Meaty matters

farmers who will take part in the Regional Finals between February and April.

Allan Barber

Meat industry commentator: allan@barberstrategic.co.nz, http:// allanbarber.wordpress.com

NZ YOUNG Farmers has existed for more than 90 years, and a large number of readers no doubt remember with affection their time as members of the organisation. The good news is NZYF is still flourishing and, even though farming has changed immeasurably during its lifetime, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest young farmers today are just as capable and every bit as passionate, and willing to adopt new technologies alongside traditional farming methods.

The most impressive aspect of NZYF is its largely voluntary structure. Apart from a national office co-ordinating main activities like the FMG Young Farmer of the Year, and helping the clubs put on events, the whole organisation operates on a volunteer basis with some 1600 members and 140 clubs across New Zealand. These members hold over 800 club meetings and organise more than 150 events a year, including the qualification series for the FMG Young Farmer of the Year. The flagship event celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2023.

The Young Farmers Clubs (YCF) throughout New Zealand provide the competitors to compete at seven Regional Finals, with the winners going through to the Grand Final held over three days at Timaru in July. The process of finding the qualifiers for the Grand Final begins in October for most of the clubs, when the competition starts to get serious with the District Finals finding the young

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This adds more energy and more moisture to any storms that head our way.

This next reason will get a few of you frothing at the mouth but the overwhelming science is difficult to ignore or deny: yep, climate change is certainly a factor.

The atmosphere is now 1.2degC warmer than the pre-fossil-fuel era. There is little doubt that it will continue to increase unless a large meteorite smacks into Earth, throwing vast quantities of debris into the atmosphere thus rapidly cooling the planet and bringing massive extinction such as happened 66 million years ago, taking the poor old dinosaur out of the game and allowing a small rodent-like mammal to evolve into 8 billion carbon-releasing humans.

This year for the first time the organisers are trialling a shortened process in the Northern and Waikato/Bay of Plenty Regions, with a two-day competition on consecutive days, the first day equivalent to the District Final and the second to the Regional Final. The concentrated schedule is still designed to find the best young farmer to compete in the Grand Final, but to streamline the means of getting to that conclusion. If it is introduced for all clubs in future, NZYF CEO Lynda Coppersmith says, this will potentially reduce the pressure on members to deliver multiple events over a very long season.

Having said that, the local Kaipara Young Farmers Club, which is part of the Northern Region, has been busy putting on a series of skill days designed to prepare its member entrants for the competition. After hosting the 2022 Grand Final in Whangārei and producing the winner – beef farmer Tim Dangen from the Auckland City YFC – the Northern Region is keen to repeat last year’s success.

The concentrated schedule is still designed to find the best young farmer to compete in the Grand Final, but to streamline the means of getting to that conclusion.

The Kaipara YFC has four entrants in the two-day regional finals in February, including Zarnie Fergusson, currently Northern region secretary and Kaipara chair; Daniel Richards, Kaipara vice-chair; and Kate Hawkings, who was on the Grand Final Committee last year as health & safety officer and is Northern region events coordinator this year, as well as secretary and publicity officer for the Kaipara club. The final member of the quartet is 20-year-old Jamie Hodges, who recently completed his NZQA agriculture internship through Whangārei A&P Society.

Or there are widespread volcanic eruptive events that caused rapid cooling leading to mass extinctions like the massive Siberian volcanic event 250 million years ago.

Or the sun unexpectedly dimmed or went out, but this scenario is me just being silly.

Anyway, a warmer atmosphere carries more moisture and has more energy, bringing bigger and wetter storms.

Every man and his dog are putting this Auckland event down to climate change, but wait! I reckon there is an anomaly at work here.

What is notable about these four young farmers is their enthusiasm for belonging to the Young Farmers organisation, their passion for farming and their eagerness to learn how to improve their skills. They are almost certainly identical in these respects to their counterparts in other clubs throughout the country, which holds out great encouragement for the future of farming, in spite of what sometimes look like insurmountable challenges.

Fergusson performs the duties of farm owner on her 89-yearold grandfather’s dairy farm in Kaukapakapa, which is run by 50/50 sharemilkers, but her main farming involvement is beef breeding. She leases land in Kaukapakapa and Waitoki on which she finishes whiteface steers and breeds registered Hereford bulls, having sold her registered Angus herd last year.

Her goals for the year are to produce sound, high-finishingweight, low-birth-weight Hereford bulls with a focus on the dairy market, and she has been putting a lot of energy into the genetic recording and background of her Herefords in order to achieve this.

Remember my “Tongan volcano eruption affecting our climate” theory?

More than theory, mate, some decent science wrapped around it. But I now know how you antivaxxers felt when you’d send me your beliefs based on internet frenzies telling me I was going to cark if I got vaccinated. (Four vaccines later, not only have I yet to have covid but I haven’t had any sort of virus for three years, never been healthier.)

I read your stuff and said I didn’t believe it as I found the supporting evidence wanting.

Readers of my column a few weeks ago wanted to know why they hadn’t heard this through the media.

She is also experimenting with more obscure beef breeds for her finishing stock, trialling Friesian cross with Fleckvieh, Normande and Viking Red. She maintains “all three of these breeds produce excellent herd replacements, so if their male offspring finish well as beef steers, it will give dairy farmers another viable option for breeding their herds other than the standard Angus or Hereford”.

She finished fourth in the regional final last year and says she really enjoys the social side of the competition as well as the opportunity to measure herself against other young farmers, as she works alone most of the time.

Richards finished second in the 2021 Northern region dairy awards and is currently managing his family’s 300-cow dairy farm with split calving at Tomarata near Wellsford. He has ambitions to go contract milking or become a 50/50 sharemilker when the right chance presents itself.

Hodges attended Taratahi

So, I sent the information about the eruption’s effects on our rainfall to the mainstream media well before the Auckland event and they probably think I’m a nut job! They weren’t interested.

The roaring forties in the southern ocean have been much calmer than usual. Noticed the lack of westerlies during the equinox?

In a nutshell, the 50 million tonnes of water thrown into the atmosphere increased the moisture content of the southern hemisphere by 20% and some of that moisture covered Antarctica in a blanket, making it colder than usual.

BREEDING: The Kaipara Young Farmers Club has four entrants in the two-day regional finals in February, including Zarnie Fergusson, who performs the duties of farm owner on her 89-year-old grandfather’s dairy farm in Kaukapakapa but whose main interest is in beef breeding.

Training Centre in Masterton for one day a week while at high school, completing Level 2 Agriculture before moving north to live on a farm, where he finished his internship. He now works on a bull beef farm at Topuni near Wellsford, gaining experience in stock and dog work, fencing and tractor driving. He has entered the FMG Young Farmer of the Year competition to learn the skills he knows he will need when he runs his own farm.

Hawkings currently works as a digger operator near Warkworth and finished first in the diggerdriving module in her first District Final in 2020. She found the learning experience of working on the Grand Final committee last year very beneficial, as it gave her a much better understanding of the skills required to compete in this year’s competition; above all, she enjoyed the challenge of organising the Grand Final programme as well as its social side.

That sums up the Young Farmers experience – work hard, enjoy the friendships and learn a lot of new skills.

This strengthened the polar vortex, which means the Southern Annular Mode became positive and clung closer to Antarctica, meaning the roaring forties in the southern ocean have been much calmer than usual. Noticed the lack of westerlies during the equinox?

This has led to fewer storms bringing rainfall to the South Island and the lack of those southern storms has opened the door to tropical storms coming in from the Pacific to the North Island.

When will this effect wane? Sorry, don’t know.