SYSTEMS SUSTAINABILITY
Matt Ward (right) with Coringa Park farm managers Josh Wardell and Louise Spowart. Josh and Louise have grown from being Scottish back-packers six years ago with little knowledge of Kiwi pastoral farming, to becoming highly knowledgeable managers of pastures.
Squeezing out the nitrogen Farming in an area where cutting nitrogen leaching losses is already a major goal gives added impetus for a team in Mid-Canterbury. Anne Lee reports.
M
att and Amanda Ward’s expansive 2140-cow dairy operation in Mid-Canterbury is among hundreds of Canterbury farms looking hard at options to drag the final few kilograms of nitrogen fertiliser out of the system so it can meet the Government’s new nitrogen cap by next year. The 571-hectare Coringa Park, 14km south west of Ashburton, is in the Hinds water zone – where farmers have already been working hard on strategies to hit the arguably more meaningful goals of cutting nitrogen leaching losses. In the Hinds area, farms - other than those covered by irrigation schemes such as 34
MHV Water - must slash annual potential nitrogen leaching losses by more than a third (36%) by 2035. Within the next five years those losses must be down by 15%. Coringa Park draws water from both MHV Water and a groundwater consent. Matt and Amanda don’t shy away from the need to cut nitrogen losses. “We know nitrate levels in the ground water around the district are too high. There’s no question we all have to be doing what we can to fix that,” Matt says. It’s their water and their community too, he says. That’s why they’ve joined in DairyNZ’s Meeting a Sustainable Future project where more than 40 farmers are working with
DairyNZ and consultants to identify what they can do to reduce nitrate leaching and limit environmental impacts and then share their experiences. Coringa Park was converted eight years ago from dairy support with Matt and Amanda joining with Matt’s parents Rod and Jo, from Te Awamutu, to form an equity partnership. Matt and Amanda had previously been equity managers of another large-herd property near Rakaia. It was there, in 2009, just five years after he graduated from Lincoln University with a Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce, that Matt won the Canterbury Dairy Industry Awards farm manager of the year title.
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2020
