Farmlander Spring 2024

GOING PRO

FARMLANDS PUBLICATION TEAM

Deborah Allan

Ian Turner

CONTACT

Farmlands

535 Wairakei Road, Burnside, Christchurch

Ph: 0800 200 600

Email: farmlander@farmlands.co.nz

CONTENT & DESIGN BY SCG

Niko Kloeten

LauraGrace McFarland

Julian Pettitt

PRINTED BY: Webstar

ON THE COVER

Ashley Lester of Tierra Mia, sheep and beef farm in Southland, shows off the FarmlandsPRO app.

Photograph by Stan McDowall Design by Julian Pettitt

This publication is printed on paper made from pulp that is environmentally certified, and from renewable and sustainable sources using vegetable-based inks. It is Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) and manufactured under strict ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems (EMS).

The plastic wrap is 100% recyclable in the New Zealand soft plastic recycling scheme.

This publication has been printed by Webstar, a Toitū enviromark diamond certified company and a winner of a Green Ribbon Award “Minimising our Waste”.

The information contained in this publication is given in good faith and has been derived from sources perceived to be reliable and accurate. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the information, Farmlands gives no warranties, express or implied, regarding the information nor does it accept any liability for any opinion or information (including the accuracy or completeness thereof) or for any consequences flowing from its use. The information and views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views or opinion of Farmlands, its editorial contributors, freelancers, associates or information providers. Independent advice is recommended before acting on information or suggestions contained herein. Readers who rely on this information do so at their own risk. Reference to any specific commercial product, process, or service whether by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Farmlands.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher. Prices and offers apply only in the time-period stated on the front cover of this publication and while stocks last.

Not all products are available at all Farmlands stores. All prices include GST unless otherwise stated.

Keep on, keeping on

Compared to this time last year, there are more than a few glimmers of hope on the horizon. This is due in no small part to the huge amount of work that’s been put in right across the motu to keep things moving and growing.

This edition of the magazine is evidence of that. From existing initiatives like Agrecovery, where Farmlands has doubled down on supporting soft plastics disposal. To new ways of doing business with FarmlandsPRO and our new Farmlands Card app. Plans set in motion months or years ago, given love and attention, will bear fruit if you stay the course.

Keeping in mind that spring is one of the most important seasons for us, we’ve revamped our checklist to look at a few new products on the market and we talk to a host of seasoned TFOs from right across the country, about what they expect from spring.

We’ve also got some budget friendly recipes from Stacey Scott; a look at how Hort has bounced back in Hawke’s Bay; and for when you’re under the pump, a reminder to breathe.

We say it every issue – but we reckon this is our best one yet. Get stuck in and have a great spring. Noho ora mai.

Ian & Deborah

Got something to share with the team at Farmlander ? Email farmlander@farmlands.co.nz

Keep up-to-date with the latest news from across the co-operative via our website and social media. @farmlandsnz @farmlandsnz

Farmlands Co-operative Society Limited

Deborah Allan and Ian Turner.

Photo: Dean Mackenzie

FROM TANYA

Tēna koutou katoa

We all know that spring is a time of fresh beginnings, and in that spirit we’ve been busy creating some exciting new innovations that’ll make supporting farmers and growers more flexible, fast and personalised.

We launched FarmlandsPRO at Fieldays®, as one of the most significant customer interaction and experience innovations in Farmlands’ history. This step forward was the result of more than two years’ work and we share a lot more detail on what’s been going on behind the scenes to get us to this exciting point in this edition of Farmlander.

What I would like to say right up front is ‘thank you’ to the early adopting farmers and growers, who have grabbed hold of FarmlandsPRO with two hands, and started to use it to benefit their businesses. It’s designed for you, and to have over 2,000 app downloads and around $2m in rural supplies sales through in the first week since launch, demonstrates incredible support for Farmlands.

Spending time in June with shareholders at our first-ever Farmlands Fieldays Village has been a highlight of the year. The village brought together the full breadth of your co-op with Fern Energy, the nutrition brands we own, and several key partners onsite together. It was a huge success – and I particularly enjoyed catching up with so many shareholders in one place.

We also launched the new Farmlands Card app at Fieldays –and received some great feedback on how easy this makes it to find Card Partners, instantly. I think it’ll help all of our customers enjoy more Farmlands Card benefits, which is so important in the current climate.

We’ve been talking about the tough economic times for around 18 months now and we’ve remained focused on making sure we add value in the right places. Put simply, it is still about getting you the right product, at the right time and – most importantly –at the right price.

The improvements we’re making to our product and supply chain transformation are bedding in and more benefits, both financial and operational, are being directly passed onto our customers. Our core range has been in place for 12 months in some regions and we’re consistently stocking more of what our customers have shown they prefer and less of what they don’t.

In July we opened our first-ever Regional Hub in Invercargill, giving us the opportunity to streamline supplies deliveries to our customers across

Southland. This gives our store teams more time to discuss your needs indepth, and help you find exactly what you’re looking for. We plan to expand our Regional Hub approach further in the coming year.

These changes are just the beginning. We’ll continue to show our commitment to evolving alongside the rural sector and how you do business now and in the future. Keeping up with the times and our customers is how we’re going to succeed in the future, but it’s also true to the reason we were originally established as your farmerowned co-op over 60 years ago.

Farmlands CEO

SEND US your best

After a wildly successful 2024 Farmlands Calendar with a canine theme, we’re widening the lens to capture the whole rural ‘Farmily’.

We want you to send us the best photos of your pets and rural animals, with the top picks gracing the walls of rural New Zealand homes in 2025.

Scan the QR code to enter or visit farmlands.co.nz/calendar

SPRING Inside our issue

Up Front Special Section

2 From the CEO

Tanya Houghton discusses feedback from Fieldays® on the big changes at the co-operative.

7 Clippings

The latest news and events from Farmlands and the broader rural sector and a Northland shareholder thanks the local Farmlands team for their help.

12 FarmlandsPRO

Find out how the new Farmlands tool will make life easier for farmers and growers.

Photo: Stan McDowall

TFO Mikayla Horton (left) with Ashley Lester and her children on Tierra Mia farm in Southland. – see page 12.

Hawke’s Bay apple growers are

technology as they recover from Cyclone Gabrielle.

A dairy farmer and his rural GP wife embrace their new life (and farm) on the West Coast.

Farmlands shareholders are making the most of a 19c/L discount at Z and Caltex truck stops.

A dairy farming couple turn their love of native plants into a thriving nursery.

Farmlands adds over 70 drop-off points for soft plastics under the Agrecovery scheme.

A Hawke’s Bay orchard owner explores how breathing can help other farmers.

Youtuber and Farmlands shareholder Stacey Scott shares some budget-friendly recipes.

A Farmlands TFO tells of using a defibrillator to save a farmer having a heart attack.

A Safer Farms initiative is using technology to improve quad bike safety on-farm.

Equine nutrition expert Luisa Wood, shares insights from a recent

conference.

CLIPPINGS

News from Farmlands and beyond

Century Farms –celebrating farming

Farmlands’ Chief Digital Officer, Andre Scheepers, represented Farmlands this year at the Century Farm and Station Awards in Lawrence, Otago. Farmlands is proud to have been the Foundation Sponsor of these awards for 16 years. During his heartfelt speech, Andre celebrated the incredible legacy of multi-generational farming families who have shaped New Zealand’s agricultural heritage. Locky Taylor’s family (pictured) was one of the 40 families who have held tenure of their land for 100 years or more and were celebrated on the night.

Drawing on his own experiences, Andre said, ‘Growing up on a farm, involved in dairy, beef, maize, tobacco and citrus, I developed a deep appreciation for the hard work and dedication that goes into farming.’

The event was attended by Farmlands Chair Rob Hewett, Director Dawn Sangster, General Manager Sales Carmen White, Regional Manager Southland Pip Broadbridge, and local TFO Marinka Kingma. Rowena Duncum served as the MC, and Mark Patterson MP

Congratulations to all the families, Century Farms Chairperson Eddie Fitzgerald, and the Century Farm committee for creating such a wonderful event.

The growth of the Farmlands brand

Farmlands is focused on a number of key complementary business development initiatives, which are set to come to fruition in the next couple of years. Central to this strategy is the launch of the Farmlands Horticulture brand, offering specialised services and products through a network of sites across the country, starting with the horticultural heartland of the Hawke’s Bay in August. These centres will provide localised support and expertise tailored to the unique needs of regional horticulturalists.

Additionally, Farmlands is expanding its nutrition business following the acquisition of SealesWinslow, creating New Zealand’s only co-op-owned animal nutrition business. The purchase ensures local farmers retain control over the food production supply chain, from sourcing New Zealand-grown grain to processing and selling feed to support premium produce. The acquisition enhances Farmlands’ existing operations, incorporating SealesWinslow’s three feed mills and enabling national scale efficiencies to deliver cost-effective, precision nutrition.

Complementing these initiatives is the development of AgStar, Farmlands’ own-label range of affordable, directsourced agricultural chemicals. By bypassing middlemen and sourcing directly from sustainable and ethical overseas factories, AgStar provides high-quality, costeffective solutions for crop protection. This approach not only reduces costs for farmers but also strengthens Farmlands’ negotiating power with suppliers, ultimately offering greater value to customers.

OUR BRAND

Artist's impression.

Get access to exclusive discounts on selected items with your Farmlands Card. Enjoy these savings anytime, all year long, at any of our five TopmaQ stores or online at www.topmaq.co.nz.

EVENT

Reflections on Party in the Paddock

Having attended the original Card Party events in Dannevirke and Te Awamutu, Party in the Paddock in Putaruru really captured the sense of the local community.

Set around a marquee in a paddock under Maungatautari, a magnificent evening greeted the 200 or so attendees - a perfect mix of families, farm owners and local workers. The kai was excellent, the beverages tasty and the music on point - letting the attendees just chill and catch up with neighbours, friends and the occasional Farmlands Director. Shareholders on the night were just so appreciative for the opportunity to be hosted by Farmlands at the event.

The owners of the farm were delighted with the response from the community, and the evening offered a real lift at the back end of another busy Waikato week. While this was to be a one-off event, the owners were so impressed they felt like it might be something they would set up again in the future – communities supporting communities.

Gavin Foulsham – General Manager - Card & Partnerships

FARMWEAR

The team wears Tussock Creek

James Coxon from Ashley Downs Farm kits out his whole team in Tussock Creek Stretch Moleskins.

“They keep us warm and looking tidy, and can stand up to everything we throw at them time and time again.” The soft moleskin fabric feels warm and comfortable making it a staple for any wardrobe, while the heavy duty fabric and topstitching makes them very durable and hard-wearing.

Tussock Creek Stretch Moleskin Jeans

SKU: 1034432; 1042357

Comfortable stretch moleskin jeans with heavy duty pockets. Visit the Farmlands Online Shop now or head in-store to get your new pair.

Rave reviews for To The Core

Award-winning rural governance leadership programme

To The Core was held over 3 days in Christchurch in earlyJune, and feedback has again been first class.

Created in a partnership between Silver Fern Farms, Farmlands and LIC, To The Core is developing the next generation of governance talent for the three co-operatives, and the wider rural community.

This year To The Core attracted 94 applicants from across the Food and Fibre sectors, leaving organisers the difficult task of selecting the final 24.

The speakers were a who’s who of the sector including Rob Hewett, Corrigan Sowman, Dawn Sangster, David

Chin, Dan Boulton, Julia Jones, Tim Gibson, Trevor Burt, Richard Young, Cassandra Crowley, Lain Jager, Leanne Crozier and Amanda Malu.

They spoke about their respective co-operatives, key areas of governance focus and their own governance journeys, together with macro and geo-political events and risks that impact farming here in New Zealand.

“I was absolutely delighted with the high level of engagement of this year’s cohort,” says Clark Taylor, who facilitated the programme. “The future pipeline of governors for our rural co-operatives really is in good hands if this year’s group is anything to go by.”

FIELDAYS

Successful Fieldays® for Farmlands

The Farmlands team enjoyed a successful outing at the National Fieldays in June, with solid visitor numbers to the big Farmlands tent and strong interest in the co-operative's two new apps.

At New Zealand’s biggest rural event of the year, held at Mystery Creek in Hamilton, Farmlands launched FarmlandsPRO, an innovative on-farm management and purchasing tool for Farmlands shareholders, as well as the Farmlands Card app, which makes searching for Card Partners easier than ever.

Farmlands tech experts were on hand to provide assistance, with download numbers for both apps exceeding expectations. Visitors to the tent were also treated to coffee, a free sausage sizzle and delicious apples from the Mt Erin Packhouse.

While there, guests could pick the brains of Farmlands experts in everything from horticulture to agronomy and animal nutrition. The Farmlands team reported a positive vibe and are looking forward to next year’s event.

Received in response to the Northland article in Autumn Farmlander 24.

Dear Farmlands,

We manage a large sheep and beef property in the beautiful far north, 50 mins from Kerikeri and 45 mins from Kaitaia and we’re Farmlands shareholders. Trips to town are not that regular.

There is a wide range of people around us from all walks of life and the closest sheep farm isn’t just down the road anymore!

We are extremely lucky to have Chris Baker as our TFO and Ange Curle as our Kaitaia store manager. Nothing is too much trouble for this duo. They understand that situations arise onfarm that can’t always be planned for and that getting supplies North is not always quick. It’s nice to know they are only a phone call away, even if it’s only to ring and vent your frustrations about issues on-farm!

I first met Chris when he came to our school’s pet day. Ange offered the new boy up as a judge (after many years doing it herself). Chris, being from a dairy background was thrown into judging lambs and did a bloody good job of it. He finally stopped calling the lambs calves, was encouraging the children and making sure everyone had a great day. He really stepped up.

The next week we were in the last days of docking. First week of school holidays, so we could have as much help as possible. It’s about 4:30pm on a Friday, hot as and the worker says we only have a quarter of a 5-in-1 left and still a last mob to do the next day - an unexpected far better lamb survival rate to blame :) I rung Chris and explained the situation. “Sweet as” he said. “I’ll come out and meet you with a couple more boxes of 5-in-1.” So well after business hours he dropped off what we needed to get the job done.

Service like this is amazing! It’s the ‘no problem, always willing to help’ attitude from this Farmlands crew which makes a difference to us. When you walk into the Kaitaia Farmlands store, you’re not just a number (although they do know yours off by heart). You’re known by name and they always ask and know about your whānau. They genuinely care.

They engage in community events such as pet days and community fundraisers and shows. They follow up on things i.e. after planting crops they check on progress, offer advice and engage suppliers to provide their expert opinions where needed.

If there is something they don’t know that you ask about - they find out. They are just good buggers who help make what can be a challenging industry to be in, a lot easier.

Kind Regards Michelle

Richard Hubber (left) of South Horizon Farming gets a FarmlandsPRO tutorial from TFO Nick Aitken.

A transformative tool for rural NZ

Farmlands has developed a new tool, that promises to revolutionise how Kiwi farmers and growers run their businesses and interact with the co-operative. We look behind the scenes at the making of FarmlandsPRO, and what else Farmlands is doing to boost efficiency and achieve better returns and service for its shareholders.

At the heart of the Farmlands Village at this year’s Fieldays®, CEO Tanya Houghton was leading the launch of and customer conversations about Farmlands’ latest innovations, aimed at supporting customers to get most out of their relationships with the coop. Right at the centre was FarmlandsPRO – a new bespoke online and app-based tool set to offer a truly personal selfserve based experience for farmers and growers.

Photo: Stan McDowall

Farmlands CEO Tanya Houghton (right) shows the app to a visitor to the Farmlands tent at Fieldays.

“We launched FarmlandsPRO at Fieldays as a tool to allow our farmers and growers to place, track and manage their rural supplies orders themselves,” says Tanya.

“This is just the beginning as we’re planning future functionality releases that will see FarmlandsPRO become the single place for customers to own and control their relationship with Farmlands.”

Full order histories, through to existing contracts and farmer-specific pricing is available through FarmlandsPRO now, with much more to come.

This new personalised digital tool reflects how farmers and growers are adapting the way they do business and how Farmlands is continuing to evolve to better meet customer expectations.

“We’re acutely aware of the challenges the rural sector is facing and the need to adjust our business model so we can be more responsive. Farming is an increasingly digital and data-driven business and FarmlandsPRO supports this by giving customers better access to information about their rural supplies,” Tanya says.

Tanya adds, that FarmlandsPRO is just one step in a business strategy built to deliver on Farmlands’ purpose of enabling improved profitability and productivity for NZ farmers and growers.

“We need to deliver to our core customers through scale and efficiency, with a sustainable and resilient onfarm service model that ensures we are here to provide the best rural supplies input pricing, with the best service and support, well into the future.”

BLAIR ROBINSON CHIEF SALES OFFICER

Reaching more Farmlands customers

FarmlandsPRO will not only provide a more seamless purchasing experience for customers, it will also allow the co-operative to better service all customers across the country.

Chief Sales Officer Blair Robinson says, “FarmlandsPRO enables us to deliver greater value to our customers in quite a few ways. We can reach a larger group of farmer/grower customers directly with pricing and offers personally presented to them.”

“We have about a hundred Technical Field Officers (TFOs) around the country, plus our specialists, and you can't manage 35,000 core farmers and growers in an efficient way without the right tools.”

The first clear example of the potential to reach more customers quickly and efficiently was during Fieldays. Farmlands was able to release its feed deals directly to all customers nationally who had downloaded FarmlandsPRO. Without it, customers would be waiting for an email or a call from their TFO.

FarmlandsPRO also helps the TFOs manage customer enquiries in real time, as they have their own access and can place orders right there and then when they see their customers,

Photo: Stan McDowall

Farmlands shareholder Doug Dodds with TFO Emma Stevenson.

with the order fulfilment process starting immediately. Rural supplies will ultimately get to farm more quickly.

“One of the biggest benefits is that a farmer has our product list in their pocket, and they can place and manage orders when and where it suits them,” says Blair.

”A TFO might be able to come up the driveway on a Thursday every two months for argument's sake. Whereas in this case, they're out in the paddock and they can jump into FarmlandsPRO and order whatever they need and have it delivered at their convenience.”

Blair says some of the biggest beneficiaries of FarmlandsPRO will be those in remote areas, a long way from the nearest Farmlands store. “We've built the FarmlandsPRO tool with our back country customers in mind. We've created as much offline capability as we can, so they can look at the app in the back of the truck and say, I need this, or I've bought that before. I can just click on it, and as soon as I get back into range, it'll send the order off.”

Reaching more customers with our product offers is key to Farmlands growth plans, as it will support Farmlands to increase market share, improving the co-ops ability to buy better and therefore lower farm gate costs,”

Unlocking Farmlands technical experts

As for the Farmlands network of TFOs, Technical Advisers, nutrition specialists and agronomy experts, Blair says FarmlandsPRO will help them be even better at their core roles.

“It will allow them to become more value add, more specialist, with less time spent on order processing. Many

of our customers need a high level of service in terms of agronomy services, more crop recommendations, spray recommendations, those sorts of things. There is only so much specialist resource to go around, and it allows us to focus that resource where it's valuable, and for our team to focus their efforts in solving the complex customer challenges.”

Historic customer purchasing data and analytics will be instantly available from FarmlandsPRO so Farmlands’ technical specialists can make better recommendations to customers, based on what they have purchased before.

Blair says, “There are just two things I’d like our customers to think about when it comes to FarmlandsPRO. It will allow them to engage with us on their own terms and it'll ultimately lead to cheaper pricing for them and for the rest of the sector through that scale and efficiency.”

“We need to deliver to our core customers through scale and efficiency, with a sustainable and resilient on-farm service model that ensures we are here to provide the best rural supplies input pricing, with the best service and support, well into the future.”

FarmlandsPRO links to supply chain transformation

The personalised experience farmers and growers will enjoy with FarmlandsPRO links closely to the wider supply chain efficiencies and streamlined delivery processes Farmlands has underway.

Farmlands’ supply chain transformation has been running for two years. The first focus was on the steps needed to scale Farmlands’ buying power to get better deals for all customers – firstly getting the right product range in place, then having the capability to source at scale. Farmlands is now very much focused on the best product distribution model – aimed at getting essential rural supplies on to farm as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Caleb Nicolson, who leads Farmlands’ supply chain, says, “FarmlandsPRO will work hand in hand with the next stage of improvements in our product distribution model – which is aimed at having the right stock easily accessible to customers in their region, when they need it.

“Customers and our sales team will be able to easily place orders on farm

or orchard and we will distribute these quickly and efficiently to the customer.”

The key to being able to do this, particularly for bulk orders, is by having a central distribution centre in a region that can carry greater amounts of stock and have well thought through logistics serving an entire region.

“Southland is the first region where we are about to introduce this new distribution model, with a regional hub in Invercargill,’ says Caleb.

“Southland has a strong connection to Farmlands, so it’s great to be able to roll out our new distribution model in that region. From a practical perspective, our Invercargill site is ideal for what we are looking to do.”

Deliveries are an important part of Farmlands’ service, especially for those living in remote areas a long drive from the nearest Farmlands store. Farmlands needs to make better use of its economies of scale, to continue offering these remote shareholders the convenience of deliveries while generating a better economic return.

CALEB NICOLSON CHIEF SUPPLY CHAIN OFFICER

Farmlands has brought small locally owned freight operators into play in Southland, and Caleb says there will be opportunities for these sorts of local freight businesses across the country. “Some of the freight providers have literally been doing this for decades; I was talking to a guy down south who for 22 years had driven the same routes, so he knows all the farmers, he knows where they leave the keys to their tractors, all of that.”

“We want to work with freight operators that know their regions and we’ll give them volume in return. We want to know how their business works, when they already deliver to certain routes and work with them. It's a really collaborative rural approach.”

FarmlandsPRO

BIG DRAWCARD FOR CORPORATE FARMERS

FarmlandsPRO is not just a game-changer for owner-operator farmers and growers. Larger customers are also showing strong interest in what it can offer.

SAM CONNOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

Farmlands Business Development Manager Sam Connor says the new solution has already become one of his key selling tools when talking to large agribusinesses, such as a large dairy farming group he met with recently who don’t currently work with Farmlands. “The meeting was specifically around FarmlandsPRO. Its functionality was one of the key reasons that they might bring their business across to Farmlands.”

Sam says FarmlandsPRO is unique in the New Zealand marketplace, and what sets it apart is the breadth of functions and tools it offers farmers and growers. “There are other offerings that might have a crossover of one aspect of FarmlandsPRO, but not as an entire product offering. You'd almost describe it as FarmlandsPRO is the iPhone, while some of the other offerings are just the apps within the iPhone.”

In the corporate space, contracting inputs is an important mechanism to fix pricing and guarantee supply out on-farm. FarmlandsPRO gives them the ability to request these contracts as well as view and manage existing contracts, which Sam says will make managing large-scale farming operations much easier. “If we look at nutrition, it gives them live visibility of their total contract allocation as well as how much they've used and what's left.

“Our customers can also request to release off those contracts as well, so if they've got 100 tonnes of products contracted, used 50 tonnes and need another two tonnes for the coming week, they can click the button and request it be delivered out on-farm. They can choose where it is delivered, the farm manager's name and who needs to be notified about the delivery. This really puts all that information into the farmer's pocket on their mobile.”

Another benefit of FarmlandsPRO to corporate farmers is being able to track and compare input usage across multiple farms. “If you’ve got 10 farms of the same size, you might find one of them is using far less product than they should be, or they might be using too much,” Sam says. “It's a prompt for any operations manager to check what’s going on.’”

Although FarmlandsPRO will undoubtedly support greater efficiencies and bulk buying, leading to cost savings for shareholders, Sam says it’s also a great example of Farmlands as a business offering value outside of just pricing. “This is effectively providing the customer with what we see behind our tills, so it's really giving an open book to them on the best possible price available to them and empowering them to make their own strategic buying decisions and control the flow of farm inputs into their business,” he says.

“I speak about it from the dairy space, because that's what I'm focused on. But it relates across arable cropping farms, it relates to sheep and beef, horticulture, everything really.”

Photo: Stan McDowall

FarmlandsPRO

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL

Farmlands’ ambition for what FarmlandsPRO could mean for customers, has evolved quickly into an all-encompassing personal rural supplies solution, helping core farmers and growers right across their businesses. We speak to key players in the development of FarmlandsPRO about its growth from a humble pilot tool.

FarmlandsPRO marked a significant milestone recently with its national launch at Fieldays®, which included introducing an app version of the solution for both Android and Apple users.

Craig McLintock, who was responsible for developing the tool, says turning FarmlandsPRO into a mobile app has been a big focus for the team over the past few months, with the aim of ensuring as many core customers can access it easily, from a platform that suits them.

FarmlandsPRO is a personalised solution for farmers and growers to manage their relationship with Farmlands, and being personal it needs to be easy to use on mobile devices. “It will be easier to navigate controls and features for customers from the app version of FarmlandsPRO –particularly when they are out and about.”

Having the apps on Android and Apple is important, as user data from the pilot cohort of just under 200 farmers and growers who have been trialling FarmlandsPRO has shown.

“About half of usage today is on desktop and the other half coming from mobile devices (including phones and tablets) accessing FarmlandsPRO through a web browser. Early research told us that farmers have office days, and that’s what we're seeing with the usage from that pilot group – transitioning from the office out onto the farm,” says Craig.

Whether on mobile, desktop or tablet, FarmlandsPRO functionality available at launch is further along than originally envisaged. Farmers and growers can already do much more through the solution, plus the Farmlands sales and technical teams can now support their customers using FarmlandsPRO.

Luke Fisher, Regional Manager - Upper South and Head of Digital Field Sales for Farmlands, says he knew the potential of FarmlandsPRO the moment he laid eyes on it, back in October last year.

A 2022 Kellogg Rural Leaders Scholar, Luke has been closely involved in the app’s development, helping to bring both customer and TFO perspectives to the discussion.

“It was pitched as a customer tool, as they can draw down nutrition, have a look at what they bought before and push that through again. As Craig was just clicking around pushing an order through, it was instantly clear how much better that system was for placing an order than anything we have in the business,” he says.

“One of the most time-consuming bits we have at the moment is placing orders on behalf of TFOs or trying to get the sales team to input their own orders, so we started talking about what it would look like if we gave TFOs access, even to the level of functionality we had at that earlier stage.”

CRAIG MCLINTOCK HEAD OF DELIVERY & INNOVATION

LUKE FISHER REGIONAL MANAGER – UPPER SOUTH

Overseas

example Luke says one of the catalysts for the increased focus on FarmlandsPRO was research on what rural supplies co-operatives overseas are providing to their customers.

”In Denmark, for example, digital ordering and relationship management solutions are well-embedded in the rural supplies sector. Overseas, the adoption by customers has been led by the field sales team who fully believe in the benefits to customers and how they can then spend more of their time adding value. ”

Building on Farmlands’ technology transformation

The introduction of FarmlandsPRO is one example of the co-op leveraging its multi-year business and technology transformation programme Braveheart, to provide better services and solutions to customers.

“We have the foundational operating systems that allow us to provide personal solutions to our core farmer and grower customers,” Luke says.

“We started engaging some of these customers to talk about very simple ordering and order management functionality that could be tailored to their needs. We always had one eye on the full potential of FarmlandsPRO, but didn’t want to overpromise. As the positive feedback grew, from customers and our TFOs, we agreed we could be ready for a broader launch at Fieldays® and everything kicked into gear really.”

Farmlands learned from this early testing that FarmlandsPRO had the potential to deliver a personal and unique self-service relationship management option that went well beyond its current system for placing an order and better leveraged Braveheart.

The project has been a massive one for the Farmlands Digital Team, led by Chief Digital Officer Andre Scheepers, who joined the co-operative in February. Craig says having Andre on board has made a big difference.

ANDRE SCHEEPERS CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER

“He has prior experience creating scalable, customer-focused, digital solutions. It's not something Farmlands had really done before, so it was good to have somebody who had comfort with the process.

“We started with ‘how do we get our current functionality in here so we can use it’, and now there’s all of this extra cool stuff that we can do that will make all of these different people's lives easier.”

The Big Picture

In this section

From high-tech apple orchards to oneman dairy farms, The Big Picture looks at big trends in the rural sector through the eyes of Farmlands shareholders.

Ruth Gilmour

22 Hawke’s Bay apple growers show how they are innovating to boost productivity.

28 Ex-Cantabrians embrace their new life on the West Coast.

38 Meet the Waikato dairy farmers who started a nursery on their tennis court.

Photo:

Dave Swney and Alice Trevelyan of The Native Dairy Farmer on their Te Awamutu property with their sons.

Taylor Corporation's packhouse has been completely rebuilt after Cyclone Gabrielle.

Hawke’s Bay hort goes

The Kiwi horticulture sector is going hi-tech, using 21st-century solutions for challenges like labour shortages and a changing climate. We speak to Hawke’s Bay apple growers embracing change, and learn what Farmlands is doing to support the fast-evolving sector.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN RICHARD BRIMER

If you were to bring early 20th century Hawke’s Bay apple grower Walter Taylor forward 100 years in a time machine to 2024, the family orchard of today would be almost unrecognisable. Now run by Walter’s grandson Kelvin Taylor, Taylor Corporation has about 450ha of apple orchards, and everything from the varieties being grown to the spacing of the trees is vastly different to when the Taylor family began growing in the area more than a century ago.

The biggest difference, however, is not out in the orchard but inside the brand-new packhouse, which has been completely rebuilt since being devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle last year. “One season we redid our packhouse with robotics; the forklifts in the shed don't have drivers or anything

like that, and we do stacking with robots, boxing the apples, and putting the apples on the trays,” Kelvin says.

“We had a really modern packhouse, as modern as anyone in the world, before the cyclone, so what we've done since is just basically put the same stuff back in again.” Steve Anderson, the Operations Manager for the orchard, says water levels during the cyclone varied from a metre deep in some areas to swallowing trees five metres high in others.

“It went through Kelvin's house, Cameron's house [Kelvin’s son], all of our packhouse, all of our coolstores. And we also lost orchards in the Fernhill area where the stopbanks broke.” The coolstores were filled up with water, and there were bins of newly harvested fruit floating down the road, Steve says.

“Kelvin made the decision to replace the packhouse, which most people said would never happen in one year, but they've had an amazing group of contractors that did the first installation who all came back - and a few extrasand got it all up and running. The plan is to get the coolstores fully done in the next two years because we couldn't do the whole lot in one season.”

Despite the disaster that struck last year, Kelvin says conditions in the area are generally very favourable for apple growing. The family shifted their orchard a few kilometres north to its current location in the 1960s, and he says one of the biggest benefits of the move is lower risk of frost. “It's a lot warmer on the northern side of Hastings, and that's why we basically got changed from the Hastings area to the Napier area.”

However, Steve says climate conditions have become more unpredictable the past few years. “The changing weather patterns have been something that's of consideration because in the last five years we're getting more rainfall than we used to get, so there's been different pressures on black spot and that sort of thing, for pest control, for disease control.”

Labour headaches

The biggest challenge Taylor Corporation is dealing with is one shared by many in the rural sector: the cost and availability of labour, especially post-Covid. “We’re busy from mid-November right through until mid-May, firstly, with thinning and then following on with harvest from February,” Steve says.

“But we are trying to reduce our winter numbers of staff by mechanical pruning because it's so expensive now with the cost of labour going up all the time. That's why we're moving to mechanisation. We've been doing mechanical pruning since 2017, and now we're playing around with mechanical thinning as well.”

To reduce costs, they have also been changing the way the orchards

are laid out, bringing the trees closer together but also reducing their height, using 2.7m poles rather than 5m. “If you're keeping it low to the ground, you can get better light penetration, but it's also about staff,” Steve explains.

“Staff don't like climbing ladders, so if you can keep things quite close to the ground, it's cheaper to harvest, it's cheaper to prune, it's cheaper to do everything with it. It's easier to get staff to work on it. You can get mums who come in and do part of the day while the kids are at school, or you can bring in guys from the islands or locals that have never done it before.

“It's quite simple, whereas, if you're climbing ladders with a picking bag and pruning saws and things, it's a lot harder.” The cost of the materials is also a factor, he says. “When you're getting 5m poles and you're putting a pole in every eight or 10 trees down a row, it's very expensive.”

Emerging markets

Another thing that has changed for Hawke’s Bay apple growers in the past few years is who is buying their fruit. Craig Wilson, owner of the Dartmoor Valley-based Meiros Orchard, started the business over 30 years ago with his wife Gill. “Back then half the orchard was Braeburn, with a lot of Royal Galas and a few Fuji. A lot of it was Europe-bound back in those early years. Now it's all Asia based, so it tends to be sweet and red and big.”

Craig and Gill are shareholders in the local Mt Erin packhouse, and he says they try and stick to apples that they can pack and market themselves. “Dazzle is the only one that we haven't got the marketing rights to; we grow varieties like Jugala, and we market them as Gem. We grow high-grade Fuji, lots of Queen that we can market ourselves, and Galaxy.”

Although he is a first-generation orchard owner, Craig has a long history in the sector, having originally done a three-year horticultural cadetship out of school. “I went overseas after that and worked and ended up managing a poultry farm in

Above: Kelvin Taylor (left) with Operations Manager Steve Anderson in Taylor Corporation's new packhouse. Below: The packhouse only uses unmanned forklifts.

“There’s been a huge shift in growing styles that lend itself to more mechanisation in terms of pruning, in terms of picking, in terms of thinning.”

England for six years with my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife. We saved some money and bought our first block of land in 1993.”

He says working on the poultry farm taught them useful skills they have applied in their orchard business, although the day-to-day reality was quite different to the seasonalfocused horticulture sector. “To state the obvious, we were dealing with livestock, which needed feeding and watering every day,” Craig says.

“It was an egg business, so the eggs were picked up every day, graded every day. Mervyn, my wife's father, developed an egg run, so we had our own customers that we used to deliver to as well. We had 10,000 laying hens and we produced about 8,000 eggs a day and sold them as well.”

As a young Kiwi on his OE, Craig admits he needed discipline to avoid the temptation to party and splurge.

“I was a young fellow and all my peers were coming over to Europe and going out always and trying to talk me into it, and here we were trying to save money and we did. Our aim was always to come back to New Zealand to buy some land and develop an orchard.”

Cyclone setback

Starting out with 10ha and around 8,000 trees, the Wilsons had expanded their operation to 50ha across five properties by the time Cyclone Gabrielle struck last year. “We had that all developed and 20ha was relatively young plantings within the last five or six years, so they were all coming into fruition,” Craig says. “They were all producing well, they were all modern plantings and hitting their strengths pre-cyclone.”

Gabrielle affected all five of the Wilsons’ properties, causing them to lose effectively half of their trees, he

says. “Now we've got 25ha of producing trees in the ground, and this year, we produced pretty much half the amount of apples that we did pre-cyclone. We went from 6,500 bins down to about 3,200 this year. And a lot of the trees destroyed were, unfortunately, newer trees, so it was a huge setback.”

In the 25ha wrecked by the storm, they cleared the silt back to the original ground layer, a huge process that involved moving over 100,000m3 of silt. Much of that land was leased out to a local grower who used it for earlyseason squash, although the Wilsons did manage to plant 3ha of new, modern apple trees after the cyclone.

“Going forward, we're just going to do it in a staged process over the next three or four years, redeveloping back into more modern structures and more

modern plantings, even more modern than what our new plantings were last time,” Craig says. While the modern plantings will earn better returns and reduce costs over time, they are expensive to set up, especially for a business that has had its income halved overnight.

“You're talking, with the structures and everything, up to $150,000 a hectare, whereas if you just plant a tree and grow it, it is considerably less than that. The long-term benefit is reducing labour requirements and getting as many hands off the trees as possible, because that's what's killing us at the moment: the labour costs.”

Common themes

Richard Lyons, a Farmlands Technical Advisor in the Hawke’s Bay who specialises in the apple sector, says the labour issues affecting the Taylors and the Wilsons are a problem across the industry. “There's been a huge shift in growing styles that lend itself to more mechanisation in terms of pruning, in terms of picking, in terms of thinning,” he says.

Craig Wilson (right) of Meiros Orchard with his son Alistair.

“Increases in labour costs in this industry have been huge over the last three to five years so growers are finding more efficient ways to grow their fruit. A lot more growing systems are being set up and designed for ease of picking as opposed to the old standard 3D system where you had to put your ladder three times round the tree. Now it's more about just going along a line of fruit in a row, which makes it much easier to pick and get into. That's going to continue.”

Richard says there are some of the older style trees still being grown, but he believes their days are becoming limited. “As a result, they will be targeted for redevelopment as and when growers can afford to do so. But right now, a lot of the smaller guys don't necessarily have the budget to do that, so it’s the bigger guys that are doing a lot of that.”

Ideal conditions

Hawke’s Bay is one of New Zealand’s largest horticulture regions, and Richard says it’s a very good region for growing quality apples. “We have enough winter chilling, and then we

have a bit of moisture around in the spring and then a reasonably warm long summer. In general our soils are very fertile, which enables productive apple orchards.”

Richard says soil and water science have also advanced in recent years, helping growers improve their returns and identify parts of their orchards that need more attention. Soil testing has been especially important during the cyclone recovery, he says.

Supporting hort in the Bay

Chris Binns, Head of Sales and Strategy Horticulture at Farmlands, says the Hawke’s Bay is a key region for the co-operative as it signals a refreshed offering for the horticulture sector. “For Farmlands to have a national horticulture presence, we have to be a major player in the Hawke's Bay.”

Chris says the nationwide rollout of the Farmlands Horticulture brand shows a renewed focus on horticulture across the co-operative. “That really comes back to Farmlands’ policy of being the go-to for everyone connected to our land. If that's our

mantra, then we've got to live and breathe it, and that means being able to be everything for horticulture as well.

“Horticulture is not just a box to tick; it's one of the major pieces of New Zealand's primary industries, so we have to give it renewed support and offer a high level of service nationwide. We do horticulture very well in Bay of Plenty, and we are having some real growth in places like Northland, but we need to make sure that we are investing in capability right across the country, and Hawke's Bay is the next big piece of that puzzle.”

To support horticulture in Hawke’s Bay, Farmlands is opening a new specialist horticulture store in Hastings, which Chris says will serve several important functions. “Our growers will be able to come in, they'll be able to see somebody there. It will be a base for our Technical Advisers, and our supply chain will be smoother as it will also be a Distribution Centre for agrichemical and for horticulture. You will still be able to come and pick stuff up, which will be perfect. It will have a sales operation, so it will be a little bit different to a standard distribution centre.”

Chris says with the horticulture sector becoming increasingly sophisticated and tech-focused, Farmlands needs to ensure it has an offering fit for the modern-day grower, and this ties in with not only the FarmlandsPRO app but the new regional hub system the co-operative is implementing in its supply chain to improve efficiency. “There's a combination of so many things: not only their technology changing on the farm, but for us it's about how we best get their needs to them in the most cost-effective way.

“Part of that is operating better from within a hort hub, a regional hub like this, and having our transport and supply chain capabilities in the right place, whether that be from supplier to us to grower, or supplier direct to grower, or offshore to our regional hubs. The one bit that doesn't change is our shareholders’ reliance on the technical ability of our people. That will always remain there.”

Farmlands Technical Advisor Richard Lyons (left) with Craig and Alistair Wilson on their family orchard.

Want to avoid rising energy costs?

If you join Meridian and get your billing through Farmlands, you’ll get:

• An industry-leading Fixed Rate Plan which includes your network charges**

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• A 2% shareholder rebate^ for paying through Farmlands

• A 2% Meridian Energy partnership discount*** Scan the code and give us your details and we’ll be in touch to see how we can help you manage your energy costs for the next five years.

You can! Farmers on Meridan’s five year Fixed Rate Plan for the last 2 years* avoided an average 6% annual increase in network charges, across all networks. Scan or visit: meridian.co.nz/FarmlandsPlan

GOLD ON THE WEST COAST Striking

A move from Canterbury to the West Coast has paid off for dairy farmer Paul Clement and his wife Abby, a rural GP. We spoke to them about their new life on the coast, and Paul’s one-man dairy farming operation.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN KATRINA THORNLEY

The gold rush that put Hokitika on the map ended over a century ago, but the small West Coast town is still a land of opportunity for some. Paul and Abby couldn’t believe their luck when they happened upon a dairy farm for sale just north of Hokitika three years ago.

For Paul, who had been working in corporate dairy farming for close to a decade, it presented a golden opportunity to finally own a farm of his own. But Abby says it ticked other boxes for them as well. “The price was a big bottom line because it ruled out most places, but we had other criteria,” she says.

“One was that I needed to be closer to somewhere we could go swimming outdoors, because I grew up by the beach. I’m a water baby, I missed being close to the sea. We were thinking we might have to live near a lake, but lo and behold, we find out that actually, we can live on the West Coast and we have 4km of beach along our farm.”

The couple wasted no time getting involved in their new community, setting up the West Coast arm of

Surfing for Farmers, a charity that helps farmers de-stress with the help of surf lessons and a BBQ. “We’ve just completed our second season and we’ve seen massive growth in numbers attending. We just love it over here and it’s a great way to give back to the West Coast community that has welcomed us,” says Paul.

They also discovered they weren’t the only ex-Cantabrians to have made the move. “We met another couple over here that had done a similar thing to us, and we got to know them reasonably well,” says Abby. “After 18 months we realised we were neighbours in Canterbury for five years and didn't actually know each other. It's a small world, but it probably shows you the difference.”

Early days

Abby’s love of the ocean can be traced back to her childhood living in the seaside Christchurch suburb of Sumner. Paul has always lived rurally, growing up on a sheep farm. The couple have been together since their last year of high school, with Paul completing a BComm in agriculture at

Lincoln University while Abby did her medical studies.

Coming out of university, Paul had a stint in rural banking. “I think by the end I got sick of talking to farmers about farming, as opposed to farming myself,” he says. When he and Abby did their OE, Paul ended up working on a cattle ranch in Canada for six months. “That was probably the catalyst for me rekindling my passion for hands-on farming.”

He got his big break in dairy farming in Hastings, where they spent a year while Abby did her first placement as a doctor at the local hospital. Although his plan was to get a job at a sheep and beef farm, it was a dairy farm that gave Paul a start as a farm assistant. “I was pretty green; although I had uni and high school summer jobs and grew up on a farm, I'd never actually had a full-time job on a farm.

“They looked past that and could see transferable skills, where perhaps the sheep and beef guys were a bit more narrow-sighted. So that was great. Within six months of that job, I was 2IC, and that gave me a great start in farming.”

Paul and Abby Clement found their dream farm near Hokitika.

Meanwhile, Abby had quickly decided working in a hospital wasn’t what she wanted to do. “I had been thinking of giving GP training a go, and so now I'm a rural GP and I haven't looked back. It's a really cool job, but it's very, very challenging.” Abby says one of the rewarding things about general practice is making a difference for people and being there for them.

“The other rewarding part about being a GP is you get to basically sit through as almost an observer of people's lives. I have little chats with elderly people every day that make me smile. You just take a wee moment of your time and make a connection with people. In a hospital, you don't get any of the continuity that comes once you know people.”

Corporate farming in Canterbury

After leaving Hastings, they went overseas again briefly before settling in central Canterbury. Paul worked in corporate dairy farming, while Abby started her career as a GP. Although they were both successful in their careers, Paul says by the end they had a growing feeling of dissatisfaction about what they were doing in Canterbury.

“We'd never really had goals, so it was always just taking opportunities when they came. We'd been with one corporate on one farm for 10 years, and you always know in those situations that that's not where you're going to be forever. I got pretty high up, into professional farm management roles, but I was doing

very little hands-on farming or milking the cows or anything.”

With kids coming along (they now have three children), they started to think about their next steps, and although they looked at other options, they came across a 123ha dairy farm on the West Coast that ticked the most boxes. For Paul, it was an opportunity to get back to doing what he loves. “It’s very different because I'm actually doing everything myself,” he says.

“I don't employ staff. Abby shouldn't be helping me; if Abby has time to help me, she should be spending more time in the medical clinic! Every now and then I get a relief milker, and I get some help through calving, but otherwise it's doing my own thing, doing everything hands on, so that’s been a massive change.”

Paul says the first year on his farm was “eye-opening”, with the biggest difference between dairy farming in Canterbury and on the West Coast being the level of consistency. “In Canterbury you've got much less day-to-day variability in terms of weather, and you’re generally farming on one soil type. The whole farm can be treated equally, and the farm is very similar to the neighbour, and probably half an hour down the road as well,” he explains.

“Whereas here we've got five different soil types on a farm that's a quarter of the size of the farms in Canterbury. We live 5km out of Hokitika and they might get 90ml of rain and we might get 10ml or vice versa, so the inconsistency creates a

lot of challenges, and the climate is certainly way different. It’s milder over here, but there's lot of rain, and you need to manage that and be prepared for that all the time.”

Tinkering with schedules

Paul says his farm is “relatively intensive”, although with around 200 cows his stocking rate is about half of what is typically seen on Canterbury dairy farms. He has been milking twice a day until around Christmas/ New Year, and “playing around” with what to do prior to that. “The old farm owner used to religiously go once a day on Christmas day,” he says.

“I was against once a day just from a lost production perspective, so I tried a few other things like three milkings every two days, and 10 in seven. We just don't produce the same as what cows do in Canterbury, so we need an alternative to twice a day for that second half of lactation. The other thing is I just could not do twice a day on my own for a whole season.”

This year, Paul finally built up the confidence to go to milking once a day in January. “The results blew me away with how well that's gone, so that probably is what we're going to stick to now, and the next thing is to think about how early we could actually get away with going once a day.”

For Abby, the biggest difference on the West Coast is that despite it being a “lovely place”, they struggle to recruit medical staff to the area. “We're trying to do more with less and you certainly feel it. The patients may present sicker because they've had to wait longer for their appointments, so that can cause challenges as well as the socioeconomics here. There’s more deprivation, which has health flow-on effects.”

Despite the challenges, they love their new community, and their property which features not just a beach but a lagoon, native bush, creeks teeming with eels and whitebait, and abundant birdsong. “The biodiversity here is pretty amazing,” says Paul. “You’ve got to pinch yourself some days.”

Paul milks their 200 cows with no staff.

No task is too tough for these hard-working gumboots

Handcrafted from natural rubber, Skellerup 4x4 gumboots are designed for New Zealand’s demanding rural conditions. With reinforced ribbed panels at high wear and flex points, paired with a moulded sole for superior grip, they’re purpose-built for everyday farm tasks.

Available from Farmlands stores nationwide.

A family of pioneers out west

Samuel Meggitt Mackley made an order to purchase 2,250ha in 1860 in Westland. He saw potential in the fertile open river flats with the possibility of gold.

In 1862, at the age of 31, Samuel returned to the West Coast with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Allan Trist (25) and daughter Emily, four and a half months old. They were to become Westland’s first farmers on what would one day be known as the Mackley Estate.

The journey to Waipuna was 72km through dense bush lining the Mawhera, later named the Greymouth River. Mary and Emily camped on the beach at Greymouth in a tent alongside local Māori, while Westland’s first homestead was constructed at Waipuna.

The river was the easiest way to get there - it took Samuel and Captain Jamieson eight days of canoe trips

up the river with the aid of friendly local Māori, Poutini Ngāi Tahu. It took another six weeks to get their personal effects and settlers' goods up to the homestead. Mary and Emily were then taken by Māori up the river by canoe.

The first farmhouse was built of kanuka poles and bark. With no shops in Greymouth until 1864, provisions came from Nelson by boat. Stock consisting of 50 sheep and six in-calf heifers were walked along the first crossing of the Southern Alps by stock from Canterbury.

Since 1862 the land has been subject to stages of development and survived many hardships and better times. Mining was booming in Reefton, so Waipuna prospered

CENTENNIAL FARM

Mackley/ Ferguson WAIPUNA, WEST COAST 1860

NEW ZE ALAND

supplying the miners. Large straight kanuka was cut for miners’ picks in Waiuta. The dairy herd provided milk and they made butter on the property, imprinted with the Waipuna pattern.

Thirty orchard trees including plums, apples, peaches, nectarines, walnuts and chestnuts were sold along with homemade bread, while chaff was grown for horses. In 1875 Samuel’s skills were listed as hotelkeeper, brewer, butcher, store-keeper, gold buyer and farmer.

Samuel ran the property until his death in 1911, then Mary ran the estate for the whole family with the help of her sons until her death in 1915. In 1946 Ernest Mackley, the last son running the estate, died. George H A Ferguson, a son-in-law, began managing with the help of his son George K A Ferguson (Samuel’s great grandson) and within two years, at age 20, he took over. In 1953 his wife Grace joined him and in 1959 they became the new owners of Waipuna Station, going on to have five children.

George worked to develop the farm, breaking in the bush and buying more land. In the 1970s Waipuna Station ran more than 20,000 sheep and 3,000 cattle as subsequent land was purchased. George died in 1989 and since his death Mark and Ken Ferguson have run half the property each, for the last 32 years. They run sheep, beef cattle, and deer for velvet and meat. They have replanted and conserved native and exotic forests including kanuka and regenerating cut-over forest.

The New Zealand Century Farm and Station Awards aim to capture and preserve the history of our country’s farming families. We share stories from Farmlands shareholders who have worked their land for 100 years or more.

Michael Thomas (left) and Farm Manager Danny Irvine with one of their bigger vehicles.

Photo: Dean Mackenzie

Farmlands has teamed up with Z Energy to deliver huge savings on diesel, but some Farmlands shareholders still aren’t aware of the offer.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

With the price of almost every input rising steeply over the past couple of years, farmers and growers around the country are feeling the pinch. However, one small tweak could save Farmlands shareholders thousands of dollars per year.

All they have to do is use their Farmlands Card when buying diesel at a Z or Caltex truck stop and they will get a saving of 19c per litre. And with over 125 of these truck stops nationwide, most shareholders will have one conveniently close by.

Iain O’Rourke, Commercial Manager – Card for Farmlands, says Farmlands has a long-standing offer of 12c off per litre at Z stations (petrol and diesel), but it also has the even bigger offer of 19c/L for diesel at Z and Caltex truck stops.

Further, the 19c/L discount is off the Z National List Price, which is often already much lower than the price at pump. To illustrate: Farmlands shareholders using diesel at Truck Stops have paid an average price of just $1.87 per litre of diesel over the last 12 months; a price that is highly competitive on any given day let alone an entire year.* Note this average includes the now ended Auckland Regional Fuel Tax, without this the average would be even lower.

Iain says Farmlands shareholders can easily find their nearest Z or Caltex Truck Stop using the Farmlands Card app.

A short retirement

Canterbury-based dairy farmers

Michael and Sue Thomas have saved over $2,000 on truck stop purchases at Z in the past 12 months by using their Farmlands Card.

“We used to be at Burnham until 12 months ago,” Michael says. “We had 1,000 cows on 280 hectares and we sold that. The idea was to retire, so we bought 10 acres in Prebbleton. I did that for a week and then we bought another dairy farm.”

Asked about what must surely be a world record for the shortest retirement, Michael has a simple explanation: “If you hang around the house, you only get a job, so you’re better off doing your own thing.”

The dairy block at nearby McQueens Valley is downsized compared to their previous farm, milking 200 cows. It is run by their long-time farm manager, along with one of Michael and Sue’s five daughters. “I pop around occasionally, but I’m more like the emergency service now,” Michael jokes.

They have been making good use of the Farmlands/Z Energy truck

stop offer since buying the new farm. Michael says using the truck stops is not only good for their bottom line, but also very convenient.

“We used to have our own tank and get fuel delivered, but since we moved farms, we've been using the truck stop. We fill all our vehicles up at the truck stop too.”

Their vehicle fleet includes a boat, which Michael likes to take out for fishing from their bach at Okiwi Bay in the Marlborough Sounds. He also enjoys a spot of golf, and catching up with their six children (including five daughters).

Regular visitors

Evan Paxton of Riverview Farms is a regular visitor to his local Z truck stop outside Dargaville. His family runs one of New Zealand’s largest kumara growing operations, producing 3,0003,500 bins per year on 60ha, with the remainder of their 200ha used for fattening lambs and cattle.

Evan says they have been using the truck stop since it opened, as it is only a short drive away from their farms. “It used to be chaos going into town and fuelling up there.”

With over 28,000L of diesel purchased in the past 12 months, they have saved more than $5,000 just by using their Farmlands Card.

They use the truck stop for a variety of vehicles, including tractors, utes and even trucks (they cart their own kumara to the packhouse). Evan says they use the most diesel during planting season. “We start in early October – although we’re working the ground before then – and we’re planting right through until Christmas. We start our harvest early-to-mid February, but the bulk of it starts on March 1st. We have a diesel trailer tank and we just grab it as we need it, but during planting, it's pretty much getting filled up every day.”

They also have Farmlands Cards for their permanent staff, to ensure they are making full use of the Z truck stop discount. “We have three staff that all have a Card, and so then they can obviously fill the diesel trailer up or whatever needs to be done. They've all got company utes as well.”

Instant fuel

Southland dairy farmers Doug and Jo Dodds have saved almost $2,500 on diesel purchases by using their Farmlands Card at Z and Caltex truck stops in the past 12 months.

Doug says he loves getting the 19c/L discount, but he also enjoys the convenience of it. He says they were previously getting diesel delivered to their farm by another provider, but they

With over 28,000L of diesel purchased in the past 12 months, they have saved more than $5,000 just by using their Farmlands Card.

prefer being able to get their diesel immediately whenever they need it.

“If we were busy using a lot of diesel, we didn’t want to have to wait for it to be delivered to our farm. Because we are very close to a truck stop, it's no hassle just to go; you just pop down the road rather than waiting a week for someone to deliver,” he says.

“We have some runoff blocks too, so if we're doing a lot of work on one of them, we can just take our ute there and refuel tractors and things. It's very convenient and you're not messing around with drums of diesel and spilling it.”

Doug and his family milk around 530 cows on a dairy platform of roughly 200ha. His family has a long history on the property, with his grandfather purchasing the original farm of 120ha over a century ago in 1911.

The biggest challenge on the farm in 2024 is rising costs, and the Farmlands/Z Energy offer has helped them save thousands while prices have gone up elsewhere.

“This season we have just moved into a new rotary cow shed and shut the two existing cow sheds down. All the costs of building and plant and everything just kept going up and up and up, so it’s great to be able to save on something important like fuel.”

* Data is based on:

Net average price per litre of diesel charged to shareholders after all discounts applied including GST Period 1st April 2023 to 31 March 2024

Z and Caltex Truck Stops Diesel only

Photo: Stan McDowall

Photo: Dawn Dutton

Southland dairy farmers Jo and Doug Dodds have made good use of the Z truck stop discount.

Northland kumara grower Evan Paxton uses a lot of diesel for his farm vehicles.

New Card app, huge step forward for co-operative

Overwhelmingly positive, is how shareholders have responded to the launch of the new Farmlands Card app at Fieldays® this year. GM of Card & Partnerships, Gavin Foulsham is buzzing with excitement over the release. "It’s a win-win-win," Gavin explains. "It benefits shareholders, Card Partners, and the co-op as a whole."

The new app is all about making life easier for Farmlands Card users. When they want to find a Card Partner near them and take advantage of savings, rebates or exclusive offers, the app has it covered. Plus, it puts card management at customers’ fingertips, allowing them to check balances and manage card security, with many new features on the way.

With a record $1.4B in revenue, and over 6.2M in Card transactions expected this year, the app is set to boost these figures even further, driving growth and profitability for everyone involved.

“We’ve come a long way, when you look back at how we used to present our offers” says Gavin. “On paper they got out-of-date really quickly. Now you can download the Farmlands Card App and find what you need fast, saving time and money.”

Farmlands Card Partner locations fast and explore what’s on offer.

Download the Farmlands Card App today from the App Store or Google Play

Gavin Foulsham – General Manager - Card & Partnerships.

Dave and Alice grow a range of native plant species on what was once a tennis court.

Native nursery courts success

When Waikato dairy farmers Dave Swney and Alice Trevelyan decided to launch The Native Dairy Farmer, a business specialising in native plants, they found the ideal spot for the nursery: the family tennis court.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN RUTH GILMOUR

In the busy Farmlands tent at the 2024 Fieldays® in June, one of the most popular attractions was a display of native plants, held in wool rather than plastic. The plants, from local nursery The Native Dairy Farmer, were being offered as part of a prize draw but visitors to the tent were clamouring to buy them. While the plants in the tent were not for sale, Alice and Dave were on hand to pass out business cards, their two young sons strapped into harnesses on their chests.

Based near Te Awamutu, the Farmlands shareholders are in an equity partnership with Dave’s parents, milking 400 cows on 124ha. “We're a higher input system, but we try and keep things simple with just maize and PK as supplements with a bit of summer cropping,” Dave tells Farmlander.

“We're quite a summer dry farm on ash soil, so we do calve quite early and just try and get as much production before Christmas as we can. Anything after that's a bonus.”

Dave has been back on the family farm for just over a decade, after studying agriculture at Lincoln University then working for DairyNZ for five years. When he met Alice, she was working as a Senior Catchment Officer at the Waikato Regional Council. The role involved advising landowners on fencing and riparian planting to protect waterways, igniting a passion for native plants that would lead to the creation of The Native Dairy Farmer.

“My area was north of Hamilton, so I was spending a lot of time on the road,” she says. “With kids on the way, it was a good opportunity to look at something I could do from home.

We were sourcing a lot of plants for our friends and farmers in the area because of my job, and so we thought ‘why not give it a go and grow our own?’ And that's where it kicked off.”

As with many great ideas, the inspiration came while Alice was getting her hair done.

“I went to the hairdressers after work and after a long session in the chair I came home and said, ‘I'd like to start a nursery and I'd like to have a Facebook page and to link what we're doing on the nursery to what we're doing on the farm’,” she says.

“I was working with a lot of farmers at the time that were doing some epic stuff, like retiring hectares and hectares of land and changing their practices environmentally, but no one knows what's happening out there or what people are doing on farm. We only hear the negative stuff in the media. I want to change that and show the good stuff that people are doing.”

An ace location

As they were planning their new venture, Dave and Alice realised they had the perfect spot for a nursery right under their noses: the barely used grass tennis court on the property. “Dave’s family used to be quite into tennis, but it had become the area where the dogs ran around and it gave us lots of extra lawn to mow,” says Alice.

“It was perfect for the nursery. It was fenced really well and it's flat, so we didn't have to do any landscaping. We were fortunate to have some advice from a family friend in the design and setup of our nursery. We weed matted the tennis court put up some windbreak and were lucky enough to pick up a second hand irrigation system that we repurposed. We are able to grow 25-30,000 plants out there, which is great. All our plants are grown outdoors from the beginning. We don't have any shade cloth and things like that, so they're pretty hardy.”

The nursery is surrounded by gardens full of established native trees, which gives it a bit of natural shade. They are now into their third season with the nursery, having started in 2021. Dave says they been “blown away” by how well their plants have grown.

“We do get some quite harsh frosts up here and we're perched on top of the hill a little bit, but because of the natural shade and the trees that we've got around the nursery, plants just hum in there. It’s a little hothouse- it could be blowing 100km/hour out on the farm and you walk into the nursery area and it's very sheltered.”

Environmentally friendly products

Unsurprisingly, for someone who built a career looking after waterways, Alice places a big emphasis on sustainability. While the range of natives they grow are great for the environment, they have also been looking for more sustainable options for their pots and boxes. Last season some friends of theirs purchased a pot making machine, which makes pots out of paper rather than using plastic.

“Now all of our plants are grown in paper pots, which you can plant straight into the ground so there's no waste, which is really exciting,” says Alice.

“We're starting to get some awesome feedback from people on how much quicker it is to undertake planting.” Unlike your traditional plastic pots the paper pot allows the plants root system to continuously grow south with no obstruction resulting in a stronger, healthier plant.

The next step to sustainability was replacing the plastic buckets they had been using to hold the plants for gifts.

“We had our paper pots and then we were putting them in a plastic bucket as a gift, and it just didn't feel right,” says Alice. “You've got this awesome sustainable product and then you're chucking it into the plastic bucket.”

The solution they developed was not just environmentally friendly but Kiwi made. They now use wool boxes supplied by Floating Peaks, a company created by sheep farmers Hayden and Anastasia Tristram, who make products using wool from their Hawke’s Bay farm.

“I had been following Floating Peaks through our Instagram pages and I found them quite relatable,” says Alice.

“They're a young couple with two young kids like us, but I really liked what they were doing. She was doing trials with wool pole protectors, which I found interesting. I got chatting with her about wool and the benefits of wool, and I asked, ‘Could you make a wool box?’

“The idea with the smaller boxes is that they fit five native plants, they sit in a wool box, and then you chop up that box and it turns into five wool weed mats. The whole product is useful and there's no waste, which is pretty cool. We’ve now also got larger boxes, which can hold 25 native plants.”

Importance of education

Alice says most of their customers are farmers who are either doing riparian planting or hill slope planting, or retiring an area and doing restoration.

“But we do have a few local lifestyle block owners and people that are wanting to use natives in landscaping, which is awesome. There's a lot of people starting to put a lot more natives in the garden as well.”

The Native Dairy Farmer supplies a range of natives and Alice says it’s important to understand which plants will work best in each setting. She also warns that there’s a lot more involved in the process than simply buying the natives and planting them.

“First of all, you've got to do the fencing. Sometimes if it's a really weedy site, you've got to prepare that site or graze it before planting, and then generally natives need two to three years’ post planting care just to get them fully established. You don’t just buy some plants, chuck them in the ground and walk away.”

Dave adds while it’s encouraging to see so many people taking an interest in riparian planting and using natives, it’s important to seek advice before embarking on that journey.

“That's where we see a lot of people get quite disgruntled with the whole process because they put the wrong plants in the wrong place and it's not successful,” he says.

“It's really cool having Alice's skills to be able to not just grow the plants but provide that sort of advice for people as well. It seems to be a missing piece in the puzzle a lot of the time; just making sure people put the right thing in the right place. You want to see everyone succeed, especially because they have invested money and time into it.”

The idea with the smaller boxes is that they fit five native plants, they sit in a wool box, and then you chop up that box and it turns into five wool weed mats.

As for what they’re doing on their own farm, Dave jokes that their situation is “a bit like the builder’s house”, as they have spent so much time growing plants for other people they haven’t done as much with their land as they would like. However, they do have plans for what to do with it when they find the time.

The nursery has been a real passion project of Alice’s in particular. With a young family and a farm to run Alice and Dave acknowledge the great support they have had from their families in bringing this awesome idea to fruition.

“We hold some pretty high standards around animal welfare, so one of our goals is planting a lot more shade trees. It's not just about growing natives or just about dairy farming; we’re trying to link it all together because they benefit each other in the bigger picture.”

The wool boxes are a hit with customers.

Farmlands bolsters Agrecovery scheme

Farmlands has taken its team-up with Agrecovery to the next level, making it easier for farmers and growers across the country to recycle soft plastics.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

The Agrecovery scheme provides free recycling for plastic containers from more than 3,000 of the most common agchem, animal health and dairy hygiene products used in New Zealand’s rural sector. Farmlands is a longstanding supporter of Agrecovery – now it’s helping divert a wider range of plastics from landfill.

“Our NRM, McMillan and Reliance Feeds bags are now recyclable and you can drop these off for recycling at over 70 Farmlands sites across Aotearoa. Our new packaging has 25 percent less plastic per bag than our previous range, but are still strong enough to be transported and used on farms,” says Charlotte Archer, an ESG & Sustainability Analyst at Farmlands.

Charlotte explains the process: “The farmer will sign up to Agrecovery online and they will place an order for their liners, which will then go directly onto the farm. They will then fill up those liners, with Woven PP #5 (woven polypropylene) or LDPE #4 (low density polyethylene) bags, with a coded zip tie associated to their Agrecovery account.

“So they zip tie the liner, then bring that back into a collection site. Our Farmlands team will record that collection into a portal, so the data gets captured. Agrecovery will then come and collect that and take it to the recyclers.”

Charlotte says Farmlands has offered recycling for hard plastics through Agrecovery since 2019. “We've

got 23 sites across New Zealand that accept those, so we've put big containers on the sites for farmers to bring them back in,” she says.

“Last year alone we were able to recycle 51 tonnes of plastic that would've traditionally been dealt with elsewhere. That was just the starting point in our journey and now we are focused on recycling those soft plastics as well.”

Scott Brown, General Manager – Strategy and Animal Nutrition for Farmlands, says although proactive farmers already recycle their plastics, companies they supply also want to know what’s being recycled.

“They’re looking at the farm environmental plans, asking, ‘What are you doing with waste?’ It's a clear trackable system that can tick all of those boxes. Whilst we're providing a solution for farmers, the drivers are coming from a number of other spaces. We're just wanting to make it easy for them to do that.”

Charlotte says Farmlands is also planning to have in-store bins available for lifestyle customers, who want to bring in a few bags at a time, or do not have the volumes to fill an Agrecovery liner. “We are just looking at rolling that out at the moment, so watch this space.”

CHARLOTTE ARCHER ESG & SUSTAINABILITY ANALYST

Lay of the land

In this section

Keep up to date with the latest industry insights and practical advice from Farmlands’ team of experts, and learn how Farmlands shareholders are embracing innovation.

44 Take to the skies with a rural contractor using drones for agricultural spraying

48 Learn how breathing techniques can help farmers manage stressful situations

56 How a Farmlands TFO helped revive a man suffering cardiac arrest

Photo: Richard Brimer

Drones

are the next frontier in agricultural spraying, although challenges remain for operators. We meet two brothers who have jumped into this fast-developing field, and learn how Nufarm and Farmlands have been supporting their business.

WORDS

BY NIKO KLOETEN RICHARD BRIMER

It’s a long way from the valleys of Wales to the hills of Hawke’s Bay, but for Stu and Russell Davies at least one thing feels familiar - the rain. There was plenty of it after Stu took over the well-known local contracting business Fogarty Spraying at the start of 2023, having previously driven the company’s distinctive green spray trucks for three years after arriving in New Zealand.

“Prior to Cyclone Gabrielle, we had 24 months of solid wet weather, so we were already having some issues, but after the cyclone we were having trucks getting stuck,” he says. “We were going out and doing a job and coming back into the yard on a minus profit, just to try and provide the client with the service that we normally would.”

Stu says he was having to wear the costs of taking as long as three hours to spray just 5-7ha of land. “It was not sustainable in that circumstance and, as they keep mentioning, with climate change, where's it all going? How do we continue running an efficient business with those losses? You just end up going broke.”

Searching for solutions, Stu started investigating other options he could offer clients that weren’t available in the area. That was when he came across the emerging technology of drones. “The drone space has been ongoing for the last five to six years in New Zealand, but it's never had the capacity: it's always been 15-20L, which is not sustainable to balance the equivalent output of a truck ground sprayer at this point.”

However, with the arrival of bigger drones with 50L spray capacity, Stu saw an opportunity. “That's where we decided to look at the option and what it was going to cost to set up. There were extra costs involved along the way, but that's what you'd get from taking a new venture on.”

Results assured

Stu’s biggest dilemma was quickly solved when he recruited his brother Russell (who had been working on a DOC riparian planting project in the South Island) to pilot the drones. One thing Stu didn’t have to worry about was the quality of his spray product.

Paul Greenbank – Nufarm Territory Manager for Hawkes Bay and Wairarapa, says Nufarm had a longstanding relationship with Fogarty Spraying prior to the drone coming on board. “We ensure that our products are readily available to Stu and his team so they can spray the minute they need to.”

Stu says they use a slightly different mix of Nufarm products for their drone spraying compared to other spray methods. “Associate and Conquest are definitely the two main chemicals I've added to the list with Nufarm and that is basically all down to the demand of blackberry spraying, which is a very specialist area that I've tried to utilise that drone for.”

Those products are seeing great results out in the field, says Stu, noting that some clients are happy for them to supply the spray while other clients have their own spray for them to use. For example, they recently did a desiccation job of some sweetcorn for local dairy farmer Paul Franklin, using Paul’s own supply of products.

The other main products they have used on Paul’s farm are Kamba 750 and Conquest, Stu says. “Paul buys a lot of Nufarm products as well and we've also done the blackberry bush spraying on a part of a terrace up at the dairy farm there.”

Getting off the ground

Although the Davies brothers are getting great client feedback for their drone spraying, the process of getting the drone in the air was not without hurdles. The first step was to pick a drone, and after some research they chose the XAG P100 PRO Ultra High-Capacity Spray Drone (50L) from Aerolab, an XAG distributor based in Auckland.

“Stu saw the XAG with Aerolab at one of the Field Days events in Feilding and got talking to them and that was it really,” says Russell. “In hindsight we probably made the right choice going with XAG. For starters, ours has a 50L tank rather than 40L, and from what I've seen, the software and the autonomous flight is a bit more efficient with the XAG system.”

Stu (left) and Russell Davies of Fogarty Spraying with their drone.

The 50L model had only just been released when they ordered it, so they had to wait for it to arrive in the country. “In the meantime, the Ukraine war started up, so China actually put a restraining order that stopped any drone 25kg or bigger from leaving China, which gave us a big delay,” Stu says.

Getting the drone was the easy part; Russell had to complete not one but four separate courses to be legally allowed to use it for agricultural spraying. “The number of boxes to tick is quite impressive,” he says. “I think because it's still quite new, the various organisations that are governing this are still catching up in terms of streamlining the process.”

Another area that is still catching up to the growing use of drones for spraying is the labels for the spray products, including the recommended water rates. Mike Cox, South Island Sales Manager for Nufarm, says they are working on updating their labels to reflect the differences between drone spraying and other methods. “It's amazing technology but have the labels caught up with the way the technology has evolved? No, and we understand that.

“There are other countries around the world who are doing the same thing, playing a little bit of catch up footy with the way labels are written and the way that the drone technology and atomisation of the droplet is evolving. The other part of it too is not only the products but the adjuvant space as well.”

Doing the research

Before embarking on his drone journey Stu did market research, talking to farmers and getting advice from local Farmlands TFOs about the appetite for such a service. “It was just a new space. Not too many farmers like change that much, if the system works and it does what it says on the tin.” While some farmers and growers were sceptical at first about using a drone, the reaction from clients has been “bloody good”, Stu says.

“There aren’t many jobs that Russ can go to and doesn't have an audience. If the spray truck turns up, you bugger off but a drone turns up? Let's call the neighbours and let's all have a nosy. It’s usually the main entertainment on the hillside watching

him flying this machine, and all credit to him, he deals with it well.”

Farmlands Agronomist Joseph Butler commends Stu for being able to build his business during a “very difficult” two years. “He just relates to the shareholders so bloody well and the staff at the store like him. He just gets along with everyone, and I think that's just one of the big points when you start up a business like these guys are doing, it all comes down to relationships.”

Joseph says drones are an exciting addition to the toolbox, and everyone involved is still learning what they can do. “You’ve got to work with Nufarm on things like water rates and chemical application; realistically it's about seeing it in action, seeing what the results are and then teaching and training up the TFOs to actually push it on farm. It's just going to open up a whole new world of options.”

Paul Greenbank says, “At Nufarm we pride ourselves on adding value to Contractors like Stu. Whether it is through innovative solutions, providing technical support and back up, or our range of high-quality products. That way, Stu can spray exactly what he needs when he needs to.”

From left: Stu Davies (Fogarty Spraying), Paul Greenbank (Nufarm Territory Manager), Paul Franklin (Farmlands shareholder, Springhill Dairies), Lauren Dolan (Farmlands Technical Field Officer), Joseph Butler (Farmlands Agronomist) and Russell Davies (Fogarty Spraying).

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Gemma with workers on her family orchard in Hawke’s Bay.

The challenges of rural life are well documented, and we’re reminded of our industry’s struggles in almost every rural publication we flick through. We spoke to Hawke’s Bay orchard owner, wellness coach and mother of two, Gemma Douglas, about using breath to help deal with adversity, and her mission to support rural mums.

WORDS BY ALICE SCOTT RICHARD BRIMER

High interest rates, low commodity prices, inflationary pressures, staffing woes, compliance requirements, government regulations, adverse weather events… the list of challenges facing Kiwi farmers and growers is long and overwhelming and often complicated. But Gemma Douglas reckons they don’t need to steal our happiness and rob us of the joy there is in the world. It all comes back to the breath, she says.

An asthmatic who has required an inhaler throughout her whole life, Gemma began learning about the art of breathwork while on a personal wellness journey that began after she left her city life behind to live on her husband Andrew’s family orchard. “I realised with my own training, I could relieve my asthma symptoms and no longer rely on an inhaler like I used to. It was life changing.”

Diving deep into the Wim Hof method of mindset training, cold

water immersion and breathwork, Gemma became so passionate about the incredible results she discovered within herself, that she wanted to share the skills with others. In May last year she attended a week-long Wim Hof instructor course in Spain.

Being only one of five qualified instructors in New Zealand, she now conducts online group sessions and one-on-one coaching, and facilitates retreats with other wellbeing professionals. The lessons can be valuable for those in the rural sector dealing with stressful situations, and Gemma has some simple tips that can be applied while sitting on a tractor.

Unleashing a superpower

“Using the power of our breath is like a superpower,” she says. “When we are aware of our breath, we are aware of the present moment, taking us out of our heads - from the anxiety and worry of the past or future. Breath counting is

really simple but incredibly powerful.” Gemma advises people to put a timer on for two minutes. “Inhale for four seconds, hold for two and exhale for eight. You're using your breath like a remote control to your nervous system – telling it that you are safe and putting you in a rest and digest state.”

Once we settle the nervous system and teach our body and mind we are safe, Gemma says we can then move to strengthening the body with hormetic stress. “It’s positive stress instead of distress. Both breathwork and cold therapy can be examples of this.”

Gemma explains hormetic stress is when we expose our body to short term stressors. “It allows our body to build up a defence system or reawakens the defence system - often weakened by modern lifestyles.”

Temperature control, sedentary lifestyle, environmental toxins paired with nutritional habits can weaken our defence system, she says.

Finding comfort within discomfort can be incredibly empowering, she said. “When we purposely expose our body to small amounts of fight and flight, such as cold water, while simultaneously using our breath to switch on our rest and digest we increase our stress resilience and raise our threshold so we can handle higher levels of stress in other parts of our lives and helps us bounce back quickly. It also increases those feel-good chemicals of dopamine and endorphins as well as the focus and energy hormones of adrenaline and noradrenaline.”

Digging deep in the face of adversity

These lessons would have come in handy when Cyclone Gabrielle struck last year. Gemma and Andrew own and lease 38ha of apple orchards spread out across four locations in Twyford near Hastings. Two hectares of their top-end premium export apple trees were completely decimated; all of the trellised rows snapped at the base of the trunk and a further 8ha swallowed by floodwaters and silt.

Overall, the couple lost about 30 percent of last year’s income. “The silver lining was that there was still fruit that was salvageable. We couldn’t pick anything that had been submerged in water, but we could pick 30cm above that and the exporters wanted it.”

As it turned out, their house narrowly avoided being flooded by mere centimetres. “We can’t believe our house missed the deluge when friends just down the road had it a whole lot worse. Five minutes in either direction, it was a very different story. It was quite an unsettling feeling of guilt, knowing how lucky we had been, compared to so many others,” she said.

Fortunately fears the trees may not survive have been unfounded and this year’s harvest has been a bumper crop. “Andrew is the hardest working

person I know; I wouldn’t be in this fortunate position to do the work I love without him and his commitment and dedication to the orchard,” she said.

“If there’s one thing that came from Cyclone Gabrielle, it is how we have come together both as a family and as a community; resilience truly is a virtue.”

Leaning into motherhood

Resilience was required when Gemma moved to her husband’s family orchard on the outskirts of Hastings in 2012 with a five-month-old and another on the way. Hailing from the deep South, Gemma’s father was a high school principal and her mother a nurse.

While she was used to her father working long hours when she was young, he was still able to clock off at the weekends and school holidays and take time out for family. But during peak busy times in any rural business, this isn’t the case, and Gemma can recall feeling intensely lonely as Andrew worked dawn ‘til dusk in the orchard.

“As a new mum with this little baby, I feel like I became almost socially inept. Apart from my family, I knew absolutely no one. I lost a lot of my confidence, and I had massive identity shift. I had left my corporate job in Auckland which I loved, and I was good at, and now where was I?”

Living around 15 minutes from the nearest shop, Gemma says their

rural life is nowhere as remote as some. “I guess it’s all relative to what we become use to. Popping into the supermarket on a daily basis, seeing a movie or going to the gym; all those things you don’t even think twice about choosing to do when you live in a city all of a sudden become part of a priority list that get bumped down depending on their importance and whether a trip to town can be justified.”

Orchard life was challenging for the first few years and Gemma learnt a whole new set of practical skills. “I had a new baby, but I managed to get out there. My father-in-law Max embraced my presence on the orchard, and I learnt to drive the tractors and hydroladders during the busy harvest months. My mother-in-law Sharon had done this for more than 40 years, so I had some pretty big shoes to fill.”

In 2018 Gemma started an online community she called The Motherhood Project, and she found herself again through her online connection with other mums. “It can be hard to get out the door when you have little ones, so this was somewhere that offered that connection we all craved. Just knowing you’re not alone in the motherhood journey is so powerful,” she said.

“Selfcare has always been a theme that has run through The Motherhood Project; it’s not about saying ‘me first, or me last, but me too’. “We can’t look after others if we aren’t looking after

Right: Gemma in a South Icebath. Her Wim Hof training included cold water immersion. Facing page: The breathing techniques have delivered amazing results for the lifelong asthmatic.

Photo: Bennycreativenz

ourselves and as mothers, we set the energy for the day within the nucleus of our family.”

Initially the Facebook and Instagram pages were a platform where she shared content and insights from different mothers and experts but over time as her confidence grew, she started sharing more of her own reflections and found many of her posts resonated with her followers. “I knew if a post I was drafting was making me cry, then it was likely going to strike a chord with its readers as well.”

Across Instagram and Facebook

The Motherhood Project now has more than 235,000 followers. Unlike other content creators with a large following, Gemma has opted not to use this following to monetise her content. “There is the odd giveaway, but it has just been about offering a community to these mothers and helping them feel connected when they are deep in the throes of becoming a new parent.”

Gemma credits the strong, independent, and confident voice she has found within herself to her parents. “Growing up, Mum and Dad encouraged my brother, two sisters and I to speak up. Dad supported us to give absolutely everything a go and Mum is a very empathetic woman with a strong awareness of others and herself.”

Society is beginning to change, Gemma believes. The patriarchal messages that were once accepted as the norm are now questioned and dismissed by a new generation. “Hardship has always been there, and I choose not to believe the dialogue when people say, ‘oh my grandmother did it with five children and no power and she didn’t struggle’. Well, I call B.S on that, I would say she did struggle and probably had some really dark moments, she just didn’t have the platform like we do now.”

Three handy breathing techniques to bring back the calm:

Deep, Nose and Slow: Three words to remember for functional breathing. Work on bringing your breath deeper into the belly. When you inhale your belly should expand, when you exhale your belly should deflate. This is caused by engaging your diaphragm in the correct way. Try to switch to full nasal breathing. I tell my kids, nose is for breathing, mouth is for eating.

12 second breath: Inhale for four, hold for two and exhale for six. (Put a timer on for two to five minutes). This will switch on your rest and digest. A great one to do in stressful moments or before bed.

Cadence Breathing: Breathing at a rate of six breaths per minute (in for four seconds, out for six seconds). This may be hard to begin with if you're not diaphragmatic breathing but will get easier. This breathing also switches on your parasympathetic (rest and digest part of your nervous system.) The vagus nerve is stimulated to lower the speed of your heart rate and then dilates the blood vessels. This improves blood pressure and lowers stress and anxiety. Start with five minutes, work your way up to 10 mins.

Gemma undertakes a number of retreats, group workshops and one on one sessions. Learn more about Gemma at gemmadouglas.co.nz

Please note, if you are pregnant, have epilepsy, heart conditions, or have recently undergone surgery, it is advisable to consult with a healthcare professional before using cold immersion therapy, as participation is not advisable.

Photo: Annie Knight, Knight by Light

RECIPE

Waikato-based Farmlands shareholder

Stacey Scott’s YouTube cooking channel

Farmers Wife Homestead has exploded in popularity, as Kiwis look to stretch their food budgets further. She shared some budgetfriendly recipes for Farmlander readers.

Cinnamon Scrolls

Hints and tricks – getting your scrolls right

• I make all my recipes that require milk using milk powder, as it is cheaper than using store-bought milk and I don’t need to go to the supermarket as often.

• How do I know if the milk or water is the right heat? it will be blood temperature when you put your finger in the milk and not feel too hot. Think of a baby's bottle heat.

• Use a stand mixer or a bowl if you are hand-kneading

• The dough will be tacky and slightly wet but that is ok. It will keep absorbing the flour while it doubles in size. A dry dough will produce a tough bread product, you always want your bread dough to be slightly tacky for the first rise. You can always add more after the rise time if you need to.

• If you need a warm spot to raise the dough, placing the bowl on a water bottle covered with a tea towel works a treat.

• You can freeze these scrolls and pull them out of the freezer to thaw and rise before baking. Just freeze the scrolls once rolled up and before you give them their second rise.

• Use a lined tray to freeze them and once frozen they can be transferred to a freezer bag.

• I like to use a roasting pan for baking my scrolls (it has high sides and makes nicer buns), and I like to use a silicone mat for rolling out my dough. They are so handy to have and you can use the mat to help roll the dough out.

INGREDIENTS AND INSTRUCTIONS

In a mixing bowl (use a dough hook for a mixer)

Add 1 cup of warm milk (see the above hint) or 1 cup of warm water and heaped 2 Tbsp of milk powder

1/4 cup white sugar

2½ tsp instant yeast

Stir and let the yeast bloom (until bubbly which takes around 5 minutes)

Once the yeast has bloomed, add:

2 eggs

50g butter (soft)

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp of salt

41/4 cup of plain flour (use high grade if you have it but if not it will still be fine)

Photos: supplied by Farmers Wife Homestead

• Mix until it forms a dough ball around the dough hook, or if you are hand kneading until the dough has come together.

• Knead for two minutes.

• Set aside for an hour in a warm spot or until doubled in size.

• Once the dough has risen, roll it on a floured surface into a rectangle shape it should be even in size and thickness (roughly 50cm by 30cm).

• Take 50g softened butter and spread it over the dough.

• Sprinkle cinnamon and 1/4 cup brown sugar all over the surface of the dough.

• Roll up the longer side of the dough, and make the log even in shape.

• Cut it into either eight bigger scrolls or 16 smaller equal pieces.

• Place all the scrolls on a baking paper lined tray, cover, and let double in size again for around 1 hour.

• Preheat the oven and bake for 12-15 mins at 180°C fan bake, until lightly browned and cooked through.

TO

MAKE UP THE ICING

1 cup of icing sugar

1 tsp of vanilla essence

1 Tbsp of water (you might need a little more water)

• You can have the icing either a runny consistency (like paint) or a thicker consistency and spreadable it is up to you how you like it.

• Once the dough cools, spread or drizzle the icing over the scrolls. Eat and enjoy!

RECIPE

Roast Meat Caramelised Onion Pie

Hints and tricks – perfecting your pastry

• I used store-bought flaky pastry for this recipe but you can use your own pastry recipe if you wish. I make up my own pastry and then freeze it into a disk to have on hand for quick meals.

• For this recipe I used a Wilshire Brownie tin (27x17.5x3.5cm).

• Use any leftover roast meat you may have. Today I had some roast pork but beef, lamb or chicken would work just as well.

• For brushing the sides and top with egg mix. I save a little of the egg mix. I do this to save an egg as you don't need much.

• For freezing spinach, use fresh spinach and pop it into a bag. No need to blanch it first. Once it is frozen you can break the leaves up as they become fragile. I then just sprinkle some crushed spinach over the egg mix. There is no need to thaw it first.

• You can make this pie as big as you like. Adjust the ingredients to match the size tin you wish to use.

• I leave the pie in the tin to cool down before I remove it. It should come out very easily.

• To check if the pie is ready, cut a slit in the top to see if the egg is set and not runny still.

• The Caramelised Onion Jam and Tomato Relish recipe is available on my YouTube channel.

INGREDIENTS AND INSTRUCTIONS

4 sheets of flaky pastry (I used store-bought)

• Take two sheets of pastry and bring the short ends together by pressing together. Turn the pastry over and press the other side together. Repeat with the remaining two sheets. You should now have two long pastry sheets.

• Line the tin with the first long sheets of pastry and make sure the whole tin is covered including the edges.

• Set the other pastry aside for the top.

½ cup of Caramelised Onion Jam (see video recipe to make your own or you can use store-bought)

• Cover the bottom layer with half of the caramelised onion jam leaving around 1/4 cup for the filling, then add slices of cold leftover roast meat

Whisk together:

10 eggs

1 cup of cream

½ tsp of salt

Pepper to taste

2 Tbsp of chives either fresh or dried

• Add the egg mixture to the pan

• Now top it with some extra meat slices and using a tsp drop the remaining onion jam over the pie. I sprinkled some frozen spinach over the top (see hints and tips)

• You can add any leftover veggies you might have in the fridge, but if you do you may need less of the egg mixture

• Brush the sides with egg (see hints and tips) and add the remaining pastry sheet over the top. Again make sure that it covers the whole tin including the edges.

• Press together the pastry with a fork along the edges of the pan.

• Brush the top of the pie with the remaining egg mix.

• Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180°C fanbake until the egg is set (see hints and tips)

• I like to serve this cold with my Tomato Relish and a side salad.

• Eat and Enjoy!

For more recipes and tips, visit FarmersWifeHomestead.com or follow @FarmersWifeHomestead on Youtube.

Winning renovation

Classic colours give this Hawke’s Bay villa a new lease of life.

Jo and Ben Percival took a leap of faith, buying an original 1914 homestead in 2017. Located in Flemington, Hawke's Bay, the house designed by prominent New Zealand architect Louis Hay, has come a long way since Jo and Ben first got the keys.

After years of minimal use as a holiday home and a severe lack of work or renovations over the past century, Jo and Ben have spent the past seven years transforming the home into their own.

Determined to honour the home’s heritage, Jo and Ben took on the task themselves. They aimed to highlight the beautiful wood panelling and sash windows without clashing with the original features. Jo decided against contemporary, neutral colours and instead opted for more vibrant and interesting hues that would pay homage to the home’s history. This careful consideration of colour and detail was crucial to the project’s success.

“We repainted our second living area (which we jokingly call our ‘ballroom’) from a hard, dated red to a calming blue-green, along with hanging new curtains. Resene Blue Smoke really offsets the original oak panelling and other native timbers in this room.” Jo says.

Preparation was key to achieving a flawless finish. Jo emphasised the importance of proper prep work, including

Resene Alabaster

Resene Blue Smoke

Before

sanding, filling and re-sanding. This meticulous process ensured that the final result was smooth and professional. The transformation was a labour of love, with Jo and Ben painting nearly every room in the house including refreshing the bathroom, trims and ceiling with Resene Alabaster.

The outcome was stunning. The house, now repainted using Resene paint, felt right and looked beautiful. Jo praised the quality of the Resene products, noting that they used 5-6 different testpots to find the perfect colours. The paint only required two coats for a great finish, which saved time, effort and money.

Jo and Ben are thrilled with how the house has turned out. It has become a place they are proud to call home, blending their personal style with the house’s historical charm. Jo's dedication to preserving the home's heritage while making it her own is to be admired.

top tip

If you have an older character house and want to be more classic in your approach to the colour scheme, check out the Resene Heritage colour palette at your local Resene ColorShop or reseller, or see it online at www.resene.com/heritage.

a $250 Resene ColorShop voucher, and a $250 Farmlands Gift Card.

the country competition

Enter your best rural project and win!

Resene and Farmlands are on the hunt for the country’s best rural Resene projects. Send in your photos and the stories behind your kitchen, shed, barn or bedroom – anything inside or outside that's painted, stained or wallpapered with Resene products!

The winning projects will not only win a $1,000 Resene ColorShop voucher and a $250 Farmlands Gift Card, but will also feature in an upcoming issue of Farmlander magazine.

TO ENTER:

Submit your project photos, including the "before" shots if you have them to the Farmlands website, along with any details of the project.

Just visit www.farmlands.co.nz/resene to enter.

Resene Footloose

A HEARTSTOPPING ORDEAL

A Farmlands TFO found himself in the middle of a medical drama recently, when he helped resuscitate a farmer who had gone into cardiac arrest. He’s using the experience to spread the word about the benefits of having defibrillators on-farm.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN RENEE HOLMES

Mike Collings, based at the Farmlands Taihape store, is also a long-serving member of the local volunteer fire brigade, which covers a vast distance in the lower North Island. His first aid training came in handy earlier this year, when he was attending a stock sale event at a customer’s sheep and beef station. The frightening incident occurred shortly after they had finished the sheep sale.

“We had about a 200-300m walk from where they were selling the sheep to where they were going to start selling the cattle. Apparently, this gentleman was already at the cattle yard. He was up on the railing and just having a bit of a look, and he just had a heart attack and fell off the railing, went down with no sign of life, no nothing. He was in cardiac arrest.”

A couple of onlookers with first aid training, including another volunteer firefighter, started administering CPR on the man. Luckily, the station had a defibrillator on hand, thanks to a conversation Mike had with the station manager five years earlier.

“I was out doing some work with him, and I said, you probably should look at buying one of these (defibrillators), not knowing that five years later I was going to be using it on someone.”

Mike says the station manager also had the foresight to bring the defibrillator down from his house to the woolshed.

“He brought it down that morning, threw it in the ute, so it was only probably about 40-50m away from where we were. I was just walking up towards the cattle yard, which was probably about 20m away from where it happened. Then all of a sudden, I heard all this yelling: ‘Help! We need some help! Someone's having a cardiac arrest.’”

Right place, right time

Mike is used to dealing with emergencies; he says the Taihape Volunteer Fire Brigade does between 80 and 100 calls a year, a mixture of medical events and motor vehicle accidents as well as fires.

“I've been in it 27 years now, so I've been involved for a fair while. It's a bit

of a family affair really. My father was a fire chief, my brother and uncle have been members and my cousin's in it now, so it's a bit of a family tradition.”

Despite his vast experience as a firefighter, Mike says moments like the one he experienced out on the station are relatively rare.

He says his first thought during the latest incident was “Oh crap”, but his training quickly kicked into gear.

“We've obviously had a little bit of medical training, but this was a little bit different as normally when we're getting called, the delay in time means we don’t always get a successful outcome, so to be Johnny-on-thespot with the right gear is very rare.”

With others in attendance giving the man chest compressions and checking his airway, Mike took on the task of using the defibrillator. “We shocked him and got him back, then we laid him in the recovery position and he went back into cardiac arrest again. We ended up shocking him about four times in the end.”

Incredibly, the man survived the ordeal despite the batteries on

the defibrillator being overdue for replacement. “The batteries actually went flat on the last shot,” Mike recalls. “I checked and I think they were supposed to be replaced in December 2023. It’s a good reminder to make sure that you replace the batteries on your defibrillator every five years.”

Lessons learned

Mike says the man he helped save has made a full recovery, and talk of the life-or-death drama spread quickly around farmers in the region.

“It was a real wake-up call for a lot of people. Since then, we’ve had other stations in the area purchasing defibrillators for themselves, and getting training for their staff on how to use them. The local stock agents are also looking into it.”

Mike knows his local farmers well, having worked at Farmlands Taihape for almost a decade, including three years out on the road as a TFO.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to get out amongst the shareholders and live their businesses.” However, he says this

year's “bloody hard up this way” with lamb prices still in the doldrums.

“Everyone's in survival mode. The beef price has stayed relatively good, and that's probably what's kept a lot of the farmers going. But obviously wool’s worth nothing; back in the day it used to be worth loads and that used to be part of the income, where obviously now it's not. It costs them to take it off.

“I would say we're going to be stuck in this rut for at least another 18 months to two years. Even if it does come right, it's going to take a long time for the farmers to get back to spending because they’re probably only paying the interest at the moment, not paying any capital.”

Despite his customers’ woes, there’s one product Mike is not having a hard time selling: defibrillators. He says in isolated areas far from the nearest ambulance or hospital, they can be lifesavers. “Farmers around the country can learn from this. We proved a bit of a point with the importance of quick intervention; 10 minutes could be the difference between life and death.”

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The HeartOn A15 AED by Mediana is a defibrillator designed for ease of use, with voice and visual prompts, and an instant switch for adult and paediatric mode. It automatically switches on when opened, so it can be used immediately. Comes with a five-year manufacturer’s warranty on the defibrillator unit.

Taihape-based TFO Mike Collings had to use a defibrillator to revive a farmer suffering cardiac arrest.

Inbuilt

speed limiters, GPS units on quad bikes, crush protection devices and a focused vehicle training programme are among measures Dairy Holdings has in place to safeguard its farmworkers.

Dairy Holdings farm supervisor Adam Mielnik says the engineering controls, across 14 South Island grazing/young stock blocks, took a little bit of getting used to for staff but everyone came round to it.

“There was a lot of ‘we won’t be able to chase animals on the bikes now’. But we don’t want them chasing stock on the bikes. That’s high risk when a mob breaks away and people go tearing after them.

“It’s meant thinking differently about how you are going to do it, going wider or putting a guide fence in but it isn’t a problem. We’ve found dealing with livestock is perfectly manageable at 30km/hour.”

Dairy Holdings is supporting the Farm Without Harm vehicle safety

campaign led by Safer Farms, the organisation dedicated to leading, redesigning and inspiring a safer farm culture throughout New Zealand.

The decision to fit controls was made in 2019 after the company’s reporting system highlighted a series of minor incidents involving quad bikes. However, while the process was underway, a vehicle was involved in a rollover, resulting in a fatality.

“The impact of something like that is just horrible,” says Mielnik. “No one ever wants to be in the position, from losing a colleague and having to call their family to tell them their loved one isn’t coming home.

“The accident hit me really hard. I had ordered the roll bar for that quad bike just a few days before. A lot of

people think it won’t happen to them but it happened to us. That is why, as farmers, we need to be front footing things, rather than reacting once something has happened.”

Due to the intensive nature of its blocks, the company has continued using quads to utilise techno-fencing equipment on farm. Initially, they had CPDs and individual speed limiting technology fitted to a range of different bikes. They have since gone over to Can-Am ATVs on all the grazing blocks. These have inbuilt speed limiters which they programme to a maximum of 30kmh.

The approach is all about being proactive, not reactive. “We have a three-tiered specific vehicle training programme for our team, on-farm quad safety procedures, our servicing programme and we continue to have our reporting system.

“We have also done a lot of work around how we can work safely to minimise the risk, and ensure the right person is using the right vehicle for the right job Our grazing block quads are also fitted with GPS units that not only monitor driver behaviour, but also alert us to a potential roll event and allow the team to call for help if needed, even from the most remote parts of the South Island.”

None of the Dairy Holdings farms have experienced a full quad bike roll over since CPDs were fitted. “And we never want to have one,” says Mielnik. “We have had three near misses where bikes rolled on their sides. I think the CPD and speed limiting helped us to fail safely in those situations.”

The Farm Without Harm campaign aims to improve New Zealand's farm vehicle safety record.

We have launched a service called 134 TRADE. A dedicated on-phone Trade Team ready to take your call and help with your Trade queries. Our team is here to help

Fast quotes

Price and stock checks

Farmlands shareholders

Order and delivery updates Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm*

The 134 Trade Team can now process Farmlands Card orders over the phone or via email without you having to visit a Bunnings store.

From the front gate to the back paddock, Bunnings Trade is here to help you with what you need for your farm.

World-class EQUINE INSIGHTS

NRM Equine Nutritionist Luisa Wood gained valuable insights when she attended a global conference on equine nutrition

in Florida earlier this year.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

The Equine Health and Nutrition Conference, held at the Golden Ocala Golf and Equestrian Club, was hosted by Kentucky Equine Research (KER). NRM has a strategic partnership with KER, giving it access to world-leading international research on equine nutrition.

The star-studded speaker line-up at the conference included Dr Joe Pagan, the founder of KER. “He did his PhD back in the eighties at Cornell University around energetics, specifically how horses use energy and the sort of energy sources they need,” says Luisa, who worked for KER earlier in her career. “He's got a real passion for that side of things, so there were various research papers presented on the topic.”

The conference also featured insights from horse nutrition at the

Olympics. “KER have supplied the feed for most of the Olympics over the last 20 years, so they have taken that opportunity to analyse the different feeds that are made for the different disciplines,” Luisa says.

“It was useful as a nutritionist for a feed manufacturer to see the different levels of energy, fat and fibre in, say, a performance horse feed or a racing feed and compare it to what ours are like at NRM. It was nice to see that we were in line with what was recommended.”

The conference also featured a presentation by renowned researcher Dr Stephanie Valberg on equine myopathies, including muscle conditions and disorders. “Dr Valberg is an international leader in diagnosing and treating equine neuromuscular disorders and has worked closely with KER over the years,” Luisa says.

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NRM Muscle Relieve is a complete, low starch textured feed formulated for horses at risk of tying up and those with conditions that require low starch diets.

“She's helped them formulate a feed called Re-Leve, which is sold in America and in the UK, and we've developed a version for New Zealand, called NRM Muscle Relieve. With the help of KER, we've adapted this formulation for New Zealand conditions, so we have a solution for those horses that tie up.”

Luisa’s trip was funded by Pure Oil New Zealand, which produces canolabased products used in some NRM feeds. She says the science of equine nutrition is constantly evolving, and being able to attend KER’s conference was a valuable learning experience.

“Having that partnership with KER ensures our feeds are always backed by the latest science, and we can provide the best advice to customers on their horses’ nutritional needs.”

NRM Equine Nutritionist Luisa Wood learned plenty from her recent trip to the USA.

Talk to us about WATER

“I get great satisfaction from meeting farmers, understanding their specific needs and working with them to deliver the best stock water solution,” says Iplex Pipelines Rural Territory Manager Craig Paterson.

A recent example of this was the stock water development on Michael Mexted and son Mark’s dry-stock operation on a 200ha property in Rotoma, on the outskirts of Edgecombe. The Mexteds had several issues that needed to be resolved, after subdividing their large paddocks into smaller units.

Some of these smaller paddocks had no troughs, leading to paddock hopping with no forward controlled grazing plan. Stock movements then became a day-to-day operation, meaning more time on farm and less time with the family. Add to this the stock being held on paddocks with no troughs when it was too wet, ruts and tracks being formed with subsequent pasture damage through pugging as stock moved through paddocks to ones with troughs.

There was also the perennial problem of the old water systems being a mixture of different pipes, in this case galvanised and PVC pipes, with little understanding of where the pipe network was, making finding and maintaining the system difficult.

So, what was the solution to these issues? Mark Mexted, after talking to Mark Beer the Farmlands Whakatane TFO was put in touch with Craig. Craig contacted the Mexteds and arranged a farm visit to understand the problems, current stocking levels, water availability, development plans and discuss solutions. This led to a farm survey, utilising GPS technology, to identify best pipeline route and tank and trough placements.

Craig then presented the Mexteds with a stock water design plan, quantifying the pipe diameters and pressure rating to deliver the correct amount of water to the troughs to meet the proposed stock number’s peak water demand and so deliver the best production outcome.

“It was a straightforward and reassuring process,” says Mark Mexted. “Capital investment on farm is a serious business but following Craig’s second visit to talk through the proposal we knew we were on the right track. Ordering the product through Farmlands, was a simple one stop shop solution, with fitting supply and the Redline pipe being delivered direct to farm from the Iplex factory.”

Major changes to the Mexteds’ farming operation have been; the farm now carries 700 R2s, a 21 percent increase in herd size and with adequate water supply cattle can now be finished in summer. Stock can be purchased earlier and utilise cheaper summer grass feed, controlled grazing can now be implemented across the whole farm and the stock now put on weight much quicker.

“I would estimate the new stock water system will deliver an additional $100,000 of income per annum,” says Mark. “With the farm now operating to its maximum potential, with no water system distractions, I can take time off the farm leaving staff to manage the daily operation - I’m enjoying farming once again.”

“The return on investment is impressive and I can’t talk highly enough about the Farmlands Iplex partnership that delivers this free service. It’s a “no-brainer”, if you’re thinking of upgrading or developing a stock water system, get professional advice and make sure the money you spend will deliver the optimum outcome.”

For further information, contact your Farmlands TFO or the friendly team at your local Farmlands store.

A COMPARISON OF ABOVEGROUND WATER TANKS

Not all poly tanks are made equal. In an era where water conservation and durability are paramount, Promax is a pioneering force in the water storage industry. Promax stands out with its two-flagship aboveground water tank options: the robust ENDURO and the economical XPRESS. Both designed with precision and engineered for durability, these tanks cater to diverse needs and budgets.

Both the ENDURO and XPRESS tank models share several impressive features. They have a heavy ribbed roof design for added strength, and a 600mm diameter manway, which is the largest and strongest in the market for select models. The manway lid is self-venting, with a venting capacity equivalent to a 80mm pipe. The tanks also have multiple plumb points for flexible installation. They are made of premium grade plastic, UV stabilised and built to AS/NZS 4766 standards. Additionally, tanks 10,000L and above come with a reassuring 20-year warranty. While there are many shared features, there are a few key differences between the two types of tanks.

The ENDURO advantage

The premium ENDURO tanks boast corrugated sidewalls, a design choice that significantly enhances their strength. This feature was put to the

test during the Kaikoura earthquake, where ENDURO tanks emerged unscathed amidst widespread destruction. The corrugated design distributes stress more evenly, allowing the tanks to withstand severe shaking. Moreover, the ENDURO tanks offer versatility. They can be partially buried up to 1 metre while maintaining their 20-year warranty, this makes them a great option for those who want to keep their tanks out of sight or who need to lower the tank to achieve fall in the downpipes. A thoughtful design element is the flat spot on the sidewall, positioned 1 metre from the base and below the manway, ensuring easy access to pipework even when the tank is inset.

The XPRESS solution

On the other hand, the XPRESS tanks present a budget-friendly alternative without compromising on quality. While they lack the corrugated sidewalls and cannot be buried, XPRESS tanks still uphold Promax’s commitment to structural integrity. Available in two colours, these tanks feature a simple, streamlined design that meets standard strength levels.

Making the right choice

Choosing between ENDURO and XPRESS tanks depends on

individual requirements and budget constraints. For those in need of a robust, potentially buried tank, the ENDURO is the ideal choice. If budget considerations are paramount and burial is not required, the XPRESS offers a reliable solution.

Promax is dedicated to assisting customers in selecting the perfect tank for their needs. With a legacy of quality and innovation, Promax continues to be a trusted name in water storage solutions.

To learn more about Promax ENDURO and XPRESS tanks and to find the perfect water storage solution for your needs, visit your local Farmlands store today. The knowledgeable staff will be happy to assist you in making the right choice.

SEA Containers NZ versatile, durable, cost-effective

SEA Containers NZ recently celebrated 12 successful years in business, specialising in shipping container sales, hire, modifications and relocations throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. SEA Containers offers an extensive range of shipping containers of all sizes, including new and used units, focusing on providing the right container for each client and application.

Shipping container storage solutions have become increasingly popular due to their versatility, durability and cost-effectiveness. As the demand for efficient storage options continues to rise, farmers, businesses and individuals are turning to shipping containers for their storage needs. Their range of containers are strategically

positioned nationwide, so they can quickly offer you the best solution for your storage requirements.

Northland’s Regional Manager for SEA Containers NZ, Odin Madsen, shared his thoughts for farmers: “Shipping containers offer farmers a robust and secure way to store everything from tools and equipment, to fertilisers and harvested produce. With the increase in theft nationwide, their sturdy construction ensures that your valuable agricultural assets are not only protected from the elements, but also from those uninvited visitors to your farm.”

When it comes to cost-effective storage solutions, shipping containers are the ultimate asset. Compared to building traditional structures, these containers offer

a more affordable way to expand your farm operations. Whether you need extra secure storage space, a temporary shelter for livestock, or a mobile farm office, shipping containers provide a scalable solution that won't worry the bank manager.

SEA Containers NZ are proud to be Farmlands Card Partners and able to offer excellent promotions throughout the year. Look out for details of the latest promotion and Farmlands Card discounts with your next shipping container purchase, hire or relocation between farms.

Get a 4% Farmlands shareholder rebate with your next SEA Containers order, when you use your Farmlands Card. Offer valid until 30 September 2024. For more information visit https://www.seacontainers.co.nz/farmlands-exclusive or phone 0508 732266.

NEED FINANCE?

Don’t fall behind on maintenance and incur extra costs by delaying a necessary purchase.

Take action now by selecting from one of two options

Put your farming costs on your revolving Farm Flexi facility and pay it off when you get paid (or earlier). At very competitive Rates and Fees.

We provide Fixed loan facilities from $5,000 right up to $500,000 to help get you much needed equipment or an upgrade. With payment plans ranging from 3 to 36 months, at competitive rates.

Sign up now to make sure you’re two steps ahead when it comes to financial planning for your key farming costs. To learn more, call 0800 200 600 or scan the QR code to Apply Online.

Finance provided by Finance Now. Refer to Terms and Conditions for full details and disclosures relating to Farm Flexi/Fixed and Finance Now. Lending conditions apply. Rates & fees subject to change.

Spring seed guide

EXPERT ADVICE to get better productivity from your pasture

Farmlands has 11 staff based around the country working in the Agronomy team, offering up-to-date, sound advice on all things crop and pasture. The Agronomy team work closely with Farmlands TFOs nationwide and are available to you on-farm to offer cutting edge seed options and advanced chemical solutions designed to maximise yields, improve resilience and enhance sustainability. Farmlands has strong relationships with all the propriety seed and chemical companies, allowing unbiased independence.

There are some new and exciting advancements in cultivars and new endophyte options coming into the market for spring in both ryegrass and crop options. Successful crop/pasture establishment is about preparation, controlling the controllables, and doing the basics well and on time.

• Ensure fertility is adjusted well in advance of the crop sequence and starter fertiliser is used.

• Purchase seed and crop inputs well in advance, ensuring they’re on-farm when required.

• Spray out - Identify and control problem weeds and insects with the correct tank partner prior to pasture and crop establishment.

• Seedbed preparation is done well.

• Correct endophyte and seed treatment for ryegrass and crop options.

• Correct sowing depth and good seed to soil contact.

• Pre or post emergent herbicides applied at the correct time/growth stage.

If these things are executed well and on time, as a rule everything else should fall into place.

What

if there was a way to rein in costs this season, without compromising production? No matter where or what you farm, it can be done.

Upgrade even one or two thin, run-out pastures on your farm this spring, and watch your animals do so well you'll save money on supplements, too.

Pick the right pasture seed, and those benefits will continue for three to five years, strengthening your business.

We all know the golden rule of New Zealand pastoral farming – the more feed you grow and harvest directly into your animals, the cheaper that feed becomes per kilogram of dry matter. And few grasses grow more than Forge NEA.

Compared to a high performance perennial ryegrass, for example, this hybrid tetraploid will produce about 1.6 tonnes of extra dry matter per hectare, per year.

Put another way, it yields 14 percent more dry matter than other hybrids. Renew or undersow poorperforming pastures with Forge NEA this spring, and you’ll generate significantly more feed from the same area of land, immediately improving farm efficiency.

But that’s not all. Because it’s a tetraploid, Forge NEA brings out the best in your animals. It’s good for them, and they’re happy to harvest it, making it easier to get high intakes.

That improves their feed conversion efficiency, compounding

the gains you’ve already made from Forge’s higher yield.

Forge NEA doesn’t mind cooler weather either. It helps fill the feed gap in autumn, winter and early spring, soaking up soil nitrogen in the process.

For dairy farmers, it’s an ideal way to get the most from your pasture, with the added tetraploid benefits of higher cow intakes, improved milk production and easier management.

On red meat farms, Forge NEA will turn your worst paddock or paddocks

into your best, so that even if you have to scale back on renewal or undersowing this season, you can still improve productivity from a smaller area of land. Either way, if you undersow or renew, you’ll get the best result from doing a really good job, and not cutting any corners.

Talk to your Farmlands TFO or agronomy expert about Forge NEA today.

Introducing Align’s game changing resilience

Align AR37 is Agricom’s smartest grass yet. This new, extremely late heading tetraploid perennial ryegrass is revolutionising the tetraploid game.

This impressive addition to the Agricom ryegrass portfolio introduces a rare style of tetraploid genetics characterised by dense, highly tillered, leafy plants – resulting in resilient, productive pastures all year round. Bred to meet the unique challenges of New Zealand’s diverse agricultural landscape, farmers can expect an adaptable grass, that will excel in any sheep, beef or dairy system. Coupled with the AR37 endophyte, you can expect increased persistence, even in some of New Zealand’s more challenging growing conditions.

Align is a powerhouse, renowned by the Agricom agronomy team for its exceptional productivity across challenging summer, autumn and winter seasons. Align's ability to remain in a vegetative state throughout summer – showcasing low aftermath seedhead and exceptional rust tolerance – puts it in a league of its own and sets it apart as a vital asset for any kiwi farmer seeking resilient high performance pasture. This summer performance and pasture quality allows dairy farmers to maintain peak lactation as long as possible, while these same traits provide sheep and beef farmers with high quality pasture for newly weaned lambs to perform at their best. Throughout winter, Align's dense nature provides winter resilience not normally associated with tetraploid pastures.

“Align is one of the healthiest and most productive ryegrasses I've experienced and it comes at a great time for producers trying to maintain productive efficient farm systems” said Allister Moorhead, Agricom’s Product Development Manager

Agricom’s extensive trial network has seen Align currently enter 36 internal trial locations across the country from Northland to Southland, of which 22 are yielded. This commitment ensures that you can have confidence that Align AR37 is a consistent, reliable, top performer across a variety of regions and farm systems. If you are looking for a grass backed by research, data and innovation look no further than Align AR37.

Ask for Align AR37 today from your Farmlands TFO or agronomy expert.

1505Bv fodder beet from RAGT New Zealand has proven to be an excellent solution for Blair Butler's farming system in the Wendon Valley, Southland. It offers economically sound, high-quality feed with strong environmental benefits when compared to other options.

Blair grows 1505Bv every year to fatten heifers, ensuring they achieve optimal liveweight by their second winter and meet market demands by spring. The superior nutritional value of 1505Bv fodder beet enables significant liveweight gain during winter, surpassing that of other crops, such as kale and swedes. Consistently, the target liveweight of 550–600kg is achieved, with animals reliably reaching a carcass weight of approximately 270kg.

Throughout the year, RAGT and Farmlands TFO Jess Peter provide Blair with support, overseeing the crop's input requirements, particularly the spray program and timing. His 1505Bv beet comes at a relatively low cost, with minimal nitrogen input and effective fungicide application, yielding over 22 tonnes p/ha. Its cost efficiency and high-quality feed, offering 12.5ME, make it a superior choice when compared on a c/kg DM basis.

1505Bv perfectly aligns with Blair's farm system needs, with excellent yields and a medium DM% bulb ideal for second-year animals. Blair has observed that the leaf of 1505Bv stays exceptionally green, providing essential protein to the animals, while other beet paddocks appear to yellow off a lot more.

Given the farm's rolling hill terrain, space for winter crops is limited. For Blair, using beet is a clear choice; in contrast, kale would require a

larger planting area and higher nitrogen application. With 1505Bv fodder beet offering a very high yield with relatively low nitrogen inputs compared to brassicas like kale, there is potentially significantly less nitrogen lost – a significant win for both the environment and profitability. It also provides the opportunity to maintain other areas in pasture, further adding to the financial benefits for the farm.

Integrating beet into Blair's rotation after swedes, followed by young grass, enhances the system's efficiency.

Fodder beet's extended high-quality feed availability into late winter relieves pressure on early spring grass, which is in high demand for ewes at lambing. Additionally, its high yield potential helps offset yield losses in swedes, which can be a common problem.

The integration of 1505Bv fodder beet from RAGT New Zealand has enhanced Blair's farming system,

offering economically sound, high-quality feed with strong environmental benefits. Its exceptional nutritional value, low nitrogen input requirements, and high yields make it a superior choice, enhancing both profitability and sustainability.

For more information on how RAGT’s 1505Bv fodder beet could provide benefits to your farming system, talk to your local Farmlands TFO.

What are weeds costing you?

Maximise your home grown feed with Nufarm’s phenoxies range to control spring weeds.

Eat more of what you grow. Calculate your potential returns at Grassmanship.nz. Get Nufarm’s phenoxies range at your local Farmlands store, or talk to a TFO today.

SCAN ME

STAMPEDE GOES THE DISTANCE FOR KIWI FARMERS

The new Stampede CM142 has been specially developed to meet the needs of Kiwi farmers, offering a unique combination of productivity, reliability and resilience.

It's disappointing when ryegrass fails to live up to its promise, leaving farmers frustrated and weary of perennial cultivars.

We understand that resowing perennial ryegrass is a significant investment and Kiwi farmers and agronomists demand enduring, high-yielding performance for the lifetime of the cultivar. They also seek reliable assurances against common issues such as ryegrass staggers and insect damage. Taking onboard this feedback, we've developed Stampede diploid perennial ryegrass with the groundbreaking CM142 endophyte.

The journey to Stampede CM142 has been one of perseverance. Developed by Cropmark's breeding team in Canterbury and incorporating insight from farmers, Stampede represents many years of research and insight to combine New Zealand’s best ryegrass genetics with a new and unique novel endophyte.

Stampede CM142 is more than just another ryegrass cultivar, says Cropmark’s cultivar breeder Stephane Montel. “This late heading diploid perennial ryegrass boasts consistent yield performance validated through rigorous on-farm trials across New Zealand and Australia. It’s a very nice looking grass, dark coloured with very high tiller density to improve its persistence and ensure a reliable source of high-quality forage throughout the year.”

Central to Stampede's remarkable resilience is the CM142 endophyte, a ground-breaking discovery with origins tracing back to the harsh alpine regions of Greece. Harnessing the natural insect deterrent capabilities of Epoxy

Janthitrem alkaloids, CM142 combined with Stampede’s robust genetics “offers a natural defence mechanism to increase pasture persistence, which is a key attribute for perennial pasture” says Stephane. “Our main effort in developing CM142 was to maintain the component around insect protection while increasing livestock performance, due to lesser toxicity and better forage production.”

However, the benefits of Stampede extend beyond pest resistance. “CM142 has consistently shown a reduced potential to induce ryegrass staggers and heat stress. We believe this is a result of its unique alkaloid levels,” says Stephane.

Cropmark says that Stampede will be commercialised this spring. In anticipation of its launch to the market, seed has been distributed to participating livestock farmers throughout the country to further assess its on farm performance. “It’s a great achievement for the team and the wider industry,” says Stephane, “With innovation from a New Zealand-owned company that provides farmers an alternative to support them in what they do best”.

Ask for Stampede CM142 today from your Farmlands TFO or agronomy expert.

Stampede CM142 perennial ryegrass being assessed at Cropmark’s trial near Burnham in Canterbury.

Science, seeds and solutions

WE’RE ALWAYS WORKING ON THE NEXT ‘NEXT BIG THING’ IN FARMING. HERE ARE SOME OF THE LATEST NEW RELEASES WE’VE DEVELOPED TO SUPPORT THE SUCCESS OF KIWI FARMERS.

AN ALL-SEASON PERFORMER

Midway is a super versatile diploid ryegrass that performs all year round with resilience and longevity. It’s so flexible, it could potentially fit across any pasture-based system, especially where early spring growth is required.

MULTI-PURPOSE RYEGRASS

THE CLEANCROPEARLY-MATURING ™ SWEDE

Palliser is a multi-purpose tetraploid ryegrass with the flexibility to be used as a short or long rotation type. It has been selected from elite plants and extensively tested throughout the country, including NFVT trials, and regional and on-farm trialling.

Aspiring soft, early maturing swede is the latest addition to our Cleancrop™ Brassica System, offering better disease tolerance and maximised yields.

To find out more please talk to your Farmlands TFO, or visit your local Farmlands store

AND YOUR PROFIT PROTECT YOUR CROP WITH

Sourced direct from world leading manufacturers, AgStar is a new range of premium crop protection products supported by Farmlands.

Purchase the AgStar range today through your Farmlands Agronomy Representative, Technical Field Officer, Technical Advisor, or ask for AgStar at your local Farmlands Store.

Spring checklist

SPRING INTO THE SEASON

Spring is a crucial time for farmers and growers. Getting things right during this season can set you up for a profitable year, but with tight budgets come tough decisions. Farmlands technical experts have compiled this handy guide on a range of subjects and products including:

• Lucerne

• Calf milk replacers

• Precision nutrition

• Flea prevention and treatment

• Lactation for mares

• Preventing fever relapse

We have also spoken to Farmlands TFOs around the country, to find out the key trends in each region.

Looking after LUCERNE

Here are some handy tips for preparing, planting and managing lucerne.

For the new

Plan well in advance when considering planting a lucerne stand. Two years out is ideal. Key things to consider are;

• Soil type – needs free draining soil.

• Fertility – soil test done, pH over 6.5.

• Existing weed burden – some weeds cannot be controlled in lucerne so reducing the weed burden prior to sowing is very important.

• Will it fit my farm system (winter dormancy, stock policy…)?

We normally advise spring sowing wherever possible. Important points are:

• Select a cultivar that is right for your farm system. Cultivars are categorised by their winter dormancy. A dormancy of 4 or 5 seems to suit most conditions in New Zealand.

• Make sure the seed has been inoculated. Lucerne requires specific viable rhizobia for nodulation and nitrogen fixation.

• Soil temperature is important at sowing, 10°C and rising, the seeds need to germinate quickly to better compete with any germinating weeds.

• Apply fertiliser at sowing. Phosphorous is a vital element for the crop.

• A pre-emergence herbicide can be applied, this needs to be soil incorporated (shallow).

• The seed bed must be fine and firm, to allow good emergence and establishment.

• A post-emergence herbicide can be applied four to six weeks after germination as well as a nitrogen side dressing. Lucerne will not start fixing nitrogen for at least six months.

• Allow the new lucerne to grow for approximately four months or when it has flowered at least 50%. This will allow the lucerne to develop a deep taproot thereby gaining access to resources (water and nutrients) which most other forage plants are unable to exploit.

• At this time graze the sward or harvest mechanically.

• If mechanically harvesting replace the nutrient removed from the system with a fertiliser application.

Winter weed control is important to keep the lucerne stand as weed free as possible. New (young) lucerne requires softer chemistry compared to older stands. All these points are key to achieving a high performing longstanding lucerne sward.

For the old

In late summer and during autumn lucerne stands need resting to allow flower development (prolonged rest). This stimulates the plant to send

Elena Duter, Head of Agronomy, Technical Field Sales and Brian Richards, Agronomy Expert.

carbohydrate reserves to the extensive root mass, giving the plant energy to draw off for the early spring growth.

The winter dormancy period is our chance to get rid of any competition in the ground. Prior to the identification of the unwanted plants in our sward, we recommend grazing the stand as short as possible to allow the appropriate sprays to act on those unwanted weeds while not affecting the viability of the lucerne stand.

It is important that any feed shortage in the feed budget created by the dormancy of the lucerne, is covered with other sources of protein, fibre and carbohydrates in the farm system.

Lucerne leaves grow from the tip of the stem, therefore are stimulated by air temp rather than soil temperature. When removed during cutting or grazing it stimulates new stems growing from the base of the plant (crown).

A robust fertiliser program is key to maximising seasonal production. Starting

with a maintenance application in early spring prior to harvest. This should include macro and micro elements. If the lucerne sward is mechanically harvested, we recommend replacing the mined nutrients after each cut based on the amount harvested. Under a grazing situation this is not limiting as some nutrients are returned to the soil via excretion.

Cutting/grazing time is determined by the development of the basal buds rather than the above ground biomass. To optimise and harvest the best quality lucerne the ideal harvest height is 300mm (3 tonnes of biomass/ha). This is to maintain the MJME at 11.5-12. If leaving to graze longer we will have more stem with a lower quality of MJME 8.

In late spring and summer, harvest period can be between 30-42 days depending on the region and time of the year. Cutting or grazing too early will reduce regrowth of the new stems.

Delivering a consistent diet is key

WORDS BY KAREN FRASER

Raising healthy calves requires good nutrition, consistency, accuracy, and hygiene to maintain high immunity and promote growth.

High-quality calf milk replacers (CMR) are essential substitutes for whole milk, providing balanced nutrients necessary for early development. CMR ensures uniform nutrition, reduces disease risk, and is easier to store and handle compared to fresh transition milk. When feeding to support higher growth rates, it’s important to make sure the product delivers enough protein to support muscle and frame development. Additionally, CMR can deliver vital trace elements, vitamins, minerals and coccidiostats to enhance growth and immune function.

Introducing calf feed early is crucial for rumen development and a smooth

transition to a forage diet. Starting in the first week of life helps to start forming habits of nibbling solid feed.

Ideal calf hard feed contains 18-20% crude protein, high energy from grains, not too much fat, and essential vitamins, minerals, and a coccidiostat. The cumulative intake of fermentable carbohydrates – mainly starch and sugar – is more highly correlated to rumen development than just total dry matter intake, especially if you are feeding higher rates of milk to support higher growth rates, a low starch starter is a false economy. Always provide fresh water to aid digestion and hydration. Maintaining a regular feeding schedule is vital for consistent growth rates and preventing digestive issues. Ensure feeding

As mentioned earlier, rest the lucerne in late summer/early autumn to restore mined energy. Growth rates slow down during the autumn due to the cooling air temperature. Five quality harvests of lucerne can be achieved in a season with a combined yield over 14T DM/ha of high-in-protein feed.

Important points to remember:

• Lucerne has no requirement for salt therefore supplementing with salt blocks when grazing is recommended.

• Under a grazing situation, duration of less than 7-10 days is recommended. Set stocking is not advisable. Lucerne can cause bloat in cattle – bloat control is important.

• Fungi can cause fertility issues in sheep if being grazed during mating.

• Aphids in spring can be an issue.

For any additional information, contact your local Farmlands Agronomy Expert or TFO.

equipment is clean to avoid disease. Gradually reduce milk replacer as calves consume more solid feed, typically start slowly weaning off milk after 6-8 weeks, depending on calf breed, type, and performance.

Farmlands has a technical team behind all our Reliance and NRM feed and additive options ready to support you this spring.

Karen is a Farmlands Technical Specialist and one of “The Calf Experts” on Facebook.

Confident farmers get proactive on NUTRITION

Optimism is returning to the dairy sector after a tough year, and this is leading to more positive discussions in the nutrition space.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

The coming season is bringing with it a change in attitude. Farmlands Team Lead – Nutrition, Chris Stephens, says this time last year there was a lot of negativity around pricing, so farmers were focused on finding the cheapest way to feed their herds. “I fully understand that was a situation everyone was in, but in the discussions we're having this year, people want to potentially feed a little bit more or add more starch into the diet,” he says.

“It's nice to be sitting down with farmers who have that performance focus again. I want that conversation. They’re saying, ‘I'm going to rear a few more calves,’ or, ‘I'm going to milk another 30 cows,’ and they want to know what they need to do to achieve it, so the positive mindset is coming back again.”

Chris says the renewed optimism means farmers are thinking more about productivity rather than simply survival, and they’re targeting the first 100 days of lactation. “Get that feed right, use a high-quality feed, get them peaking

in milk production, get them in calf and then make some management decisions from there, depending on what the season brings.”

He says the key message from the Farmlands nutrition team leading into spring is to focus on that front end of the season and get the cows in calf. After that, farmers have a variety of management tools at their disposal, depending on how the season plays out. “Am I going to put in crop, am I going to feed PKE [palm kernel extract]? How much silage have I managed to get? All that went away last year – it was just, ‘That's going to cost me money so I'm not going to do it.’ They weren't in that space of forward thinking.”

Chris expects to see this change in attitude translate into more intensive production, particularly in the window between System 2 and System 4, where he says it tends to fluctuate. “I would just about guarantee some of those System 3 farms last year turned into System 2 farms and System 4

went to System 3. Once you're at that System 5 farm, you're kind of locked because you've got quite a high stocking rate and things like that. Those guys tend to live by the sword and die by the sword a bit more.”

Much of the country has experienced good pasture growing conditions recently, with El Nino failing to deliver the expected drought in the North Island. However, Chris warns that the dry matter in pasture has “crashed away” between September and November in the past few years, depending on the region.

“You think there's a lot of grass in the paddock because it's all standing and it looks like quite a lot, but the pasture is actually quite low in dry matter. We've started to add quite a lot of protein to cows’ diets in spring, which would normally not be needed because they would be getting so much protein from the pasture. The important thing is to be aware of these issues and talk to your nutrition specialist about your options.”

Photo: James Jubb

Level Up

WORDS BY DR ROB DERRICK

Transition milk and whole milk from the vat are a great resource for rearing calves. We know from calf milk replacer specifications that there are a range of trace minerals, vitamins and additives that we can add to casein or wheybased products to improve the outcome for both the calves and rearer that are also lacking in whole milk.

Our dairy replacements and beefies are just facing more challenges and need to adapt to a forage only system faster than a single calf left on mum in a less intensive environment. Level Up has been based on the latest Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle (2021) recommendations for calves and includes additives to support gut function that are often added to milk replacer to level the playing field when using whole milk.

A veritable smorgasbord of micro ingredients which could be limiting health and performance plus Coccistop –a proven coccidiostat to aid in the prevention of coccidiosis – Level Up will appeal to some people who simply want to rear better calves and have less issues.

Inevitably it will be something others only turn to in a moment of need if the season is working against

Kiwi Power Whey

HEAD OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Power Whey has been a great product, but shipping delays and rising costs have been increasingly challenging in recent years. Taking the opportunity to re-invent a classic we have made some fundamental changes to Kiwi Power Whey:

• The crude protein level has been lifted from 23 percent to 26 percent. We are pleased to be relying on whey protein concentrate from

them. Unusually wet or cold conditions that may have compromised calf development in the womb, colostrum quality or growth after birth can increase the risk of calves succumbing to other stress factors. In such challenging conditions when performance has dropped, Level Up should be considered to help put the season back on an upward trajectory.

domestic production which is a more concentrated protein source than whey from cheese production. Research has shown that at the higher levels of growth rates sought in ‘accelerated growth programmes’, protein can become limiting when higher levels of milk replacer are being fed. Also, when fortifying our typically high fat whole milk, a higher protein level calf milk replacer is a better complement.

• Coccistop has been added as a proven coccidiostat to help protect calves from an early age. Coccistop is very effective but much less toxic for both calves and non-target species which can sometimes steal some milk.

• To link to NRM starter calf feeds we have added the same essential oil blend to deliver the same taste and smell to give young calves more confidence in the hard feed.

Feedback from early users has been fantastic and because we can increase production to meet demand rest assured that if you want more we will be able to meet your needs.

DR ROB DERRICK

PRECISION NUTRITION

Anybody who has toured a large feed mill and a modern blend site in New Zealand will know that apart from feed mills being on more levels, having more sealed silos than open feed bunkers, and having more complex processing, mixing and pressing equipment, the major difference is the number of staff about.

Labour is expensive, especially when seasonal demand creates big peaks and troughs. Commercial farmers with large, predominantly one-system operations that are used to having low staff levels may see this as an inefficiency and reminiscent of a bygone age. In reality, feed mills have a high fixed cost and I learnt very early on that diversification is the key to making a feed mill viable in NZ if intended for mostly ruminant feed production.

Catering for the lifestyle market by making poultry, pig and equine feeds, which have a lot flatter demand profile

WORDS BY DR ROB DERRICK

than our predominantly spring calving or lambing ruminant sectors, increases both the efficiency and resilience of feed milling operations and ultimately lowers the price per tonne.

Having more operators gives feed mills a big advantage over blend sites - the ability to customise feed to a far greater degree. History both internationally and locally has shown that blend sites trying to run a low-cost operation come unstuck when trying to meet the bespoke requirements of many dairy farmers.

So, whilst blends are a great way to blend straights and add a standard mix of major minerals or additives, they really have to charge a premium for any more complexity, which quickly erodes their cost advantage. If you want a feed solution which best meets the needs of your livestock at any particular time, compound feed formed into pellets offers some advantages.

Sustainability from a performance, profitability and environmental perspective is most likely going to require higher precision going forward. Whilst there are regional trends with respect to e.g. mineral requirement, supply and availability can vary greatly at a farm level. For example, the potassium level in a diet can affect the availability of magnesium and antagonists can affect the availability of copper and its effectiveness within animals.

What works for one farm can create wasteful excesses and even toxicities on another. Additives to help control mycotoxins are only worthwhile if the diet contains toxins. Increasingly milk and meat processors are looking at additives to reduce methane production, which they will encourage their suppliers to use, but until all farmers are rewarded for reducing methane they won’t have universal appeal. The operators in a feed mill are used to formulation complexity and can deliver additives precisely locked into the pellets and without angst.

Every season seems to present new opportunities and challenges compared to previous years. Compound feed mills can also sustain a higher level of personnel in the field. The cost of Nutrition Specialists trained to understand the needs of performance animals within a region that also support calf and small ruminant animal needs are spread over a wider market both geographically and seasonally. Test the knowledge of your local Nutrition Specialists and if you favour us with your business the results may surprise you.

A good deal for NZ FARMERS

The

recently completed purchase by Farmlands of animal feed manufacturing business SealesWinslow is good news not

just for the

co-operative

and its

shareholders,

but for the broader New Zealand

farming sector.

The deal means Farmlands is the only nationwide rural co-operative with its own animal nutrition business. Scott Brown, General Manager –Strategy and Animal Nutrition at Farmlands, says that was one of the key considerations when buying SealesWinslow’s assets, including three mills at Morrinsville, Whanganui and Ashburton.

“If we didn't buy these, they would go to commercial hands who care about just maximising profit for them versus ensuring these assets stay in farmers' hands.

The other thing it means is that we then source grain from our shareholders and inputs for them, so we can support arable farmers while providing our customers with quality animal nutrition.”

Scott says SealesWinslow is a natural fit within Farmlands, which has its own animal feed brands (McMillan and NRM). The move will significantly increase the co-operative’s feed production capacity, particularly in the North Island where it previously had no

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

mills. “We had the internal capability for a national feed business without having all of the assets,” he says.

“It helps with the scale, so we can use our NRM and McMillan brands to help fill up our feed mills and drive profitability. Our main focus is the core farmer/grower, but we sell a huge amount of volume of NRM Peck 'n' Lay and those other products to lifestylers. All of a sudden, we are putting thousands of tonnes of additional volume into the SealesWinslow site in Morrinsville with the team there.”

While the addition of SealesWinslow gives Farmlands more capacity for bulk production, Scott says it will also help at the other end of the value chain, expanding the co-operative’s capabilities in precision nutrition and compound feeds. “Having a compound feed means that we can customise with the right materials into that feed to get the right outcome,” he explains.

“It means that if your animals are deficient in this element or this element, getting the right feed will

produce a higher output. It's more financially profitable and you get better milk quality and animal health carbon emission outcomes, because you're producing more milk for less inputs, and it's locally sourced grain, so all those things combined mean that the outcomes are pretty strong.”

Scott says it’s not just SealesWinslow’s physical assets that will be of benefit to Farmlands shareholders; it also has a digital feed calculator that lets farmers forecast the financial results of various feed options, and Farmlands is planning to adapt its own version for its customers. “By doing so, you can see how much you can expect your profitability to increase compared to what you're doing now.”

From an “NZ Inc” perspective, Scott says New Zealand dairy remains a grass-fed system and always will be. “We are not looking to change any of that. We are the multivitamin every day with the additional feed to make sure you're getting everything, rather than just what's in the pasture.”

Meeting your pet’s needs: FLEA PREVENTION AND TREATMENT

Fleas occur commonly in many environments and can cause irritating infestations for your pet – which may lead to skin disease or result in spreading disease also.

JOSHUA EDESON CATEGORY MANAGER

Treating a flea outbreak

Once you see evidence of fleas on your pet it is important to recognise that their home environment will have also become contaminated. Why? Fleas are prolific reproducers, releasing dozens of eggs daily which fall off your pet wherever they go - into all those nooks and crannies in bedding, furniture, floors - basically everywhere. Therefore, optimally managing fleas requires a two-pronged approach, treating both your pet and proactively managing their home environment. Using a fast-acting flea product like Moxiclear, which works by direct contact on the flea’s cuticle rather than the flea first having to bite your pet for a blood meal, is effective as it helps both limit further irritation for your pet and environmental flea egg contamination - because dead fleas do not lay eggs.

Breaking the environmental life cycle

• Identify your pet’s favorite hangout spots: Focus on treating these areas where your pet loves spending time.

• Regular vacuuming: Daily - if possible, which not only removes eggs but helps stimulate adult fleas to hatch from cocoons and then get sucked up in the vacuum. Do not forget the car!

• Regularly wash pet bedding: Use the hottest cycle, (more than 60°C, and at least 10 minutes).

• Restrict access areas: Prevent pets from accessing dark and humid areas where larvae survive, such as under the house.

• Treat all household pets: Remember the cats!

• Avoid untreated animals: Do not invite untreated animals into your home.

Breaking the flea cycle

• Monthly treatments: Use Moxiclear on all household cats and dogs monthly to stop fleas breeding.

• Correct product use: Never use a dog flea preventative product on a cat or vice versa, as they may contain different chemicals or strengths which could cause toxicity.

• Year-round prevention: Follow a year-round flea environmental control and preventative treatment plan to prevent problems.

Parasite control programs

When deciding which preventative treatment to use for your pet, other parasite diseases to consider apart from fleas include gastrointestinal worms, mites, and ticks. Parasites can also cause illness in your pet and may simply be managed by using a regular treatment that provides broader protection. Working closely with your animal health professional and following these guidelines will help ensure your pet remains healthy and free from fleas and other parasites. Regular check-ups and treatments are key to maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for your beloved companion.

TIFFANY MENZIES FARMLANDS VETERINARIAN

Becoming the best buying group

Back in October 2023, Farmlands launched Everyday Value Pricing on selected products, and has continued to expand the EDVP range where possible. The objective has been to offer best possible pricing every day, so shareholders and customers can purchase goods when they need them, rather than waiting for a promotion. EDVP is available to both new and existing customers, allowing Farmlands to maximise purchase volumes and secure the best pricing possible for all shoppers.

As part of EDVP, Farmlands also has price breaks on key farm inputs such as Pro Plan Performance 20kg, to reward shareholders and

Lactation

The start of spring often means hearing the pitter patter of tiny hooves and is the most common time for foals to be born. For broodmares, lactation significantly increases their physiological demands. Well-fed lactating mares can produce the equivalent of 2-4 percent of their body weight in milk daily during the first two months of lactation.

In order to sustain this incredible output, the energy requirement of nursing mares is nearly double that

customers for purchasing in bulk. These are the best possible prices Farmlands can offer, with no further discounts or rebates applied.

Joshua Edeson – who manages Farmlands’ Cat and Dog Food range –says: “Delivering value to shareholders and customers in our current economic climate, where inflation is driving prices up, was crucial. We looked at new ways to deliver reduced pricing, and the way we’ve done that is by removing ineffective promotions and opening the offers to a wider group of customers. This means Farmlands has been able to grow our volumes and improve pricing, which for the customer means lower prices every day.”

of barren or early-pregnant mares. In addition to elevated energy requirements, nursing also boosts protein, calcium, and phosphorus requirements.

As well as adequate forage through pasture and hay if required, supplementary feed is generally required to maintain weight in lactating mares and meet their increased needs for energy, protein and trace minerals. NRM Evolve is an ideal solution here, and designed specifically to meet these requirements. As well as high quality protein and organic trace minerals, Evolve has the added benefit of Buffered Mineral Complex (BMC) from our technical partners Kentucky Equine Research.

BMC has been shown in research studies conducted by KER to serve as a potent buffer in both the stomach and large intestine, and as a key component of a new supplement shown to increase bone density in young stock. This makes Evolve also ideal as a supplementary feed for foals when the time comes to wean them from the mare.

For ‘good doer’ mares and young stock that require less calories, NRM Progress is a concentrated version of Evolve that contains similar ingredients but is fed at half the feeding rate.

For assistance with feeding plans for breeding or young stock, consult with a qualified equine nutritionist.

LUISA WOOD FARMLANDS EQUINE NUTRITIONIST

Supporting city kids LEARNING TO FARM

Located in the heart of Auckland is the Mt Albert Grammar School farm – one of the most unique in New Zealand. When MAGS asked for support to help raise its chickens, NRM delivered.

WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN

In the concrete jungle that is New Zealand’s largest city, the 8ha Mount Albert Grammar School (MAGS) farm offers a taste of rural life to the school’s mostly urban students. Coadette Low, Head of Agriculture at the school, says the course has been growing in popularity.

“We have over 200 students taking the programme, which is pretty cool for an option subject. The majority are from an urban background.”

The farm offers a mixture of learning experiences for the students across both agriculture and horticulture. It has calves, lambs, dairy sheep, a citrus orchard, raised garden beds, vertical garden and even a gold kiwifruit educational licence. Last year, they added rearing chickens to the mix.

“With the Year 12 programme, they do our livestock growth and development unit and we thought, let's do chickens, because we can get them as chicks and the kids can see their progress throughout the year, to becoming layers,” Coadette says. She approached NRM after getting great results for the chicks (now young pullets) on the NRM Chick Starter feed.

“We are proud to support the health of the animals and help develop the knowledge of the students. Consequently, we delivered copies of the updated NRM Chook Book and Farmlands Calf Rearing Guide.

It is great to see young Kiwis take an interest in agriculture, especially in a city like Auckland where their opportunities might be limited.” The 30 pullets are now feeding on NRM Pullet Grower Pellets and which they'll be on until they reach point of lay. Having hard copies of the books is a great resource as well. Most of these kids probably won’t go into farming

poultry, but half of them might end up having backyard chickens.”

With family sizes shrinking and New Zealand’s population becoming more urban, Coadette says it’s important for the future of the rural sector to give city kids a chance at farming.

“We've got kids who are applying for Smedley [a training farm in Hawke’s Bay] this year and they have a clear passion, yet they are not off a farm, with others looking to head down to Massey or Lincoln University,” she says.

“They have this innate want to do it, whereas we all know people who have grown up on the family farm who would never in a million years go back and run it; it's just not what they're interested in.”

To download your free copy, visit https://nrm.co.nz/products/lifestyle/

ProCalf and the goals of calf rearing

The goal of calf rearing is to produce a healthy calf that can grow at the required rate solely on a diet of grass as soon as possible. Grass is cheaper than milk or meal, and having a calf that can be weaned sooner reduces labour inputs, making the rearing process less time consuming and more cost effective.

ProCalf from Donaghys is a product than can help calves develop their rumens quicker. ProCalf ® contains a blend of yeast, bacterial extracts, enzymes and AgResearch licenced live microbes, all vital parts of a developing healthy rumen. ProCalf also contains rennet which improves digestion and reduces the chances of calves developing nutritional scours.

In a trial treated calves were 6.7kg heavier than untreated controls at six weeks after the start of the study. The most telling statistic for ProCalf was that at this time 80 percent of the treated calves were able to be weaned compared to only 27 percent of the untreated controls. Being able to wean calves earlier significantly improves the cost effectiveness of the calf rearing process by reducing milk, meal and labour inputs.

ProCalf is an easy-to-use product mixed with milk. Calves are given 5ml as an initial dose on arrival at the calf

rearers or their first whole milk (not colostrum) feed and are then given 2ml per head per day till weaning. If calves are noticed to be unthrifty or are suffering from dietary scours they can be given ProCalf as a supportive treatment at a rate of 5-10ml per head per day.

ProCalf is available in 1L, 10L and 20L pack sizes as well as a convenient 5L backpack.

Although rearing calves is a complex and intensive process, we should remember what the end goals are; a healthy weaned calf, growing at the required growth rate on a solely grass diet. ProCalf is a product that can help you improve the efficiency of your calf rearing system this spring.

To find out more, talk to your local Farmlands TFO or nutrition specialist.

BAGBOTTLEBOOST

Help prevent milk fever relapse with a three-step treatment regime.

You can’t always prevent a cow going down, but with the right treatment plan, the risk of relapse and associated costs of labour, time and reduced milk production can be minimised.

To help give down cows the best chance of returning to health and production, consider a 3-step regime.

Initial milk fever treatment with an injectable calcium solution is typically fast and immediately effective; however, the chance of relapse remains a risk, extending recovery time, increasing labour, and reducing milk in the vat.

Relapse affects at least 30-35 percent of cows offered only 1st line treatment¹.

Once the cow is up and walking following initial treatment, and has gained enough muscle control to swallow normally, orally administered calcium (Oral-Cal) or oral calcium with

added energy (Oral-max) provides a continued level of support. Studies have shown that using oral calcium in this way can help to prevent relapse by up to 60 percent¹.

Lastly, provide an energy boost.

Administer propylene glycol (Ketol) for that essential energy boost for a quicker metabolic recovery, and a positive influence on the post-calving energy gap. Administer 240ml twice daily as a drench, or Ketol can be mixed into drinking water or feed.

Always read the label before use.

A new solution for metabolic bag recycling

Every year thousands of bags of metabolic solutions are used in the treatment of conditions in dairy cows such as milk fever, grass staggers and ketosis, these metabolic bags were

then disposed of as waste but that’s about to change.

Elanco have been working alongside Agrecovery to seek a sustainable end-of-life option for the Metabolic Solutions bags, and these empty bags can now be returned to your participating store for recycling, including over 70 Farmlands stores. However, it is crucial that bags are returned in a recyclable condition, so we ask to you follow the recycle 1,2,3 before dropping your bags instore: 1. Remove sharps (needles should be disposed of in an appropriate sharps container).

2. Cut off and dispose of the attached tubes.

3. Keep it clean. Ensure the bags are free of any contamination such as blood or mud, if contaminated please rinse and dry before returning to store.

Once collected from store, the metabolic bags are sent to a sorting facility before being processed and recycled, right here in New Zealand. Let’s leave it better for the next generation.

References 1. Thilsing-Hansen T, Jorgensen RJ, Ostergaard S: Milk fever control principles; A review. Actc vet.Scand.2002, 43, 1 -19.

C.B.G 37.5, Glucalmag, Glucalmax, Glucalphos, Mag20, Oral-Cal, Oral-Max and Ketol are registered under the ACVM Act 1997. Register product No. A004633, No. A004047, No. A001441, No. A001442, No. A001448, No. A007669, No. A009642 and No. A000110.

C.B.G 37.5, Glucalmag, Glucalmax, Glucalphos, Mag20, Oral-Cal, Oral-Max, Ketol, Leave it Better, Elanco and the diagonal bar logo are trademarks of Elanco or its affiliates. Elanco New Zealand, 106 Wiri Station Road, Manukau, Auckland 2104. 0800 446 121 | © 2023 Elanco. PM-NZ-23-0096

QUALITY NUTRITION FOR WORKING DOGS

During peak periods, a working dog will require 2-3 times the calories per kg of body weight than that of a dog at rest. These dogs need a high quality diet to perform at their best.

PRO PLAN Performance Extreme

32/30 for adult medium-to-large breed dogs, has 32 percent protein and 30 percent fat. It's highly nutritious, energy dense and formulated specifically for adult dogs in times of high intensity exercise.

Rather than just feeding them more and more food to keep up with their increased energy needs, it is better to provide them with a special diet, which is highly digestible and energy dense. If the energy density of a food is too low, a dog may be physically unable to eat the volume of food required to meet its energy requirements. This can be further complicated in some dogs by fatigue which can lead to a drop in appetite.

The power of protein

Working dogs require higher levels of good quality protein in their diets. Exercise increases the body's need for protein used for tissue maintenance and repair.

High performance nutrition helps extend the career of working dogs and their quality of life. Scientific research at Purina has shown that a diet containing higher protein levels can reduce the number of soft tissue injuries in working dogs and aids in a faster recovery time*.

Fat

Working dogs are primarily endurance athletes and their fuel for endurance work is primarily from fat. Dogs are more efficient at metabolising and mobilising fat than most other species.

Carbohydrates

Easily digestible carbohydrates are necessary to provide energy to fuel sprint work and ensure good stool quality. Diets without carbohydrates can result in mild-chronic diarrhoea, which can lead to dehydration and a loss of body condition. Using carbs for energy can sometimes “spare” protein from being used as an energy source leaving the amino acids it contains available for use in other functions including muscle and tissue repair.

The nutritional objectives for working dogs:

• To optimise work rate and overall performance

• Reduce injury and prolong the working-life span

• Maintain lean muscle mass and a strong immune system

• Avoid nutritional imbalances

Utilising both PRO PLAN Performance and new PRO PLAN Performance Extreme 32/30 in your working dogs feeding programme, provides the flexibility to feed according to each dogs individual work level and energy requirements.

PRO PLAN Performance (32 percent protein and 21 percent fat) is ideal for your breeding bitch during gestation and lactation and provides all the nutrition required for a puppy’s development.

PRO PLAN Performance Extreme 32/30 provides concentrated nutrition to fuel metabolic needs and maintain lean muscle for dogs working under extreme conditions.

For more info phone 0800 PET VIP or head in to your local Farmlands store or Farmlands Online Shop to purchase.

*Reynolds AJ et al. 1999. Effect of protein intake during training on biochemical and performance variables in sled dogs. Am. J. Vet.Res. 60:789-79

UNLOCK YOUR PASTURE’S FULL POTENTIAL

Are you getting the most out of your pastures? Unwanted weeds can quickly take over, reducing grazing area and robbing your livestock of valuable nutrients. Don't let them hold your operation back - take control with Tordon™ PastureBoss™ and Tordon™ 2G Gold from Corteva Agriscience.

Tordon PastureBoss THE POWERFUL WEED WARRIOR

Tordon PastureBoss is a selective herbicide that delivers unparalleled control of annual and perennial broadleaf weeds in pastures. Its unique formulation, containing Aminopyralid and Triclopyr, provides fast and reliable control of hard to control weeds. Treated areas can be undersown with new pasture grasses as soon as

broadleaf weeds collapse - pasture productivity is rapidly restored.

Whether you're battling Californian thistles, Ragwort, Docks, or broadleaf weeds like Mallow, Water Pepper or Giant Buttercup, Tordon PastureBoss has you covered.

Tordon 2G Gold

VERSATILE GRANULAR SOLUTION

For an easy-to-use granular option, look no further than Tordon 2G Gold. This dry formulation is ideal for spot treatment of many difficult-to-kill perennial weeds such as Ragwort, Thistles, Oxeye Daisy and Giant Buttercup as well as Broom, Gorse, Tutsan, Sweet Brier and Blackberry. Its controlled-release technology ensures effective, consistent performance.

Tordon 2G Gold is recommended for control of scattered brushweeds and broadleaf weeds in areas where spray treatment is impractical or undesirable.

Trust the Experts

Corteva’s range of pasture herbicides are backed by decades of research and real-world results. As a leader in pasture management solutions, Corteva Agriscience provides innovative products and expert support

Maximize forage production

Eliminating competition from unwanted weeds allows desirable grass to thrive, increasing the nutritional value and yield of your pastures, supporting healthier livestock and higher stocking rates. With superior weed control from Tordon PastureBoss and Tordon 2G Gold, you can make the most of every hectare – boosting your bottom line through improved pasture productivity.

Don't settle for subpar pastures any longer. Unlock their full potential with Tordon PastureBoss and Tordon 2G Gold. Contact your local Farmlands TFO or agronomy expert today to put these powerful solutions to work on your land.

Samuel Whitelock – Plant Science Graduate, Lincoln University.

SPRING CHECKLIST

TFO PROFILES

In New Zealand’s diverse rural sector, one size doesn’t fit all. Journalist, farmer and Farmlands shareholder Alice Scott spoke to Technical Field Officers (TFOs) across the country to find out what is going on in their regions.

Hanna Whitehead, Lower North region –North Island

The beauty of being part of a large enterprise such as Farmlands, TFO Hanna Whitehead says, is the depth of knowledge and insight she can tap into within the cooperative, which adds value and can help improve the bottom line of the clients she works with. “I just think with this strong knowledge resource right here in the company, it’s there to be used and gains can be made on the ground,” she says.

Hanna, who has been in the TFO role for two years, was born and raised in the Wairarapa on a sheep and beef

farm, so fully grasps just how incredibly tough many of her clients have had it over the last couple of seasons. Hanna says much of the area had an extremely dry autumn; many farmers only had about 5mm of rain between Christmas and the end of April. “And we got the tail end of Cyclone Gabrielle as well, I can see it has really taken its toll,” she says.

Hanna services the arable, dairy and sheep and beef sectors. While her dairy clients are “ticking away okay”, her arable and sheep and beef customers have cut back where they can. “A lot of farmers are looking for the best deals and are happy to look at different options for a better price, I see that as a really good opportunity though; to get in front of

Hanna Whitehead works with the arable, dairy and sheep and beef sectors.

potential new clients wanting a good deal and then proving I have the service that’s going to back it up.”

It was too soon to say what the next season would look like for Hanna in the Wairarapa region as it was dependent on how much rainfall the area got through the winter. “A lot of farmers have done a couple of seasons with little to no fertiliser inputs, and many will be hamstrung by forecasted commodity prices so again may be put off investing in those big ticket items again.

“There are a few options in terms of permanent pasture renewal or opting for a cheaper short-term grass. Using summer crops as an insurance policy to finish lambs is a popular option here. Many will sow an early rape or leafy turnip to guarantee feed throughout the drier months,”

Outside of work Hanna’s partner is a shepherd on a sheep and beef station and the couple enjoy getting out into the hills on horseback. She also plays in the East Coast hockey club in the women’s premier grade.

While she knew she didn’t necessarily want to be a farmer herself (she laughs, “I think I spent too many days as my dad’s Huntaway dog, and it put me off”), the TFO role at Farmlands has given her a renewed sense of respect and enjoyment for the industry and loves getting alongside other hardworking, rural Kiwis.

Chris Baker, Upper North region –North Island

Northland TFO Chris Baker has an intimate level of understanding for his dairy-based customers. Chris comes from a 17-year milking background in Morrinsville, and has now moved back to Kaitaia where he was born and raised.

His experience in the industry has afforded him a sixth sense when it comes to client needs. “You just get a good feel for what they are dealing with at any point in time. They are busy people and it’s about anticipating what they need and when,” he says.

Come spring, most dairy clients are “full on” preparing paddocks for forage maize and sowing chicory and brassicas for summer grazing. Many have split calving dates, which makes for a steady demand in product year-round.

Chris also services a mix of sheep and beef farmers and horticultural clients as well. “Sheep and beef properties are still cleaning up from Cyclone Gabrielle; fixing fence lines and repairing other infrastructure and I have a number of avocado growers that will be in the thick of picking.”

The warmer climate of the Far North means pastures grow year-round. Kikuyu is a native grass that grows prolifically in the region. It is common practice to mulch this grass to ground level in the autumn and over-sow or undersow with an annual or Italian grass variety to provide bulk feed through the summer.

Chicory, plantain, brassicas and kale are also sown in the spring and grazed after a 60-to-90-day growth period. “They are good options to fill the feed deficit after December when things can dry out.” While economic conditions are “pretty rubbish” for many of his clients, Chris

sees the region’s climate as one of the more favourable ones in New Zealand; having also farmed in Invercargill, he understands just how much harder it is to grow feed in the colder end of the country.

Chris’ in-depth level of experience in the dairy sector brings a strong element of empathy for those he works with. It was a tough call to leave the industry, but one that has brought him more time with his family.

“It was during the Covid lockdowns when my kids were coming with me a lot more on the farm and they talked about how they never saw me when they were at school. I said ‘what do you mean? I am here on the farm every day?’ and they said I was there but never really present, either head down working or asleep. It bummed me out to be perfectly honest and we decided to make a change.”

His role as a TFO has given him a newfound work-life balance. “I have weekends to take the family camping and fishing which is pretty cool.” He does miss the animals and the challenge of making decisions, and seeing small onfarm changes that would result in positive outcomes.

“Sometimes when I have stopped in to see a dairy client about something and I can see they are flat out I will help out putting cups on or whatever, so I still get my fix every now and then!”

Chris Baker came home to Kaitaia after working in the dairy sector in Morrinsville.

Jamie Hancock, Taranaki – North Island

Stratford-based TFO Jamie Hancock has been with Farmlands for nearly 16 years and in the rural supplies industry just on 34. Beginning as the “boy on the floor”, he has worked his way through the ranks and now enjoys his TFO role servicing predominantly dairy-based customers.

The region has an average rainfall of 1.5m and a sloped contour of quality volcanic soils. “We are very spoiled in Taranaki with our reliable climate and free-draining soils, it makes for easy planning,” he says.

Although last spring was particularly dry, the region bounced back, and its dependable growth hit when moisture returned in the summer.

“While last spring was just an average one, some of the region, particularly south and parts of coastal Taranaki, have not seen a lot of rain since Christmas and grass growth has been far from ideal. This has forced some to dry off earlier than anticipated with the eye on setting up for next season,” he says.

Agronomy decisions are increasingly being driven by environmental compliance and regulation and Jamie says he is seeing more and more farmers opting to spray and direct drill paddocks rather than disc or plough. At this time of year paddock identification has been made and preparation for spring sowing was underway. “Now we’ll address fertiliser and weed identification and control.”

Jamie says a summer crop is a popular option should a dry season hit, particularly in South Taranaki. “We grow fodder beet or a brassica or chicory and can be feeding it 60 days from planting. Forage maize chopped into silage is also a good option to feed through spring and autumn,” he says.

Having been in the game for many years, Jamie feels lucky to have a loyal client base. “You tend to see many clients outside of work on the sidelines of kids' sports and the likes, a lot of them become more like friends than customers to be fair.”

He also mentors younger TFOs new to the job, and encourages them to be the most helpful and reliable and the first person a farmer might call when they need to order a product. “It’s about making stuff happen and ensuring our clients get the job done when they need it. I think at the end of the day you’re there to add value to a client’s business. Anyone can sell a bag of seed and there’s a lot of competition out there these days, but it’s the support and back-up that comes in once it’s in the ground that counts.”

The well-established team in the Taranaki region enjoys a low staff turnover, thanks to a positive team culture.” Jamie says. “We’re a happy family here.” Outside of work Jamie says he likes to live “vicariously” through his three children. “They are pretty keen on sport, so I chase them around and enjoy watching them play.”

Aimee Milne, West Coast – South Island

Westport-based TFO Aimee Milne hit the ground running following the completion of her Bachelor of Agricultural Science (hons) at Lincoln University in 2019. Most of her Farmlands clients are dairy farmers, a life Aimee understands, coming from a West Coast dairy farm herself.

“I have lived and breathed dairy farming in Westport my entire life, so I guess I come with an innate sense of what my clients need from me. We are quite isolated over here and I understand the challenges that come with that,” she says.

Last season was an excellent one for many of her clients; a mild winter and a wet summer meant pasture covers were exceptional. “Looking ahead to this season, I have a number of clients planning summer cropping and also winter cropping, aiming to put farmers in a good feed position for the unpredictable environment we can be faced with.”

Turnip, rape and forage maize are excellent summer feed options for the West Coast. “Supplementary feeds are also something I do a bit of work with alongside our nutrition specialist Paul Cooper; working out different blends and catering our options depending on my clients’ needs.”

With the industry feeling the economic pinch, Aimee has been acutely aware her clients are always keen to review

Jamie Hancock in a shareholder's maize pit in Kaponga.

costs. “Last season spending just came to a literal halt with the milk payout drop in August and people are shopping around a bit when it comes to essential expenditure.”

The West Coast’s high rainfall brings additional challenges for her dairy clients. Some have found their wintering standoff pads are no longer consented due to being too close to waterways and they have had to invest into new ways to manage their herds such as installing composting barns.

“A composting barn is where the effluent is mixed with the bedding and quickly breaks down with regular aeration. It means the floor is 40 to 60 degrees and cows are very happy and healthy, which can lead to an increase in production, so the return on investment is very good.”

When it comes to life outside of work, Aimee enjoys playing netball and she has recently purchased her first home. “I also just love getting home to my parents’ farm and being out there amongst the animals. After a busy week around people, I really enjoy the peace out there on the farm.”

Rod Oliver, Central South Island – Darfield

When Farmlander caught up with Darfield-based TFO Rod Oliver there was moisture falling from the sky; the first bit of rain the region had seen for quite some time. “There will be a few smiles today; it’s been a pretty challenging season for everyone,” he says.

Rod’s farming clients have been working through the feed shortage month by month; many started feeding out back in February or March. The winter season has been an extremely long and relentless one but there is optimism for the upcoming season “looking at what provisions they have and coming up with a plan B as well”.

Rod has found he has been doing a lot of quotes as people shop around and give more consideration to their essential expenditure items. “Development and infrastructure

work has been pretty minimal. There is a small amount of fencing and water pipework going in, but most have just battened down the hatches and are riding it out.”

Rod comes from a farming background, growing up on a sheep, pig and cattle farm on the Canterbury plains. He went dairy farming in his 20s and then tried his hand in retail, working in the sport trade for 20 years followed by 12 years as Business Manager of Farmlands’ Darfield store. It was there that he built strong relationships with shareholders and developed a strong sense for what their needs were.

Moving into the TFO role two years ago, Rod has thoroughly enjoyed the change in scenery and having a stronger connection with his clients. “It’s a competitive industry to be in and while farmers do need to shop around, ultimately, it’s the strength in relationship that keeps your phone ringing. Loyalty still means something to most,” he said.

“Sometimes I have found myself as an ear for clients who are finding things particularly hard, many are very good at getting off farm and keeping their wellbeing in check but there’s still many that don’t have the luxury of staff or family help and they sometimes just need to vent, which is fine. I am happy to be that person.”

After decades of managing staff and often working weekends, Rod has enjoyed the change in lifestyle his TFO role brings. “I really enjoy watching club rugby and spending time with family and friends.” His daughter works as an agronomist, and he has enjoyed sharing his knowledge of the industry with her. After the recent passing of his father, Rod and the family still own their 40ha property in Hororata, “which is keeping them all pretty busy, too”.

Darfield-based Rod Oliver has been in the TFO role for two years.

West Coast-based Aimee Milne comes from a dairy farming family.

Jessica Peter, Southern region –South Island

“Southland might get you down, but it never lets you down.” This is a quote Southerners often use when they are in the depths of winter mud and cold, but as the warmer spring weather begins to dry things out, TFO Jessica Peter says the reliability of that moisture brings with it plenty of pasture growth and the luxury of options that come with having plenty of feed.

Jess covers the Gore area and travels as far as Lumsden. Her clients are a mixture of dairy, sheep and beef and arable, and there is rarely any downtime in her job as she services the needs of such a varied customer-base.

“Last season was a real mixed bag in terms of the weather. Districts within the Southland region vary from each other more so than they did historically. North of Gore, farms were really feeling the dry, but 20 minutes south it was a different story with good rainfall.”

Each district and farm may have varying requirements in terms of their climatic conditions which makes the job more interesting.

Arable customers had a difficult season with poor crop yields and low returns and wet weather conditions during harvest. Sheep and beef farmers are also doing it tough with low returns. “It’s been a particularly competitive year for those of us on the road, people are shopping around to make sure they are getting the best prices and I expect this coming season will be more of the same.

“Many sheep and beef guys have made savings by not putting on fertiliser for the last season or two, it’s going to be interesting what decisions are made this season in terms of what farmers put on their paddocks,” she says.

For Jess it’s been a matter of keeping her chin up and doing the best she can for her customers. “It is a very competitive market in the South and my role is to advise and provide inputs and solutions for my shareholders. The best part of the job is revisiting a property and seeing improved yields through agronomy advice. Or stock weights improving through animal health changes, that’s what builds relationships round here. The people are what makes the job, and I love working within different farming operations. I’ve lived in Southland for 10 years and it's now my adopted home.

“I think it’s about being reliable and making sure I follow up with a farmer if they have asked for a price or have simply put a question to me. I always make sure if I don’t know the answer to something then I will go away, talk to the right people and get back to them. I actually enjoy that process and it’s where integrity lies.”

Outside of work Jess enjoys getting back home to her family’s sheep and beef farm near Nelson every so often. She is also a keen hockey player and she and her husband have also recently built a hut on his family’s dairy farm near Gore which she enjoys staying in.

Jessica Peter says last season was a "mixed bag" for Southland farmers.

LINER SELECTION FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE

Here are some practical tips to improve milking performance by selecting the right milking liner and performing regular maintenance checks with timely replacement of milking liners.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT MILKING LINER

When it comes to choosing a Skellerup milking liner, there are several performance features to consider. Ensure that the mouthpiece size aligns with breed of cows in the herd, opt for a round or square barrel and select a liner tailpiece size that fits milk claws.

A good milking liner will:

• Provide an airtight seal at both ends of the shell

• Mouthpiece and barrel sizes fit a range of teat shapes and sizes, reducing cup slip and teat end damage that may cause mastitis

• Provide efficient and complete milk out, minimising teat congestion, discomfort, and injury

• Be easy to clean

LINER TYPE IMPACT ON MILKING PERFORMANCE

In a recent study from Lincoln University, that included more than 60 milkings per cow in each phase, square liners were found to improve milk flow rates and shorten milking times. Notably, cows milked with square liners exhibited no signs of discomfort, as reported through behavioural observation, compared to those milked by round liners.

LINER CHANGE CALCULATOR

Our liner change calculator indicates when liners are due for change and sets a calendar reminder. Scan the QR code or visit www.skellerup.co.nz/dairy/ when-to-change-liners

2,500 LINER CHANGE

Over time, liner condition deteriorates affecting milking efficiency. DairyNZ recommends changing liners after 2,500 milkings.

• Flex cracks in the barrel increase the risk of splits and bacterial growth.

• Mineral deposit build-up creates an abrasive liner surface that can damage teats and increase risk of infection.

• Distorted liner mouthpieces and barrels can arise from swelling caused by the absorption of milk fat and chemicals.

• Worn-out liners contribute to cup slip, prolonged milking duration, and increased susceptibility to mastitis infections due to incomplete milking.

• Inelastic, swollen, or cracked liners are unable to exert the necessary massage pressure to stimulate milk letdown, leading to reduced milk production.

For expert advice and recommendations on your rubberware requirements this season, contact your local Farmlands store to book a free dairy shed rubberware review. Your local Skellerup Technical Specialist will visit the dairy shed to troubleshoot, document and review dairy rubberware, or book a visit today: www.skellerup.co.nz/book-a-farm-visit

Farming ’s tech transformation

New tech tools can make life easier for farmers and growers while boosting productivity, writes Spark's Matt McLay.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has long been considered in the tech world as technology’s next big growth area. Today, its potential is being realised across many industries with business adoption gaining great momentum, and Spark IoT connections increasing by almost 80 percent in 2023.

IoT describes the devices and sensors that can “talk” to each other and share data across the internet, then feed it back to the user. Common, everyday examples include smart appliances, personal medical devices like pacemakers, and even self-driving cars. But IoT is becoming increasingly important for farmers and growers as well.

They want to know more about what's going on in their environment, and that includes things like real-time monitoring of their fuel levels, water levels, as well as soil and moisture quality. Spark also partners with several different companies to provide ongoing monitoring of the health of our waterways.

Farmers and growers can now find out straight away that there’s a broken pump, before having to walk all the way to the back of the farm, for example. It's about getting real-time alerts as to what's going on, and there's a number of different ways of connecting that information. This can also make it easier to get off the farm, giving you peace of mind that you will be alerted as soon as there are any issues back home.

It hasn’t been as easy for rural New Zealand to get on board with IoT as it has for industries located mainly in urban areas. Until recently, internet connectivity and mobile coverage was far less available due to the costs of building mobile infrastructure in more remote and sparsely populated areas.

But over the last five years, the Rural Connectivity Group (RCG) has built over 500 cell towers throughout rural New Zealand, connecting tens of thousands more rural properties to the internet. The RCG is a joint venture between New Zealand’s three mobile providers, Spark, One NZ and 2degrees, to share the costs of building this infrastructure, and was a world first when it built its first towers in 2019.

This extended coverage has allowed Spark to roll out some of

its IoT networks too. These are low powered networks that connect IoT devices. And because these devices don’t need as strong a connection as a mobile phone does, they can often connect much further away from the nearest cell tower than your mobile phone can.

On top of that you have the increasing role of AI, which can use historic data to help identify trends and issues you might want to be aware of, such as using historical weather information to predict weather patterns and how they might affect pasture growth. Farmers and growers are also looking for more efficient ways to manage their onfarm purchases, so it’s great to see Farmlands develop FarmlandsPRO to address this challenge.

It's going to give farmers and growers real-time information on product purchases and usage, enabling them to make quick calculations then and there, rather than waiting until they’re in the office at the end of the week. It will also let them check back on historical information about what they ordered previously.

I like the fact that this was a tool set to help alongside the face-to-face support they get from Farmlands. They still have the interaction with their TFOs and other technical specialists, but we are big supporters of tools that allow people to do more things for themselves and free up time, which is a valuable commodity for everyone in our rural sector.

Matt McLay is IoT Sales Lead at Spark NZ. You can check out some of Spark’s IoT solutions, and contact the team at: https://www.spark.co.nz/iot/home.html

Matt McLay.