Country-Wide July 2022

BACKING FARMERS

PYRAMID’S SCHEME

A look at Chris Dawkins family’s award-winning farming operation in Marlborough, p28

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Efficiency is the answer

THE HE WAKA EKE NOA DEAL HAS been put to the Government and we wait on whether or not it will be accepted.

Is it a fair deal? It was made under duress so many farmers would say no.

It was Hobson’s choice. Supporters say it is better than going into the ETS.

Industry bodies may think it is the best deal they could strike, but many farmers will see it as just another tax. Farmers with mortgages to pay and trying to make a living in an uncertain, inflationary environment, will not welcome this deal.

It is a political problem and needs a political answer not a farmer one. If accepted by the Government it will buy some time before the general election about 16 months away. The Government seems to be in decline and doing everything it can not to be elected.

The question is will an incoming Government allow He Waka to be scrapped or even changed? It’s a question farmers need to know well before voting next year.

Expert advice to farmers is not to rush in. Farmers need to push for more details before creating a plan or reducing emissions. What they have to do is work out their emissions and sequestration numbers before the end of the year.

He Waka is politically expedient rather than efficient.

Do we need to be the first country to tax ag emissions? We already have a great story, low carbon footprint and a cooling, not warming effect on the planet. Action affecting food production is contrary to the Paris Accord.

A more efficient way to reduce greenhouse gases is not to tax, but to leave farmers to continue as world leaders at farming with a low carbon footprint.

The red meat sector has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 30% since 1990 through efficiency. Greater efficiency meant more product from fewer stock.

The industry bodies had argued all along that He Waka Eke Noa and methane targets were separate issues despite critics saying it was like saying petrol and oil prices were separate.

A week after the announcement of the final He Waka proposal to Government, Dairy NZ and Beef + Lamb NZ chairmen, Jim van der Poel and Andrew Morrison put out a statement saying methane is not the problem. The measurement used by the Government, GWP100, was accurate for carbon, not methane. It hugely overstates biogenic methane’s warming impact. The GWP* was a better measurement for methane and reflecting the warming impact.

Groundswell and its supporters should be furious. A grassroot organisation made up of volunteers who put in countless hours for more than a year to argue for GWP* and focus on the warming effect, not emissions.

Farmers will be asking why did the industry bodies choose He Waka Eke Noa, a tax, as the option when methane isn’t the problem.

Terry Brosnahan

Next issue: August 2022

Rural crime: Watch out for crooks in the back blocks.

Long-acting drenches: Caution against their blanket use as a pre-lamb treatment.

Aerial work: Why drones are now a good option.

Vertical integration: An integrated livestock operation ensures succession.

Contents

48 A FAT LOT OF GOOD

Nicola Dennis explains the benefits of IMF.

74

KEEPING IT LOW COST AND SIMPLE

A Rangitikei couple are farming family lease blocks with the aim of eventually buying their own farm.

16

HE WAKA EKE NOA

The proposed methane price could be damaging.

8 BOUNDARIES

HOME BLOCK

11 Paul Burt gets on the blower to chat to a Minister

12 Mark Guscott sorts through the debris of recent storms

13 Charlotte Rietveld’s Grandad ticks off a century

14 Dani Darke contemplates rural community spirit

15 Robert Hodgkins prepares to start milking sheep

BUSINESS

16 He Waka Eke Noa: Proposed methane price damaging

18 He Waka Eke Noa: ‘Know your GHG number’

20

NEVER THE TWINE SHALL MEET

28

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

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The ewe flock is the powerhouse for a family farming operation in Marlborough.

Chris Dawkins award-winning farming operation in Marlborough’s Waihopai Valley.

Photo: Jess and Paul Jones.

An unusual equity partnership has taken out this year’s Tararua Farmer of the Year title.

Pure wool yoga mats

PURE WOOL EXERCISE MATS TICK ALL THE COMFORT and sustainability boxes ensuring they are right at home in the hippest of yoga studios while adding value to strong wool.

The brainchild of the Schwass family, who farm Kaiora Downs, a 1400-hectare hill country sheep and beef property near Culverden, the exercise mats were born out of a passion for wool and a frustration with continually poor returns for their 31-32-micron wool clip.

Determined to do something about it, Jane Schwass says they were adamant they didn’t want to send their wool overseas in order to add value to it.

It was an encounter with a wool processor who had wool felting machinery that set them on the path to producing exercise mats.

Produced with an ethos of minimal impact, the mats are simply washed, dyed and felted and given a latex rubber backing.

Jane says being wool, the mats are warm, luxurious, antimicrobial, they breathe and they don’t slip. At the end of their working life, they can be used as a pet bed, weed matting or simply allowed to decompose.

The family started small with their venture by just sending a couple of bales away for processing into mats, in January of this year the whole clip (second shear) went down to the scouring plant in Timaru.

Jane, who farms alongside her husband Mark, says their adult children have all had some input into the venture.

A family chat group allowed the Schwass’ to consult with each other at every stage of the process from the design through to the manufacturing and marketing. A family friend has helped with the marketing of the mats which has only just got underway.

The wool that goes into the mats is produced by the family’s 3600 crossbred ewes who are shorn six monthly.

The family have a strong environmental focus and have undertaken significant planting in the 20 years they have farmed the farm.

The mats are $95 + postage and available from www. kaioradownsmats.co.nz

DON’T BLAME THE WAR

No one should be surprised by soaring food costs, least of all food producers. The only surprise is that people are blaming the war in Ukraine. For years food producers have been telling anyone who will listen that their costs of production were rising sharply, much of it driven by new and restrictive Government rules and regulation.

The fact is the cheap prices consumers have enjoyed for years have been subsidised by producers unable to fully pass on those rising costs. That may now be changing and with the full financial impact of climate change and other environmental policies still to come, consumers had better be prepared. These prices may just be the start.

CONFERENCE MINING

There must be money in running conferences judging by the multitude on offer. Of course conferences need speakers and I was amused to be invited to speak, via email, on so many topics except agriculture. From architecture and engineering to customer excellence, my expertise aligned with the conference to make me a “strong fit for an opportunity to speak”.

I was flattered but also suspicious it was part of a scam. Most appeared to be from Proqis, a division of Global Media Research, and seemed legit.

Maybe I should make a paradigm shift, reposition myself in the global economy and sign up. Throw in lots of psycho babble, do some pivoting and reaching out, call it a journey and talk about the learnings, going forward.

All suggestions on how to fill out a 45-minute slot and land this plane will be gratefully accepted. – Editor

JOKE

An Irishman walks into a bar in London at lunchtime and orders three pints of Guinness. He takes them to a table and starts drinking them, a sip at a time from each in sequence. It’s unusual but the barman’s busy and doesn’t ask. The next day the Irishman returns at lunch and does the same thing. This goes on for a week, so the barman eventually asks, “So, what’s with the three pints?”

The Irishman replies, “Simple. I have a brother back home in Dublin and another in New York, and we all promised we’d drink like this, as a way of staying close and keeping each other in mind, y’know.” Which satisfies the barman. The days become weeks and months, the Irishman becomes a regular. Everyone knows and loves him. The ritual became a part of the pub’s folklore.

One lunchtime, the Irishman comes in and orders two pints of Guinness.

Silence descends on the pub as the Irishman takes his pints to his table. The barman, awkward as all hell but feeling like he has to say something, comes over to the Irishman and says, “Er, listen, Paddy, I just wanted to say I - well, we - we’re all so sorry for your loss, and, if there’s anything we can do to, y’know, help or anything...”

The Irishman looks up at the barman, his face a mask of incomprehension - until suddenly, understanding hits him and he starts laughing.

“What? You thought - aw c’mon man, it’s nothing like that! I just quit drinking!”

CONSULTATION CHANCE

Farmers may get another chance for feedback on agriculture greenhouse gas pricing, after Cabinet considers it, and it goes for wider public consultation.

B+LNZ Director, Nicky Hyslop, said public consultation will start about October and the farm organisation will seek any method possible to talk to the proposal again.

She said the time for turning a blind eye and thinking ag emissions tax won’t happen, is past.

“That battle for that was in 2019, when talk was about bringing ag into the ETS.”

She said He Waka was a last-minute call by ag partners, and has allowed time for our industries to shape their own solution. The process had given them the advantage of getting the split gas proposal and onfarm sequestration in.

“It’s still bittersweet, but better than the ETS alternative.”

One positive from the latest He Waka recommendation is for the Government to prioritise work on nature-based solutions, and biodiversity credits. This shows a move to give farmers recognition for environmental services.

Farmers who don’t understand He Waka should talk to a rural professional, including their accountant, Hyslop said. “Or jump on the B+LNZ website.”

• More on He Waka Eke Noa p16.

DID YOU KNOW?

Artificial intelligence is coming for all our jobs, right? It’s so smart that it can drive a car and hold a reasonably coherent conversion. However, since it is teaching itself, it can come up with some fairly flimsy logic. CLIP, an artificial intelligence image processing workhorse from openai.com, has been stumped by a Granny Smith apple.

A not-at-all convincing Ipod logo attached to the aforementioned apple convinced CLIP that it was looking at Steve Job’s favourite music players. Likewise, pasting some dollar signs on a poodle tricked CLIP into declaring the pooch a piggy bank.

THE VIEW FROM SKY

Australian Sky News host Chris Smith described New Zealand as a laughing stock as he talked about NZ’s latest policy to tax its sheep and other livestock for belching and flatulence.

On June 12, on Chris Smith Tonight, Smith said, in a world first, NZ farmers would be charged for their livestock emissions, which he described as an outrageous tax.

Smith said NZ was on a charge to be net zero by 2050 no matter what the world was facing in economic crisis. NZ was not a major emitter at 24 in the world rankings, and this new policy would drive up grocery prices even more.

The fact was agriculture was the only industry which actively removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and he asked when was the logic going to be seen. The fact was, any tax on biogenic methane would be passed on to consumers.

“Something which was not needed right now – further pressures on our cost of living,” Smith said.

CORRECTION

In the Country-Wide June edition onfarm report ‘Seeking the best of both worlds’ about North Otago’s Awakino Station, manager Dan Devine’s partner Jasmine Mathisen’s name was mis-spelled. We regret the error.

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HOME BLOCK Matata

Wrestle an opportunity

RATHER THAN SKYPE OR ZOOM I PREFER good old fashioned telephone interviews these days.

I do so to avoid unconscious bias creeping into the exchange. Because the other party can’t see me and only hears a lower-octave voice, it should avoid tainted responses because of who I am… obviously a late middle-aged (okay, early old age) white male farmer (you can pick ’em a mile off) and this sub-set carries the baggage of perceived wealth, environmental disregard, chauvinism and general privilege.

It also avoids those other identity issues. I’m pretty sure I’m a Mr but the last thing we want is for someone's feelings to be hurt because of how they prefer to be known, or how they dress or how much they eat. When you are only using your ears, ignorance is bliss.

Armed with these solid communication principles I sought an interview with the Minister of Conservation.

PB. Good Morning your Honour. Thank you for taking the time for a chat.

MC. You are welcome, but my people haven’t briefed me as to why I’m talking to an average person.

PB. Simply because we share a common occupation and have a lot to offer each other.

MC. How so?

PB. We are both in the business of managing resources. (Depending on who I am talking to I use this phraseology to elevate my occupational status)

MC. That’s interesting, what resources specifically?

PB. The big ones… land, people, water, flora and fauna.

MC. That’s impressive, it’s a wonder we haven’t crossed paths before now.

PB. You need to appreciate, Minister, that despite the common thread our performance indicators are quite different. First, I’ve been at it a lot longer than you, 32 years and counting, and that allows some logical continuity. Secondly, project success is not negotiable. I am history if I fail, the money I invest is my own (okay half is Louise’s and the other half is the bank’s but I’m personally accountable for it all). Thirdly, I can’t abide wastage and inefficiency hence I see asset and opportunity where you see cost and liability.

MC. Well, you can’t hold me to account for being part of the flawed but most acceptable political system

available. Do you have a particular area of concern?

PB. I do actually, the price of organic pet food.

MC. Pardon?

PB. It’s about opportunity and the fauna part of your portfolio, animal pests as you call them. Because of your honourable youthfulness you can’t remember when a kilo of wild protein (skin-on venison carcase) was worth an hour of a farm boys’ wages, about $20.00 in today’s minimum wage terminology. Admittedly that was for human consumption but even at half that return for pet food it would be a useful prop to the rural economy.

MC. Stop there. You know that 1080 is our most effective tool for pests and we can’t jeopardise its use with unintended contamination of food products, even pet food.

PB. It’s been spread upstream from my house and I was assured that was safe.

MC. We won’t get into that debate and besides if you give a pest species economic value, people will “farm” them with minimal reduction in numbers.

PB. Worldwide, name me a wild animal species that’s survived when the price on its head is high enough.

MC. My people have to be in control or it will be a shambles.

PB. If the rewards are there nothing will compete with the efficiency of private enterprise.

MC. The set-up costs would cripple the idea before it got up and running.

PB. You were party to the meat for the needy programme where 30 tonnes of wild venison was harvested from Fiordland and distributed to those who can’t normally afford good meat. All parties involved trimmed their costs and made it work. We are already spending vast sums and the resource is being wasted. The hunter/gatherer community in NZ is very active, skilled and responsible. Ask the old guys how scarce deer were when a carcase was worth a week's wages.

MC. If it is the opportunity you indicate, someone would be involved already.

PB. They are in a small way but bureaucracy hampers them at every turn. Government departments don’t have a reputation for being visionary. Here is your chance to wrestle an opportunity out of a problem and really make a name for yourself.

MC. It’s been nice talking to you. I’ll get my people to make a note and put it on file.

“Project success is not negotiable. I am history if I fail, the money I invest is my own (okay half is Louise’s and the other half is the bank’s but I’m personally accountable for it all).”

Paul Burt gets on the blower to chat to a Minister.

Then the floods arrived

I’VE HEARD A SAYING THAT GOES “JUST when you think things are going well”. That was definitely the case this cropping season.

The normal rainfall tally in February is about 40mm, but we ended up with nearly 300mm. Combine that with December’s rain being twice the normal and it ended up being a real shit show when it came to harvesting time.

We harvested ryegrass seed in January as normal with decent yields. Then the floods arrived. A flood here on our river flats isn’t unusual. We have stop banks that keep most of it out and we accept a bit of risk as Mother Nature holds all the trump cards.

It ended up being a big bastard of a flood that over-topped the stop banks and burst them in two places, so the river cranked through our irrigated flats for a couple of days. Goodbye to the sweetcorn and the squash and as usual when things go bad, they are our two best margin crops.

One small paddock of peas was harvested in February, but I probably shouldn’t have even bothered as the yields were terrible. Thankfully our clover seed and maize grain ended up with decent yields so not all is lost.

We’re lucky here that we also have a decent-sized sheep and beef enterprise going on and that has done the heavy lifting for this season in terms of paying the bills. We’ll still end up losing money this year though which is pretty frustrating.

This stuff always happens at the worst times too, doesn’t it? We’ve just done some expansion and taken on more staff and debt to go with it. It has been one of those times when the resilience has been tested and found to be in a good place. That’s been my lesson from this episode.

A large chunk of what we do on the farm is around trading lambs. For the last few years, we’ve

been buying 80% of our lambs from three other farmers. It’s been working well and they’re good stock from good farmers and the general timing seems to work for all of us.

But these other businesses don’t stay still either, one has sold to trees, one lost a lease and the third bought a finishing farm of their own and then we went and expanded so I had a higher demand from a lower supply. Two of the original three farms will still supply us in the years ahead but maybe a bit less but we’ve found what we needed for this season and developed a few new contacts for the seasons ahead.

Life is about people, in my opinion, and if we can manage these relationships well then I can’t see why we can’t keep doing business for years into the future.

The old chestnut of inflation has been getting a fair bit of airtime recently. This has happened before and it’ll happen again. It’s a bit unsettling though with some of the costs going up as fast as they have.

We’ve pared back a bit on some inputs but the rubber will hit the road in the spring when we start cropping. Some of the early grain contracts have gone up a lot on the income side but when you add in a best guess at the costs we’ll be worse off growing these crops. There’s a bit of pain still to come for all of us yet I think. I’ll be a lot more thorough when I’m working out these margins during the winter.

I’ve recently read a short story called, “Who stole my cheese?”. It’s about a couple of mice in a maze and I would highly recommend it for those people struggling with all the changes happening now. It’s a light read with lots of good messages, and you might just find something in there that helps navigate your way through your own maze.

First there was December’s rain, then came February’s deluge. Mark Guscott sorts through the damage in Carterton.

“This stuff always happens at the worst times too, doesn’t it? We’ve just done some expansion and taken on more staff and debt to go with it...”

The river cranked through our irrigated flats for a couple of days.

Ticking off a century

While Grandad Colin recommends sleep to cope with constant rain during lambing, Charlotte Rietveld celebrates his century of wisdom and humour.

WE’RE YET TO SEE WHAT DELIGHTS

July brings but June sure has been memorable. In our little slice of MidCanterbury, the lush, wet year has continued. Exponentially. We’ve had 140mm of rain for the first half of June alone.

Farm tracks are rivers, paddocks unenterable and gateways a bog. We could be forgiven for thinking we were in eastern Southland. After a couple of years living there, I concluded the people were outstanding, the cheese rolls legendary, big beer bottles resplendent but the weather atrocious.

Give me a cool, crisp and clear Canterbury winter’s day where a rain-jacket needn’t constantly be within a one metre radius. I do miss Invercargill’s lovely wide streets, though, one must never underestimate the merits of parking ease.

Someone who certainly does not take such things for granted is my old mate Grandad. Having already lived well beyond expectations, he has now reached the almighty milestone of a century.

Despite his age being quite the achievement, Grandad would say passing a driver’s licence test at 100 is the feat. You sure do appreciate places of parking ease when you’ve been around for that long.

Given the circumstances, the 100th birthday celebrations remained fluid to the end. While the obligatory liquids were quaffed, arranging any event during a pandemic, let alone with a guest list of similarly aged mates is not for the …faint hearted.

If you rightly thought that pun was dreadful, you should hear some of Grandad’s jokes. Raising the betting standard to a triple-elevated century-old great-grandad pinnacle of Dad-jokes, he has some blinders.

Living in Methven, at the foot of Mount Hutt, he’s particularly chuffed with his latest; “I don’t need to go skiing, I’m going downhill fast enough as it is”. This, and various other favourite stories are readily repeated at regular intervals.

But don’t be fooled into thinking Grandad has lost his marbles, far from it. He’s well up to date with

“Having spent 50 years as a MidCanterbury cropping farmer, he can sort the wheat from the chaff. As one of the first local farmers to sell his ewe flock, he launched into lamb trading and never looked back.”

global politics, knows where the markets are at and don’t dare mention Mahuta. Having spent 50 years as a Mid-Canterbury cropping farmer, he can sort the wheat from the chaff. As one of the first local farmers to sell his ewe flock, he launched into lamb trading and never looked back.

It is here that he imparts his greatest life advice: “buy the small lambs”. I suspect Grandad’s advice is focused solely on the compensatory growth potential of lighter livestock, but I have backed any underdog ever since.

Years ahead of his time with all the wellbeing coaches that abound, Grandad’s advice is simple when it comes to adverse events. A downpour during lambing? “Sleep. There’s nothing you can do about it. Take 2 aspirin, put cotton wool in your ears and get a decent night’s sleep.”

How many Grandads are out there actively encouraging drug use eh? Told you he’s up with it. Not that I would particularly trust Grandad’s medical advice. Once when my grandmother was suffering from ill health and hyperventilating, Grandad sprung into action. Realising she was short of oxygen he had just the answer; retrieving the old Hoover from the cupboard, he switched it to blow and kept it directly in front of her. It’s miraculous she survived the day, let alone another 40 years.

But Grandad doesn’t let trifling issues such as mortality bother him. Recently placed under my four-year-old’s filterless interrogatory heat, he barely missed a beat.

“Great-Grandad, will you die soon?”

“Yes” he replied, “I suppose I will” while grinning. He hadn’t recognised he was volleying with his own genetic bluntness until the reply put him in his place.

“Oh right. Do you have any biscuits?”

A wise investor to the end, these days Grandad is craftily taking out The Press subscriptions at threemonthly intervals - no refunds should you pop your clogs you see. Alas, I inherited neither his farming nor financial prowess. Anyone want to buy my small lambs?

HOME BLOCK Rakaia Gorge

Serial small lamb buyer Colin Watson, celebrating 100 years of age with granddaughter Charlotte Rietveld.

Doing our bit in the sticks

IT'S ONE OF THOSE SQUALLY, HEAVY shower kind of days – the ones where MetService shows a symbol of a sun behind a light cloud and a few rain drops. Sometimes I wonder if the people that work for the weather forecasters actually ever look out the window.

After a massive amount of rain over the past few weeks we have had a slip come down, taking out fences and a culvert along the way. The digger has come through and tidied up where he can but it's left behind a bit of a mess. So today has been spent dodging the showers and helping my beloved fix fences.

Squelching around in the mud and the showers isn’t the funnest way to spend a morning, but the paddock is needed by the ewes and so the show must go on. I am often surprised by Anthony’s tenacity when confronted by a job like this one. Maybe the grittiness and determination our rural men exhibit harks back to the pioneering spirit this country was built on.

When I am facing a job in mud up to the tops of my gumboots, with cold fingers, wet running down the inside of my jacket, and wire that doesn’t want to be strained, I have a tendency to feel a bit overwhelmed. I wonder what kind of New Zealand would have been created if everyone had felt that way.

I often contemplate the extraordinary attributes of rural folk. Perhaps it's because I’m really an outsider, having been brought up in Wellington, that I see things in this way.

I do a bit of work with Rural Coach around family succession planning, and business strategy planning. One of the first things we do with people is a ‘discovery’ process where people write down what is most important to them, and what they really value in life. It’s really interesting to me that ‘community’ is virtually always a top three value for rural people.

However, when I talk to their urban family members as part of the process, that isn’t always the case. That got me thinking about the things rural people do within their communities. We all know that in a small community there are many roles but not many people to do them, so people end up doing a lot. Most rural people see this as just part of being in a small community – not a chore, but a way to be connected and to help the community be strong. There is almost a succession of roles to be taken on, starting with being on the Playcentre committee, moving through to the Cossie Club and Sports Day committees, and then on to the local Lions Club.

I am part of a farm business discussion group and at one of our field days the group was accused of being too profit-driven, and not focused enough on other outcomes. I took exception to this as I knew what the members in our group did as part of their everyday farming lives. I decided to do a stocktake. The list was long and varied and included school board of trustees chair and several trustees; Fed Farmers regional chair; catchment group founder and chair; rugby, soccer, hockey, cricket coaches and coordinators; senior rugby referee; pony club president; local fundraiser event manager and track managers; dog trial committee members; farmer director; first responder; dentist association secretary; school stock scheme manager; Search and Rescue volunteer, the list goes on. Most are unpaid community service that the group did because that’s what happens in small communities.

This is the reality of what rural people do needs to be understood by government when they think about rural communities. When compared to many of our urban counterparts, rural people are doing more than their share of keeping their community alive, and therefore keeping NZ alive, and that needs to be recognised.

City-raised Dani Darke pulls her boots out of the autumn mud to contemplate rural people’s community spirit.

“When I am facing a job in mud up to the tops of my gumboots, with cold fingers, wet running down the inside of my jacket, and wire that doesn’t want to be strained, I have a tendency to feel a bit overwhelmed.”

HOME BLOCK Aria

Enterprise stacking

more from less

WE'RE IN THE MIDST OF OUR SHEEP dairy build at the moment. We received planning permission on April 25 and we hope to start milking around June 15 so it's pretty full throttle. Neither of us have ever milked before so we're relying heavily on our new dairy shepherdess Robbyn, and a lot of our Nuffield dairying friends to direct us.

Only one Holstein and one Jersey dairy farm are left in Hertfordshire - before refrigeration all of our county would've been dairy farms because of its proximity to London (50 kilometres to the centre).

Dairying has now moved to the west of England where greater rainfall favours ryegrass production, so we're somewhat bucking the trend, as we were when we set up our sheep flock, at which time only two other significant flocks existed in the county - so why are we so determined to do the opposite to everyone else?

Well, we are large tenant farmers on modern agreements (historically a lot of tenant farmers have been on three-generation 'AHA' tenancies which include buildings, houses and sometimes workers' cottages at a very reasonable rent). We also have no interest in diversification - most of our tenancies preclude the obvious things neighbours have adopted such as caravan storage, farm shops, holiday cottages, commercial property lets, dog walking paddocks (no seriously), horse stables etc. So to keep paying big commercial rents purely from farming is very unusual, particularly in our part of the world where the soil is not great and there's no irrigation.

So how do we do it? Enterprise stacking (a very modern version of mixed farming) allows us to produce more from less area. Before we started farming our farms, they only directly employed one person and produced some straw, wheat, barley, oilseed rape, some hay for horses and about 200 ewes. All with a great reliance on inorganic fertiliser and chemicals.

Ten years into our management, we are a team of six now, still producing wheat and barley, but also quinoa, borage, oats, grass for seed and peas, running 2500 ewes (with room for more) and milking 300 ewes (should be 600 in two years time).

We grow cover crops before spring crops allowing us to graze sheep over winter and reduce fertiliser inputs. We graze our winter crops allowing a huge reduction in chemicals. We use herbal leys for grazing that receive no fert, weed wipers for low chem use.

An inter-row hoe reduces our herbicide costs and works on our resistant grass weed population we inherited. We only bale spring barley straw as we have no need for straw and neither does anyone in the area (others bale for burning in a power station) but I'd rather return ours to the soil to reduce fertiliser reliance.

And there's further room for chickens - both meat and egg birds - with little detriment to what we're producing already.

The modern bit for us is in making each enterprise as profitable and thus sustainable in its own right. Our system has developed over 10 years and this year has brutally highlighted our most sustainable enterprisethe dairy and our riskiest enterprise, arable cropping.

Even with all the steps we have taken, our arable cropping still relies too heavily on unsustainable inputs of inorganic fert propping it up. We use N testers, N sensors, endophyte seed dressings etc to reduce our N requirements, so where our predecessor would have applied 220kg/ha N, we can grow the same yields on 90-120kg/ha N but I believe we need to reduce this further through better-formulated fertilisers perhaps?

We have seen fert prices triple, crop, chem and diesel prices double, we have bought additional fuel tanks, allowing us to make more strategic fuel purchases rather than panic buy.

Last time I did the sums, we needed to find an extra £100,000 (NZ$195,000) to get the arable crops to harvest, and we would receive an extra £100,000 from selling them at the 'new prices'. This sum has fluctuated a bit over the spring, but crudely this is the situation, so no greater profit for the arable, just a greater cash demand and many argue greater risk of growing crops.

The sheep and dairy systems are far less reliant on 'bought-in energy' so we are able to pocket the extra profit increased food prices have created.

“...still producing wheat and barley, but also quinoa, borage, oats, grass for seed and peas, running 2500 ewes and milking 300 ewes...”

As Robert Hodgkins prepares to start milking sheep in Hertfordshire, England, he describes how his farming operation has adapted to soaring costs.

HOME BLOCK Hertfordshire, England

HE WAKA EKE NOA

PROPOSED METHANE PRICE DAMAGING

The proposed methane price would likely see an overshoot in meeting the Government’s emissions reduction targets, and cause unnecessary economic damage. Joanna Grigg reports.

It’s all about the pricing of emissions. Too high and some farmers could go out of business, pushing food production offshore. According to the Beef + Lamb NZ’s (B+LNZ) June 2022 analysis, the most likely farms to feel the squeeze first, are extensive beef, sheep and deer farms. They typically have a low stocking rate, a high proportion of breeding stock and low profit margins.

B+LNZ are concerned that the chosen modelling figures by Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership, He Waka Eke Noa, (35 cents per kilogram for methane) implies this is needed to meet New Zealand’s 2030 emissions targets.

In the June report, the sheep and beef farm organisation states this price would be “extremely damaging to many sheep and beef farmers and would likely see an overshoot in meeting the government’s emissions reduction targets, and cause unnecessary economic damage.”

These are strong words for the organisation that is a member of He Waka.

It proposes an alternative maximum start price for methane, at 11c/kg, with a price ceiling to keep under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) level.

Even at 11c, the profit before tax loss is modelled to be a 11% decline. At the top end, one in four farms would see more than 10% of their profit used up paying emissions tax, it predicts.

The flip side is that, if the price is too low, the ‘big stick’ to flog farmers to reduce methane and nitrous

oxide emissions, won’t be painful enough to enact change.

Where this point is, is the tricky bit.

He Waka Eke Noa modelling estimates that a farmlevel split-gas levy will result in a fall in production of 0.1%. This drop in meat exported would be picked up by overseas producers. This shift overseas, to less efficient producers, is known as emissions leakage.

A high ETS carbon price and no hand brakes on exotic pine plantings has been the biggest driver to reduce stock emissions, simply by land use change. This is not the preferred way to reduce NZ’s emissions, as it pulls whole farms out of production.

acceptable, especially when the tools are not there to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from stock yet.”

She said the maximum must be 11 cents, and capped for three years at least.

While boluses, or seaweed solutions might be bandied about, B+LNZ did not assume any use of incentive payments. This is because, at this point, low methane sheep genetics is probably the only practical solution available.

The B+LNZ analysis was possibly far too generous in sequestration offset returns. It assumed farmers would get 100% of the ETS price for carbon, when it’s likely to be 75%.

“Although we will push for 90% of the value,” Hyslop said.

Also, only 10% of pre-1990 indigenous cover on farms will possibly get accepted into He Waka offsets. This is because of the blanket stock exclusion rule. The analysis assumed 100%. This means the decline in profit could be even worse than predicted.

It’s a very challenging picture. Not counting sequestration, the analysis shows three in four farms will have profit before tax reduced by 10% or greater. One in four farms will see it reduced by 30% or more.

When a generous sequestration allowance is added in, half of farms have profit before tax cut by 10% and one in seven farms see a cut of over 30%. This paints a clear picture. Getting sequestration recognised is going to be an important ingredient for extensive farms. And why shouldn’t it be.

Plugging in the correct ‘system settings’ for greenhouse gases will be crucial to the competitiveness and viability of NZ’s ag sector. The people behind the system settings would be the proposed System Oversight Board. He Waka recommended they be primary sector experts and representatives. They would work alongside an independent Maori board. They will be empowered to recommend to the Government the levy rates, and how revenue is to be collected.

B+LNZ said farmers need to get full access to their sequestration offsets, to control the economic fallout. This conclusion comes from their 2019/20 Sheep and Beef Farm Survey of 452 farms, using stock numbers, fertiliser use and possible sequestration areas.

While the average farm might cope, analysis shows the diversity of farm types means some are vulnerable to severe economic effects. Extensive farms are the most sensitive due to limited ability to reduce stocking rate and inputs further.

B+LNZ director Nicky Hyslop said it supported the model using averages, but analysis must look across the range of farms to see the effects.

“It’s super important to test it across all types and geographies.

“It shows that methane at 35 cents is simply not

The full report is available at https://beeflambnz.com/ sites/default/files/levies/files/BLNZ-Modelling-ReportHWEN.pdf

Sequestration won’t make farmers rich

While one hand gives sequestration rewards, the other hand is taking it away in emissions tax. Farmers won’t get rich in the wash-up.

Signing up eligible trees for sequestration through He Waka is unlikely to be a profit-making exercise but it will help, especially extensive farms that can’t drop capital stocking rates much more. Analysis by B+LNZ shows the importance of sequestration, to reduce the economic implications of the emissions levy on sheep and beef farming businesses.

But it predicts that, at a methane price of 35c/kg, there will still be significant impacts on sheep and beef farmers’ profit, even if all sequestration is included.

The June-released He Waka proposals are not very generous with sequestration allowances.

One big sticking point is that, as a minimum, pre2008 indigenous tree areas may have to be fenced off from stock (or stock excluded somehow) to be eligible. Whipping up a fence is easy to say but expensive in reality.

Are fences needed? Larger regenerating areas may be able to withstand some light stocking rate grazing of

Table 1: Estimated gross emissions reductions acheived through existing policies, waste and farm-level levy by 2030.

A high ETS carbon price and no hand brakes on exotic pine plantings has been the biggest driver to reduce stock emissions.

stock, and still be a healthy regenerating forest. Why fence with carbon hungry materials? There may be natural boundaries to exclude stock. Nicky Hyslop, B+LNZ Director said much more work is needed on sequestration rates on-farms.

There has been one welcome change in the original proposal, since farmer consultation. This is that these pre-2008 unfenced areas of regeneration might be able to be counted, if they have Active Ecological Management that allows regeneration. This would have to be proven by “a suitably qualified sequestration expert” who can recognise equivalent, or enhanced actions, to determine appropriate value of sequestration. So, fencing may not be needed, if you can prove the bush is growing.

Hopefully the expert won’t be exorbitant.

A forest assessment (with photos and a map), created by the landowner, and assessed by someone independent, was a previously accepted method. It was used to assess regeneration for the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative.

The bad news is that farmers with exotic woodlots planted prior to 2008, don’t look to be eligible for sequestration. This has stayed in the recommendations, despite push back by farmers. He Waka recommends finding ways to get these into the ETS instead.

Maori retain ownership of 340,000 hectares of land. Far more is in indigenous

cover than general title areas (33% vs 9%) but getting sequestration offsets might be harder. It would require agreement from a collective of owners. About 500 Maori agribusinesses farm/manage the land but many have lease arrangements. He Waka recommends an independent Maori board to work alongside the System Oversight Board. This board would be funded from levies paid by Maori agribusiness, but the sequestration from Maori reserve land should be made available to others in the primary sector.

‘Know your GHG number’

BY: JOANNA CUTTANCE

Farmers need to learn their greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration number while the Government is deciding what system and prices it is going to enforce.

They should also push for details of the proposals being considered.

Agribusiness consultant Deane Carson has encouraged all farmers to “know their number”.

This would give them an indication of where they were and what levy cost they may be up for.

The ‘number’ referred to a farm’s GHG emissions and sequestration. Several GHG calculators are available for farmers to choose from. Beef + Lamb New Zealand has a free calculator on their website which met the requirements for calculation emissions under the He Waka Eke Noa programmes. Carson said the B+LNZ calculator was easy to use. Overseer also offered a calculator, and farm consultants and farm accountants could also help farmers learn their number.

Carson said the emission number was important because it was a commitment by He Waka, for the end of 2022, that 100% of farmers knew their number. From a practical sense, He Waka was still under consultation and knowing the emission number would help farmers communicate their views around the levy.

He said in regards to the He Waka proposal the industry bodies needed to come out with clearer messaging soon, and they were obliged to do that. He encouraged farmers to push for that clearer information as many farmers did not understand what was now proposed. For the time being, Carson suggested farmers hold off creating a written plan to manage or mitigate emissions, until more detail of what was required became available. A few industry leaders might do it, but traditionally it cost quite a lot of money to be the trailblazer. As time

There is a glimmer of hope of getting large pre-1990 indigenous forest into onfarm sequestration, despite being lightly grazed by livestock. Bush growth has to be proved by a ‘qualified sequestration expert’.

went by, outputs would become clearer, and the levy organisations would get better at providing a framework. When the supporting industries got those resources, it would be much easier to write the report for when it would be required.

Carson said the feeling he had from farmers was that most perceived the He Waka options as a tax on the productivity of the sector, and most did not see it as a progressive solution to reducing GHG emissions.

South Otago sheep and beef farmers Bryce and Lyn Clark, and Simon Davies agreed it would be just another tax.

Davies said for sheep and beef farmers, the adoption of He Waka left no mitigation. There was no option except to reduce stock numbers and plant more trees.

“There is nothing in the toolbox, no options for low-emission supplement feed, no methane vaccines, the science is not there for sheep farmers to use onfarm yet,” Davies said.

Having no detail of what was required meant there was a great deal of uncertainty and he felt early adopters would get punished. In the past three years Davies had

taken 50ha of productive land out of the farming system, reducing stock numbers. This land was planted in natives and pine. He was not sure if that step would be acknowledged or counted in the levies.

Davies said not knowing when the baseline for stock numbers started, added to the confusion. Achieving the first 10% of what was required would be achievable but the next 10% would be much more difficult and expensive.

The Clarks added to their native plantings on their farm last year as part of the Jobs for Nature initiative, and Lyn would like to see what they have done recognised. She felt the science being used was a flawed way of measuring emissions and would like a oneoff emissions audit of everything, including shelter, hedges and small tree lots.

“I’d really like to see everything that sequesters carbon to be counted - shelter trees, shrubs, soil, wool,” she said.

Her concern was sheep farming would become so miserable the only option would be to sell for trees.

Carson felt the science used for the calculations within He Waka was controversial and had hoped due diligence

was done. Industry bodies could have shown real leadership by using emerging science, and he had been disappointed the metric GWP* had been left out of the conversation.

“If we are going to deal with climate change in a socially acceptable way, it requires us to adopt the best science,” he said.

The model used science which was rapidly becoming out of date and industry bodies needed to be more mindful about the metric used.

Carson would prefer GWP*, an alternative accounting metric that scales emissions over time and better accounts for the different warming behaviours of short-lived gases like methane, was used. It was well-established science and well-recognised. He felt the regulatory bodies had been very slow to respond to this emerging science.

He said GWP* emerged four years ago, and new policy proposals were still overlooked, despite widespread acknowledgement of its virtues.

“If we are going to be world-leaders we need to be using innovative science, not an outdated model,” Carson said.

Deanne Carson suggested farmers hold off creating a written plan to manage or mitigate emissions, until more detail of what was required became available.

NEVER THE TWINE SHALL MEET

How do you secure your farm business with rising inflation and consequent high interest rates? Confront your debt and costs sooner rather than later, Kerry Dwyer writes.

nflation and increasing interest rates are putting pressure on farming businesses. How you handle these will have huge impacts on your future.

Some of us lived through the period after 1984 when the Lange Labour Government deregulated the economy, with interest rates reaching over 20% for some. Inflation peaked in the early 1990s. Farm business responses varied, we either adapted or failed. The toll was huge and lessons learned have been carried by those who were there.

In 1990 I spent a few months interviewing 200 farmers from Blenheim to Palmerston, to gauge how they handled drought and government support packages that had been available.

I met a range of people, some who were still farming and some who had exited with the help of a government exit grant. One that stuck in my mind was an ex-farmer who then did a PhD on how farming businesses handled the changes introduced by the Labour Government from October 1986.

He had done in-depth work with farmers, to find that those who acted to make structural changes within a three-month period of that election had the best outcomes both short and long term. Those who responded slower had worse outcomes. I regret I never went back to further discuss his research.

Putting that into contemporary times, consider those businesses most impacted by Covid-19 and the resulting lockdowns. Some sat and waited, with government assistance, and some got into action

making structural changes to their enterprises. The results are most likely in line with that 1980s research.

Reading today’s media there are any number of farming people complaining about the effect of inflation on their costs. Few are complaining about how their product prices have also inflated.

Rising interest rates are being used in an effort to curb inflation. History shows that it has had mixed results in the past, yet it is being tried again. We will suffer a double whammy because history is not always learnt from.

How do you secure your business future? Structural soundness and efficiency are important at all times, but especially when the pressure is on. How does your business rate in both?

I saw a farmer who had a good farm, with a gross income of about $300,000. He had a 150hp tractor doing about 700 hours a year. The total cost of tractors has been running at about $1/hp/hour, but that may be on the rise. His tractor cost was therefore about $100,000/year, or a third of his gross income.

While that is not all cash cost, it is a cost that will be faced over time, when maintaining and replacing the machine. He has a structural problem in that his business cannot fund that tractor over time, because it costs too much relative to income (and profit). He can ignore the problem or confront it. Feeding balage and doing his own cultivation should be considered very carefully.

I had a client doing some spray painting who had a two-litre feed pot, and was planning to use 80 litres of paint on the job at hand, paying an employee to do it. I lent him my 10 litre pot, with hoses, which I had paid $300 for. The saving in time between the two options paid for itself.

Debt and interest rates

Structural soundness relates to capital structure and debt loading. Does your debt loading mean you can show a profit with higher interest rates? Farming lenders have been working to reduce their exposure over the past few years, which has been irritating for some, but if you have been forced to lower debt ratios, be thankful now.

If your debt levels and servicing costs are high, consider seriously, and quickly, how to alter that structure. That may mean asset sales to a small or large degree.

Economists are predicting house prices to fall. Will similar drops be seen in the value of farms and machinery? With banks requiring increased capital we may get a hit from that and lowering asset values to really hurt your capital ratios.

I have advised clients to get real definition from their bankers on what their credit ratings are, and what impact that has on lending margins. Some bankers do not want to divulge the classifications, but consider how important it is to your business and how you can use that information.

Consider what capital items are really required in your business and private life. Having a machine that gets used a couple of days a year is very nice when you can afford it. But when the going gets tough what is more important? A boat or food on the table?

Strive for efficiency

Efficiency is the other tool for hard times. Working harder is not the same as working smarter. High productivity is part of efficiency.

About 30 years ago I had a client tell me he couldn’t understand some farmers tying gates up with binder twine, so I made sure I had none on our place. His point was the time it takes to undo and retie the twine at each gate was not efficient compared to a chain and latch, let alone the security issues when the twine gets chewed. When you can’t afford a chain and latch, think about the hidden cost of time.

I once visited a farmer with about 3000 stock units, who was wintering them in 12 mobs depending on age etc. I advised him to mob them up and get an off-farm job to fill his time in. He did that and later commented it was far better for him and his business. Efficiency can be measured in various ways, inputs versus outputs of hard items such as fertiliser, fuel, feed supplements etc is reasonably easy. Time and effort are vital to your business.

Driving around the country I see dairy farm people riding various machinery behind the cows on their way to milking. I had a client in the 1980s who had a push bike he would ride to the paddock, leave there and walk behind the cows back to the shed. Whacky but good for him, the cows and his profit.

Consider whether your business has structural problems. Confront them sooner rather than later because the pain of being late might be more than the pain of early divestment.

Consider efficiency and productivity. Get the tools that do the job best, with least cost of capital, cash and time.

“When you can’t afford a (gate) chain and latch, think about the hidden cost of time.”

Achieving consistently good results year on year is Rebecca (Becs) Mahoney’s key driver. Rearing approximately 2,500 ewe replacements within 6,000 sqm shedding in the Tararua district, she and her father Neal have established a fine-tuned system; one founded on trusted products and reliable service.

2021 was Becs’ eighth season working with AgriVantage and rearing her animals on Sprayfo milk replacers ad lib. Her chosen bedding conditioner is Stalosan F, and she also uses Launchpad18 whole colostrum powder.

“We went through 90kgs of Launchpad18 last season, and it really saved us” she says.

“We lambed 1800 very high fertility ewes on a mix of hill country and flat land in the Tararua district in mid-winter” she explains. “Anyone crazy enough to lamb in July must have a backstop. We would have picked up 250 weak (but alive) lambs in a snow event on one of those days; if we hadn’t had Launchpad18, we’d have lost them all.

“Having reared lambs and calves for a long time, I know when an animal needs a boost. Launchpad18 gives them a good kick! It is an amazing product, and you get what you pay for.”

For the last three years, Becs has been feeding Sprayfo Alpha, a premium high fat, high energy skim milk formulation as a starter. After two weeks, the lambs are transitioned onto Sprayfo Primo (whey-based) milk replacer.

“Sprayfo is a product we have really enjoyed using because we don’t get bloating and we see minimal health issues” Becs continues. “Our results are consistent year on year.”

Every animal is weighed on entry and again at 4 and 6 weeks.

“We have achieved good early growth rates on Alpha and less scouring. I believe it is an excellent starter for the younger animals.

“The transition from Alpha to Primo is seamless. There can be a bit of scouring due to the change but it’s only nutritional and doesn’t last long.

“I think there’s a really cool relationship between Sprayfo milk powder and meal” Becs adds. “Our lambs start nibbling from day one. They eat a little less on the Alpha but as soon as they transition onto Primo, they are away.”

For all 2,500 lambs, Becs is targeting a weaning weight of 18kg. The lambs need to gain a minimum of 300g/day.

“To achieve what we do, we need to be able to trust the system” says Becs. “We know our milk replacer, we know our bedding conditioner, we know our rep – and we don’t make changes unless there’s a good reason to.”

Ask your reseller for Sprayfo lamb milk replacers this season –the science-based brand with proven performance in New Zealand lamb rearing systems.

“EIGHT YEARS’ EXPERIENCE WITH BOTH AGRIVANTAGE AND SPRAYFO HAS GIVEN US COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN BOTH BRANDS.”

Rearing her lambs on Sprayfo, Becs aims to achieve a minimum mating weight of 42kg at 5 months.

More proposed rules

Farmers have until July 21 to give feedback on the national policy statement for indigenous biodiversity. Joanna Grigg reports.

They call it a full exposure draft, but it takes some reading to get a full idea of what the national policy statement for indigenous biodiversity looks like with its clothes off.

It will be the master handbook of guidelines, for all councils. The latest proposed version will now cover public land as well – including the Department of Conservation estate. Each region at present has its own ‘weather-system’ of rules - sunny in Northland but southerly in Southland. The aim of this new policy statement is a more consistent approach across New Zealand.

The draft policy is at the test stage. It is before the ministries for the environment and primary industries to test its workability for the farming community.

The test-run will involve farmers reading the proposal and giving written feedback by July 21. There are 40 questions to answer (see link below).

How is it different to the original 2019/20 proposition? Apparently, the amendments have aimed to “tweak the provisions for pastoral land, areas outside of significant natural areas (SNA) and existing uses, for clarity”.

The word tweaking hints that it's an adjustment, rather than any big shifts.

One of the big issues in the first draft was whether landowners could clear indigenous species (both inside or outside an existing SNA.

The draft policy says it will allow existing activities to continue, plus some specific new activities. Existing activities inside SNAs will be allowed to continue, as long as there isn’t an increase in scale or intensity, and will not lead to degradation.

Half of the native vegetation that occurs on sheep and beef farms (1.4 million hectares), is woody (old growth and regenerating forest). This represents 17% of the total native woody vegetation remaining in NZ. Farmers have shown themselves, by their actions, to support the policy aims of halting species population loss, reduction in species range or reduction in ecosystem function. Farmers do plenty to enhance habitat for indigenous species.

Conflict may occur with the management of the buffers around indigenous ecosystems. The draft policy suggests maintenance of improved pasture must not adversely affect a threatened or at risk (declining) species. Will farming/earning export dollars take precedence over growing at-risk indigenous

biodiversity and expanding it into pasture?

Within an SNA, a resource consent will be required to intensify the scale of farming. Councils may require fencing off an SNA as part of a resource consent. No clearance if it compromises the protection of SNAs or the maintenance of indigenous biodiversity. It is hard to pin down exactly what this means in reality.

Farmers need financial help to improve their SNA land too. The policy says mechanisms for accessing funding will be developed alongside the policy statement. Farmers should push for pest control funding support, as fencing off livestock is only part of it. Pest control should be subsidised, being largely a public service carried out by farmers. This bill suggests councils may require pest control as part of resource consent application for a new activity.

In some cases, livestock grazing can enhance the success of indigenous biodiversity, through controlling exotic weeds. The use of well-timed Merino wethers, to nip off wilding conifer or pine seedlings.

Where the line blurs is between where SNAs and productive farmland meet. Some indigenous areas are truly special (older, established, valuable in type and scale and host to fauna biodiversity), while farms also have areas of less-worthy indigenous cover.

The definition of “a regular cycle of periodic maintenance” is going to be important. It’s feasible for hill block spray cycles to be 20 years apart. The present wording is a regular cycle of periodic maintenance or improvement of pasture is permitted, as long as certain conditions are met which address the environmental effects. No mention of years.

It instructs councils that their “policy statements and plans need to recognise that sometimes vegetation is removed for pasture renewal.”

Pasture clearance will not be allowed when the regenerated indigenous biodiversity has become an SNA. Blocks that have been left too long between sprays may fall under this rule.

Clear direction that must provide for economic well being, such as farming, forestry, infrastructure and energy.

Doesn’t require significant natural areas (SNA) to be split into ‘high’ and ‘medium’ categories. Councils don’t have to identify/ map all indigenous biodiversity for SNA but SNA would be identified by councils and ecologists working with landowners, using standard significance

THE SECOND DRAFT: CHANGES

FOOD SHORTAGE A GLOBAL LESSON

Living in the middle of the modern city of Shanghai is very convenient. Within a 10-minute walk from my place, I have at least six different supermarkets (some deliver within 30 minutes of ordering), a couple of different wet markets and plenty of 24-hour convenience shops.

Adding to that there are cheap and very convenient restaurant delivery (usually no extra fees compared to dine in) and an advanced e-commerce system.

The rest of the world is now coping with what has been happening in China with e-commerce and deliveries for a while now. Worrying about our food supply was not something I thought possible.

Covid still has a major impact in China with the continuing focus on maintaining a zero Covid policy. Without a policy change, there will be smaller lockdowns around Shanghai and the rest of China to maintain zero Covid.

The biggest challenge of our April and May lockdown in our apartment building was food. In some parts of the city, people completely ran out. Luckily we had a backup plan of freezers full of high-quality New Zealand venison.

By the middle of March, the mood in Shanghai

changed. For the first time since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, all Shanghai schools closed and classes went online. We still have no idea when students will return to classes.

For the first time in my 15 years of living in China, some items were not available in supermarkets. There was some panic buying and mainly focused on meat, dairy, vegetables, fruits, grains and oils. Toilet paper was always in plentiful supply! By mid-March, logistics became a challenge and some food processing factories were not operating as normal.

By April 1, 26 million people in Shanghai were locked down. It meant everything was closed, including all shops and restaurants, and all online sales, deliveries and couriers stopped. This was a major problem for many, as a lot of people do not even cook at home. Eating out is cheap in China, so there is no need to keep much food at home.

A lot of people ran short of food very quickly. Luckily my family was not one of these but it was what most people faced, and initially it was local communities that stepped up. Neighbours quickly formed online WeChat (China’s equivalent of WhatsApp/Facebook) groups

Hunter McGregor describes how the people of Shanghai coped during the recent Covid-19 lockdowns.

BUSINESS China

for their apartment buildings and compounds to communicate with each other.

People began to share or offer food to members of their community. Others began to organise food deliveries from larger distributors who had trucks that could still deliver. They could get the correct passes/ licences to get around the city.

Large orders via group buying were the only way to get food. While a very inefficient way to buy and deliver food, people made it work. Also, everyone supported older and more vulnerable members of their local communities.

We would often buy an extra pack of the group buy deal that was being delivered to be given to older people within our building. It was only for a week or two in early April when we really worried about our food supply. Over time the food delivery situation improved.

Also over time, the local government stepped up to provide food packages. Some areas of the city had plenty of food delivered by the government, while others had very little. In my area we had a few deliveries throughout our nine-week lock-down, which was very much appreciated, but nowhere near enough to sustain our family.

With the full city-wide lockdown lifted by June 1 (64 days of full lockdown for my family) food supplies are nearly back to normal. It has been a massive relief to get out and about but we have a long way to go before Shanghai returns to a new normal.

While sitting at home in early April worrying about our food supply, I spent a lot of time thinking about the challenges millions of people around the world are going to face because of the ongoing conflict in Europe. We faced mainly logistics issues as the food could not be delivered but it would have been a different story if there was no food available to deliver.

With a population of 1.4 billion, China has several strategic food reserves to manage food supply and at times pricing. The actual volume of China’s strategic pork reserves, for example, is a closely guarded secret but they do exist. Over the past few years, the government has released pork from time to time to maintain stable pricing and supply because of African swine fever. According to Xinhua (Chinese state media) in April 2021, China's grain reserves have a storage capacity of more than 650 million tonnes. The few days we worried about our food supply, pales in comparison compared to many around the world.

With a changing world maybe NZ might need to look at some sort of strategic protein reserves. Supplying high-quality milk and meat to support the most vulnerable members of the community might be a better use of government money than some present spending.

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

People began to share or offer food to members of their community. Others began to organise food deliveries from larger distributors who had trucks that could still deliver.

The Jing’an area of downtown Shanghai with very little traffic.

Count farm vegetation

By Glenys Christian.

Photos by Anna Mandeno.

Tom Mandeno has many things to be proud of on his north Waikato sheep and beef farm, Far Fields. But the one he’s keenest to show off is a 1000-year-old kauri in a covenanted bush block. It takes four people with arms outstretched to encircle its girth “or five children”, he explains. Its location in Waikaretu Valley, southwest of Pukekohe is about the southern limit of where the giants of the New Zealand bush will grow naturally.

The fenced-off block is one of four on the 670 hectares (600ha effective) which Tom farms with wife Anna, whose interest in conservation has seen three of those protected by Queen Elizabeth II Trust covenants. The first was put in place 30 years ago with further fencing and planting continuing since that time. And there’s been a lot of poplars and willows planted as

well since the 1980s.

With sheep and beef farmers’ present challenge of environmental sustainability, he believes there’s a lot of uncertainty and that many of his counterparts are finding difficulty seeing their way forward. So, thinking he’d be out of his depth in putting together a greenhouse gas emissions calculation for the farm, he approached Maria Shanks, Beef + Lamb’s extension manager in Hamilton.

She was able to run through the figures he provided to come up with a total of 2479 tonnes of GHG emitted in the 2019/20 farming year.

“I thought we would get a very similar offset because of our plantings and sequestration in the soil,” he says.

But to his surprise there was only 17t of vegetation offsets he was entitled to.

“That’s a dismal amount,” he says.

“It didn’t seem right.”

So that led to him putting a resolution to Beef + Lamb’s annual meeting earlier in the year, calling for recognition of onfarm sequestration from established trees and vegetation in farmers’ GHG emissions calculation. It was passed by 98% of the postal votes received.

Chairman Andrew Morrison gave an assurance at the meeting of continuing support, saying the amount of vegetation on sheep and beef farms was wide-ranging, from shelterbelts through to riparian planting.

Impact on the bottom line

Based on a carbon price of $80/t Far Fields’ emissions would come with an annual cost of $200,000 under the present rules, with a huge impact on the bottom line, Tom says.

“I can’t see how farmers can afford to

Established planted trees and covenanted bush are a feature of the Mandenos’ north Waikato farm, but existing rules mean there’s a dismal amount for carbon offsets.

Tom and Anna Mandeno with 1000-year-old Kauri on one of their bush blocks.

spend such a large percentage of farm revenue on these charges.”

He makes the point that he runs a low-intensity farming system with larger paddock sizes than many farmers and quite a lot of set stocking. But in his case the only solution he can see to pay the new cost will be a reduction in onfarm spending such as wages, animal health, repairs and maintenance, vehicles and capital expenditure.

“These harsh budget cuts will be a reminder of the difficult 1980s when our mortgage carried an interest rate of 22% and the overdraft rate was 30%.”

Including sequestration from established trees and vegetation in farmers’ GHG emissions calculation makes complete sense to him.

He says all the regulations do is drive more loss of pastoral land to forestry.

“We’ve got to decide if we still want sheep, beef and dairy farming.

“I’m not looking forward to learning how to eat pine trees.”

Any carbon price increase would fuel further planting to reap the rewards and more cost for sheep and beef farmers to meet their GHG offset obligations.

“Then you’ve not got a $200,000 problem but a $400,000 problem.

He believes if the Government declared the country closed for further planting to gain carbon credits it would make a big difference. The East Coast of the North Island has seen some of the largest tracts of farmland bought up to be planted in pine trees, often by overseas companies. On cattle-buying trips to the region, he says the

difference that’s made in the landscape is clear to see.

“Previously when the trees were small it didn’t seem a big deal, but now it does. Carbon farming will have to run its course for the life of the forest.”

And the issue has crept closer to home in recent years. Just two farms away, almost 900ha has already been planted in exotics and there are several other local properties where plans are well advanced.

He well remembers the days of the land development loans and land development encouragement loans from the late 1970s and early 80s where farmers were paid to clear land for grazing which might not have been best suited to that purpose.

“We’ve gone full circle,” he says.

“But we’ve got to find a commonsense way through. We can’t bankrupt the whole industry on principle.”

Blocks of native bush on the Mandenos’ north Waikato farm.

“These harsh budget cuts will be a reminder of the difficult 1980s when our mortgage carried an interest rate of 22% and the overdraft rate was 30%...”

More on Tom Mandeno p52.

COVER STORY

Challenging the status quo

The ewe flock is the powerhouse for the Dawkins family’s farming operation in Marlborough’s Waihopai Valley.

By Joanna Grigg. Photos by Jess & Paul Jones.

Chris and Julia were at the helm of The Pyramid from 1978 to 2020. The baton was handed on when the 400ha farming area was leased to their son Richard, and his wife Jess. The balance is in vineyard (100ha), forestry woodlots (80ha) and aesthetic plantings. Honey and firewood are onfarm ventures that involve the Dawkins’ other sons.

Richard (32) has the same Dawkins inclination to challenge the status quo. As an example, he pioneered a successful system for maximising triplet lamb survival through indoor lambing. His refined system has seen triplet lamb deaths fall from 33% to 17% over lambing. The low 4% mortality across all ewes (in and outdoors) is due to mobs getting more attention across the board. Twinning ewes now lamb in the best paddocks. Triplet lamb survival is 245% from scanning to sale.

“It’s an absolute home run for us and for animal welfare,” Richard says.

In 2021 the net profit farm-wide from the indoor triplet lambing system was over $32,000. This is based on dropping the long-term average death rate of 24% down to 15%.

Their performance was so impressive it won them the Westpac and Osgro Marlborough Sheep & Beef Farmer of the Year 2021.

The farm power house is the ewe flock. While the judging criteria was across five bottom lines, the sheep performance was a standout. Chris and Julia targeted 150% survival to sale and a minimum 15% lamb death. This year Richard’s flock achieved 164%. Lambs are expected to grow to 20kg carcase weight on the ewe, with about 80% to 90% sold prime before weaning.

The Pyramid is slightly wetter than classic dryland Marlborough (783mm average) but the farm is stocked slightly lighter than the typical B+LNZ Class 6 Northern South Island breeding and finishing farm (about 7su/ha versus 8.4). The stock unit income is higher however at $208/su in 2020. This was $50 more than the average farm. The most telling perhaps is that the Pyramid’s earnings before interest, tax and rent (EBITR) is 44% higher than the B+LNZ Class 6 average.

Behind this performance are ewes that some might call too heavy but competition judge, Pete Anderson, described as exceptionally efficient. The 1400 Longdown ewes average 79kg at mating. All 400 hoggets are mated as they typically weigh in at 48 to 50kg.

At 60.5kg of lamb liveweight weaned/ewe mated, the flock is well above the StockCare programme top 25% of 49kg. The lambing was 160% plus combined with an average weaning weight of 38kg to get this result. The ewes weaned 77% of their body weight that year.

Ewe flock performance: Lamb weight weaned per ewe mated at The Pyramid (Blue) versus the top, average and low quartiles in the Stock Care Programme, courtesy Pete Anderson.

Notes: GFI Gross Farm Income, FWE Farm Working Expenses, EFS Economic Farm Surplus, EBITR Earnings Before Interest, Tax & Rent.

Previous page: Richard Dawkins holding Rosalee (2), together with Jess and Ellie (4). Above: Stage 1 vineyard developed in 2016, looking south over the sheds with the pyramid hill in the background.

The Pyramid Economic Farm Surplus 2018, 2019, 2020 compared to B+LNZ Class 6 Average Farms.

Anderson says these ewes grow big lambs and the Dawkins are on top of ewe and lamb wastage. Ewe wastage is an exceptional 4%, compared to the top 25% of Stock Care flocks at 4.6%. In 2020 the lamb wastage was 14.5%, while the average for StockCare mobs was 19%.

Longdowns Stud has supplied the Dawkins rams for eight years. The Dawkins will cull ewes anytime, and often find a second udder check will catch another 4% with faults. Chris says he sees huge room for improvement in hogget lambing. It sits about 90% and has been affected by abortion. The hogget lambs grow just as fast as lambs from older ewes. This is due to the trifecta of being terminal sires, a later

lambing date and having more singles80% are killed prime before weaning.

This season the hoggets were lambed indoors as well, to try and maximise those lambs that made it full term. Richard says he was able to reduce dystocia and starvation, losing only 9% of lambs born.

EBITR has averaged over $560/ha for the past three years and the effective farm surplus beats the B+LNZ Class Six model hands down – an impressive $493/ha in 2020 versus $182/ha.

Richard puts the good lamb growth rates down to concentrating on ewe body condition. Anything lower than three out of five at weaning gets lucerne or brassica through summer. The target is reaching over 3.5 for mating on March 1st. They frequently body score and take the lighter ewes out, even when mustering. Through the yards they score by eye, especially when off-shears.

Chris says the Marlborough sunshine

is very conducive to sheep performance, especially helping keep ewes healthy and in good condition over summer.

Richard says they can graze rougher pastures and keep weight on with maintenance rations.

Ryegrass is dominant on the downs and needs controlling. Sub-clover has a good presence, especially on the hill and white clover performs almost as an annual, with a seedbank present.

Jerseys for hire

The Dawkins use dairy genetics three ways in their system.

They run Friesian bulls through to R2s for fattening, grow Jersey bulls for lease to dairy farmers and fatten carry-over cows to be resold into the dairy industry in calf.

The cattle:sheep ratio is 45:55 and cattle are valued for sucking up sheep parasite larvae and grooming pastures. Ewe lambs were only drenched once last season, as an

Above: Chris and Richard Dawkins in the covered yards used for indoor lambing. The Dawkins' have the ability to cover 1400 ewes for shearing in this space.

EBITR has averaged over $560/ha for the past three years and the effective farm surplus an impressive $493/ha in 2020...

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indication of flow-on benefits.

Cattle onboard can range from 35 to 500. They are the relief valve in the feed budget. With bull numbers constant (about 230) numbers are then manipulated depending on the season and whatever is the best value for money.

A Jersey bull at The Pyramid has an exciting life compared to the typical Friesian bull destined for hamburgers. They are bought in as bull calves for $450 and leased as yearling bulls for heifer mating on dairy farms in late October. They return in January.

Richard says they are lucky to have an outstanding stock agent, who adds considerable value in this area.

The lease is repeated as R2s where they are used for mixed age cow mating, then return home for a third winter They then go back for mating but are sold to the dairy farmer at that point.

Each Jersey bull sold this year made $2650 after commission. Richard says they are only counted as four stock units/year since they go off the farm for a time. This puts the return about $180/stock unit/ year. They are more profitable per unit of energy eaten than Friesian bulls, he says. Friesian bulls sometimes compete with sheep, eating better pastures like ryegrass

or brassica crops on the flat. The Jersey bulls will spend winter on the Tummil hill on ranker pasture.

Forage King Maize, sourced through OsGro Seed, provides bulk feed for the low demand cattle (Jersey bulls or carry-over cows through summer). The Dawkins rate it highly as it needs less water to produce as much biomass as lucerne or wheat. The seed is large and can be planted deeper into the moisture zone. Last season it cost $800/ha to establish and produces between 8 to 12 tonnes/ha. At ten tonnes/ ha this gives a feed cost of eight cents per kilogram of dry matter.

“It’s a far superior option when compared to supplements.”

Pugging and wastage are generally not an issue in the summer so it can be cell grazed, with shifts twice a week. Chris suggests crushing the crop down where the polywire will run, to prevent shorts.

Three generations; Chris Dawkins (left) with Richard, Jess, Rosalee and Ellie.

Hoggets grazing lucerne. Hoggets are mated at a target weight of 50kg on March 29th and lambed indoors after the triplets.

No cost spared to develop hill

Richard and Chris Dawkins have enjoyed the challenge of bringing a weedy hill block into better pasture.

With vineyard development encroaching on the sheep land, the Dawkins purchased a neighbouring 187ha of hill in 2015. It added space for 375 stock units (su) straight away and, after development, now winters 1140su (seven su/ha).

Being a timber man, Chris saw an opportunity in the 200 large scattered wilding pines on the block. Quotes for harvesting were “excessively expensive” so he dry-hired a bulldozer with a winch and a log loader. One of the Dawkins’ long-term workers is an accredited forestry logger, so he did the job himself, with assistance from the Dawkins as required.

Each tree averaged four tonnes of saleable logs, a total of 820 tonne) and, after all expenses, generated $31,000 of profit. At this point Richard and Jess came back from overseas and saw an opportunity in the

150t of non-export grade logs stacked in the corner. The firewood business was born. Some of the hill has gone back into Pinus radiata, with a 23ha erosion-prone spot planted as a woodlot. Poplars were planted along the roadside for shelter. Other weeds on the block were barberry, hawthorn and broom. They were aerial sprayed and root raked using a custom-made rake that plucked out the barberry bushes.

In typical Dawkins style, things were done properly. A 1.5km rock causeway road has allowed two wheel drive access across the hill. The wetter areas were drained with 2.5km of Nova flow pipe. Fencing repairs are underway and four km of new fencing installed with plans for a reticulated water system too.

Super sulphur 20 was applied at 1500kg/ ha with three tonnes of lime by truck to the lower country. The pH is now six and Olsen P 30. Annual fertiliser maintenance is 150kg super/ha (about $9/su).

To help buffer from drought, an 80,000

Looking north over the Avon River flats. 80ha of river flats are sown in lucerne, subdivided into three to five hectare paddocks.

A 60-minute profile of the winning farm business in the Marlborough Sheep & Beef Farmer of the Year 2021 is available on video. The Dawkins Family farming secrets are revealed in a comprehensive run-down of their sheep and dairy trading system. With the March field day limited to 100, the Marlborough Sheep and Beef Charitable Trust have created an excellent online video resource. It is supported by a 40-page handout. Both are available from Beef + Lamb NZ.

kg drymatter silage pit has gone in. It can feed ewes and two-tooths prior to mating if required and resulted in 195% scanning through dry periods in recent years.

Praised for matching land to use

The first thing you notice at The Pyramid are the trees; the lovely scattered oak, popular, and Honey Locusts (Gleditsia) trees and the areas of well-manicured woodlots. Next you notice the big pointy hill in the centre of the farm that gives it its name. Across this landscape are a patchwork of pastures and crop blocks.

i

FARM FACTS

Avon Valley, located 17km up the Waihopai Valley, 30km SW of Blenheim.

602ha total + 30ha lease.

468ha effective sheep and cattle country from 2018-2020. 400ha now effective (after second vineyard development in 2020).

Running 1400 ewes average and 400 hoggets mated. Lease bulls out, return $180/su. 100ha vineyard.

7 months in a soil moisture deficit, beginning third week of October.

House 250m ASL. Husband/wife partnership 1978 –June 2020.

Jess and Richard leasing farm (pastoral platform). 187ha ‘Tummil development’ ongoing since 2015.

Lachie Grant, LandVision, said they had a positive attitude to the environment and were proactive in minimising pugging.

“Pug your soils down and the top is so compressed it can only hold fifteen mls of moisture – that’s gone in only three days in the summer.”

Grant questioned the recent root raking on the hill, however, describing it as a tool to be used cautiously. Richard says they used this method as the Jordan soils are heavy and stable and there was minimum soil disturbance.

“And a one pass operation with the rake is the most effective.”

BUSINESS TARGETS

Target 20kg lamb CW Prime off mum.

Maximum 15% lamb death rate.

This careful match of land type to use was recognised by the judges in the Marlborough Farmer of the Year Competition. The Dawkins scored highly in the land resource management section (ranking number two of all past entrants).

Nitrogen losses are 8kg N/ha/year (considered low for sheep/beef). The Dawkins are part of the Avon Valley Catchment Group and have started water quality testing.

It wouldn’t be downland Marlborough without a good dollop of lucerne in the system. The Dawkins have close to 20% in

R2 Friesian Bull 360kg CW by Christmas.

Min 48kg avg hogget mating weight by March 29.

30ha summer cropping rotation with zero IWG beginning in 2022. Continue development of 187ha Tummil Block.

“I have to feed the family between the 36 years of harvests.

Meat and wine: Yearling Jersey bulls grazing in the vineyard after harvest. Prosper winter active fescue is sown interrow to maximise grazing returns.

direct grazed lucerne and typically 20ha in winter fodder crops. This forms part of the pasture renewal system. Lucerne balage is bought in as a supplement.

Richard said the winter dormancy of lucerne is an issue as it can’t be stocked until mid-September.

“It’s great for later-lambing hoggets but the main ewes have to lamb on winteractive mixed sward pastures.”

He said they need complementary pastures that grow through winter, to get ewes through early lactation. Lambing starts late July onwards. Main weaning is November, to beat the dry and meet the peak markets.

As a new thing in 2022, Richard will introduce a wintering system with no intensive winter grazing.

The harder slopes are in Pinus radiata and Chris values the lump sum income. A

recent woodlot made $60,000/ha net profit but it is still not enough for Chris to replace livestock.

“I have to feed the family between the 36 years of harvests.

“I like a diverse income stream.”

He was always keen on wool, especially when it made up 55% of farm income. Now it’s 1.4% and the “pride and joy” Corriedales made way, somewhat reluctantly, for meat-focus Longdowns.

Richard really rates the breed as a way to achieve mating to weaning of 165%.

Indoor lamb a worthwhile beat Richard Dawkins had 10 years away from the family farm. While away he experienced indoor lambing systems in the United Kingdom and on return, decided the continual battle with triplet lambs out in the paddocks couldn’t go on.

Above: The landmark Pyramid Hill gives the property its name. Below: Julia Dawkins and Richard with a triplet orphan lamb, born indoors and raised outdoors. (Photo supplied).

With support from Beef + Lamb NZ, the Dawkins created an indoor lambing system in the covered yards, tweaking it each year to decrease labour and input costs.

Out in the paddock, usually one triplet lamb would be lost of the three during pre-lamb and lambing process.

Now only 15% to 18% of triplets die, Richard says, and this is saving the majority of all preventable deaths.

“These remaining deaths are either related to stillbirth and other nonpreventable issues,” Richard says.

The improvement in wastage has helped see the Dawkins achieve a lamb percentage of 165% this season.

Richard calls it a hybrid indoor-outdoor system, as the ewes only spend two to seven days in the indoor pens. Ram harnesses and markers means conception patterns are tracked and ewes are all set to come indoors, in their groups.

“Sheep are used to being handled so have adapted really well.”

The original intention was to address an animal welfare issue, rather than make money.

“The bonus is that the system is now profitable.”

In 2021,120 triplet ewes, 198 single ewes and 141 hoggets were lambed through the shed. The cost was $19.10/ head which provided a profit of about $7000.

But when the wider benefits across the whole lambing system were taken into account (extra feed outdoors, labour savings with lambing beat) the farm-wide profit was an extra $32,000. Richard has managed to reduce the labour cost and had time to shift winter breaks, as well as be in the shed each day.

“The system is easier and less labour intensive than some may think”.

The boxer

Richard and Jess have two children (Ellie, four and Rosalee, two). Richard was a keen welter and middleweight boxer in his 20s but decided to step back from sport to focus on family and farming. His boxing highlight was being runner up in the 2018 National Champs, in a closefought battle.

Left: Yearling Friesian bulls winter grazing annual ryegrass. Ryegrass is part of the rotation for lucerne renewal. Below: Riding high: Rosalee and Chris.

Impacts of new calf rearing standards

BY: PAUL MUIR

The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) are developing a new welfare code for dairy cows. Within this proposed code three new considerations will be relevant to calf rearers.

All newborn calves removed from their dam must be offered sufficient good quality colostrum/colostrum substitute as soon as possible after but within two hours of being removed, to ensure that any calves that have not sucked their dam receive colostrum within 24 hours after birth (minimum standard No. 12b).

This is a positive move because of the transfer of passive immunity to the calf but it is worth noting that 20% of calves left on the cow for 18 hours will not have suckled - some dairy cows wander off after calving, calves can go under hot wires and selection for milk production means that some udders are low and difficult for calves to access.

Ideally, there should be daily or even twice daily calf pick-ups and then fed or tube-fed high-quality colostrum within two hours of arrival at the calf shed. It would be good to see some qualification of what constitutes high quality colostrum.

New minimum standard

The management practice of feeding calves once daily on a limited volume of liquid feed is not acceptable for the first three weeks after birth. It has proposed a new minimum standard requiring that, for the first three weeks after birth calves must be fed a suitable good quality liquid feed at a rate of no less than 20% of their body weight divided into no less than two feeds

per day (minimum standard No. 12g).

Feeding a minimum of 20% of bodyweight and at least two feeds a day will have significant ramifications for calf rearers. This means at least eight litres a day for a 40kg calf and at least 10 litres a day for a 50kg calf.

The references cited by NAWAC to support this recommendation are from work conducted overseas using many individual calf feeds during the day or automatic on-demand calf feeding machines. This simulates what a calf would receive from its mother in about 10-12 suckling bouts a day and explains how a calf can manage to drink those quantities.

The recommendations will have unintended consequences. I would not contemplate feeding a young calf two feeds of four litres - the risk of abomasal overload and nutritional scours and secondary pathogen challenge is simply too high. It will mean automatic feeders become the norm – a boon for those selling the feeders and the feeding of excessive amounts of

Feeding high milk volumes means the calves eat little or no meal or pasture - they have no incentive as they are always full.

milk will make rearing a high-cost exercise for dairy farmers.

Feeding high milk volumes means the calves eat little or no meal or pasture - they have no incentive as they are always full. Unfortunately, the rumen development process takes time and the later the process of rumen development starts, the longer it takes. High milk volumes mean weaning is delayed and ultimately very large milk volumes will be fed to rear a calf. Dairy farmers feed, on average, about 316 litres/ calf. This will increase significantly under the new regulations.

Bull calf rearers

The impact on bull calf rearers will be considerably greater. Bull calf rearers typically adjust calves to a once-a-day feeding system by the time calves are one or two weeks of age. They rear using about 155 litres of milk or milk replacer while rearing calves to 100kg at 12 weeks (0.7 kg/ day). It is certainly not all about cost and calf welfare is a concern of all as satisfactory

growth rates are a key determinant in all rearing systems. Nevertheless, bull calves are reared to a budget and the margins are already sufficiently fine that there is already a 20% turnover of rearers every year.

The proposed regulations will mean at least another 20kg of milk replacer for rearing which together with the additional labour will cost about $120 extra per calf. This will make the rearing of bull calves even less compelling and consign about 400,000 more calves to the bobby chain. Another unintended consequence.

A calf must be given suitable liquid feeds that satisfy minimum standard 6a, until the rumen has developed sufficiently to allow it

to utilise solids as the sole feed source, but must not be fully weaned off milk before 6 weeks of age (minimum standard No. 12e).

A proportion of calves reared on once-aday systems would be weaned at five weeks but these are calves which are well-adjusted and eating sufficient quantities of meal. There is no doubt that if calves have to be fed 20% of their bodyweight in milk for the first three weeks they will be slow to take to solid feeds and there will be welfare issues if calves are then weaned at six weeks.

At this stage these changes to the welfare code are proposals and submissions were due to close June 30. View the full documents or (if there’s time) make your

submission at www.mpi.govt.nz/ consultations/changes-to-the-code-ofwelfare-for-dairy-cattle

Paul Muir and Beverly Thomson at the Poukawa Research Farm have evaluated lower cost rearing systems and reared about 8000 calves across a wide range of trials –covering effects of colostrum, milk feeding systems, meal type, roughage and calf breed on calf performance.

Much of this information is available at www. on-farmresearch.co.nz

“The proposed regulations will mean at least another 20kg of milk replacer for rearing which together with the additional labour will cost about $120 extra per calf.”

KEY POINTS

An equity partnership with employee.

Two hill country farms, 845ha, 8km apart.

8709su, a sheep to cattle ratio of 65:35.

Goal to generate $1200/ha, finish stock.

Winners of the Tararua Farmer of the Year.

FINANCIALS

2021/2022 year:

GFR $1132/ha

FWE 61%

EFS $442/ha.

Across the business, sheep generated $720,672 and cattle made $224,398.

Total expenses were $597,439 making for a total economic farm surplus of $371,072.

A WINNING PARTNERSHIP

The FS Partnership hill country sheep and beef equity operation has taken out this year’s Tararua Farmer of the Year title. By Sandra Taylor. Photos by John Cowpland.

An unusual equity partnership is part of a longterm business growth plan for Tararua farmers Brent and Rachael Fouhy and Ben Simpson. The partnership was recently named Tararua Farmer of the Year, recognising the performance of their hill country sheep and beef operation as well as their innovative approach to business and people growth.

The partnership farms 845 hectares over two hill country properties 8km apart. Between them, they carry 8709 stock units with a sheep to cattle ratio of 65:35.

Ben, who has had extensive experience working on large North Island stations, was initially employed by Brent and Rachael to manage Knox Estate. The employee/employer relationship worked well and when Ben began looking around for ways to grow his capital and secure a future for his children, Brent and Rachael thought there must be an opportunity to collectively grow a business.

Ben had proved himself to be an excellent stockman and his skills were growing in other aspects of the business such as running financial and feed budgets. Combining their skills and assets made sense for both personal and business development.

Brent says they sought advice on the equity partnership proposal from their bank and advisers and the model stacked up. While the partnership is unusual in that all parties are in their early 40s with children of a similar age, Brent believes this is also a reason it works well, with all the partners having similar drivers.

Brent and Rachael and their two children

Charlotte (10) and Amelia (7) are based at the 320ha Mangaone Valley Farm which they bought off

Brent’s parents in 2015. Ben and his children Allie (9) and Nicholas (7) live at the 600ha Knox Estate, a farm Brent and Rachael initially leased in 2014.

The FS partnership was formalised in September 2018 and bought all the stock and plant for both Knox Estate and Mangone Valley Farm. It now leases both properties.

The partnership’s focus is on growth and Brent says they are actively looking to buy a finishing block so they can add value to the stock they breed as well as another 4000-5000 stock unit farm.

With 70ha of flats between both farms, there is minimal opportunity to finish stock and about 50% of the lambs are sold store along with all steers. Heifers are either retained as replacements or finished.

Brent says this lack of finishing ability does leave them exposed to the vagaries of the store market.

“It would be nice to follow them through.”

While Mangaone and Knox Estate are run together, they are managed separately and there is a deliberate policy to minimise stock movement between the two farms. Mangaone gets the bottom 400 two-tooths, 200 plus five-year-old ewes and 200 poorer mixed-age ewes from Knox Estate annually. These are walked down the road and for these ewes, it is a one-way street.

LIVESTOCK Onfarm

Right: Brent and Rachael Fouhy are always on the lookout for opportunities to grow their business; Ben Simpson was initially employed to manage Knox Estate. He is now part of the FS partnership.

Both farms are considered summer safe, but last year was challenging with a hard spring and porina damage which impacted on drymatter production, ewe condition and lamb growth rates.

The partnership measures pasture covers monthly and uses Farmax to identify pending feed deficits and surpluses. This allows them to be proactive in their decision-making such as applying nitrogen or selling stock when feed deficits are looming.

They also use vet and Country-Wide columnist Trevor Cook as a farm systems consultant and continue to implement the measuring and monitoring principles Brent and Rachael put in place a number of years ago when they were part of the StockCare programme. This includes body condition scoring ewes six times a year as they strive to maintain them at a body condition Score of 3 throughout the year.

Aside from employing students over the summer, which is part of the partnership’s philosophy of helping people grow their skills, they don’t employ any other staff,

so Brent and Ben will talk to each other at least once a week about day-to-day management. They don’t have regular formal partnership meetings other than when they are meeting with Trevor or their banker.

“Just so everyone is on the same page.”

Outside of the partnership, Rachael works at Tararua Vets in Pahiatua which is one of seven clinics in the Totally Vets group. As well as being the senior vet in her practice, Rachael also sits on the company’s board of directors.

Because Rachael and Brent share child caring duties, their daughters Charlotte and Amelia are an integral part of the business. From a very young age, they were involved in farm work and took a keen interest in what’s happening. They even look forward to the bull catalogues arriving.

MANGAONE VALLEY FARM

• 320ha effective

• Sheep: 250 5-year ewes, 1330 mixed-age ewes (lambing around 150%) and 420 two-tooths

This grazing-off option is no longer available, so they now prioritise ewe lambs and this year grew 8ha of Hunter to help grow out the lighter ewe lambs, rather than try and finish lambs.

Below: The partnership invests in environmental protection and enhancement work including fencing off waterways and poplar and willow pole planting.

• Cattle: 70-80 cows, 35 R1 steers, 30 R1 heifers, 10-15 R2 heifers, 30-40 dairy calves.

All Mangaone Valley Farm breeding stock is put to a terminal sire, a policy Brent and Rachael put in place after Rachael returned to work as a vet and the couple took on the short-term lease of another farm.

As the couple was trying to run three farms, a terminal system on the home farm was simpler to implement and worked well.

Mangaone Valley Farm is 320ha effective with just 12ha of flats. While they strive to finish as many lambs as possible, they typically sell 25% of the Mangaone lamb crop as store.

Cattle play an important role in managing pasture quality and internal parasites. Between 70-80 cows are mated in early January to Angus or Hereford Bulls. While these are not strictly terminal sires, no replacement heifers are retained on Mangaone. While they have used terminal breeds in the past, Brent says this means they had smaller lines to sell that couldn’t be combined with the Knox Estate cattle.

Steer calves are wintered and are typically sold store in early December while 10-15 heifers are sold prime before their second winter. The balance are wintered and sold prime as two-year-olds.

They also run 30-40 dairy calves which arrive in December and go home 18 months later as in-calf rising two-year-olds.

KNOX ESTATE

• 600ha, 525ha effective

• Sheep: 1400 mixed-age ewes, (lambing around 144%) 800 two-tooths, 1300 hoggets (600 mated)

• Cattle: 110 mixed-age cows, 40 R2 heifers (mated), 120 weaners.

Knox Estate was first leased in 2014 with the right to renew after nine years. It has been the focus of a recent development programme which has included subdivision and capital fertiliser. This has lifted Olsen P levels from 7-9 to 13-15. Most importantly, they have addressed a molybdenum deficiency which was limiting clover growth.

Brent says when they first took over the lease, they were hard-pressed to find any clover plants. Now the legume is abundant throughout the sward.

“It’s improved no end to where it was.”

Farmax modelling has shown this combination of fertiliser and management

means they are now growing 10-15% more grass than they were when they first took over the farm.

The farm breeds both sheep and cattle replacements for both properties. The ewes are Coopworth and while they have yet to hit the target 150% docking in their mixedage ewes, they have come tantalisingly close.

The mixed-age ewes weigh an average of 65kg which Brent says is ideal for their hill country.

“They are efficient sheep, if they get any bigger, we end up with too many triplets.”

The two-tooths average 60-62kg and Brent

says they are happy with that.

One of the challenges for the partnership is to grow out hoggets to good two-tooths. For three years, they sent 600 ewes lambs away for grazing in January. These returned a year later in top condition weighing about 70kg, despite having lambed as a hogget. This weight was quickly lost on Knox Estate’s hill country.

Brent says they used to carry winter trade lambs to pay for the grazing and these lambs gave them flexibility in that they could be sold if feed was tight.

This grazing-off option is no longer available, so they now prioritise ewe lambs

Top: Brent and Rachael run a terminal policy on their home farm but with limited ability to finish stock, the majority is sold as store. Above: Ben (left) and Brent use Farmax to help identify pending feed surpluses or deficits. This is alongside other monitoring and measuring tools.

and this year grew 8ha of Hunter to help grow out the lighter ewe lambs, rather than try and finish lambs.

This worked well and despite a very difficult season, they were able to put 400-500 ewe lambs to the ram weighing a minimum of 40kg.

Despite disappointing weaning weights, Brent says this focus on growing ewe lambs has meant they were a similar or better weight than previous years.

“They’ve put on more kilos from a lighter base.”

Adding value

The partnership has recently been able to take on the lease of 12ha of flat land which had been part of Knox Estate. This had been leased to a dairy farmer who no longer requires it and this, Brent believes, will be ideal for growing out and finishing lambs and cattle.

They had been growing 7-8ha of rape every year for the remaining ewe lambs in autumn, when there was typically a feed pinch.

In 2019 and 2020 they grew 15-20ha of rape and plantain and kale and plantain respectively. Flown on by helicopter, their crops were used for ewe lambs and then for wintering steers.

The area of crop will be able to be expanded with the acquisition of the extra 12ha and this should allow them to finish more lambs and get more ewe lambs up to mating weight.

One of the challenges on Knox Estate is calf losses due to natural hazards such as tomos (holes) and creeks. This has meant they are weaning 80% in their mixed-age Angus Hereford cross cows.

In a bid to improve this, in 2020 they decided to calve the cows on saved feed behind a wire on improved country. This meant the cows weren’t maintaining pasture quality on other parts of the farm and this was reflected in ewe performance last winter and spring. Combined with a tough spring and porina damage, this led to a high lamb wastage and lighter lambs at weaning. Brent says they are still tweaking

the system to reduce calf wastage while getting cows back into the ewe blocks as quickly as possible.

Animal health

As would be expected with Rachael in the partnership, they are proactive when it comes to animal health. They drench test regularly and don’t use capsules or moxidectin drench.

Brent says while the sheep make more money than the cattle, they continue to run a slighter higher ratio of cattle because they control both pasture and internal parasites which benefits the whole farm system.

Facial eczema isn’t a significant issue, although when selecting rams, moderate resistance is part of the criteria.

Environmental management

The partnership has carried out SLUI whole farm plans on both farms and these are used to inform the management of individual land areas. Since 2009, the Fouhy family has planted 200-250 willow and poplar poles every year, and in 2005 fenced off the Tiraumea river which runs along Mangaone’s boundary.

They have fenced off a further 1.5km of smaller creeks and this work will continue as finances allow. Along with a 6ha forestry block planted in 2010 under an afforestation grant Scheme, Mangaone features 30ha of regenerating native bush. Across the business, greenhouse gas emissions have been calculated at 3.97 tonnes/ha.

A skilled stockman, Ben is also growing his skills in the financial side of the business.

With limited cultivable land, one of the challenges for the partnership is growing out ewe lambs. The recent acquisition of 10ha of flat land will open up more opportunities for finishing and growing out stock.

Top feed, top cattle

The main drivers of beef cattle profit are productivity and efficiency. Numbers and weights of calves weaned per cow mated represent productivity, whereas cow liveweights, progeny growth rates, along with feed consumed, contribute to efficiency. Top pasture and animal management are needed to boost the components of these profit drivers.

The challenge for beef farmers is to meet animal feed requirements as much as possible from seasonally available pasture for desired animal performance and marketing. Not an easy task, as feed demands of calving and progeny growth don’t always match seasonal pasture supply which can vary each year. In fact the most profitable beef production system may not be biologically efficient using only seasonal pasture.

At the start of each season planning and implementation for matching feed supply and demand needs to be at different levels. First, a knowledge of average seasonal pasture growth for your farm is required. Regional pasture growth curves for your area can generally be found from the Farmax pasture growth forecaster or from the Beef + Lamb NZ Q-Graze manual.

Then from discussions with your adviser, or from previous years’ experience, you’ll get a pretty good idea of stock carrying

capacity. From this, an estimate of timing of feed surpluses and deficits will allow determination of types and amounts of forage crops and/or feed supplements required.

A few ways to help match feed supply and demand are as follows, with some more costly than others:

• Buying and selling stock at key times

• Manipulating stock performance to match pasture growth

• Conserving feed as supplements to cope with deficits

• Using animal body condition as a buffer

• Buying feed supplements if cost-effective

• Manipulating calving dates and stocking rate

• Saving some paddocks for forage crops

• Strategic use of nitrogen and fertiliser.

The biggest challenges, as shown in Fig. 1, will generally be managing the springsummer surplus and coping with winter and autumn deficits. In this example, with mixed cattle and sheep, feed supply and demand are matched by conserving and feeding hay.

The challenge for beef farmers is to meet animal feed requirements as much as possible from seasonally available pasture, Dr Ken Geenty writes.

Figure 1: A generalised feed supply and demand profile for a 70:30 sheep:cattle ratio.

Source: A guide to feed planning (Sheep Council)

Alter the calving date

Many hill country farms with no flats won’t be able to make hay. In these cases a very effective way of better matching feed supply and demand is to alter calving date as shown in Figure 2.

Here, October calving matches beef cow feed requirements to Taihape hill country pasture growth averaged over three years. In this example matching of cow feed requirements with pasture production is quite precise meaning cows will be well fed and productive while maintaining pasture quality and minimising waste.

Once strategic planning of stocking rate, calving dates and feed supplementation have been completed, day-to-day feed planning needs to be implemented. Because the key feed ingredient is energy,w the metabolisable energy (ME) system, adopted for farm animals world-wide, will be used. This system is simple and easily applied.

Quantities of ME in most pastures, forage crops and supplements are readily available online and in publications.

Other important dietary components such as protein, fibre, minerals and vitamins are conveniently balanced in high quality pastures and forages, except where there are known mineral deficiencies in the soil eg. selenium, cobalt and copper in some areas of New Zealand.

These can be corrected in fertilisers or administered directly to animals. Many supplementary feeds such as cereal grains are deficient in protein and some minerals and vitamins which also need to be added. This information is normally available with the published feeding tables.

A good place to start finding cattle feeding information is the Beef + Lamb NZ website beeflambnz.com where the publication ‘Guide to NZ cattle farming’ has comprehensive tables of feed requirements. Handy feeding guidelines including pasture production in various areas of NZ is available on the FARMAX site at www. farmax.co.nz

The trick is to provide animals with enough feed to meet their ME requirements for the desired production level. It’s important to remember that feeding isn’t a precise activity but using available guidelines, and some simple rules of thumb, you should be able to get close to animal needs.

Examples of planned feeding of cattle,

Hill country farms with no flats for haymaking require other feed planning strategies.

Figure 2: Matching pasture growth and cow feed requirements by altering calving date.

Source: Guide to New Zealand Cattle Farming, 2017 – B+LNZ

five or above by using forage crops, such as fodder beet or brassicas, and fine tuning calving date can increase 240kg calf weaning weight by as much as 10-15% or 25-30kg.

The relatively simple process of altering calving date to match cow feed requirements better with your pasture growth curve can increase production, as the graphs illustrate.

as follows, can be the basis of plans for all cattle according to your particular situation.

The ready reckoner in Table 1 relating pasture drymatter to ME is a useful tool for your feeding plans. For example the amount of ME for beef cattle and their calves during early-mid lactation and grazing medium quality pasture on easy hill country would be up to 150 MJ ME each day. Reading from the ready reckoner this amounts to 15kg pasture DM.

Feeding for cow maintenance

Such a large quantity of feed consumed would require pastures about 12-15cm in length or 3000kg of DM/ha. To achieve the desired feed intakes these pastures would only want to be laxly grazed down to about 1200kg of DM/ha.

Similar feeding plans for cow maintenance, pregnancy and post-weaning growth of progeny can also be derived from published feeding tables and using the Table 1 ready reckoner (over page).

The amount of supplement offered will be pretty much a judgement call but can be guided by monitoring cow body condition score and/or liveweight. Maintenance of body condition score at about five during pregnancy in cows has huge advantages in both survival and viability of calves due to good early supply of milk.

For adult beef cattle during periods of pasture shortage several types of supplements can be effectively used. Silage is commonly fed to pregnant cows during winter. Requirements for 500kg cows during early-mid pregnancy are about 100 MJ ME per day. Good quality pasture silage will have a DM content of about 25% and contain 9 MJ ME per kg of DM.

To meet a pregnant cow’s daily requirement, ME needs to be a total of 11kg of DM or 44kg of wet silage is required, 2.2 tonnes per 50 cows. If a green pick is available in the paddock the quantity of

silage fed can be reduced by 10-15%. Pregnant cows are often break-fed forage crops such as rape during winter. An example calculation of the break size needed for 50 cows each day follows: Maintaining body condition of five in 500kg pregnant cows, as above, requires 100 MJ ME/day or just over 8kg DM. Rape has about 12 MJ ME/kg DM. With an average yield of 7 tonnes DM/ha, or 0.7kg DM per square metre, this means each cow will need about 11.5sq m/day. To allow 15%

trampling wastage, allocation will be 13.5sq m/cow or 675sq m/50 cows. If the feeding face is 75m wide then the electric fence will need to be advanced 9m each day.

These above example calculations give some basic pointers for working through your own feeding plans. For more help, including a FeedSmart App, go to B+LNZ at https://beeflambnz.com and search using ‘feeding calculator’.

• Ken Geenty is a primary industries consultant.

Table 1: Ready reckoner to convert metabolisable energy (MJ ME/day) to drymatter (kg DM/day).

“To meet daily pregnant cow metabolisable energy needs, a total of 11kg of DM or 44kg of wet silage is required amounting to 2.2 tonnes per 50 cows.”

A FAT LOT OF GOOD

at. It’s a little word that carries a lot of emotional baggage. One can scarcely mention the word without the internet offering a dozen public health guidelines and10 hidden secrets to shrink yourself. But when it comes to the eating quality of meat, fat is one of the good guys.

In fact, intramuscular fat may be the only fat the predatory “as seen on TV” advertisers don’t want us to lose. I took a look at the basics of meat science and, as it turns out, it’s not simply a matter of “fat tastes nice”.

There are many ways of classifying fat. One of the main ones is where you find the fatty tissue (i.e. adipose tissue). If it is wrapping around the internal organs inside the abdominal cavity, it is called abdominal or visceral fat. This is the kind of fat you would see on a beef heart or around the kidneys.

Its purpose, like all fatty tissues, is to store energy but it’s also a major regulator of endocrine signalling in your body (how the different parts of the body talk to each other). It’s also the type of fat your doctor is most worried about you accruing, because of its association with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Fear not, however, if you happen to be sporting a bit of a puku, it’s not necessarily abdominal fat. Your jolly belly fat might be just sitting under the

skin as subcutaneous fat. This is the fat that keeps you warm and cushions you against the hard knocks of life.

With meat, subcutaneous fat is the kind of fat you will see coating the side of a juicy lamb/beef/ pork chop. If we look closer at our chop of choice we might also see thick streaks of white where different muscles meet. That is the intermuscular fat that sits between muscles, it acts as soft padding for the muscles as they move.

Then there is a more subtle kind of fat, intramuscular fat (IMF) which sits in small quantities inside the muscle ready to fuel muscle movements. This is the “marbling” consumers get excited about.

There are also specialised types of adipose tissue that live around the body doing things not at all related to meat, such as brown/beige fat (primarily a furnace for heat), bone marrow fat and brain fat.

I only add these for completeness. The intramuscular fat is the star of this show.

Why is IMF good?

When it comes to meat yumminess, there are three key requirements to check off - flavour, juiciness and tenderness. Increasing intramuscular fat improves all three of these aspects to a degree. Fat imparts flavour - in fact fatty acids and the

Some fats are good for us, others not so. But then there’s the starintramuscular fat. Nicola Dennis explains the benefits of IMF.

things packaged with them seem to be where many of the species-specific flavours live. So a higher quantity of IMF can help your beef taste beefy, your lamb tasty lamby and your billy goat taste like wet dog.

A higher fat content also helps with lubricating the mouth during eating, triggering more saliva and making the meat seem more juicy. Have I spoiled the illusion by pointing out the juiciness is your own spit? I sincerely hope not.

When it comes to tenderness and IMF, it seems replacing some of the muscle fibres (and the extracellular matrix that holds the muscle fibres together) with fat cells leads to a less dense, easierto-eat steak.

Of course, this overlooks all the other chemistry going on inside the meat. Glucose, salts, free amino acids, pH, water-holding capacity, collagen content, collagen solubility, heat shock proteins etc all affect the flavour/juicy/tender checklist too.

The types of fatty acids packed into the fat cells matter too because of the aforementioned flavours and because fats with lower melting points will melt in your mouth for your full enjoyment..

Even then, all the stars can be in alignment, but you blow it all with cooking temperature.

It comes as a great surprise to me, an entirely unsophisticated chef who often can’t identify which species of homekill she has fished out of the freezer, even after eating it, that I should not fry everything on high and bake everything at 180C.

How much IMF is good?

The amount of intramuscular fat in your meat depends on which animal you have selected and which muscle you are chowing down on.

The percentage of IMF present can range from 1-2% for the venison shoulders, chicken breast sits at 3-4%, a lamb loin is about 5% and a high marbling score Wagyu beef steak can exceed 50%. I even found a Polish research group looking at IMF concentrations (0.96 to 1.4%) in various muscles of the European beaver.

Obviously that is a very wide range of values and all those meats taste juicy and tender in their own right (with the possible exception of the beaver). So, it is hard to say how much intramuscular fat cuts the mustard without going into the specifics of individual meat cuts. However, it would seem there is a point where the extra IMF isn’t doing much. For example, one research team in Australia who were looking

Winning trend

It’s looking like a win:win for fatty flavours and the environment. Results from AgResearch’s high and low methane sheep experiment show low methane emitting sheep have improved fatty acid profiles in their intramuscular fat.

This finding is not as outrageous as it might seem, because the acidic environment that creates methane in the rumen is also detrimental to the formation of fatty acids needed to make IMF.

Note: the author has not tried Wagyu mince Offended Wagyu marketers are advised to send Wagyu samples to our esteemed editor for distribution.

at beef striploins found that eating quality benefits plateaued once IMF got to 13-20%. The aforementioned Wagyu beef sits well above this threshold (typically in the 2035% range).

There are multiple uncharitable ways that we could interpret this, that Australian palates are unrefined, or Wagyu beef marbling is overkill. But, perhaps it is best to recognise that Wagyu beef has been bred for its unique flavour profile (as well as the marbling) and the fat is where the Wagyu flavours are most likely to live.

It probably goes without saying, but the intramuscular fat content may not be a big deal for non-steak cuts which typically contain chunks of subcutaneous/ intramuscular fat and are nurtured into a tender, juicy, flavourful state through roasting, stewing or grinding. That being said, consumers appear to be willing to part with cash for Wagyu mince so there is no accounting for marketing. Note: the author has not tried Wagyu mince. Offended Wagyu marketers are advised to send Wagyu samples to our esteemed editor for distribution.

How do we improve IMF ?

Clearly there is a genetic element to intramuscular fat. The Wagyu started life as a cold-resistant draught animal that could pack Vitamin A away in its muscles in preparation for the long snowy winters. Since graduating to Japanese cuisine in the late 1800s, there have been huge gains in the amount of IMF in Wagyu beef.

The heritability of IMF varies widely depending, again, on which species and which muscle you are focusing on. And like all genetic traits, it also depends on how accurately you are measuring IMF and how well you are keeping track of the environmental (non-genetic) factors that might aid or hinder IMF.

Let’s look at how intramuscular fat comes

to be so that we appreciate all the ways we might influence it. For simplicity, I will focus on cattle which is where a lot of IMF science effort has taken place. The fat cells (i.e. adipocytes) that will store the IMF are installed during gestation and early life. By the time the calf is about 250 days old, it seems it has all the fat cells it is ever going to have anywhere in its body. In fact, for some of the faster-to-mature fat deposits, like abdominal fat, the die is cast when the calf is a newborn. So how well the calf’s mother was fed during pregnancy, her milk yield, the calf’s weaning age and weaning diet is likely to affect the number of IMF fat cells available.

Fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A and D can also be important, although not always in the way expected as some researchers postulate that restricting vitamin A may be favourable for overall IMF. Possibly not favourable for the animal.

Once the fat cells for IMF have been built, the only thing left to do is cram them full of the good stuff. This only happens when the animal has surplus energy to store, so the animal must be enjoying a diet in excess of its growth and maintenance needs. IMF fat cells have to wait at the back of the queue behind the other fatty tissues.

So IMF fat cramming usually occurs later in the finishing stage. Therefore, slaughter age and weight is also important. Calm your itchy trigger finger and give your homekill animal some time to fill it’s intramuscular fat cells. If your processor pays premiums for marbling, take care with your finishing liveweights to give the intramuscular fat a chance to develop. I’m looking at you, lower South Island. I know from my days as a market analyst, that you are routinely knocking the heads off under-grown stock. Perhaps you could consider giving your light prime animals a bit of extra time (or investigate their store value with someone further up the country). You can only kill them once. They may as well go out big and juicy.

• Nicola Dennis is a scientist and data wrangler.

“Calm your itchy trigger finger and give your homekill animal some time to fill it’s intramuscular fat cells.”

Plan and monitor for control

Early in June I spent two nights in an ICU ward in a supporting role. I was so impressed with the level of monitoring and the level of response to the signals. I really got the impression that the medical people were in control.

There were clearly things beyond their control, but they seemed to have minimised those. They had lowered the risk of something going wrong.

Last month I completed a risk analysis of a large farming business which highlighted the number of areas where influence can be wielded. There were 16 broad areas but within each were many more “items”. Many, if not most mitigating actions were captured in planning and a very common part of that planning was monitoring.

I have mentioned before about what I see as a determining feature of high performing farming systems. It is being in control and minimising risks. This means leaving as little as possible to the things that cannot be controlled. Like weather and feed.

For all farming systems there are packages of industry best practice. How much these apply to each farming business is specific to that business. Take vaccination programmes for example. For most of the major infectious diseases that we have there is a vaccine that will either prevent or minimise that disease.

Having a vaccination programme in place that covers the known infection challenges for the farm goes a long

way to being in control. I do recall a farmer not long ago who had a vaccination plan but forgot to give his ewe lambs Toxovax. A process that schedules actions in a plan must accompany that plan.

Trace element deficiencies are another area in which almost full control can be applied. Monitoring to know a status and applying appropriate supplements is a proven approach to not suffer from production losses due to deficiencies. Where I see this not working is when the wrong type of supplement is being used or when the status changes.

A common change is in the aftermath of applying lime. This will lower copper availability by lifting the molybdenum levels. Updating the status every three or so years is wise, especially when fertiliser or lime applications have either changed or begun.

The more and longer summer drys in some areas will be changing the status of both macro and trace elements.

Being in control of worms on farms is a hard one. On some farms there is excellent control. That can never be the case if that control is via regular drenching. Planning and monitoring is the cornerstone of getting control. This is an area that really frustrates me because of the lack of enough monitoring tools, but we can still make huge progress with what we have.

I was faced last year with a new client on whose farm there was severe triple drench resistance in a system in which lambs were drenched every month for six months. Before last winter we set out a grazing plan for summer and the outcome has been spectacular in that most lambs not sold at weaning got one to two drenches. Planning and monitoring were the keys to give that farmer a lot of control.

The area that being in control brings the most reward is feed. Profitability of our pastoral farms is driven by how much feed we grow and how much we utilise. Weather has a massive impact on how much we grow and there is probably a bigger variability in that now.

The feed demand on our farms is very predictable. Manipulating the demand against the supply is where control is exerted.

Minimising any loss in long spells of dryness is also about being in control. We can never be totally in control but those good farmers have less variability in their annual production.

Last month I came across a farming business that was exemplifying being in control and not just taking what the season delivered. That farm had an extraordinary growing season resulting in much more pasture being taken into the winter than usual.

The manager had remembered the last time that the summer had delivered such and the consequence of not doing enough in response. Lamb weaning weights were well back because of lowered pasture quality the next spring. So this autumn he had bought hundreds of empty cows, beef and dairy, and had them behind wires on hills. He will make a small margin on those cattle, but the big payback will be lamb weaning weights. I was so impressed with him taking actions to influence the outcome. Being in control.

Vet Trevor Cook gets confirmation of the value of being in control and minimising risks.

“The feed demand on our farms is very predictable. Manipulating the demand against the supply is where control is exerted.”

GIMME SHELTER

Thanks to the poplars and willows planted on his north Waikato farm, Tom Mandeno is able to finish all his lambs on his steeper country rather than using the flats.

“Poplars do a great job through the hot, dry summers,” he says.

“Lambs do so much better sitting under an umbrella.”

He first became interested in the species back in the 1980s when the Waikato Valley Authority had a subsidised pole planting programme with the aim of stabilising erosion-prone hills and gullies. He was a Raglan County councillor at the time and needed no convincing that there would be many associated benefits such as providing shade and shelter for livestock as well as being able to farm less intensively.

So, he became a foundation trustee of the Poplar and Willow Research Trust when it was formed in 2011, with the aim of speeding the development of new, improved species. Since then, trials have been carried out on his farm, broadening and improving the range from the three species which had been commonly used in the past.

“You want a poplar with most of the growth below the ground and not much above,” he says.

The worth of the research he believes has already been proven with a greater resistance to salt carried off the Tasman Sea by onshore winds. And in a serious storm, such as Dovi earlier this year, only a few were lost.

In 1973 he bought the 315ha farm, Far Fields, in the Waikaretu Valley, then met and married Anna, who is a nurse. They moved on to the farm in 1978, a couple of years after building a dam to improve the water supply. More recently a solar-powered pump has been added to make the most of grazing made available by developing more of the hill country.

Gradually stock numbers were expanded to 4000 ewes but just a few cattle were run. In 1980 a smaller 240ha farm was bought 9km along the road, giving them more scale.

“We had a lot of debt and wool was what got us through the difficult times in the 1980s,” he says.

Gradually they moved cattle numbers up with Tom’s eye

for stock refined by having bought for his Dalgety’s clients, so he could eventually buy those of a similar quality for their farm. About 2500 ewes are now wintered along with 1000 ewe hoggets, with all replacements bred on farm. They’ve tried different ram breeds over the years, now using a Romdale on most of the flock with lambing starting in August. That’s a month earlier than the one third of their ewes going to a terminal Suffolk ram. Lambing averages about 130%.

Buying rams from local farms where selection for facial eczema (FE) tolerance has been carried out means good flock survivability exists. Tom well remembers local farmers’ advice that rams bred in an area where they were exposed to facial eczema was a big step towards eliminating a disease which resulted in substantial losses. His ewes receive only a mineral drench as a result of their built-up immunity to FE and internal parasites.

The first draft of lambs go to the meat works in early December with Tom pleased with 630 of them reaching more than 19kg carcaseweight and an average price of $177 last year.

The sheep are shorn twice a year, using local shearers in early May then again in early December. Five-year-old ewes are sold at the Tuakau ewe fair along with any surplus twotooths.

“It’s a simple system,” Tom says.

Their traditional Angus and Hereford cattle are all bought as weaner steers from the autumn fairs. The aim is to get them to a carcaseweight of about 320kg at from two and a half to three years of age.

The yearlings and young steers go on to the harder hills where they grow out and make a good job of cleaning up rough feed, then are driven to the home farm for finishing. There’s no pasture renewal carried out with Tom dubious about the merits of new species.

“I have the old-fashioned idea that the pastures which are here and have survived for 50 years perform best,” he says.

“Nothing else has done as well.”

About 180 tonnes of Superplus is applied annually, with

Poplars and willows give umbrella-like shelter for the lambs on Tom Mandeno’s north Waikato farm, writes Glenys Christian.

LIVESTOCK Onfarm

iFARM FACTS

Far Fields, Waikaretu Valley, north Waikato. 427ha with another 243ha 9km down the road.

2500 ewes wintered with 1000 hoggets, bred to Romdale or Suffolk rams.

About 200 Angus and Hereford weaner steers bought in to be sold at 320kg. No pasture renewal, crops grown or nitrogen used. Hay is made every second year.

120t going on to the home farm and 60t topdressed on to the smaller block.

“We don’t use any nitrogen,” he says.

“Our clover does that for free so that’s one environmental box we can tick.”

Soil tests are carried out every three or four years with the latest results from last year showing pH levels ranging between 5.7 and 6.2 and Olsen P from 15 to 33. Lime used to be applied from a local Waikaretu lime works but when that closed a switch was made to using dicalcic lime for a while.

While no crops are grown, hay is made every second year.

“It’s good for the weaners and helps them settle down.”

Feral deer, pigs and goats can be a problem in the four bush blocks and Canada geese make unwelcome visitors on the lake. Stock manager, Steve Bryant, has been on the farm for the past five years.

Increasingly Tom spent more time off-farm, with

Anna running the properties in his absence. His first foray into local government was when he was elected to Raglan County Council back in 1983. Then in 1988 he gained a Nuffield Scholarship to visit the UK and Europe, studying the reorganisation of rural local government, particularly in Scotland. Back home, he served on the Waikato Regional Council’s (WRC) West Coast Catchment committee for nine years.

“There were some pretty difficult times,” he says “In the 1980s the pelt on a lamb was worth more than its meat value.”

The increase from about 50 cents/kg to today’s $8-9/kg is “amazing”. Federated Farmers’ meat and wool chairman of the time, Snow Petersen, called for a $30 lamb, which seemed unobtainable to many.

“A store lamb was worth $5, and you could get $5/ kg for wool,” Tom says.

“So you were better to grow an extra kilo of wool rather than increase stock numbers.”

In 1990, deciding to run for a seat on the Wool

Top: Anna plans to erect a 2.1km fence for the 4.2ha dam they built in 1976 and plant it out with trees. Above left: Trees protect stock in storms and heat, especially lambs. Above right: Weaner cattle are bought in and finished. There is no pasture renewal.

Board he visited all the members of the electoral committee for both it and the Meat Board and was elected the following year. He became deputy chairman after being unseated during the rise of the Farmers for Positive Change lobby group in the 1990s.

At one stage the Wool Board had grower reserves of more than $400 million.

“But no one’s going to get back into market intervention and wool stockpile storage again.”

Lighting a spark

Coming out of school, Tom worked on his parents’ sheep and beef farm at Orere Point, southeast of Auckland for a year. Then he went to Ruakaka Station out of Gisborne to work as a shepherd before enrolling at Massey University to gain a diploma of sheep farming.

He wrote away and, sight unseen, was accepted for a shepherding job on Mount Possession Station in the Ashburton Gorge. He was issued a very important instruction by manager, Rob Chaffey - bring a good supply of manuka poles for mustering sticks on the high single slopes!

So he and his five dogs set off to travel south, with him spending an enjoyable 18 months on the 45,000 hectare high country run which carried 24,000 Merinos and 1200 Hereford cattle.

After his southern adventures and back in the north again, he threw himself into Young Farmers Club (YFC) activities, entering the very first Skellerup Young Farmer of the Year in 1969 as a 23-year-old hopeful. He made it through to be the youngest of the four national finalists with Gary Fraser the winner.

“That lit a bit of a spark,” he says.

So he applied to be the NZ YFC representative for

the International Farm Youth Exchange programme for 1970, sponsored by the producer boards and shipping line P&O. Tom was selected and with the Australian young farmer travelled to the United States on the liner Canberra. He spent six months in host states South Dakota and Virginia then six weeks in Ontario, Canada, on different farms.

He then went to the United Kingdom where his mother had been born and where she had met his father when he was a Royal Air Force squadron leader during the Second World War. He spent a season as a courier/driver leading 14 minibus passengers on nineweek camping tours in Europe with Contiki Travel before returning home.

On the night of the Skellerup final Tom had the opportunity to talk with guest of honour, Sir Brian Talboys, who recommended he follow his path of getting a job at stock and station agents Dalgety. So with Tom’s father being a client and a vacancy to fill he became an agent and auctioneer at Tuakau, southwest of Auckland, for the next six years.

“That was when we had 70 million sheep and there were massive sheep sales there,” he says.

Producer board directorships

He remained on the wool board from 1991 until its disestablishment in 2003, and then became a farmerelected director of Meat and Wool NZ and the NZ Meat Board until 2009.

Closer to home, he became a director of the C Alma Baker Trust in 1998, which runs nearby Limestone Downs, right on the west coast. Much research has been carried out in recent years on Wiltshire sheep, and with the addition of a dairy herd over 10 years ago, there’s been a focus on taking the surplus beef animals produced to an older age. The now NZ-based trust will celebrate its centenary in 2026.

Tom’s also been a Justice of the Peace for almost 30 years and has been involved with the WaikatoHauraki-Coromandel Rural Support Trust as a facilitator for the last six.

“It brings people together and gets them off the farm,” he says.

“It can be a long, lonely battle for some of them.”

He remains very positive about sheep and beef prospects.

“It’s a great industry and a cornerstone of the economy,” he says.

“People want to eat our high-quality produce. Just look at how strong the market is in China.

He’s been involved with agricultural projects during the terms of six ministers of agriculture.

“If we ever needed a powerful ministerial voice to support a viable future for New Zealand agricultural exports, it is now,” he says.

“And we’ve got smart young people coming through. That gives me confidence for our future.”

• More p26/27

“We had a lot of debt and wool was what got us through the difficult times in the 1980s.”

Country mix: Lambs on the move beneath established trees on Far Fields.

Applications for the 2023 Nuffield Scholarships are open until 14 August.

The future of food and fibre is in the hands of our bold, grounded people - those who give back to their communities and industries. Sound like you? Register your interest in a Scholarship at Ruralleaders.co.nz/application-nuffield

Dear Aunty Thistledown,

Don’t you get sick of all the busybodies and politicians casually discussing the demise of the meat industry? New Zealand’s livestock numbers are trending downward, the national ewe flock is being decimated, and still they clutch their pearls and ask “when will something be done about the farmers”?

I’m sick of them discussing the guardians of the land like we aren’t in the room. I’ve had a gutsful of them proposing a 20% reduction in livestock numbers like it's an aspirational goal. I say it seems like we have too much bureaucracy per hectare in this country! I say we make them justify stocking rate!

Yours sincerely, How About That!

Dear HAT,

That seems more like a rally cry than a question, but watch me jump in anyway.

Yes, the livestock numbers have reduced across the red meat industry. I would love to put this in stocking rates, but it is difficult to work out which land is housing what. So, let me take a leaf out of the mainstream media’s book and do this on a per person basis. Ten years ago, here in the land of the long white sheep, there were 7.3 sheep per person, 0.9 beef cattle per person and 2.6 deer per person. Now each person shares NZ with 5.2 sheep, 0.8 beef and 0.2 deer. Or, reverting to more useful numbers for a quick second, the total livestock numbers have dropped 5.5 million head (-15%) across those three classes and the human population has gone up 726,000 head (+17%). Team “red meat” is making do with less.

How about the bureaucracy? We will look at this on a full-time equivalent (FTE) per person basis. Actually we look at it per 1000 people which is roughly how many souls a politician eats annually. Let's think of a whimsical unit like “hecta-people” (Hp) instead of saying FTE/1000 people all the time.

The stocking rate of politicians (0.02/ Hp) themselves is trending downward, because the number of parliamentary seats has stayed about 120 for the past 26 years despite a growing NZ population. Politicians are running at half the stocking rate of 100 years ago (0.4/Hp) when there were 80 seats in parliament for a population of 1 million people.

On the other hand, the number of public servants (loosely defined as the people doing the government's bidding), has gone up, up, up. In 2021, there were just over 61,000 public servants compared with just under 44,000 in 2011. The stocking rate is up from 10/Hp to 12/ Hp. Sounds intensive to me, I hope the government is wintering them responsibly.

Of course, there are certain public servant types we could stand to see more of such as, say, teachers and police. But, the stocking rate of teachers is on its way down. From 11.7/Hp to 11.5/Hp. Police numbers are variable year-to-year, but sticking pretty close to the 2.1/Hp. It seems the public servants who serve have to keep it efficient.

Also, hats off to the Ministry of

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

Environment staff who were able to drive everyone’s blood pressure up with only 300 full time staff (0.07/Hp) - although it has now ballooned to over 600 FTEs (0.13/ Hp). Hope they updated their resource consent accordingly.

And last but not least, the MPI staff. It’s a reproductive rate to be proud of over that side of the fence. There were 1,721 staff in 2011 and the most recent figures have them at 3,450 in 2021. That's a 74% increase in their stocking rate- from 0.4 to 0.7/hp. Perhaps they are filling the void left by the M.bovis cattle.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me drop this graph here and call the job done.

Love, Aunty Thistledown.

DEVELOPMENT SPURS SYSTEM CHANGE

A switch to tall fescue and irrigation has transformed the finishing operation on Tom and Sam Macfarlane’s Melior Venison farm in South Canterbury.

By Lynda Gray. Photos by Anna Munro.

Achange from ryegrass to tall fescuedominant pastures has created a better feeding platform for young stock at Melior Venison.

“I haven’t sown a perennial ryegrass for six years because I think we have better options for our system and land type,” Tom says.

What’s been developed is a pasture mix with Hummer, a tall fescue variety, as the base. The exact mix grown, and the establishment process followed is dependent on soil type, specific environmental considerations and the seasonal feed demand of the young stock grazing it.

The change to fescue as well as the development of irrigated flats for winter crop and high-quality prairie grass and red clover has transformed the farm from a predominantly breeding to a mostly finishing system. The Macfarlanes’ beef operation appeared in Country-Wide June.

When Tom and Sam moved to the farm, formerly known as The Kowhais, in 2013, replacement of the perennial ryegrasses on the lower lying country, and browntop on the steeper country was high on the To-Do list.

The high-endophyte ryegrass was never going to work in the finishing system they wanted to build. Tom was aware of tall fescue’s attributes. His father Andy was a co-founder of pasture and forage company Agricom and an advocate of the perennial grass. However, Tom did his own

background research before deciding it was the best fit.

“It was always our intention to change to a more profitable pasture. We started with fescue and kept evolving it from there.”

Drawing on Agricom advice, the Macfarlanes chose Hummer with novel endophyte (MaxP).

On the higher fertility mid-altitude country, a Hummer (14kg), Relish red and Tribute white clover (3kg each), Atom prairie (4kg) and Agritonic plantain (1kg) mix is grown. The sowing rates are relatively low and indicative of a well-prepared seedbed. Attention to seedbed preparation never used to be a huge priority, Tom admits, but through trial and error it became obvious that a two-year annual ryegrass to brassica crop rotation was the best way to eliminate

weeds and weed grasses, build fertility, and therefore improve the chances of successful fescue establishment.

An Asset ryegrass and Hunter brassica mix has worked particularly well.

“It’s a good fit. It breaks down the thatch left from old pastures and also produces feed at key times when we need it for the young deer.”

The spring-sown mix which persists until drilling of a permanent grass the following spring means fewer tractor hours are spent on establishing summer crops.

“If we grew rape for a summer crop, we’d need to follow on with an autumn-sown short-term grass and that can be a problem on our country because it can either be too wet or too dry making establishment hitand-miss.”

FARM FACTS

SHAREHOLDERS

John (Tom’s uncle) and Melinda Macfarlane (Aust); Tom and Samantha Macfarlane.

STOCK

Finishing 3000 deer, 4000 lambs and 430 cattle on two farms.

FARMS

Total 20,000su.

The Kowhais: Between Fairlie and Pleasant Point. 800ha (650ha effective) including 180ha irrigation.

Transitioning to the finishing of young deer, cattle, and lambs. Stanton Station 10-year lease. Kimbell, 10km west of Fairlie. Being developed primarily for hind breeding plus ewes and beef cows.

STAFF

Employ five full-time plus casual staff for the two farms.

This season Oakdon, a new and first New Zealand-bred meadow fescue was added to the spring-sown Hummer mix. It’s more palatable than tall fescue and has strong mid spring to late summer growth. It’s slower to establish, giving the red clover a chance to get a good foothold while soaking up any excess nitrogen that weed grasses could tap into.

On the steeper, drier and variable fertility north-facing hills the fescue mix has been altered with Savvy cocksfoot added. Cocksfoot will persist during the dry summers, bounce back quickly after rain, and provide good standing hay for strip grazing in the winter. It should last seven to 10 years making it a true permanent pasture.

The hard graft of fescue development is complete, and the Macfarlanes are targeting crop and pastures in particular areas.

A good example is a steep hill marginal block in the south corner of the farm immediately below a forestry block. Vehicle access is difficult and there are environmentally sensitive areas.

“It’s not easy to break-fence so we’ll

do a two to three-year rotation of annual ryegrasses and summer crops before permanent pasture.”

Has the pasture makeover stacked up; will it produce more kilograms of drymatter, meat and income per hectare?

In simple terms it’s elevated the farm from sheep and beef breeding generating 10-15c/kg DM to predominantly finishing, generating 30-plus c/kg DM consumed.

Tom estimates the development is growing an extra five tonnes DM/ha each year at a cost of about 4c/kg/DM assuming a sevenyear pasture life.

“The costs are covered in the first year assuming the livestock finished generate 27c/kg DM or more, and beyond that the extra production is free.”

New chapter

A 10-year lease of Stanton Station, a 20-minute drive from Melior Venison, (Country-Wide June) is a new farming chapter.

2020,

The lease arrangement unfolded from

when the venison schedule dipped

From left: Angharad and Charlie Johns (who manages the South Canterbury farms) with their children Amelia and Arthur, and Samantha and Tom Macfarlane with their son Jack.

out at $6/kg which hit income hard. The Macfarlanes had to reassess and reset what they were doing.

“We had highly productive country and highly productive stock. The hinds were productive but not profitable on that country. We wanted to maintain the balance of what we’d developed and also ensure the supply of quality stock.”

They were keen to grow scale and scope but restrained by capital and unable to buy more land. Instead, they expanded without capital outlay by negotiating the lease of Stanton Station which they identified as ideal breeding country for hinds as well as cows and ewes.

“It adds balance to the overall operation. We were lucky to find investors who had a shared vision to turn it into a deer farm.”

Downland pastures will be upgraded but probably not with fescue given the limited 130ha of easy contour country and the need for a faster rotation to fill feed supply and quality gaps.

Regardless Tom says they’re committed to the deer industry.

“We’re focused on what we’re doing with deer. For us it’s about constant improvement and a belief and fascination with how we can do that with genetics and feeding.”

Farming pathways

The development of The Kowhais/Melior Venison is the first full-on chapter in Tom and Sam’s deer-focused farming career. Both 34, they started out in 2013 managing The Kowhais for Tom’s Australian-based uncle and aunt.

In 2017 they formed a 50:50 equity partnership, buying the former Deer Improvement stud breeding farm at Balfour in Southland and renaming it Melior Genetics. Last year, the farming business

Next Gen challenge

Some people are born farmers and that’s cool, but the industry needs to do a better job of selling it as a career to the next generation. That’s the Macfarlanes’ view based on talking with a number of Lincoln University students over the last few years.

Undergraduates often aspire to rural professional roles because they aren’t aware of the opportunities to learn and grow a broad skill set, as well as the earning potential.

was restructured with Tom and Sam leasing both South Canterbury farms from a group of owner investors. The Macfarlanes have a 25% stake in the collective farming business, called Melior Venison, which they hope to increase to at least 50%.

They employ nine onfarm staff, most under the age of 35. Charlie Johns manages the South Canterbury farms, and Sam Bishop Melior Genetics.

Sam Macfarlane supports them with practical advice on staff recruitment, giving feedback on the wording for online job advertisements to emphasise the values and essence of the farming business. She also mentors managers on how to approach performance reviews and encourage the input of employees.

“We want the people who work with us to be motivated and it’s not just about money, it’s also about creating the right working and social environment. I enjoy bridging the gaps in management and communication skills that aren’t taught at university.

Spending to save

Tom takes a slightly different view on how to cut farm expenses.

“I think as farmers we tend to look at costs and farm working expenses in isolation rather than the long-term potential gains and return on capital from spending.”

A good example is the $1000-$1500 annual spend on soil testing to identify

In the Federated Farmers 2021-2022 remuneration report, 13% of farm managers were under the age of 30; the median TPV was $80,500 and the maximum $149,000.

Tom says the low percentage under the age of 30 is a concern.

“I think for industry progression we need more in that younger age bracket. It’s a massive challenge.”

Farm owners need to do their bit in matching their expectations for high

calibre managers with the employment package, especially housing, he says.

“If you want your manager to go above and beyond and have that ownership mentality you need to supply the right environment, facilities, and a house an owner would be happy to live in.

“I often hear ‘it’s adequate for staff or a manager’ but that isn’t fair. Adequate is not good enough.”

At takeover Melior Venison was a hi-endophyte ryegrass system running about 10 ewes/ha. Under the new fescue based system it runs about 10 hinds/ha.

areas that require more or less fertiliser, or specific nutrients. It costs about the same as a tonne of fertiliser, but Tom regards it as smart spending because it leads to more targeted fertiliser inputs which over time will potentially reduce the amount used while increasing the productive potential of the land.

Heartbreak and change

Amid the buzz, excitement and achievements of farm developments over the last few years has been personal loss and grief for Tom and Sam. The year before the birth of Jack (almost 4) was the stillbirth of Penelope in 2017 at 32 weeks. In 2019 Genevieve was stillborn at 26 weeks.

The deeply traumatic time was tempered in part by the empathy, phone calls and cards from other couples and families affected by stillbirths, Sam says.

“It’s mind-blowing the number of people who have experienced similar to what we have.

“The more we make this a normal conversation the less alone everyone who goes through it will feel.”

The couple coped with the losses of their daughters in different ways. Tom immersed himself in the farm development while Sam’s life ground to halt as she questioned and reassessed her life to date, and how she wanted it to look in the future. This included resetting her role in the farming business. Until then she had fulfilled a number of roles typical of many farming women.

“I like organising systems and I picked up the tasks that others didn’t want.”

Financial administration, taking care of online media for the marketing and promotion of Melior Genetics as well as for recruitment of employees were all on her unwritten job description. But despite the

work, effort and results Sam felt unfulfilled, undervalued, and unsupported in the business.

On making the decision to step back from those roles, Sam, a qualified hairdresser, opened in December 2020 Boss Salons in Fairlie. A nanny takes care of Jack and household duties, and Sam works four days a week, including Saturdays when Tom has a farm day with Jack.

“For us it’s meant working and thinking

differently. My work life is now a lot more balanced than it used to be.”

The Macfarlanes are looking forward to the birth of their baby in late July.

Sam is still involved in the farm business but in more of a strategic thinking and advisory capacity. A good example was the move to take on the Stanton lease.

“I could see the opportunity and value it could add from the get-go, and I pushed Tom to follow through.”

“It’s mind-blowing the number of people who have experienced similar to what we have... The more we make this a normal conversation the less alone everyone who goes through it will feel.”

Top: Kale on the mid-altitude country. Above: Lambs on clover and prairie grass.

A business selling venison

BY: LYNDA GRAY

VENISON IS A HARD SELL BUT WORTH

it, says James Petrie aka The Merchant of Venison who loves the job of selling it.

But a lot of people in the hospitality and food service industry are wary thanks to lingering memories of tough, freezer-burnt offerings served up in the homes of wellmeaning hunters.

“Many chefs still aren’t familiar with farmed venison. They put it in the same camp as hunted venison, but that’s like saying Rugby Union is the same as Rugby League.”

He’s convinced a number of chefs to include farmed products on their menu by offering tips on how to serve it for their particular clientele.

“It’s such a great product and farmed venison is such a great story but as an industry we need to work harder at telling it.”

He sells about six to eight tonnes a week of Mountain River product to restaurants, wholesalers, supermarkets, butchers throughout the South Island, and online to households.

James Petrie.

Petrie started selling venison after-hours after beginning work in the boning room of Mountain River in 1993. He approached Ian Stewart, the plant manager, about the idea and his encouragement and advice helped him greatly.

In 2010 Petrie took the leap and made it a full-time business with the backing of his wife Angela, growing the client base throughout the South Island. Over that time there’s been

big changes and developments with venison cuts.

Twenty years ago neck bones, osso bucco and trim were the main offerings; now there’s Denver leg, Frenched rib racks, short loin, strip loin, tri-tip, boneless cheeks and much more. Most of what’s sold is in ready-to-go form from Mountain River although Petrie has value-added in recent times by mincing and curing some of the cuts.

Chefs have become more adventurous and are taking on board new cooking styles such as American-style BBQ smoked cuts.

Petrie’s hope is that in the not-toodistant future people will regard venison as an everyday protein rather than a special occasion food. That will take time but the stocking of venison in supermarket chillers is an encouraging sign. He supplies Foodstuffs and Fresh Choice supermarkets in Christchurch as well as to My Food Bag.

The move to orange under the Covid traffic light rules traffic light has been great for business and once the hospitality industry is moving he wants to make inroads to the North Island.

Another short-term goal is to win the NZ Pie of the Year competition which could involve a smoked venison brisket.

He’s working on it, watch this space.

“It’s such a great product and farmed venison is such a great story but as an industry we need to work harder at telling it.”

VENISON SCHEDULE NEEDS TO

LIFT

Acollection of this season’s trading/ finishing gross margins across lamb, bull beef and venison show a reasonably tight spread with all in the 30-40 cents per kg drymatter (c/kg DM) range.

However, some gross margins are closer to 40 than 30c/kg DM, and these deserve some explanation. First, the winter lamb job has benefited from the Southland drought with buying prices in the $3.50 to $3.60/kg liveweight (kg LW) range until the end of April. A $4.20/kg LW) buying price reduces the gross margin to 28 cents/kg DM.

The nine month to 18 month bull enterprise benefits from a bull purchase price of $3.00/kg LW, compared to $4.50/kg LW for the 100kg LW weaner bulls.

The weaner deer sales in March were highlighted by the savage difference in price between stags ($5.60/kg LW) and hinds ($3.88/kg LW) giving the weaner hinds a boost to profitability despite a slightly lower liveweight gain potential.

If the venison schedule fails to improve as forecast at $9/kg carcaseweight (CW), and stays closer to $8/kg CW, the gross margins would be 20c and 32c/kg DM for stags and hinds respectively. Of concern to farmers is not just the peak venison schedule in the October window, but also how it is maintained through the rest of the killing season with considerable numbers normally killed at less than ideal weights, simply to catch the schedule before it falls.

This highlights the need for breeders to organise their breeding hind management carefully. Adult hinds need to be in good order and well grown to achieve earlier and

tighter fawning, bigger fawn birth weights and fawn growth rates, and earlier weaning at higher fawn and adult hind liveweights.

Management changes

A 70kg LW fawn by mid May is ideal, making a 110kg LW (60kg CW) stag from October 1 realistic. Animal health remedies work better on well-grown fawns. Two sizeable deer operations in South Canterbury have recently made changes to their management to enable deer to be better grown in mid to late summer. One changed their lamb sale policy from fattening to selling all lambs store early January, the other quit a substantial bull

beef fattening enterprise in favour of breeding cows.

The dairy grazing price is still being haggled over (June 1) even as cows arrive on their grazing blocks. I have used $35/cow/ week, which, with a 12.5kg DM per cow per day crop consumption, is 40c/kg DM. That excludes the cost of straw, and assumes the dairy owner does the work. The graziers are making the most of the high dairy pay-out, and inflation in cropping costs, to push the dairy boys hard.

You cannot make a decision looking at these enterprises in isolation, the whole farm management needs to be analysed. With wintering dairy cows this is especially relevant as a large winter cropping programme with its associated rotation, may be required. In addition, the regional council will need to consent to nitrogen loadings.

Last year, one dairy cow grazier I spoke to, trying to respond to dairy farmer requests to reduce his fodder beet area, was denied by the regional council because reducing the ratio of fodder beet to kale would have increased his nitrogen leaching number. In mid Canterbury the greatest lift in land sale prices on the plains has come from parcels which have already wintered dairy cows, i.e. have a relatively high nitrogen baseline. While all livestock options are doing well it is especially pleasing to see venison improving. The venison schedule reached $8/kg CW this season just past, up $2.70 on this time last year, and in line apparently with the five-year average. More importantly, it held up right through the season.

No better than beef or lamb

However, the schedule needs to continue to improve; as noted earlier an $8/kg CW schedule makes deer finishing no better than beef or lamb. Venison deer breeders, already concerned at the lack of scale in the sector, are also concerned about the lack of confidence (probably reflected in the discounted hind price). Venison marketers say they are unwilling to pressure their customers on price.

A representative breeding hind herd, selling weaners, could earn a gross margin of 12c/kg DM, or if finishing all progeny, 16c/ kg DM. At High Peak Station’s 2018 weaner sale, well-grown European and hybrid red stags and hinds sold for $7-$8/kg LW.

Regarding beef, one could take the view

Tom Ward explains the forces behind the season’s lamb, beef and venison markets.

that there needs to be some caution around the schedule. Choice beef (premium beef) and pork retail benchmarks in the United States, still at historically high levels, are down 20% and 14% respectively on this time last year, despite no significant change in supply. Total beef slaughter is up 15%, but this is breeding cows, driven by drought, and it affects the grinding beef retail price only.

Demand for beef is down as consumers absorb significant increases in living costs. Nevertheless, the US 95Cl price remains about $3.00/lb and the exchange rate at 65 cents (7% better than twelve months ago).

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As an interesting aside, the Americans are likely to pay more for their beef eventually, due to herd liquidation (highest in 30 years) and higher feed costs. The meat processors are already paying 17% more for prime cattle than a year ago, something they can readily afford. The USDA has revised downward their production forecasts for 2023 by 7%, and their import forecast upward by 6%, with most coming from Brazil and Mexico, and eventually Australia.

Table 1: Livestock trading gross margins

• Tom Ward is a South Canterbury farm consultant.

“Adult hinds need to be in good order and well grown to achieve earlier and tighter fawning, bigger fawn birth weights and fawn growth rates, and earlier weaning at higher fawn and adult hind liveweights.”

Don’t forget the three Ss

UNDERUTILISATION OF PASTURE already grown is quite possibly the single biggest lost opportunity on beef and sheep farms.

Farmers don’t fully appreciate the gravity of this fact until they model the farm's biology and compare feed demand with feed supply.

Underlying the mismatches are stock policies, which may show great return per kilogram of drymatter eaten but fail to show how much high value winter feed is consumed.

In addition to poor feed demand and supply profile is lack of subdivision, also an underrated farm investment because the number of paddocks is also inextricably linked to pasture utilisation. The more paddocks you have the more management decisions you can apply and the more likely your stock will be able to eat what you’ve already grown and paid for.

Those of us who cut our teeth with farming back in the 1960s and 1970s will remember being drilled about how our highest priorities should be around the basics of subdivision, stock policy and super phosphate – the so-called three big Ss. As time went on the ‘S’ for super-phosphate was replaced with an ‘S’ for soil fertility.

There has been plenty of debate on which of the three big Ss should take priority, particularly when finances are limited, but most would agree there’s little point in growing more pasture if you can’t effectively utilise what you’re already growing. So soil fertility has often taken third place when finance is limiting, however in an ideal world the three big Ss should have equal priority.

SUBDIVISION

(AND ASSOCIATED WATER RETICULATION)

• More paddocks provide more opportunity for you to better utilise your pasture and stock management skills.

• You will grow more pasture with more paddocks as rotational grazing principles will be able to be applied embracing ‘grass grows grass’.

STOCKING POLICY

• Getting the right stock class on the right land class

• Matching feed demand with feed supply

• The right stock policy with the best genetics

S S S

SOIL FERTILITY

• To grow more pasture you need higher soil fertility

• Getting the best ‘bang for your bucks’ by choosing the right fertiliser type.

In a nutshell, well-managed old pastures are hard to beat, and this has not only been demonstrated on sheep and beef farms, but also holds true on dairy farms.

On some farms, pasture renewal will be essential to get the farm back up and running, but on most, there are likely to be higher-level priorities, Bob Thomson writes.

Pasture utilisation

If we were to take a 500-hectare sheep and beef farm with an average pasture production of seven tonnes DM a year and a typical pasture utilisation of 75%, and we increased pasture utilisation to 80% then we would increase pasture eaten by 350kg/ha per year. This increase in pasture utilisation would be realised whether the pasture was old or new, and at a nominal 15 cents gross margin return per kilogram of DM, would be worth $26,250/year without any additional expenditure.

If we were to take the same 500ha sheep and beef farm and applied a pasture renewal programme on 10% of the farm at a cost of $1000/ha we would have spent $50,000. Let’s assume that in the pasture renewal phase we increased pasture production from 7-10t DM and therefore increased overall pasture production by 150t or the equivalent of 300kg DM/ha/ year over the whole farm.

Again assuming a 75% pasture utilisation and 15 cents return per kg/DM that would be worth $16,875/year and would take three-years to pay back. Had that investment been spent on a specialist pasture for a specialist purpose then that is an entirely different proposition –lucerne is a good example of that sort of opportunity.

However, if soil fertility was less than optimum and the $50,000 of capital

investment was spent on raising Olsen-P then $50,000 spent on phosphate would relate to at least 20kg of elemental P/ha applied across the 500ha. As a consequence Olsen P may increase by about four units on most of our soils.

Each unit increase in Olsen P would likely raise pasture production by about 1% when Olsen P is less than optimum - but you’ll need to check these assumptions for your farm with your soils. If we assume that pasture production was 7t DM/ha that translates to an increase of 280kg DM/ ha across the whole farm. Again at 75% pasture utilisation and 15 cents return per kg DM that would result in a $21,000 gross margin return across the whole farm and therefore would take two or three years for payback.

The increase from soil fertility would be achieved without disruption from regrassing or loss of production as the new pasture aged and slowly reverted postplanting. On the other hand, provided the capital investment in soil fertility is supported with maintenance fertiliser, then soil fertility and therefore pasture production will be maintained at the higher production level.

Taking all things into account we can conclude that before we start spending money on new pasture we need to make sure we’ve got our priorities sorted. Sure, some of you will be able to take advantage

Sticking to the basics:

FIRST PRIORITY

Plan for more Subdivision:

• The most underrated farm improvement ‘weapon’

• Better utilise and enhance the pasture that you are already growing.

SECOND PRIORITY

Review Stock policies:

• Some stock classes are more profitable and better suited to your farm

• Get the right stock class on the right land

• Choose your source of genetics wisely; there are huge differences in profit.

THIRD PRIORITY

Raise Soil fertility:

• When you can utilise and manage what you’re already producing then increase soil fertility

Consider Seeds – the fourth priority

• Finally, when all else is sorted, maybe look to improve your pasture genetics. of all the opportunities by improving pasture utilisation, increasing soil fertility, and embarking on a pasture renewal program with each contributing toward increased profit. But for most farmers there will be the process of setting priorities and accepting that well managed old pastures are very hard to beat.

On hill country sheep and beef farms we observe that farmers who do basic things really well are ‘picking the lowhanging fruit’ and enjoying the best returns from capital investment in farm improvement. That view is backed up with the benefit of hard-won farmer experience and hard-core benchmarking of farm production and profit.

• Bob Thomson is an AgFirst consultant.

How can you reduce your reliance on imported feed?

MAYBE THE ANSWER IS SIMPLY TO GROW A BIT

With the air of uncertainty around imported feeds in both the short and long term, now is a good time to explore alternatives. And you don’t have to look far. Planting an extra paddock in maize at home, or ordering more maize silage in, may be all that’s needed. Maize silage is the ideal supplement to pasture. The cows love the stuff, it helps you maintain high production and milk quality when your feed levels dip (and will keep for years if they don’t). To find out about adding more maize to your farm system, contact your local Pioneer representative, call 0800 PIONEER or visit pioneer.co.nz/maize-silage

Lumpy skin warning

BY: LYNDA GRAY

Don’t lump it, do more and step up preventive action was the message to the Australian government and ag sector leaders from presenters at the Northern Territory Cattle Association conference about the increasing threat of lumpy skin disease (LSD).

The serious bovine disease is edging closer to Australia and has put the cattle industry on high alert.

An outbreak would have devastating consequences for the cattle industry in

patterns increasingly connecting Africa to Europe and Asia; increased heat, humidity and changes in wind due to climate change were all interacting to increase disease threats such as LSD.

In late March the federal government pumped an extra $61.6 million in emergency additional biosecurity funding for Northern Australia and the Northern Territory Government has pledged another $2m. But David Connolly NCTA president said it won’t be enough for the scale of

EXTRA.

Northern Australia and would trigger the shutdown of major export markets for live cattle, hides and dairy products, Andrew Tongue, Department of Agriculture deputy secretary told the conference.

The disease is a threat to Australia because it could be blown into the northern part of the country on insects such as mosquitoes and midges. It would be difficult to control in extensive and remote cattle and buffalo herds.

Tongue said changes in geopolitical trade

disaster if an outbreak eventuates.

Another speaker, Nicole Manison, Minister for Agribusiness said an LSD outbreak in Australia was a case of “not if, but when.”

BeefCentral.com, an Australian beef industry online publication, has kept tabs on spread of the virus throughout southern Asia.

Since 2019 it has spread to India, Taiwan and Vietnam. In 2021 it was reported in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia,

and in early March this year Indonesia. Predictions are that LSD will spread through the Indonesian archipelago and if it reaches the eastern island of Timor, Australia will be the next country at risk.

Biosecurity New Zealand is monitoring the spread of LSD.

“We are watching the situation and have a number of measures in place to prevent it arriving here,” Dr Mary van Andel, Chief Veterinary Officer, Biosecurity NZ says.

“We do not import any live cattle and the importing requirements for cattle semen and embryos include measures for LSD.”

Some animal products (dairy, hides and skins) represent a low risk of introducing disease but the import standards for these products also includes measures such as country freedom or treatment of the disease.

Imported used animal equipment must be cleaned before entering NZ and there are “general requirements” for passengers, mail, and cargo to manage the risk of LSD entry.

Lumpy skin disease is a serious bovine viral disease with only marginally successful vaccine treatments. Apart from lumpy and painful skin lesions it causes fever, watery eyes, loss of appetite and a reluctance to move. It manifests causing emaciation, reduced milk production, damaged hies and reproductive losses. While some infected animals have no clinical signs, others are severely afflicted and die.

An example of Lumpy Skin Disease on a cow.

“We do not import any live cattle and the importing requirements for cattle semen and embryos include measures for LSD.”

RE-EXAMINING THE URINE PATCH

Received wisdom refers to something that ‘everybody knows’ is true… even though it might not be. It’s common knowledge that you starve a fever and feed a cold, that going out with wet hair will make you more susceptible to bugs, and that man ‘flu’ is an exaggeration.

Periodically, the curious person might examine some of the ‘everybody knows’ statements to test for truth. Circumstances change, science advances, and sometimes the passage of time means that the original interpretation is no longer appropriate.

With this in mind, the suggestion that dairy cow urine is the source of so many environmental problems deserves reexamination.

In the early 1990s a soil scientist made a back-of-the-envelope calculation at a conference and said that a dairy cow urine patch could be equivalent to the addition of nitrogen (N) at one tonne per hectare.

The figure is still in the minds of many, even though it was pared back to two-thirds of a tonne very rapidly. Advances in animal breeding and feeding since then mean that the modern dairy cow (and other farm animals) is more efficient than her forebears; she turns more of what she eats into milk and so excretes less.

Doctoral candidate Lisa Box, working with Dr Racheal Bryant and Professor Grant Edwards on plantain at Lincoln University has estimated urinary N output at approximately 200g N per cow per day. She did this with collection devices on the cows. The N was delivered in about 20 urination events of 2-3 litres liquid each time. Research has also shown

that the area of a urine patch covers about 0.40 m squared of pasture (with an uptake zone of twice that area).

After being grazed, ryegrass plants start rapid regrowth with a translocation mechanism for fast transfer of stored sugars from the roots, and uptake of water (and N) from the soil. The dark green colour and increased growth of the grass, observable within a few days of the herd departing, is an indicator of where much of the about 10g of N from the urine can be found.

After a single grazing, urine patches cover 3-4% of the grazed area and form part of the diet once the herd returns. As far back as 1994, soil scientists suggested that “a combination of ammonia volatilisation, denitrification, microbial N immobilisation and rapid plant uptake may minimise leaching losses in urine patch areas of pasture”.

First principles support new thinking.

Dr Graeme Coles, a Canterbury-based nutrition scientist, has done the calculations, using published results from New Zealand research trials. See Table 1.

Research by Massey University animal scientists has shown that nitrogen is split about evenly between urine and faeces. Best production practice leaves (49.5 x 3.16) kg/ha return of N in urine while mean productivity leads to (37.2 x 3.45) kg/ha return.

Soil scientists have calculated that at least 65% of this N is immediately recaptured by plants and about 30% is lost to the atmosphere. This leaves a maximum of 7.8kg/ha of nitrogen to leach from a best practice operation (for 2255 kg/ha MS),

The suggestion that dairy cow urine is the source of so many environmental problems deserves re-examination, Jacqueline Rowarth writes.

“They calculated leaching under gorse was greater than under pasture by a factor of almost two to almost three times – and underestimation of this ‘invasive’ contribution could constrain agricultural production.”

and 6.4kg/ha from a mid-level production system (for 1473 kg/ha MS). Note that these estimates are worst case because they assume cows do all excretion on pasture, which is not the case in reality (because of milking).

This N is joining a background of N from soil organic matter. To 30cm depth, NZ soils contain on average 100 tonnes of organic matter per hectare, which is associated with about 10 tonnes of N.

Decomposition of organic matter depends on temperature and moisture but under fertilised moist conditions in NZ, half of any added material will have gone in 3.5 to five years. The research team, which included scientists from the University of Waikato, estimated mean turnover time for organic matter on fertile, moist pastures at about 15 years. This gives the potential for considerable N to be released from soil organic matter – 127kg/ha/yr has been measured over a 13-year period under bare fallow by Plant and Food Research scientists.

Another significant source of N is human excretion. Again, Dr Coles has done the calculations with a focus on the Selwyn District in Canterbury. In rural areas septic tanks are ubiquitous and the dispersal field must be below the depth of pasture (lawn).

NZ population dietary studies indicate average daily protein intake is 102g for males and 71g for females (86.5g overall). This protein is effectively all turned over, which means rural Selwyn residents inject 182 tonnes/yr of N into groundwater.

Gorse and broom contribute to N in groundwater as well. Research by Landcare modellers have warned that the catchment contribution of nitrogen-fixing woody shrubs is being underestimated. They calculated leaching under gorse was greater than under pasture

*This is the ideal/possible calculated by Lincoln University scientists as harvestable ** using DairyNZ/LIC dairy statistics 2020-21

by a factor of almost two to almost three times –and underestimation of this ‘invasive’ contribution could constrain agricultural production (because of assumptions that N load is caused by agriculture).

Below: After a single grazing, urine patches cover 3-4% of the grazed area and form part of the diet once the herd returns.

‘Feed a cold and starve a fever’ was probably never true. Wet hair leading to illness is probably association rather than causation. Man ‘flu’ is probably real. Men already knew this but struggled through sickness and ill health to make their case clearly to women. The explanation, published by the British Medical Journal in 2017 is that men might have weaker immune responses to viral respiratory viruses. Another explanation, published last year in Frontiers for Immunology, is that women have evolved to be more resistant to herd diseases such as viruses (including Covid-19), whereas men are more resistant to bacterial infection likely to be associated with hunting and fighting.

Research will continue internationally on the reality of man ‘flu’, but in the meantime NZ needs to sort out the received wisdom around dairy cows. Food production, particularly of the essential amino acids available in meat and milk for low calorie intake, depends upon it.

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

Why plant natives?

Trees don’t have to all be green, writes Peter Arthur who enjoys the colours of deciduous species.

All trees soak up CO2 while they are growing but it seems we are getting bogged down in pettifogging detail trying to decide which are eligible for carbon credits and which are not.

I gather $145 million has been spent on the He Waka Eke Noa consultation process so far, trying to decide how we are to be taxed, and what species of trees we should plant.

Some want to plant pine trees and some want to plant natives but there are numerous other options which could be considered.

This year, in my part of the world, we have had an almost perfect autumn — perfect amounts of rain, amazing grass growth, no wind and the most beautiful autumn colour.

The lush grass growth led to lots of shit and Martin dagged one lot of lambs four times before they finally went off to the works. Flies were also bad for a month or so. Some wind would have hardened the grass, but lack of it meant the autumn colour stayed on the trees.

For the last 50 years I have been planting trees for autumn colour—all deciduous exotics, and for about two months the place looks an absolute picture and reminiscent of those calendar photos you see of North American woodlands.

The bulk of the colour comes from red oaks, Quercus rubra, Q. palustris, Q. ellipsoidalis, and Q. coccinea which is the best red. Some Q. alba, the American

white oak has nice orangey/brown colours.

The brightest of all is Pistacia sinensis, of the same family as the pistachio nut.

It does best on a hot dry site with full sun. Some of mine are partially shaded and don’t colour up so well. Nyssa sylvatica, or the tupelo does well in damp sites, as do the two deciduous conifers, the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) and swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum). These last two go orangey brown.

The ginkgo, which can be slow growing, turns a nice clear yellow and seems to tolerate all sorts of sites. It is one of the oldest living trees so is pretty bulletproof. The female has very smelly flesh-encased seeds, but the edible kernels are eaten, like salted peanuts, in Asia, and Graham Dyer, of Tauranga is growing them as a commercial crop.

Dotted about are maples, liquidambars, and some ashes, which tend to get beaten up by the wind. The joy of these deciduous trees is that the landscape is forever changing. Wonderful colour in the autumn, then they drop their leaves and are bare skeletons, looking dead in the winter. Spring comes and all the soft green leaves appear, which harden off and loose their pristine glory over the summer months, but provide excellent, cool shade for the livestock.

Several pockets of black walnuts (Juglans nigra) and several hybrids, planted in sheltered spots turn a nice yellow. These, along with some of the oaks, I have got

Nyssa sylvatica, tupelo.

Gleditsia triacanthos, honey locusts.

Ginkgo biloba.

“Both pines and natives make for a very drab, monotonous green landscape. There are so many other alternatives which could be sucking up CO2.”

going by just tossing the seed around and leaving them to it.

I have a paddock of honey locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos), the females of which produce long bean-like pods which cattle will eat, a few figs, persimmons, and wild , bird-spread cherry plums. The latter has a brief period of nice white blossom in the spring, and the kereru enjoy the fruit, even when it’s green.

In the late winter, when everything is bare and drab my magnolias start to flower, between 300 and 400 of them, planted in the vicinity of the house and they really let you know spring is on the way. Some magnolias can reach 30 metres in height and have been used for timber in China.

This farm is a colourful place to be with ever changing scenery. I have natives in two fenced off gorges (about 80ha) with kowhais, hoherias, manuka, kanuka and the native white flowering clematis paniculata, being the only colourful plants.

I’ve planted small groups of totara, rimu, kahikatea and cabbage trees in other places around the farm, because I like their foliage and wanted to see how they grow here. Apart from the cabbage trees, quite slow. There are about 10ha of pruned pines and a recently planted patch of coast redwoods.

The pines, a second rotation, planted in 2014, won’t be ready to harvest till 2035 by which time China expects to be selfsufficient in growing its own timber.

To me, both pines and natives make for a very drab, monotonous green landscape. There are so many other alternatives which could be sucking up CO2 and making the countryside much more attractive, especially for our CO2 emitting tourists.

This last autumn, after 50 years of planting, I spent about an hour a day on the quad with Henrietta, my fox terrier running alongside, puttering around looking at the various trees and their colour. There are about seven different areas I can visit so it’s a different route every day. Very pleasurable and so far the Government hasn’t found a way to tax pleasure.

Above: Peter Arthur plants trees for autumn colour on his 240ha farm, west of Hastings.

1Choose between Rural Support Trust, SPCA or Life Flight

LOW COST AND SIMPLE

Karl Farrell is a young man with a wise head on his shoulders.

He’s realised that the best way to make money off steep country is to keep farming processes simple, expenses low and to work towards achieving reasonable stock performance.

Karl (30) farms two lease blocks totalling 1060 hectares (900ha effective) in partnership with his parents, 13km southwest of Taihape. He also leases 360ha from his parents in the Kawhatau Valley, and helps local farmers with mustering.

Sharing the workload is his partner Michaela Hayes (30) with her team of nine dogs: five broken in; two in training and two fox terriers for entertainment.

“Our long-term goal is to buy our own farm but in the meantime leasing is working out well, allowing me to pay off my stock loan,” Karl says.

“I’m lucky as leases are not easy to come by.”

The better-developed of the two Taihape lease blocks (Tiri, 360ha) has been farmed by Karl and his parents for 15 years while the adjacent 700ha (600ha effective) “Ridge” block has been leased for a year.

Karl was only 21 when he got the call to come home and help manage the two blocks, due to his father’s health.

“I was probably too young and didn’t know enough, but by working on lots of farms I’ve learnt more about what not to do than what to do.”

When the Ridge block became available it was too good an opportunity to miss. However, Karl couldn’t lease all three blocks and make them financially viable so his parents became involved. The two Taihape blocks are now farmed as a company, Lowridge Farming Limited, jointly owned by Karl and his parents. He continues to lease his parents’ farm.

Subdivided from east-to-west by a gorge at least 40m deep, the Ridge block is extremely steep in places occasionally resulting in cows losing their footing. The gorge’s only crossing is at the highest point (860 metres above sea level) at the eastern end of the block.

Prior to leasing, the Ridge block was running 2200 Perendale ewes and 150 Angus cows including replacements for

A young Rangitikei couple are farming family lease blocks with the aim of eventually buying their own farm, Russell Priest writes. Photos: Brad Hanson.

both. He bought the Perendale ewes and in-calf Angus cows but not the replacement stock.

“We got into leasing the Ridge block at the right time because the ewes only cost me $200.”

Realising the importance of running breeding cows on the predominantly steep hills to maintain pasture quality, Karl runs 250 mixed age cows plus 40 R3 in-calf heifers on the two Taihape blocks.

This includes the Ridge’s 150 Angus cows plus 100 mixed-breed cows on the Tiri block. This season all cows have been mated to Karl’s homebred Simmental bulls.

He says unless the area has just been through a drought, tag (poor quality pasture) is always a feature in the area as they can’t winter enough stock to control rampant spring growth.

“Without cows our ewes wouldn’t perform as well as they do, however we don’t work them so hard that they start pushing into areas where they are likely to get into trouble. The secret to farming cows is to know when you can work them and when they need to be fed well.”

Reluctant to run cows in large mobs particularly when the ground is wet, he tends to work them in smaller mobs over the winter in conjunction with ewes. The latter get first dibs in a paddock before the cows are moved in.

Set stocked for calving at 1/10ha with ewes in July/early August, cow numbers are constantly adjusted to even up feed covers between paddocks. Neither cows or heifers are supervised at calving with the latter being calved on paddocks with easier contour.

His aim is to keep the system simple.

“I don’t want to be rushing around calving two-year heifers.”

Some people love their cows but Karl’s are there to do a job.

Calving percentage on the Tiri block has

“Our long-term goal is to buy our own farm but in the meantime leasing is working out well, allowing me to pay off my stock loan.”

ranged between 85-90% (cows to the bull) with dries 2-3%. A selenium jab is given to cows at pregnancy testing.

Bull-out date for the heifers is January 1 and January 10 for MA cows. Using Simmental bulls to mate both cows and heifers at a ratio of 1:30 (yearling bulls) and 1:45 (MA bulls) they remain with the cows and heifers until it is convenient to remove them - usually when mating mobs are passing by the yards. Any female showing a late pregnancy is culled. Easier-contoured paddocks are chosen for mating with 60 being the average mating mob size.

Simmental cattle stud

Sold on the place for $876 last year the Simmental cross weaner steers averaged 250kg and heifers 235kg ($730).

With an inherited interest in Simmental

cattle (his grandfather is Simmental breeder Colin Hutching) Karl runs Low Ridge Simmental stud on his parents’ farm, consisting of 50 cows and replacements and selling 5-10 bulls annually. In October this year he’s holding his inaugural yearling bull sale putting up 12-15 bulls.

“My parents’ farm is too steep to grow out 2-year-olds so selling yearlings is the natural alternative.”

Karl aims to breed moderate-framed, well-muscled bulls with low-to-medium birthweight EBVs and good calving ease (direct) EBVs. He’s not concerned about low fat EBVs as the Angus cows will provide the fat.

Of genomic interest to him are the homozygous and diluter genes which produce polledness and cattle with diluted coat colour. Continues ››

iFARM FACTS

Leases 1420ha in the Taihape area.

Mainly steep hills but some cultivable.

Sheep and beef breeding and limited lamb finishing.

Stocking rate 8-8.5su/ha.

Selling all stock on the place guarantees price.

Simple low-cost farming system, FWE 40% of GFI. Has a 50-cow Simmental stud.

FINANCIALS

Last year’s gross farm income was $652.25/ha over the whole 1060ha. The profit before tax was $344/ha. They sold 230 weaners with steers from the 150 straight Angus and 100 Simmental cows. The steers at $876 (about 250kg LW) and the heifers, $730 (235kg).

Of the lambs sold, 60% were store which averaged 28.80kg LW (mixed sex) and $116 each.

The rest were sold prime, weighing 17kg CW and averaged $140. About 1200 ewe lambs are retained.

Above: The two Taihape blocks are now farmed as a company jointly owned by Karl and his parents.

His advice to clients is to use the Simmental as a terminal breed just as they use their terminal-breed rams, mating them to cows they don’t want to breed from and capturing the free lunch that is hybrid vigour.

The excellent pasture grooming work done by the breeding cows allows the sheep to flourish. Normally scanning at 180% (MA ewes) and 168% (two tooths) the Romney ewes’ average lambing is 148%.

Identifying dries, singles and multiples and sometimes foetal aging, Karl believes his scanners provide excellent value for money in a tight budget.

All 1500 Perendale ewes and ewes Karl won’t breed from (300) go to Suftex rams at 1:80 on April 10. MA Romney ewes (1700) and 1200 two-tooths (55-60kg) go to Romney rams around April 20-25. Both MA Romney rams and ram lambs are used for mating at ratios of 1:80 and 1:60 respectively. Ewes are flushed for 10 days before mating and a further 10 days during mating with rams out for two cycles.

Karl gets Suftex and Romney rams used on the Kawhatau block from Rob Tennent at Waipukurau. He likes a sound, open-faced ram with a good barrel, good fertility and survivability and a high maternal worth index. He looks for similar physical features in his Suftex rams with lots of meat and growth.

The Romney rams he uses on the Taihape blocks are selected as ram lambs from Peter and Max Buchanans, north of Mangaweka.

“I help the Buchanans out at docking time and identify the best ram lambs over the docking board. I do a further selection at weaning and a final one before they go out with the ewes.”

The Buchanans have a high-performing flock and have been using Romney rams from Forbes and Angus Cameron for many years.

The three mating groups (terminals, MA Romneys and two-tooth Romneys) are kept intact throughout the winter on 35-day rotations. However with the average paddock size on the Ridge block being 25-

30ha a mob of 1500 ewes may remain in one paddock for a week which is not ideal according to Karl.

“I’m a fan of rotational grazing because you know how much feed you’ve got but if you run out you’re better to set stock as there’s no point in rotating from nothing to nothing.”

Pregnancy scanning on July 20 results in the three mobs being split into multiple and single-bearing ewes with the former going onto more feed and the latter often set stocked on less feed.

Vaccination of ewes occurs at the end of August immediately before set stocking for lambing, about three weeks before the first lambs are due.

Lambing on easier hills

Ewes to Suftex rams are set stocked for lambing on the easier, fertile country on the Tiri block to get the maximum number of lambs away at weaning. Last year 35% of the terminal cross lambs were killed off mum at 18kg.

Left: Karl moving cows and calves. He aims to breed moderate-framed, well-muscled bulls. Above: The pasture grooming work done by the breeding cows allows the sheep to flourish.

Single-bearing MA Romney ewes are set stocked in the rough gully paddocks at 7/ha while the twins are stocked at 5.5-6/ha on easier contoured paddocks.

“Some thumping good single lambs come out of the gullies.”

Mostly lambing on the Ridge block, the Romney ewes have access to better shelter than where the Suftex cross lambs are born which is exposed to the south. Karl expects lamb losses to be 20-25%.

At weaning in January any killable lambs are sent to the works. The best cut of store lambs is retained and finished, the second cut is sold onfarm and the tail-end lambs are retained and sold after being shorn in February.

“We used to leave all male lambs entire at docking; however next year we’ll turn the Romneys into cryptorchids because they’re easier to sell.”

Weaned directly into the shearing shed and shorn (avoiding remustering) the ewe lambs are carried through to early winter before replacements are selected. Only those from twin-bearing ewes are retained with

culls being sold on-farm.

At docking, cull ewe lambs are identified then drafted into the trading mob at weaning.

After shearing the ewes in January and June, Karl is proud that he only lost $1000 on his wool last year (returns from wool minus the shearing costs).

He is a strong advocate of minimal drenching. Only if there is a moist summer or an outbreak of Barbers Pole threatens will the lambs be drenched.

“I haven’t drenched a ewe in 10 years but I do draft lighter ewes off the main mobs during summer and winter and move them ahead of the main mobs in their rotations.”

As part of his philosophy of keeping things simple, hoggets are not mated.

“Our country doesn’t lend itself to doing a good job of lambing hoggets. If you’re going to lamb hoggets you’ve got to do it properly.”

Farmed at a stocking rate of 8-8.5su/ha the two lease blocks complement. The Tiri block has 100ha of cultivable land, 200ha of easy country and the rest steep while the Ridge block is virtually all steep.

“If you start pushing stock too hard on [steep] country things can go horribly wrong.”

Using a five–year cropping rotation Karl plants 5-7ha each year in swedes out of pasture and block-grazes ewes (supplemented with fine-chop silage) over the winter using a three-wire electric fence.

“Ewes love the fine-chop silage which is

“I haven’t drenched a ewe in 10 years but I do draft lighter ewes off the main mobs during summer and winter and move them ahead of the main mobs in their rotations.”

Two of Karl’s home-bred Simmental yearling bulls. They remain with the cows and heifers until it is convenient to remove them - usually when mating mobs are passing by the yards.

handy if you have to supplement them in a dry summer.”

Making about 100 large-round bales on the Tiri block helps to mop up the spring surplus and in spite of it being expensive to make ($50/bale) Karl believes it’s cheap insurance.

Raphno helps ‘pump’ the lambs

Karl uses raphnobrassica to graze trade lambs over the summer. It is sown after the swedes in early October to avoid club root. It’s given 80-90kg N/ha in April/May, shut up and used to feed ewes in the winter, giving pastures a spell before being set stocked for lambing.

He’s impressed with the raphno even though the seed is expensive.

“It’s a summer and winter crop in one but once it’s established you must hit it hard to stop it going to head to get the best out of it.”

Karl believes to justify growing greenfeed crops they must be put them in for the right reason then fully utilise them.

Sowing the raphno area in young

grass in the spring with vigorous, high metabolisable energy, drought-tolerant Mohaka tetraploid ryegrass and clover “pumps” the lambs along.

Helped by the excellent fertility levels on the Tiri block (Olsen Ps 25-30) crop yields are generally good and at an altitude of about 500m pastures and crops grow through the winter. The Ridge block has lower fertility levels (Olsen Ps 5-13, sulphate sulphurs 4-5). Winters are long and hard with little pasture growth making it difficult to achieve an acceptable winter rotation.

Snow falls on about six occasions with the heaviest fall last year being 0.6m at the woolshed. Covering the ground for two weeks it was followed by some extremely hard frosts.

“If there is snow on the way we try to move stock to lower ground.”

Broken-in 50 years ago and blessed with potentially productive soils (volcanic soils on the easier country and mainly mudstone on the hills) the area can grow a lot of grass over the spring/summer period.

Michaela Hayes has a team of nine dogs: five broken in; two in training and two fox terriers for entertainment.

Unfortunately reliable summer rains have been somewhat erratic in recent years. Average annual rainfall is 1200mm. The mudstone while being inherently fertile is prone to sheet erosion.

Porina damage can be severe on the mainly south-facing hill soils resulting in little or no pasture growth and some “hard” ewes at weaning.

In one hole he counted 52 grubs where 7-8 can cause major damage.

“Normally we spray with Dimlin, however we couldn’t get any so used Dew (an organophosphate) which blitzed them but it’s not my preferred option.”

A 6km laneway system helps stock movement. The two blocks together are 9.5km long which means some early morning rises when mustering. Horses are used on the steep hills.

The lease agreement on the Ridge block requires an annual fertiliser application of 350kg/ha of sulphur super to be applied. In a low-cost business (expenses represent 40% of GFI) the major costs are fertiliser, leasing, maintenance and rams.

Applications

Nuffield Scholarships

Karl gets Suftex and Romney rams used on the Kawhatau block from Rob Tennent at Waipukurau.

Return to the Hollyford track

Hollyford track revisited. Memories of a low altitude journey with impressive bush, coastal and lake scenery made us keen to return. It has been 25 years since we walked the track. In April 2022 Julie (my partner) and I signed up on a guided return trip.

After 45 years of independent tramping and hunting, the idea of embarking on a guided tramp with a bunch of strangers took some getting used to. Our only similar experience was a guided journey down the mighty Whanganui River in 1988.

That decision was a simple one as neither of us had used a canoe and did not own the requisite gear. We do own boots and backpacks so why not head off and independently walk the Hollyford track as many do. The answer was Julie was keen to get back to multi-day walks and the Hollyford guided would be a confidence builder.

The tramp cost $2795.00 each. This included hotel accommodation in Te Anau and meal before we set off – bus transport

to start of track – lodge accommodation on track, all meals and a tremendous helicopter flight from Martins Bay to Milford Sound – then bus back to Te Anau. Plus guide services.

Our experienced track guide, Suzanne White says there are several other reasons clients choose to be guided. It keeps walkers in the game longer - experienced older trampers may find the burden of carrying a heavy pack is becoming strenuous and the rudimentary nature of the DOC facilities a little unattractive. This way they can walk lighter and enjoy the comforts of sheets and hot showers.

It offers a chance for experienced trampers and hunters to share the enjoyment of the wilderness. Their partners or families may not be able to do the more strenuous trips, but are comfortable with the notion of a guided walk. It is a safe introduction to tramping for Kiwis or visitors not familiar with our back country. And it is ideal for those who don’t have walking companions.

Wanting to share his love of the outdoors with his partner, Peter Snowdon heads to Fiordland for a guided walk.

Clear waters of the Hollyford River.

Photo hollyfordtrack.com

I was keen to have someone else organise the logistics. Just bring your boots, a change of clothes, toothbrush and credit card. Simple. Others organise you and take care of the details.

A group of 15 walkers and two guides were our companions over the three-day journey. It proved an ideal group size as it gave a chance to get to know some of the fellow walkers, which included several farming couples from Waikato/King Country. I was surprised to learn some guided groups on the Milford Track are 50 in number. I can see scale altering that experience significantly.

The guided experience gave us the comforts of a lodge, hot showers and flush loos. Carrying minimal gear was a joy. These were the things I had imagined I would enjoy the most. And while these were a treat, it was the knowledge that was imparted by the guides that was the unexpected standout feature.

The track is chock full of history, flora and fauna and geological highlights. Our guides

were engaging and at the same time were aware that sometimes people just wanted to quietly enjoy the place and space. This delicate balance was maintained over three days, no mean feat!

Guides Kyle, Suzanne and Claudia skilfully helped us build our levels of understanding of the locality. We learnt of early European interaction with Maori, the background to the failed Jamestown settlement, the way the massive 2000 floods changed the landscape, the story of pounamu and chief Tutoko and of resilient farmers and early tourism.

This all greatly enhanced the appreciation of the trip. You can learn this stuff from reading and research but it resonates more when delivered in the context of the place. Stories of the difficulties of isolation told alongside the remains of a homestead hearth and within sound of the roaring Tasman Sea leave a lasting impression.

Downsides? Guided walking means operating to a set timetable. Be ready to depart at a certain time and not mess around keeping others waiting. Don’t be that guy who is lacing his boots when the others are ready to set off! But timetables were understandable and, in a group, you need to consider others.

Highlights! The Martins Bay sandspit and understanding some of the human settlement history of that particular area, which can only be accessed by boat (freedom walkers won’t see this area). Lying in a cosy bed with sheets and soft pillows listening to red deer roar and morepork call. The sunset at the Martins Bay Lodge beside the Hollyford River.

This was not the challenge of doing independent tramping, but challenges can be found in other trips. We reflect on the Hollyford guided walk as one of the best journeys we have done together.

Top left: Lush and green - The Hollyford Track. Above left and right: Layered with history – Sandspit area Martins Bay. Below: Experienced track guide Suzanne White.

A THIRST FOR O NLINE KNOWLEDGE

THE INTERNET GIVES US THE world’s knowledge at our fingertips. While some of us mainly use it to look at cute puppy videos or shop on Trade Me, it is astounding how much knowledge is at our fingertips.

The entry point for seeking out this knowledge is often Google. While there are alternative search engines, such as Bing, I have never found them to be as useful as Google. This could be because I am so familiar with how Google works.

Basic searching

Quote marks

Quote marks give you a search result with the exact phrase between the marks. If you type: Otago drought you will get results about Otago and droughts, but if you type “Otago drought”, it will return sites that talk about an Otago drought specifically.

Hyphen

If you want to search about drought. but want to exclude Otago, you can do so using a hyphen as a subtraction tool:

drought -Otago

This will bring up drought pages without an Otago-specific focus.

OR

This gives you results for either word, so: bicycle OR bike.

Cached

Sometimes Google throws up a search result you want but the page will not display because the site is temporarily or permanently down. You can still access the

last version of the site that Google cached by typing cache: in front of the URL: cache:www.odt.co.nz

(You can also click the three dots beside the URL in the search result and then click the “cache” button at the bottom right.)

Asterisk

The asterisk functions as a wildcard. Maybe you’re searching a famous quote but are not sure of part of it. So you may search for: May you live all the * of your life. The results will bring up the actual quote (may you live all the days of your life).

Search in title or in text

If you want a result that will bring up a certain word in the title of the page or in the text of the page you can use either intitle: or intext: before the search, eg: Dunedin intitle:Otago Dunedin intext:Florida

Google filters

Whenever you search you will see a range of filters pop up under the search box: Map, Images, News, Videos and More. You can use these to filter your search to get, for example, news story results or photographs. You will also see Tools and you can use that to set a date range to ensure you get the latest results or results from a certain period. You can use these filters together, such as news stories on a topic from a certain country from a particular time period.

Searching within a site

Sometimes you may wish to search within a particular site, but the site either does not have a search function or it does not work so well. To do a site-specific search using Google, just use the “site” search tool: drought site:http://www.fedfarm.org.nz/

Useful

Google also responds to a handy range of commands, including conversions. For example, you can type in: Convert 27 inches to cm

That will bring up a box with the conversion solved and an easy way for you to make further conversions. Similarly, Convert US 100 to NZD, will make the conversion and allow you to make further calculations.

Google can also make simple translations, e.g. typing where is the farm in Spanish brings up donde esta la finca at the top of the page.

You can also set a timer by typing in: set a timer 3 minutes

Or if you have a need for a coin toss or have a game requiring dice, then use the search bar to flip a coin or roll a dice.

Fun

Lastly, Google has some fun features too. Try typing in: askew or do a barrel roll and see what happens.

Searching the internet for information has become second nature for most of us. Kirstin Mills gives some tips on how to streamline the search.

Rural and real

Injury-enforced down-time inspired Kate Ivey to set up her online business.

By Lynda Gray.

AN OFF-THE-CUFF COMMENT SIX years ago by husband Mark was a grating but significant turning point in the development of Kate Ivey’s online fitness and wellness business.

“He suggested I get an ice-cream truck and open for business near the Lake Pukaki visitor centre….it really rocked me because I knew I could do better than that,” Kate (37) says.

The well-meaning advice made her literally step up and out of the confidence crisis she was battling.

The physical education and psychology graduate with additional qualifications in nutrition and exercise prescription had enjoyed a rewarding New Zealand and overseas career in health promotion. But marriage to Mark and moving to the relative isolation of the family-owned Glentanner Station, followed by motherhood and the demands of three pre-schoolers derailed hopes of a traditional urban-based health and fitness related career. But Kate rolled with the changes drawing on the idyllic setting of Glentanner, situated just off State Highway 80 on the way to Mt Cook.

“I used to do training programmes with neighbours and run boot camps on the lawn when the kids were asleep.”

However, an unexpected tipping point was rupturing her achilles not long after the birth of youngest daughter Imogen. It brought enforced down-time and a lightbulb moment.

“It sort of clicked all of a sudden. I knew I wanted a business that would help people like me – busy and mostly rural women who had a limited time for fitness and workouts.”

She borrowed $3000 to develop online

downloadable PDF e-books with short and achievable exercise and fitness workouts and launched Kate Ivey Fitness in July 2016. It attracted loyal followers who soon started asking for more, leading Kate to change the business to a subscription basis and add new workouts weekly, along with some nutritional advice and recipes.

By lockdown 2020 the business was frantically busy, at which point Kate brought on board Anna McDermid to help lead the workouts.

earth environment.”

Kate’s grown the business with the backing of a support team, many of whom are friends or were recommended by friends. A good example was a university friend and business coach James McDonald, who was a big help at the start and helped her transition to a subscription-based business. Another is her head trainer, Anna McDermid, a qualified fitness trainer and wife of a university friend.

Kate says it’s been a rollercoaster six years with the launching of an online business around family life with Mark and children Olivia (11), Angus (9) and Imogen (7), as well as shifting from Glentanner Station to develop a new farming enterprise at Lake Pukaki.

There’s been lots of learning along the way and she has words of advice for other rural woman embarking on business.

The business further evolved and in 2021 it was a comprehensive programme called DediKate offering HIIT (high intensity interval training); weights; low impact, Pilates, yoga, pregnancy, and post-partum workouts as well as stretching and nutrition advice. In mid-2021 she launched in Australia, taking on board some Australian trainers.

DediKate has about 1600 subscription members of which about 45% live in rural areas. The business employs three people and has contract arrangements with seven trainers.

“Most of them have rural or what I call regional values and that’s the big point of difference of DediKate from the many other online fitness options; it’s about fitness, health, and well-being in a rural or down-to-

“Don’t sell yourself short. Give it everything it takes and needs to be a fully fledged business rather than a hobby.”

Also, don’t expect or wait for everything to be sorted before you launch.

“Just get started and be prepared to learn and adapt along the way.”

And never underestimate the time and effort it will take.

“It’s great being my own boss but looking back I was naive as to how much work it would take. I love my work and it’s still busy but now I set boundaries and make time for myself and my family.”

Not surprisingly her time-out pursuits are fitness-based, “I play golf once a week and am going to play basketball again… I’m an active relaxer, exercise and sport is part of my self-identity.”

Kate Ivey: ‘I knew I could do better than that.'

“He suggested I get an ice-cream truck and open for business near the Lake Pukaki visitor centre... it really rocked me because I knew I could do better than that.”

SOLUTIONS

Wool-synthetic study in the home

WHAT IMPACT COULD THE MATERIALS

we use in interior furnishings and bedding have on the microbiome of our home?

Campaign For Wool New Zealand (CFWNZ) has partnered with AgResearch to learn more.

The study - the first of its type - will assess the microbiome within commonly found materials in the home, such as wool and polyester.

Microbiome refers to a group of microorganisms in a specific environment, which can include bacteria, viruses, fungi and other single-celled organisms. The hypothesis for the research is that the stark compositional differences between wool and synthetics give rise to a different microbiome.

The study will involve the analysis of wool-filled and synthetic fibre-filled pillows,

along with wool and synthetic carpet.

Campaign For Wool is a global initiative highlighting wool as an eco-friendly, comfortable, fashionable and durable fibre, and a preferred alternative to cheaper and more disposable options.

It’s the first time CFWNZ have collaborated with AgResearch on a project involving NZ strong wool.

AgResearch Senior Scientist Dr Sonya Scott says with funding support from industry and government, they are able to carry out novel research that may generate new knowledge around what a natural fibre like wool can offer.

They are able to explore what difference there may be between use of wool and synthetics when it comes to the billions of microorganisms that exist in homes.

“We hypothesise that different types

Know your colostrum powder

PROVIDING A NEWBORN CALF OR lamb with colostrum within 12 hours of birth is vital. And if maternal colostrum is unavailable or poor quality, a colostrum replacer can provide an essential alternative.

So, how do you go about selecting the right product? A product selected on price may not give a newborn animal the start it needs.

Is it a colostrum replacer or a colostrum supplement?

Although very similar, it’s important to note the difference between a colostrum replacer and a colostrum supplement.

A colostrum replacer is designed to completely replace the first feeding of colostrum – most often when high-quality colostrum is not available.

A feed of colostrum replacer will provide at least 100g of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) which is essential for achieving passive transfer in a 40kg calf. (Or 10g IgG for a 4kg lamb.)

On its own, a colostrum supplement

cannot replace high quality colostrum; it is designed to be fed in conjunction with maternal colostrum.

Have the vital immunoglobulins been protected during pasteurisation?

Products listed as “whole colostrum”

of fibre around the home will alter what microbes are present.”

She says they do not know if this could have health implications, and the first step is to measure any differences.

(usually a replacer) are made from colostrum collected from dairy cows.

Any colostrum must be heat-treated (pasteurised) to eliminate potential diseasecausing agents, such as Johne’s disease or Mycoplasma bovis.

Heat treatment is key. Where standard pasteurisation involves high temperatures which can reduce IgG content and damage growth factors, whole colostrum is pasteurised through carefully timed heating and cooling cycles with regular testing to preserve the natural ratio of all ingredientskeeping key colostral components intact.

So, the different products obviously have different benefits. However, a colostrum replacer is more cost-effective; it can be used as the sole source of colostrum or to enrich maternal colostrum. Ask your retailer for AgriVantage’s Launchpad18 – the whole colostrum replacer.

– Supplied.

Clockwise from top left: Kids at play - Amelia Johns and Jack Macfarlane race each other on Tom and Sam Macfarlane’s Melior Venison farm in South Canterbury; Tom Mandeno and horse on his north Waikato farm; Karl Farrell and Michaela Hayes’ moving stock on their Rangitikei hill country sheep and beef farm; Pot of gold in the hills at FS Partnership’s Tararua hill country sheep and beef equity operation; Ben Simpson’s working dog.

More from The Pyramid farm. Clockwise from top left: Willow the wandering kunekune, one of the girls' many pets; Mixed aged ewes post-scanning; Jess and Richard Dawkins with Ellie and Rosalee; Pyramid Hives - Patrick Dawkins (35) and wife Laura run Pyramid Apiaries based at the farm; The view across part of the 'Tummil Block' bought in 2016. With weeds, fertility and improved pasture species now sorted, next comes subdivision and reticulated water.

While you kick back, know your ewes and their lambs will be looked after with the benefits of BIONIC Plus, the reliable combination worming capsule with 100 days protection.

Together with this ultimate DOMETIC Cool-Ice Box, time will be on your side.