SPECIAL REPORT • ORGANIC FERTILISER
Winter grass at Aquila Sustainable Farming’s Riversdale farm ready for calving.
CHALLENGING SEASON for organic dairy Focusing on soils and non-synthetic fertilisers has been productive for a Southland organic dairy farming company despite a difficult season. Karen Trebilcock reports.
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quila Sustainable Farming is showing it takes patience, good management, and investment to get soil in a condition where it can cycle nutrients without adding nitrogen fertilisers. The nine dairy units on six farms in Southland, owned by a German investment fund, have been supplying Open Country’s powder plant at Awarua Bay with organic milk under EU organic standards since late 2018. And with 5500 cows and 1200 heifers to feed on the 4000ha semi self-contained operation, making sure the soils can produce enough is all important. Soil consultant for the farms, Soil Matters’ head consultant Rob Flynn, said
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for the first few years it was about “getting the basics right”. “Aquila was on a mission – simplifying sustainable food production. “It had to build from scratch an organic supply chain for all inputs as there was none in place in the South Island at the time capable of producing the projected amounts of milk,” Rob said. With a stocking rate of between 1.8 and 2.4 cows/hectare, production has averaged between 380 MS/cow to 420 MS/cow. Rob said it had begun with soil testing. “When the health of the soil is assessed, the physical, mineral, and biological aspects are all looked at. “From the beginning, soil tests using the labs at Eurofins were done to determine
nutrient requirements in specific areas. “Recently more extensive soil testing has been done to implement an approach which allows for more fine tuning and also take a close look at the carbon cycling in the soil.” The farms are run with closed herds and with all young stock grazed together. They are spread across Southland from Kaiwera to Orawia and include irrigated and non-irrigated pastures and a wide variety of soil types, topography, and climate zones. Rob said potassium, known to be a problem in many Southland soils, was one of the first hurdles. “One of the products Soil Matters works with is Viafos Potash22.”
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | July 2020
