Dairy champion – Gavin Fisher

Waikato farmer Gavin Fisher milks 150 cows on his organic dairy farm at Te Aroha. He is the new ambassador of the Organic Dairy Hub, a farmerowned co-operative based in Waikato.

By Gerald Piddock

A move in the right direction

Consumer demand for natural food products is increasing and as a result organic dairy farming is enjoying good growth and returns.

The sky’s the limit for New Zealand’s organic dairy industry as it rides a wave of growth fuelled by demand for covidimpacted consumers wanting food that is safe and natural.

Consumers are no longer just looking at what food is going in their bodies, but how that food was produced as well, organic dairy farmer Gavin Fisher says.

Fisher is the newly appointed ambassador for the Organic Dairy Hub (ODH), a farmer-owned co-operative based in Waikato. He says organic dairy farmers are now receiving high prices for their milk.

“If you look at organics as a global food category over the last 15-20 years, it’s been growing year-on-year,” Fisher says.

“Internationally, organic cow’s milk is still a reasonably small offering, but that base is growing at an encouraging rate. As a food category, if it continues to grow then that can only mean good things for consumers’ health and for our farmer’s returns.”

This growth is reflected in Organic Aotearoa NZ’s 2020-21 market report, which shows organic dairy exports have grown 55% between 2017-2020.

The report showed that dairy was now the largest organic sector in NZ, with its exports valued at $153.8 million.

The sector has 95 dairy farms certified to full USDA-NOP standards, with 36 farms certified to EU standards. Currently 25 farms are in the process of converting to organics, with 14 of these farms in the South Island.

The average herd size on these farms was 300 cows, compared to 440 cows on a conventional farm.

ODH is a co-operative that comprises over 25 organic dairy farmers from all over the North Island.

The milk is processed at different sites across the North Island, including Waikato Innovation Park spray dryers,

The 74-hectare farm at Te Aroha has been in the Fisher family for three generations and has been certified organic for more than 20 years.

Waiū Dairy in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, Goodman Fielder and Green Valley.

ODH exports a range of certified dairy, as well as now promoting their own brand Ours Truly and its range of A3 organic dairy products. ODH also supplies liquid milk for other organic dairy brands in NZ.

Since ODH was formed in 2015, their farmer payout has steadily increased year-on-year, however, what that payout is, is confidential, Fisher says.

As its first-ever ambassador, Fisher’s role places him as the public face of the hub, supporting other organic dairy farmers and advising those farmers thinking of, or are partway through, the conversion process to becoming organic.

He also educates ODH and Ours Truly customers about organic farming and speaks from a farmer’s perspective.

“Consumers are after that ‘inside the gate’ story,” he says.

Fisher farms 74ha near Te Aroha in Waikato, running both a dairy farm and a deer unit that produces organic venison,

Continued page 30 “The key to reaching that market premium was to start the organic certification. The certification added value outside the gate and the agricultural farming practices that I was doing was adding value inside my gate.” Gavin Fisher

AGRICULTURE IS OUR CULTURE

It’s the Pulse of the nation

As well as the dairy and dry stock, Gavin Fisher sells organic certified eggs and fruit grown on the farm at the gate through his brand Off the Planet Organics.

as well as a nearby 16ha runoff block where younger dairy stock are farmed, as well as a small number of beef cattle.

He is the third generation of his family to farm the property, saying it was always his plan to take it over.

After leaving school he spent a few years on the farm before travelling overseas. He then spent a number of months on a working holiday in Australia, which included working in the mines for a local geologist and wheat farming in rural Australia before returning home in the early 1980s.

He began organic practices when he returned home after gaining insight into what the future farming practices would look like based on his overseas experience.

Fisher says he saw that farming methods in NZ could be dramatically improved from the way things had always been done and came home to future-proof the family farming business for generations to come and improve his land through changing his farming practices.

He brought that knowledge home and then moved to organic certification from late 1999.

Gavin is married to Sheryn and has adult children. His wife and father are actively involved in every facet of farming and are on the farm and in the cowshed every day. When the kids are home, he says they love putting on their gumboots and helping out.

In addition to meat and milk, Fisher sells his organic certified eggs and fruit grown on the farm at the gate through his brand Off the Planet Organics.

Fisher’s farm has been USDA/NOP certified organic for more than 20 years.

He says he applied for the certification for a multiple of reasons. He believed future consumers would want products that were organic, as well as suspecting that tighter regulations for farming around freshwater and climate change were coming.

Being certified organic allowed him to front-foot those changes and this allowed him to get better value for the product coming off the farm.

“That was pretty easy to see and it was part of wanting to stay relevant,” he says.

Prior to the certification, he says the farm was run using a mix of conventional and organic principles.

Fisher saw the potential to capitalise on a market premium by going through the organic certification process.

“The key to reaching that market premium was to start the organic certification. The certification added value outside the gate and the agricultural farming practices that I was doing was adding value inside my gate,” he says.

The farm runs on a low-input system. He does buy in some organic supplementary feed, but it is mostly selfcontained.

The pastures are a wide variety of different species that are able to withstand seasonal challenges around summer and winter a lot better. Mixed pastures give the cows a varied diet and it also helps to keep the cows healthy and the milk produced nutrient-dense.

“The approach is to have as much diversity as possible, whether it be in the pasture or the trees and shrubs in and around the farm – I’ve been planting out the farm for 41 years,” he says.

The 150-cow herd is fed mixed pastures, giving them a varied diet and it also helps to keep the cows healthy and the milk produced nutrient-dense.

The trees also provide ample shade for the cows during the summer months, reducing heat stress and stopping the soils from drying out.

When Fisher plants a tree, he looks for it to tick as many boxes as possible. It should provide as a minimum shade and shelter, a food source, natural habitat, recycle nutrients, a cash crop and sequent carbon.

The combination of these pastures and trees have created a natural nutrient recycling system on the farm, where minerals and nutrients are returned and broken down into the soil.

The trees allow the cows to graze vertically in addition to eating the varied pastures, therefore providing them with a much larger grazable area.

“A cow can reach about a metre and a half high when browsing and every paddock is planted out; you can look down the tree line and see it trimmed to where the cows have reached to,” he says.

That vegetation also gives the cow nutritional properties that they would not get just from eating pasture.

He says the cows then return nutrients through its manure, the micro-organisms then make it available to shallow rooting plants in the pasture.

The farm milks around 150 cows, but he is looking to increase that and reduce the size of his deer operation.

“The herd’s production data is only one indication of the farm’s overall success and profitability,” he says.

“A farm could have extremely high production, but those gains could be lost if the farm is inefficient or has high expenses.”

“This movement has positives for organics because it is encouraging farmers in the right direction around farming more sustainably.” Gavin Fisher

Fisher says organic farmers consider their soils as being the building block for their business.

“Understanding the biology of it and how to best look after it and how it could best provide for you, I think is quite important,” he says.

He believes farmers who may have previously dismissed organics are now giving it a second look as the Government imposes tighter regulations around freshwater and greenhouse gases.

For established organic farmers, it puts them in a very good position to meet regulatory challenges and most will only require, if any, minor tweaks to their farming systems.

“This movement has positives for organics because it is encouraging farmers in the right direction around farming more sustainably,” he says.

It was also in part fuelling the talk around regenerative agriculture.

That movement had positives for organics because it was pushing farmers in the right direction around farming more sustainably.

He says some farmers who had gone down the regenerative path were now applying for organic certification.

“The reality is that what I have been doing here for 28 years is what they are calling regenerative farming – we have been doing all of those practices anyway,” he says.

These new conversions will be welcomed by the sector, as Fisher believes keeping up with demand will be its biggest challenge in the immediate future.

“And that’s a good problem to have,” he says. n