (Quercus coccinea) 1.2-1.5 metres high are $13.40 each. If you buy 50 the price is $7.90 each plus gst and freight. If you get a thousand the price is cheaper still. The same tree, a bit bigger (1.6m) and in a pot will cost about $60 at a garden centre.

Appletons grow a huge range of trees, both natives and exotics, and sell many as growingon lines, small plants from 15-25cm high, and upwards at even cheaper prices—the Scarlet oak being $2 each. These small plants need growing-on in a nursery bed for a year or more before planting out.

In the autumn Appletons spend several weeks roaming New Zealand to collect seed from particular trees and in some years there is a good amount of seed, in others none at all for certain species.

This means some years they will have a certain species for sale, other years they won’t. This mostly applies to the more uncommon trees like Davidia involucrata (the Handkerchief tree) and Sequoiadendron giganteum (the giant redwood or Wellingtonia).

As well as trees they supply smaller-growing native plants for riparian planting, plus of course all the major forestry species.

Prior to planting, spray the spots with Roundup and you can add Terbuthylazine for longer-term weed control. It’s best to do this at least six weeks prior to planting.

If the area is already fenced off and there is lots of really long grass I take old salt lick containers and the like and pre-dig the holes, putting the soil into the containers. This way it doesn’t get lost in the long grass, and in the

Life-long tree

grower Peter Arthur offers advice on tree selection, costs and care.

recent dry years we have been having in Hawke’s Bay any rain we do get is not only going into the hole, but also into the soil in the container, a double dose of moisture. If the ground is really dry I add about 20 litres of water when I plant.

Dag wool for weeds

Once the tree is planted it will need to be kept weeded for the first few years. I have tried all sorts of plastic weed matting and old carpet but this year have used dag wool which is easy to apply and which to my surprise, doesn’t blow away in the wind. It is also meant to act as a bit of a hare and rabbit deterrent, but I can’t vouch for this.

Newly planted trees in very short grass seem to attract hares and rabbits. Long grass seems to deter them so long as you take long strides and try to avoid flattening it so you haven’t made a convenient track from tree to tree.

Over the past 50 years I have used all sorts of tree barricades, starting off with 44 gallon drums. These worked well with the short legged, fat, wool blind Romneys of the time. Today’s open-faced, long legged athletes quite happily put their front feet on top of the drum and eat the top out of the tree. Of course I couldn’t run cattle around those trees for a year or two.

I then used taller weldmesh type netting but am now on to X fence security netting 1.8m high which I cut into about 2m long lengths. This,

anchored with two waratah standards, costs about $100 a tree. It has worked well provided there is something else in the paddock for cattle to rub on. If there are no other trees, power poles or old bits of machinery for the stock to rub on, they will use the barricade as a back scratcher with unfortunate results.

Spanish guards

I am now trying, for the first time, Cactus barricades imported from Spain by Tree Guards NZ. These come in packs of 10 and measure 1.7m high by 1m long and cost $49 plus gst per barricade. Every second horizontal wire has been cut and sticks out like a very sharp barb. It makes for a narrower barricade than I would like but I am using them to replace X fence barricades on which the cattle have been rubbing. So with two waratah standards this will work out at about $70 per tree. This may sound a lot but once the tree is established the barricade and standards can be removed and used again. Some of my older barricades are on their fourth tree.

I have found that most trees protected by a 44 gallon drum grew faster than those protected by netting, Norfolk Island pines and palms being the exception. Some advise raising the drum off the ground for better air circulation but I’ve never done this. The temperature inside can be horrific which I think helps with weed control. They certainly don’t thrive in a drum. I still use them in one or two sheep-only paddocks, but top them with old netting.

“I have tried all sorts of plastic weed matting and old carpet, but this year have used dag wool which is easy to apply and which to my surprise, doesn’t blow away in the wind.”

Left: Peter Arthur’s Hawke’s Bay farm. Above: Peter prepares tree protection - X fence security netting 1.8m high cut into about 2m long lengths. This, anchored with two waratah standards, costs about $100 a tree.

Realities of sheep and cattle farming

Sheep and cattle farmers in New Zealand are regarded worldwide as kings of pasture grazing systems. Our clean green image is out there and needs guarding for the sake of our marketing edge. This underlines the importance of carefully monitoring to manage and/or mitigate the impacts animal waste and greenhouse gases have on our environment.

Animal waste

By Ken Geenty.

We are one of the world’s most densely populated countries with grazing ruminants. A feature of ruminants compared with humans and other animals like dogs, is the huge size and capacity of their digestive tract. This fermentation vat, consisting of four stomachs as shown in Figure 1, can digest a wide variety of plant products in large amounts. Output of waste mainly as faeces and urine is large.

The ruminant digestive tract with its contents is close to 35% of animal body weight with the ability to hold feed equivalent to about 15% of liveweight. For example, as shown in Table 1, a 500kg lactating cow can require up to 52kg of pasture wet-matter a day equivalent roughly to a firmly packed sack of grass, plus drinking about 35kg of water.

Adult ewes in comparison eat about 10kg or a sugar bag full of tucker daily. Cows consume proportionately much more water than ewes so have a larger wet-matter waste output. On the other hand sheep more efficiently spread smaller dollops of waste around the paddock.

Trends in the NZ livestock industries over the past couple of decades have shown a dramatic increase in dairy cattle numbers reaching just under 7 million. During the same period beef cattle have declined by some 12% to 4m and sheep by 32% to 26m. Intensive dairying has moved into many of the former sheep and beef farming areas.

The above numbers are large by world standards. For example, with a population of 5m, we are about the same size as the state of Colorado in the United States, but with about 20% fewer people. However Colorado has a dairy and beef herd of only 120,000 animals. NZ’s total of about 11m cattle is just over 90 times larger.

Scientists generally agree the waste output of a cow is equivalent to about that of 14 humans, so a country like NZ is dealing with waste from not 5m but more like the equivalent of over 100m humans. And that amount of waste can be a heavy load on our environment.

The main impacts of animal waste are leaching or runoff of nitrogen to groundwater and waterways and pollution with faecal material.

Unfortunately, little can be done about reducing waste from sheep and cattle apart from lowering numbers through diversification. However, some grazing practices such as intensive use of winter crops or break feeding can increase leaching of nitrogen raising soil N loadings as can over use of N fertilisers.

The best move is to consult your rural professional as there are tools such as Overseer which can predict N loadings under different scenarios enabling remedial action.

Greenhouse gases

Almost half of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in NZ are from the agricultural sector. Most is due to methane from belching ruminants.

An agricultural emissions research levy was previously proposed, quickly becoming known as the ‘fart tax’. It encountered opposition from the farming sector and the National Party at the time, resulting in plans for the levy being abandoned. The Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium was formed as an alternative.

Methane emitted by animals is a potent GHG with one tonne having the equivalent of 25t of carbon dioxide. The less significant but highly potent nitrous oxide comes from dung fermentation. These gases, along with carbon dioxide, damage the protective ozone barrier near our stratosphere contributing to global warming.

Abomasum Omasum Small Intestine Rectum Anus Large Intestine

Cecum Rumen

Reticulum

Figure 1: The digestive tract of ruminants as illustrated in cattle.

With its large cattle and sheep populations, a country like New Zealand is dealing with waste from not five million but the equivalent of more than 100m humans.

Sea level rises and adverse weather events are some of the well-known consequences of resulting climate change.

A farming-based New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme to reduce and mitigate effects of GHGs is growing. For carbon credit rewards farm forestry needs to be specifically for greenhouse gas mitigation and not as an eventual cash crop.

Longevity ranges from 50 to 100 years for pines, cypresses, eucalypts and natives. Costs include initial preparation and planting, an initial start-up fee, maintenance including pruning, thinning and fencing and annual returns to MPI.

The long-held view that greenhouse gases from livestock farming make a major contribution to climate change is being questioned. A recent study at the Auckland University of Technology has found that up to 90% of GHG emissions from farming are absorbed by woody trees on or in proximity to farms.

The notion of carbon neutrality simply means that total CO2 gases, or their equivalent, emitted are cancelled out by the same amount of absorption. In this case GHGs are gobbled up by growing woody trees and incorporated via photosynthesis to plant storage.

The insatiable appetite of trees for carbon is highlighted in a Nature Journal article on climate

change. It pointed out that our native forests, often adjacent to farming areas, are an enormous carbon sink. Nationally they hold some 7 billion tons of CO2 that would normally be in the atmosphere. This GHG storage by our native forests is equivalent to 86 years of NZ’s total emissions. Therefore, although much of our slow-growing native trees are not eligible for the carbon trading scheme they collectively make a very significant contribution to GHG mitigation.

Not surprisingly tree planting on farms is gaining momentum. Of 8.5 million hectares of sheep and beef farms it is estimated the 1.7 million ha in trees will grow to 2m ha by 2028. Areas planted can include retired areas on farms or at least 30 metre wide riparian strips protecting waterways. With 42ha of growing trees mitigating equivalent emissions from 100 dairy cows or 500 ewes, largescale plantings are needed for meaningful GHG mitigation. This could well change the face of our hill country farms.

Some argue a large proportion of these plantings are pine monocultures, sometimes with detrimental environmental and farming consequences.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement our Government pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. An Independent Climate Change Commission (ICCC) is working towards NZ-wide carbon neutrality by 2050. Legislation which should be in place by the end of this year is labelled by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as ‘ground-breaking’.

Some practical alternatives for reducing emissions according to a Biological Emissions Reference Group (BERG) include reduced stocking rates with increased per head production, lower fertiliser applications and once daily milking of dairy animals. BERG say sheep and beef farms have made a good start with 30% reduced emissions over the past 25 years.

More information about strategies to reduce GHG emissions on farms can be found on the B+LNZ website at - beeflambnz.com/ search?term=greenhouse+gases

Table 1: Relative lactating ewe and dairy cow pasture intake and waste output. (Beef cows generally have 15-20% lower numbers than dairy).

– wet matter.

More trees are being planted on hill country, often as pine monocultures, to offset greenhouse gas emissions

A country like NZ is dealing with waste from not 5m but more like the equivalent of over 100m humans.

LEARNING THE CLASSER TRADE

By

Maria Todhunter started shed handing at her family’s Lake Heron station, alongside the rousies in the school holidays. By the time she was 17 she’d worked her way up to the classing table, learning the art alongside her grandfather, Bob Todhunter.

Now 22, Maria has just received her official stamp of approval from the NZ Wool Classers Association – her own stencil with its owner/classer Number FM2207.

This year she classed for 15 days in total, with shearing including Merino ewes, wethers and hoggets. Time off might prove tricky next year, as she starts full time work with WSP Engineering Consultancy in Christchurch. She completed a mechanical engineering degree in 2021, sometimes racing back from the shed to complete an exam or assignment.

Whatever the hurdles, she’s determined

to continue classing the Lake Heron clip when she can.

“I am hoping to take some time off work for classing next year. The company see it as a positive having different interests and the skills to run a shed.”

Maria enjoys many parts of high-country farming but it’s the wool classing that fascinates her.

“And it has been so special to be taught by Bob.”

“I learnt how to class by picking up a fleece and walking towards a bin while watching Grandpa’s face. If it was wrong, he'd get a look on his face, like ‘what are you thinking’?”

This season she was the youngest in the shed but held the most responsibility for the wool.

Bob taught her by first explaining all the different parts of the fleece – neck, back, skirtings. She has had two years of guidance

from visiting classer Nicola Peddie, NZ Merino Company, who helped explain contract specifications and completed the Shed Inspection with her.

“Nicola has a background in wool classing and would come up every shearing to talk about the micron specifications and the things to look out for, like vegetable matter.”

Fleeces low in vegetable matter

Lake Heron fleeces are generally low VM but the backs are removed if blown sand or matagouri leaf is present.

“We take a section out but don’t take too much, as often there is a big price difference.”

Maria says it is very hard to pick a micron by eye so it’s more important to know where the fleece fits in comparison to other fleeces.

“This is an advantage of an owner classer

A young Christchurch engineer is planning to still take time off to class the wool produced on her family’s sheep station.

Joanna Grigg.

Maria Todhunter, 22, worked her way from rousie to the wool classing table.

– you have the constant relationship with the wool and can see if the mid staple might be stronger than average.”

Lake Heron ewes clip between 20 and 22 microns. Maria says she has had a few trips to Cleardale stud, Rakaia Gorge, with her father Philip to choose rams but is not so involved in the genetic selection side.

“I can see a picture of the feeding management through the year, when I look at the fleeces on the table.”

She has spent a fair bit of time defending high country farming to her student friends.

“There are misconceptions about farmers that we don’t care, but I consider myself an environmentalist.”

The Todhunters spend a fair bit of tabletalk time discussing the future of farming. This made Maria well prepared when asked to speak to the Environment Select Committee hearings on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill.

“I said to Dad I’d come along to the hearing to support him and watch, then the next minute I was sitting in front of everyone and being asked if there was anything I had to add!”

Maria spoke from the heart about what the property means to everyone in her

family and her belief that their farming methods are good environmental practices too.

“At Lake Heron we have every incentive to cherish and nurture the environment to make the most out of the farm and tourism aspects.”

As to her future involvement with the farm, she is not really sure at the moment and is focusing on engineering.

“Dad had another career and came back to the farm, so I’m pretty open-minded.”

Support for classers

When Maria was training in wool classing, woolclasser Nicola Peddie was at her side. In her visits with Maria, during shearing at Lake Heron, Nicola would talk about each fleece that came across the table.

“Having a consistent process for checking wool characteristics is key for consistency across the entire wool clip.

She says Maria is very methodical in personality anyway so this was naturally formed quickly.

Nicola would then leave her to class for a while, then go over the wool bins to ensure she was on the right track and staying consistent.

The other aspect of training was meeting the contract requirements. Nicola said the classer has to show they can lead the wool handling team and work closely with the head wool handler, to achieve the best outcome with the resources available.

As area manager and/or wool representative, Nicola completed a classing report for Maria. This includes an in-shed inspection as well as test results.

“The shed inspection involves checking what is required for the wool clip, and seeing if the preparation and oddments getting removed are consistent with this.”

Nicola says the dollars involved are significant.

“Over-preparation or under-preparation can make a significant difference across the total value of the wool clip.

“It takes into account the likes of micron, length, strength, colour, style.”

The report also involves ensuring the wool specification sheet is completed clearly and correctly. Lines are then weighed, cored and grabbed and the sample matched against the written specifications. Wools are then typed and allocated accordingly for brand partners, Nicola said.

“This completes the process and gives us the ability to complete the wool classer report which is then submitted back to the Wool Classers Association.”

Nicola says all growers are offered a preseason meeting to look at contract wool specs and opportunities.

“As part of this process some growers may like to include the wool classer.”

Nicola says when she was completing her NZ wool classers certificate, NZM were instrumental in the support they provided.

“Having a passion for the fibre is the foundation of this, and Maria genuinely has it.”

She says Maria has been fortunate to learn off her grandfather Bob who has more experience and wool knowledge than most in the industry.

‘I can see a picture of the feeding management through the year, when I look at the fleeces on the table.’

Maria told the Environment Select Committee of her belief that the family’s farming methods are good environmental practices.. Photo: Anna Munro.

Billed as the Mother of all Protests, farmers from around the country took to the streets of towns and cities on November 21 in the latest Groundswell protest against “unworkable regulations”. Our pictures show protests from Dunedin, Timaru and Palmerston North. Further protests planned include a Groundswell Gathering at Parliament in February.

Dear Aunty Thistledown,

I accidentally weighed our farmhand while we were weighing calves the other day.

I wrote Sam up in the little yellow notebook as a joke. But there is no joking when it comes to my wife and the farm records. She’s a real measure, manage and monitor type. She ran Sam’s numbers through one of those BMI calculators on the interweb and it told her Sam is overweight.

Wifey is now on a quest to make Sam smaller for “the good of his health”. She has replaced the butter with margarine and keeps switching the motorbike’s fuel tank to “reserve” so Sam gets more exercise.

Please tell her she is being ridiculous!

Regards, Chubby Checker

Dear CC, I know better than to tell a woman she is being ridiculous, but I feel safe using that term on the Body Mass Index (BMI). This 189-year-old cockroach of a mathematical equation comes in handy when comparing whole populations, but is about as accurate as a horoscope for telling us anything about the health of a single person.

Initially called the Quetelet index, the BMI was devised by Adolphe Quetelet, a mathematician who was studying the measurements of the average white male living in Belgium circa 1832. Quetelet wanted to find an equation that explained how someone’s weight

increased as they grew taller. He had no interest in obesity or health or telling people how much they should weigh, which is a good thing since his background was in astronomy.

Enter Ancel Keys, 140 years later, who had a chip on his shoulder about the way insurance companies were using height and weight tables on their customers. Keys revisited Quetelet’s index, which he rebranded as the BMI. After studying a selection of healthy men in five countries, Keys concluded that the BMI was “slightly better” at determining fatness than using a simple ratio of weight to height. How’s that for faint praise!

Keys has more accolades for the BMI. He said it couldn’t explain half of the variance in body fatness, but it was more convenient than submerging men in tanks to weigh them underwater or pinching them all over with skinfold calipers. Sounds like he was a little ho hum about our buddy the BMI.

During the 1980s and 1990s various health agencies set about making the BMI fit nicely into boxes so they could classify people as underweight or overweight, a task it was never designed to do. These categories are fairly arbitrary and in many cases are devised to classify 50% of the population as overweight or obese.

If Sam’s BMI is over, say, 25 then various health authorities will tell you that Sam “may” be overweight. The word “may” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Sam may have a lot of muscle which is heavier than fat. Sam may be genetically closer to a Shetland Pony or Clydesdale, than the (white, male) Thoroughbreds the scale was built on. Or, the 25 threshold may have been picked out of thin air and mean nothing.

Fat people have high BMIs, but not everybody who has a high BMI is fat. Which is completely fine, because you don’t need the BMI to tell you if Sam is fat. If you don’t trust your own judgement, then simply ask a young child.

Is there anything wrong with Sam being fat? Yes, but most of the downsides of being chubby are how other people might treat Sam.

The scientific link between fatness and poor health is nowhere near as cut and dried as you might think. Underweight people and obese people (BMI 30+) have a slighly lower life expentency than “normal” and “overweight” people. But that hides a lot of confounding issues. For example, there are plenty of diseases (and treatments) that cause people to gain or lose weight before they leave this mortal coil. There are also plenty of ways in which a patient’s weight might affect their access to effective treatment. Medicine and medical machinery have not been optimised for very small or very big patients. Hell, it wasn’t even that long ago when they started considering female test subjects in medical research.

The important thing, as it always has been, is for Sam to enjoy regular exercise and a variety of wholesome foods. Enjoy being the operative word. There is a special place in hell for people who leave the quad bike on reserve fuel.

Aunty Thistledown.

Cali Thistledown lives on a farm where all the gates are tied together with baling twine and broken dreams. While she rarely knows what day it is, she has a rolodex of experts to call on to get the info you need. She’s Kiwi agriculture’s agony aunt. Contact our editor if you have a question for her terry.brosnahan@nzfarmlife.co.nz

SOLUTIONS

Managing pesticide resistance threat

PESTICIDE RESISTANCE IS A SERIOUS challenge for the farming sector –decreasing its ability to manage pests and diseases such as blackspot (apples), powdery mildew (a fungal disease affecting a wide range of plants), diamond back moth and weeds affecting ryegrass.

Farmers, industry and government all have a part to play to manage it.

Farmers can follow simple measures to keep ahead of the game. When applying pesticides, following label instructions ensures products are - and will remaineffective against the pests threatening the quality and yields of their crops.

Resistance issues can occur if products aren’t mixed properly and the dose of active ingredient is either measured in excess or below the prescribed amount on the label. This can allow resistant populations to multiply.

Other measures include reducing the reliance on specific products and using pesticides with other pest management strategies.

Crop rotation and alternating agrichemicals with different modes of action are strategies farmers can use to delay the development of resistant insects, weeds and diseases.

Pesticide resistance is cited by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as one of the main global concerns for the future success of agriculture. A loss of pesticide options could have important economic and environmental consequences for New Zealand.

“New Zealand is a small market for bringing in new pesticides. This limits the products offered to farmers and growers and increases the chances of resistance developing,” Agcarm chief executive Mark Ross says. “The government must continue to address regulatory delays to introducing new products, especially those that are based on softer and greener chemistry, such as biopesticides.

The crop protection industry is committed to supporting best practice use of the industry's products. It invests heavily in the research and development of new actives and products, and stewardship activities to ensure pesticides are not only economically viable and safe to use, but

also environmentally sustainable.

Pesticides include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides and are used to manage pests - mainly insects, pathogens (fungi, bacteria and viruses etc) and weeds.

Pesticide resistance prevention and management uses pesticides in ways that delay or avoid resistance in pest populations, and depends on:

• Understanding the mechanisms of resistance and its development

• Reliable methods for monitoring and detecting resistance

• The availability of strategies to prevent or delay the development of resistance and minimise the impact of resistance that has already occurred.

An ag plane sprays fungicide on a legume crop.

HUMAN TRIAL FOR LINCOLN GENE THERAPY

Lincoln University researchers have received United States Food and Drug Administration approval for in-human clinical trials of their gene therapy for the treatment of CLN5 Batten disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disease affecting children.

The CLN5 form of Batten disease appears early in a child’s life and causes brain degeneration manifesting in devastating symptoms including vision loss, seizures, dementia, abnormal movements and inability to communicate. Sufferers typically die in their teens.

Until now there has been no cure and no hope of treatment, but the Lincolndeveloped gene therapy is a potentially transformative treatment for the CLN5 patient community.

Over the past decade, Professor David Palmer and Doctors Nadia Mitchell and Samantha Murray have been developing their gene therapy in sheep with a naturally-occurring form of the disease.

“The brains of sheep with Batten disease shrink, as do the brains of humans with the condition,” Dr Mitchell says, .

Poplars under attack

A NEW PEST IS INVADING THE South Island. Poplar and Willow Research Trust general manager Ian McIvor said they were asking farmers to scan their eyes over their poplar trees for a hairy poplar sawfly.

It was only known around Dunedin and the Taieri Plains, but the bug could be moving undetected around the country, especially after potentially hitch hiking through the winter on farm machinery.

The hairy poplar sawfly has a fluffy yellow caterpillar covered in rows of black spots. The chewing life stage is most obvious from November to February

They are the larvae of a type of plantfeeding wasp, commonly named a sawfly. It’s similar to the sawfly that feeds on willows, but is not a type of insect present in New Zealand.

Having evolved in Europe on European poplars, in the 1880s they invaded North

America where they damaged American poplar species.

They are capable of defoliating entire trees, but it is hoped they will never outbreak to such an extent in NZ due to its more temperate climate. It may become a more serious pest when it reaches areas with warmer summer temperatures, such as Central Otago or the east coast of the North Island.

Most of the poplar tree species in NZ landscape are susceptible to the poplar sawfly to some degree. If a hairy yellow caterpillar, between 1cm and 3cm long is found chewing on poplar leaves the trust asks that people to take a photograph and upload it to https:// inaturalist.nz/home. This will be shared with professional entomologists who will identify it, and then be able to track the pest as it spreads through NZ.

Visit www.poplarandwillow.org.nz

“When we have replaced the missing gene in affected sheep before they display symptoms, in most cases the disease has been prevented. When we replace the gene after the sheep begin to display symptoms, the therapy has slowed the progress of the disease.”

Sponsored by Neurogene Inc (USA), a company founded to bring life-changing genetic medicines to patients and families affected by rare neurological diseases, the Lincoln team have received US FDA approval for their Investigational New Drug Application, clearing the way for the first in-human clinical trials of their CLN5 gene therapy.

The first clinical trial is expected to initiate at the University of Rochester (New York) in the first half of 2022.

“The FDA approval is life-changing news, not just for our research team, and for the university, but especially for thousands of Batten disease patients globally, “ Dr Mitchell says.

• Visit research.lincoln.nz for more information

Top left: Tim Mehrtens on his Waimate farm with wool shedding Wiltshire lambs. Top right: No more “clip go the shears…” Middle right: Sheep graze a hillside on Kim Robinson’s Glen Murray farm. Above: “Get up”: Kim Robinson’s dogs board the side-by-side.

Top left: In the woolshed gym with Richard Gavigan. Top right: Tree protection on Peter Arthur’s East Coast farm. Centre: R2 Angus Hereford heifers on Gilbert and Diana Timms’ Shannon farm. Above left: Pine trees being harvested in 2018 on Paul Burt’s farm, now on its second rotation of production radiata forest. Above right: Totara Slab Hut on Bay of Islands farmers Neville and Linda Lewis’ farm.

That’s the number of amazing contributors funding the Campaign for Wool New Zealand and National Council of New Zealand Wool Interests.

Thank you.

Let’s change the wool industry. Together.

nzwool.co.nz