NZ Dairy Exporter December 2017

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IMPACT PLAYERS 2017 The key influences $12

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

1

FORFOR SALE SALE

$14,400,000 $14,400,000 475475 HaHa

240240 Muddy Muddy Creek Creek Road, Road, Omakau, Omakau, Central Central Otago Otago Satinburn Satinburn Dairy Dairy Farm Farm includes includes an irrigated an irrigated dairydairy platform platform plusplus an area an area of land of land available available for dairy for dairy support. support.

A feature A feature of the of property the property is the is future the future irrigation irrigation development development potential potential for platform for platform extension. extension.

OverOver all Satinburn all Satinburn is anis“A anGrade” “A Grade” property. property.

Omakau Omakau is a is well a well serviced serviced locality locality in close in close proximity proximity to Alexandra. to Alexandra.

ThisThis location location alsoalso has has the added the added benefit benefit of easy of easy access access to lakes, to lakes, rivers rivers and and mountains mountains for afor wide a wide range range of recreational of recreational pursuits. pursuits.

• • • • • • • •

Near • Near newnew fourfour bedroom bedroom homestead homestead plusplus two two newnew threethree bedroom bedroom brickbrick houses houses New • New 64 bail 64 bail rotary rotary cowshed cowshed Modern • Modern irrigation irrigation system system withwith significant significant on farm on farm irrigation irrigation storage storage New • New pastures pastures fullyfully cultivated cultivated New • New infrastructure infrastructure Large • Large calf calf rearing rearing facilities facilities Fully • Fully enclosed enclosed five five bay bay concrete concrete floorfloor workshop/implement workshop/implement shedshed Current • Current Fonterra Fonterra supply supply zonezone withwith significant significant growth growth potential potential

Opportunity Opportunity knocks knocks herehere ……….. ………..

TheThe owners owners instructions instructions are are to sell to sell andand will will meet meet the the market! market!

Geoff Geoff Norris Norris 0273809965 0273809965 gnorris.dunedin@ljh.co.nz gnorris.dunedin@ljh.co.nz Dunedin Dunedin 03 470 03 1370 470 1370

Licensed Licensed Real Estate Real Estate Agent REAA Agent 2008 REAA 2008

FOR SALE

$9,600,000 278 Ha

521 Racecourse Road, Omakau, Central Otago Wildon Dairy Farm is an exceptional well developed dairy farm.

Improvements include: • Substantial four bedroom homestead, with two additional three bedroom homes • New 54 bail rotary dairy shed • Large calf rearing facilities • Two woolsheds and covered yards • A variety of implement and hay sheds.

• Separate additional 121ha irrigated grazing block available for purchase.

The irrigation system on the milking platform includes four centre pivots, fixed grid sprinklers and k-line enhanced by two on farm irrigation storage dams.

Omakau is located approximately within an hour of Queenstown International airport and Wanaka.

Central Otago is an unrivalled adventure playground no matter the Season.

This location has recently experienced considerable development and with that represents fantastic investment possibilities.

Highly motivated vendors who have another opportunity Inspect Now! This is not one to be missed.

Geoff Norris 0273809965 gnorris.dunedin@ljh.co.nz Dunedin 03 470 1370

Licensed Real Estate Agent REAA 2008

CONTENTS

FUTURE-PROOFING FARM DEVELOPMENT 38

ONLINE

FAREWELL PHYSIO, HELLO FARM 14

10 Dairy Exporter’s online presence

MILKING PLATFORM 11 Frances Coles finds dairying full of excitement 12 Sam Sherrard looks to the sky 13 Thomas Chatfield swaps the physio’s rooms for the farm

IMPACT PLAYERS OF 2017 16 Sheryl Brown on the big wet 18 Feds set for continued influence with Katie Milne 20 Damien O’Connor views a different world 22 Overseas investors: It’s a waiting game 23 Frustration at new migrant labour rules 25 Tech’s influence trends upwards 26 Boost ahead for R&D 28 Strong result for beef 30 Meka Whaitiri: Manutuke to minister 32 Mental health: You’re not alone 34 Outbreak highlights horrors NEW ZEALAND

Learn, grow, excel

NZ Dairy Exporter is published by NZ Farm Life Media PO Box 218, Feilding 4740, Toll free 0800 224 782, www.nzfarmlife.co.nz Dairy Exporter/Young Country editor Jackie Harrigan, ph 06 280 3165, M 027 359 7781 jackie.harrigan@nzfarmlife.co.nz Deputy editor Sheryl Brown, ph 021 239 1633 Lead sub-editor: Andy Maciver, ph 06 280 3166

4

BUILDING ON SUCCESS AT HOME 92

Reporters Hugh Stringleman ph 09 432 8594; Glenys Christian ph 027 434 7803; Sheryl Brown ph 021 239 1633; Cheyenne Nicholson 06 280 3168; Anne Hardie 027 540 3635; Anne Lee 021 413 346; Karen Trebilcock 03 489 8083; Designer: Joanne Hannam Account Managers: Warren McDonald, National Advertising Manager, Ph 06 323 0143 Lloyd Davy, Auckland/Northland, ph 027 474 6091 Janine Gray, Waikato and Bay of Plenty, ph 027 474 6094 Donna Hirst, Lower North Island, ph 06 323 0739 Nigel Ramsden, Livestock, ph 06 323 0761

Shirley Howard, real estate/international, ph 06 323 0760 Debbie Brown, classifieds/employment, ph 06 323 0765 Aleisha Serong, South Island, ph 027 474 6091 Subscriptions: www.nzfarmlife.co.nz subs@nzfarmlife.co.nz ph 0800 2AG SUB (224 782) ISSN 2230-2697 (Print) ISSN 2230-3057 (Online)

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

HITTING THE SWEET SPOT

SYSTEMS 38 Submerged crops put strain on system 41 National herd size falls 43 Endophytes: From serendipity to design 46 CO Diary: Setting up for success 48 Farmers step ahead with EnviroWalk app 49 Leaders do the right thing 50 Southern hub gets down to business

SPECIAL REPORT | WOMEN IN DAIRY 52 Katie Milne: The farmers’ chief lobbyist 54 Rebecca Keoghan: Leading a safety culture 55 Skills go untapped 56 Expert Eye: Listening to farming women 57 Charlotte Rutherford puts on her gumboots 58 Julie Pirie: Making things happen 60 Toni Brendish: Future-proofing Westland 63 Linda Hofsteede: Giving it a go, one more time 66 Horowhenua’s Taste Trail gals 68 Suzanne Hanning steps up online

SUBMERGED CROPS PUT STRAIN ON SYSTEM 38

SPECIAL REPORT

ENVIRONMENT 70 Future-proofing farm development

STOCK 74 Why sheep milk?

76 Goat farmer develops detection system 78 Vet Voice: Katie Mason on hitting peak lactation

YOUNG COUNTRY 80 Matt Snedden doesn’t do town 82 Researchers focus on the urine patch

WOMEN in dairy

SPECIAL REPORT 51

RESEARCH WRAP 85 Easier, cheaper hot water

FARM GEAR 86 Methane capture: Winning with poo power

DAIRY 101 90 Forage Value Index: Stars for the rye

VIEW FROM THE TOP 92 Lewis Road: Building success at home

SOLUTIONS 93 Hopper feed system for herringbones

Property 94 Property Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

DOESN’T DO TOWN 80 5

DAIRY DIARY

BROUGHT TO YOU BY FONTERRA FARM SOURCE

NZFARMSOURCE.CO.NZ/STORE | 0800 731 266

JANUARY January 21-25 – International Dairy Week in Australia spans five days and has more than 1000 head of first-class dairy cattle and 180 breeders competing for prestigious awards. Trade exhibits, seminars and tours are all part of the event at Tatura in Victoria. More? Visit www.internationaldairyweek.com.au January 31-February 2 – The annual New Zealand Dairy Event is held at Manfeild Park in Feilding. The three-day event attracts some of the best cattle from around the country as well as a focus on competitions

for farming youth. Another feature is the Semex Summer Sensational Sale. More? Visit www.nzdairyevent.com February 1 – DairyNZ is running heifer-rearing field days in the lower North Island to showcase good management practices for heifer grazing and provide a forum for farmers to discuss regional issues. All aspects of heifer grazing will be discussed from feeding levels through to management of grazier-owner relationships to achieve win-win outcomes for all. More? Visit www.dairynz.co.nz

FEBRUARY February 5 – Nominations close for the Fonterra Dairy Women of the Year Award which recognises women who have significantly contributed to the dairy industry with passion, drive, innovation and leadership. Nominations also close for the Dairy Community Leadership Award which recognises a dairying woman who is making a significant contribution in her local rural community through leadership and support. The titles will be awarded at the Dairy Women’s Network conference on March 22 in Rotorua. More?

Visit www.dwn.co.nz February 7-9 – The Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre holds its 31st annual workshop at Massey University. The workshops transfer information among industry, science, policy and regulatory sectors. Registrations close on February 1 and can be done by visiting www.massey.ac.nz/~flrc/workshops/18/ workshop2018.html February 8 – Dairy Women’s Network and DairyNZ are running ‘Helping your business go places’ in the Wedderburn Tavern in Central Otago. The day introduces the Whole Farm Assessment approach which is a process for analysing a farm system to identify and prioritise key issues, opportunities and

ONE SOURCE

options for change. It runs between 10am and 2pm and is a free event. More? And to register, visit www.dwn.co.nz/events-page/ February 14-16 – The Southern Field Days provide the latest in rural technology, equipment and ideas from around the world during the three-day event which is held at Waimumu, 12km from Gore. More?

Visit www.southernfielddays.co.nz February 22 – A Lincoln University Dairy Farm focus day is being held between 10.15am and 1pm. For information about the farm which is on Shands Rd near Lincoln, visit www.siddc.org.nz February 23 – The Bay of Plenty Ballance Farm Environmental Awards evening will be held on February 23 at the ASB Baypark Arena in Mt Maunganui. More? Visit www.nzfeatrust.org.nz February 21 – Finalists are announced for the Ahuwhenua Trophy – BNZ Maori Excellence in Farming Award. The competition is held annually, alternating between dairy and sheep and beef. The 2018 competition is for Maori dairy farmers. The winner will be announced at the awards dinner held at the Wigram Airforce Museum in Christchurch on May 25. More? Visit www.ahuwhenuatrophy.maori.nz

TO KEEP THE WATER FLOWING

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

EDITORIAL

Mt Taranaki on a good day.

The rollercoaster year

W

hen you are young and older people bemoan the fact the years go by faster and faster, young minds don’t really believe them. But now that I am more mature, I can tell you it’s a thing – 2017 flew by in a flurry of monthly deadlines and awards won by the Dairy Exporter team, along with pressure from all the free publications out there, vying for letterbox and kitchen table space.

Here at the Dairy Exporter we are sticking to our knitting, and have recommitted to in-depth, timely and quality content – delivered to loyal subscribers because they know and appreciate the value the publication adds to their business.

That is not to say we can’t evolve the way we do some things – we are looking at delivering more content online in 2018, more video content through our website and social media platforms and more technical, research and environmental stories to upskill farmers for the challenges facing them.

This year the dairy industry has welcomed the strengthening of dairy prices and weathered the challenges of ramping up regional plan changes and dirty-dairy rhetoric during the election which left many farmers feeling victimised and under pressure.

What does give me heart is the latest dairy stats with evidence of the New Zealand herd producing more milk from fewer cows – by breeding and feeding for higher per-cow production.

More milk from fewer cows means the environmental footprint is lighter on the earth. And with an average per cow production of only 381kg MS/cow in 2016/17 there is plenty of upside for farmers to strive for.

Many farmers we profile are already producing upwards of 400 and even 500kg MS/ cow, so our mandate is to help inform other farmers how they can grow and excel with more milk from fewer cows and lower stocking rates.

The drive for expansion and production over the past 20 years is a big ship to turn around, but evidence shows the evolution is starting to get some traction.

We have reviewed the year and brought you a snapshot of what we considered the Impact Players of 2017, including the big wet, the politics and the advances in science and technology. One thing is for sure, farming is changing at pace.

Women have always been involved in dairy farming operations – but the scope of their involvement has been changing over the past 20 years. This issue we celebrate the width and depth of those roles – onfarm, in the farm office, as lobbyists, environmentalists, calf-rearers, financial controllers, in industry and community roles – many fitted around their other important roles of nurturing the next generation of NZ’s farmers.

There are many inspiring women out there and thousands more who we haven’t profiled – we salute you all for your energy, drive and passion for the industry of dairy food production.

The industry lost an inspiring leader in Michael Spaans, chairman of DairyNZ, late in 2017 and we acknowledge the loss suffered by his

family and friends.

So, will 2018 be any less busy? Or rollercoaster-like?

Fewer highs and lows?

I suspect not, so make sure you get a break over the summer to build your resilience for the next onslaught.

Thanks for your support in 2017, have a great summer.

Jackie

SNEAK PREVIEW:

NEXT ISSUE SPECIAL REPORT: GOOD SCIENCE •

What is the latest coming out of the research institutions?

•

New Government on science funding the future.

MILKING INTERVALS •

Jason McBeth talks milking intervals – OAD and 3in2 milking – what are the pros

NZ Dairy Exporter

@YoungDairyED

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

@DairyExporterNZ

and cons?

7

Word in your ear DAIRY STOCK PERFORMANCE

Optimise the productive impact of in-shed feed Feeding to production makes economic sense and no more so when weather conditions affect feed availability. With dry conditions predicted for this summer and the increasing effects of global warming being felt, there is no better time to be reviewing your feed budgeting and allocation tools and processes.

Tru-Test’s modular dairy automation system is designed to offer farmers the automation tools as and when they are of most value to your business and budget.

“With the information the Tru-Test system’s gathering on each cow, we’re making more efficient use of our expensive feed along with our grass, whether it’s abundant or tight.”

criteria, e.g. best producers, pre- or postcalving, to efficiently target manage the condition of your cows.

With access to your data online, you can set up feed delivery rules and change feeding regimes quickly without having to be in shed. In fact, you can manage your feed allocation from anywhere there is an internet connection.

The In-bail ID & Feed Control module is designed to ensure you get the best return for each dollar spent on supplementary feed in the shed.

For Geoff Batchelor from Opunake, investing in Tru-Test’s In-bail ID & Feed Control module has enabled him to more closely and effectively manage his feed inputs.

Our In-Bail Feed module enables dairy farmers to preferentially feed selected individual cows or groups by preferred

“It was always in the back of my mind to be able to feed to production. Getting to the end of lactation we can identify our higher producing cows using information from the In-bail Sensors and those who are getting light from our Walk over Weighing.

Making sure we focus feed the right cows and make the right decisions on under performers based on their history.

We’ve always had in-bale feeding but were just doing it blindly and blanket feeding. Now with the information the Tru-Test system’s gathering on each cow, we’re making more efficient use of our expensive feed along with our grass, whether it’s abundant or tight. We’re also able to better allocate to get the production from the cows putting it in the vat”.

Effectively managing feed inputs can deliver significant cost savings as well as being a saving grace in times of feed restrictions.

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Pasture Management

Weighing & EID

Dairy Automation

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Milk Cooling & Tanks

MiHub™ & Data Services

Post Purchase Support

MILK PROTECTION

One farmer’s icy solution to ensuring compliance FRANUI FARMS LIMITED Lawrie Jones, Owner

Location:

Pohangina Valley, Manawatu

Stock numbers:

330 herd

Farm size: Dairy type:

146 ha (dairy)

Lawrie Jones is sorted for the new milk cooling regulations with his recent investment in a ProCool Ice Bank pre-cooling system.

36-a-side herringbone

For Lawrie Jones, the looming compliance changes for milk cooling coupled with the knowledge that their bore sourced water wasn’t cold enough to cool their milk in summer, led him to investigate milk cooling options at this year's Mystery Creek Fieldays.

“We found that in summer our water cooling would get up to 20°. As a result, the milk was entering the vat at 15° plus and clearly not going to meet regulations,” Lawrie explains.

“First we invested in a double bank plate cooling system. That certainly helped, especially with last summer being quite cool. But then we thought, with summers being like they could be – very hot or getting hotter – we need to look at another alternative for pre-cooling the milk. At Fieldays we looked at heaps of different cooling systems. When we saw Tru-Test’s ProCool Ice Bank, I thought, yeah, that’s a simple, easy method of cooling milk. We then did a bit more investigation before finally deciding on that system.”

When asked what specifically sold him on the ProCool Ice Bank, Lawrie responds: “Well, I look upon it as a car battery, basically. You’re storing cold water in an ice form, which to me is a very good, efficient way of storing ‘energy’. A lot of other systems take huge amounts of power to cool either large volumes of water or to operate a glycol system

while you’re milking. Whereas with the Ice Bank, it's just stored there, ready to operate when you need to cool the milk.”

Lower power usage is also valuable, not only for cost but where power outages can be an issue.

“When the cowshed’s operating, it’s drawing quite a lot of power, so we can have issues of blowing fuses and that sort of thing. With the Ice Bank, the actual refrigeration unit on the vat hardly goes now. So, while we're milking, it's not drawing anywhere near the power it was before. All the vat refrigeration does now is maintain that cold temperature until the tanker comes. It's switching on when the milk gets above 6° and just maintains a low temperature from there.”

Lawrie has had his Ice Bank in since September and so far, so good.

“The milk's currently entering the vat at about 6.5°. And that’s towards the end of milking. At the start it will be going in at about 3°. That’s well within the new guidelines and with the vat refrigeration hardly going at all.

I also feel it’s far more efficient than the vat refrigeration unit which just has a cold surface underneath. It’s only that area where the milk is in contact with the cold refrigerant. With the Ice Bank, all the milk is in contact with that cold water.

Our cows peak at 33 litres a day. With a 36-a-side herringbone – there’s a huge volume of milk going through at a very fast rate.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

www.tru-test.com

Based on his research and experience to date, Lawrie offers the following advice to dairy farmers considering their cooling options for compliance.

“I think the first step is to make sure you’ve got good water circulation. That’s a must and why we upgraded our plate cooler.”

As for his motivation for doing it now rather than waiting?

“It's like everything, isn't it? If you leave it too late you'll be competing with lots of other people trying to fit a system in.

Timing then could be crucial. I didn't want to go into this summer, especially if it's going to be hot, with high water temperatures.

Before, an early morning pick-up and we wouldn't meet the new regulations.

Nowhere near. Our vat refrigeration would be going virtually all day, to try and cool that milk.

Now, at the end of milking, the vat temperature’s about 6.5°. The tanker can come straight away and pick that up - no problems at all.

That’s really important, as you never know when the tanker’s coming. Early, the driver would either have to go away and pick up someone else or wait, and they don't really want to wait.

All round I think it's a very efficient system.”

How are you tracking?

Let’s talk.

0800 TRUTEST (878 8378)

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ONLINE

ONLINE

New Zealand Dairy Exporter’s online presence is an added dimension to your magazine.

Through digital media, we share a selection of stories and photographs from the magazine.

Here we share a selection of just some of what you can enjoy.

Connect with us online: www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

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@DairyExporterNZ NZ Dairy Exporter

Sign up to our monthly newsletter www.nzfarmlife.co.nz/e-newsletter

MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS: TIM MCVEAGH

Introducing...

After completing an Agr Sci degree at Massey, Dairy Exporter’s Farm Gear writer Tim McVeagh initially worked as a Dairy Advisory Officer with MAF. A stint at UC Davis in California during this time included assisting vet students milk sampling cows for Mycoplasma mastitis!

For 21 years he ran the field trials and laboratory at Allflex.

Nowadays, as well as the Farm Gear column, he helps out casually at a local milking machine company and runs his small nursery and beef block in the Pohangina Valley.

Lesiure time revolves around sailing his yacht at Napier, or sailing with family, out of Wellington or North Auckland.

Followers of Dairy Exporter/Young Country Facebook page.

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Fat Evaluation Index

Completing our series of calf-rearing videos, Ursula Haywood discusses diseases and the vaccinations available to combat them.

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NOVEMBER 2017

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

MILKING PLATFORM │ COLUMN

Dairying full of excitement

and opportunities

Frances Coles

South Canterbury

I

was really struggling to come up with what to write for this month’s column about.

There’s all the usual stuff to cover off that happens at this time of the season: the weather has warmed, calving is done and dusted with replacements being weaned and dispatched to pastures further afield; grass growth has gone loopy and measures such as silage-making and irrigation have come into play to keep it all balanced, plus we’re already shifting our focus to getting well set-up for next season with mating underway.

But none of this is terribly interesting, because it’s happening on all of your farms too.

What has been interesting over the past couple of months has been the amazing range of experiences thrown my way by the dairy industry.

This is one of the things I love about dairy farming – the variety. The diversity of jobs, experiences and situations you can find yourself in over the course of a career, a season, or even a week!

Just to be clear – I’ve never been the kind of person who loves routine. Before I married a farmer I worked as a print journalist – which provided a delicious level of excitement as you weaved your way through workdays which could see you transition from court hearings to school assemblies to stately homes being showcased for house and garden features.

Over the years I’ve discovered that if you

are open to opportunities, dairying can be just as exciting.

In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to be involved with focus groups directly influencing our industry, networked with agribusiness leaders showing their retail and commercial counterparts how great businesses run and I’ve faced challenges within our own business which have seen me drawing on many of the skills I’ve had to cultivate over the years for dealing with testing situations.

It seems many people overlook a really obvious opportunity for amazing partnerships which meet the goals of both groups.

While not all of these have been pleasant – they’re still the kind of thing that keeps life interesting for me and pushes me to continually be learning new skills. Growth and innovation are inextricably linked to success, I believe.

However, sometimes the ‘excitement’ can be unwanted – many farmers are feeling uncertain about the future of their businesses post-election.

The implications of changing fiscal policies, modifications to immigration rules affecting the labour market, environmental pressures ramping up and a relentless deterioration in our social licence to farm are challenges some farmers simply don’t want to face.

An abundance of dairy farms are on the market in Canterbury and while there are all sorts of reasons people are listing their properties, one in particular really interests me.

Nobody has come out and directly said it to me, but lately while attending events with more mature farmers also in attendance, I’ve picked up a real vibe

that some just can’t be bothered having to learn new tricks any more, and are seriously asking what options other than dairying are open to them.

Obviously some have decided to act and are exiting the industry – hence the farms for sale.I feel we are on the knife-edge of a real turning point in the industry.

A group of experienced farmers feel they have ‘done their dash’ or want to focus on other things in their lives, and there’s a crowd of young people eager to move into farm ownership but struggling to raise the capital to get on the property ladder.

Land values are high and people are quick to assume only corporate or overseas buyers are in a position to buy these farms.

But it seems many people overlook a really obvious opportunity for amazing partnerships which meet the goals of both groups.

Older, wiser farmers can offer their expertise and security to motivated young people who accept the challenge of farming in a disrupted world, embracing new technologies and outside-the-box thinking.

Why does it always need to be a cut and dried single transaction of one party selling up and the other buying? Can there not be more creative ways to move towards the desired outcome?

Lease to buy, or equity managers, sharemilkers and contract milkers who are given the opportunity to have a shareholding which grows over time?

Our industry has been based on a cooperative spirit in so many ways – why can that same spirit not apply to succession of land ownership?

I’d certainly be interested to see more discussions and idea-sharing around how innovative farmers may already be tackling this predicament.

Strike up a Twitter conversation with Frances @ColesFrances

New opportunities on the market for dairy farmers.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

11

MILKING PLATFORM │ COLUMN Looking towards Hamilton from the hills of Ngaroma.

Looking to the sky Sam Sherrard Ngaroma, King Country

With calving dispatched and mating well underway the warmer and more settled weather is much appreciated in our corner of the King Country.

This is our fourth season milking 360 cows in Ngaroma where my wife and I 50:50 sharemilk. We are on a developing hill country farm and milk once-a-day all season. My wife works off farm so the OAD regime frees up the time needed to run our two children to and from sports practices and the like.

Rainfall really is Ngaroma’s strong point but after another ‘unusually wet winter in a row’ it won’t be long till farmers around the district are again looking skyward for the next shower of rain.

What has not fallen from the sky however is the sky itself, despite the Labour coalition Government. Much was made in the press and on social media of the horrors that a change of government would bring to New Zealand. So far it seems we have got what we usually get, a middle-of-the-road government guided by an effective public service. The new crowd just wants to put their stamp on business as usual. However, changes to the minimum wage and perhaps to labour laws will be a challenge for all farmers but particularly for contract and sharemilkers.

These changes, some of which will be implemented during existing contracts for sharemilkers, could put some employers in a difficult situation. The labour portion of some contracts is quite tight creating a conflict between obligations to their employees and the need to fulfil their 12

obligations for the farm owner. For which more money may not be forthcoming.

Twenty dollars an hour in 2020 may seem a way off, but now is the time to understand and prepare for what our businesses will look like with higher labour costs as wage costs will not only increase for minimum wage workers.

This is something to bear in mind when negotiating contracts.

Much was made in the press and on social media of the horrors that a change of government would bring to New Zealand. So far it seems we have got what we usually get, a middle-of-the-road government guided by an effective public service.

For some in the industry the change will be simple and stress-free. For others serious and disruptive change may be required.

When we started our sharemilking venture we decided to operate an hourly rate, paid from timesheets. This creates a little work – and a little spreadsheet.

I think this has been a great success, if only that it provides direct feedback to management of the hours being worked.

Staff get immediate benefit for extra work in busy times. However, budgeting is required from employers during the quieter periods on farm.

Labour requirements can also be managed with system change. Farms may need to become less-intensive or make changes to the milking regime to better manage some costs. It is important

all parties understand how each other’s position will change and plan ahead to avoid unintended consequences.

One thing is for sure, those who best understand their business will be bestplaced to cope with the challenges.

The next job in our district is running the annual Ngaroma Trial Bike Ride.

Common throughout the rural sector these fundraising events provide a great source of revenue for worthy causes. Like many small farming communities ours is close-knit and everyone pitches in for the preparation and on the day itself.

Being new to an area getting involved in these events is a great way to get to know the community. While many of the key helpers don’t ride, the track crew could be best described as a drinking club with a motorbike problem.

In our case the money is used to supply and operate a van to get children to the bus stop for our local school. Our school is 35 kilometres away and the closest bus stop 20km. The community banded together to buy a van 15 years ago when the bus routes changed. We are now on to our second van and with two trips a day our little van can do 80km a day so a replacement van looms. Recent changes to transport funding have meant only some of the children now get a conveyance allowance, so this year we are all rearing stock scheme calves to raise additional funds. While we all would prefer the school bus to come closer, the way our community pulls together makes us realise what makes it special.

December is usually when we get a sense of what the summer weather will bring.

A drier summer has been predicted which will bring its own challenges. I hope this is the year I can have the silage baled before Christmas instead of the inevitable mowing on December 28.

We will be looking forward to having the farm chores done in the mornings and enjoying some time with friends and family over the break.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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Helping grow the country 13

MILKING PLATFORM │ COLUMN

Farewell physio, hello farm Thomas Chatfield Pukehina, Bay of Plenty

First, a bit about me. I’m contract milking 920 cows at Pukehina in the Bay of Plenty.

It’s my first season contract milking and my first season on this farm. Before this season I was managing 500 cows in Whakatane.

Six years ago, I returned to New Zealand after three years working as a physiotherapist in London and made what I consider to be one of the best decisions of my life.

I had planned to move to Melbourne and continue working as a physio, when

the opportunity arose to do some farm work for a friend.

From this tentative step into the farming, I was offered a permanent position by a contract milker whose worker had quit halfway through calving and needed someone ASAP. I remember wondering if I was going mad for even considering quitting my chosen profession and taking a decent pay cut to become a farm assistant on a dairy farm. In the end, I decided that I could always return to physiotherapy if things didn’t work out.

The next challenge was explaining to people that I was now a farmer and not a phsyio – I definitely got some funny looks from my friends when I first told them what I was up to.

I spent my first season as a farm assistant, before moving to a 2IC role on Dreamfields – a farm I then went on to manage. On that same farm in 2016 I was lucky enough to win Farm Manager of the

Year in the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards.

As a direct result of this success in the awards, I managed to get my CV in front of my current farm owners and have now been given the opportunity to contract milk for them on their farm.

Now, a little more about my farm. We milk 920 crossbreed dairy cows on low land in Pukehina, between Te Puke and Whakatane. The farm is very low and, with the amount of rainfall we have had in the past five months, to say things have been challenging would be an understatement.

The grass has really struggled since the flooding in early April 2016, and since then the farm hasn’t really had a chance to dry out. With the soils being waterlogged for so long, our poor ryegrass has suffered.

As I walk around the paddocks, I see large open spaces where I would rather see thick rye and clover pastures, and I know the picture will be the same for a lot of people this year.

WIITNH W

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

The grass has really struggled since the flooding in early April 2016, and since then the farm hasn’t really had a chance to dry out.

For me, this has added to what was already going to be a tough season starting a new business on an unfamiliar farm. To further compound matters, a new team of staff have also meant endless challenges as we all adjust to a new farm and systems, and at times it has felt like we have taken one step forward only to be pushed back three.

With all that said, there is light at the end of the tunnel – our production hasn’t broken any records, but we are up on last year and the district average is down, so I am pretty happy with that.

Mating is on track for a significant improvement from the previous season, which will hopefully set us up for a better season next year.

Our maize is up and the grass looks like it is finally growing. It won’t be long until the summer grass takes over, but for now I am happy to look out my window at the best ryegrass I have had this season.

At times, normally on a crappy wet day, I find myself wondering why I am doing this when I could be sitting inside a nice warm treatment room working as a physio.

But, since going farming, I find myself more realising the challenges are what make me tick. I got bored working as a physio. Getting up and facing a challenging day or week makes me enjoy success so much more when it arrives and

that is partly why I’m writing this column.

I’ve never been any good at writing, I dropped English as soon as I could at school – I never had any interest in it and I was no good at it. But now, with a few more years behind me, I find enjoyment in challenging myself to do things that I’m not good at and, so far, the more time I spend practicing something the easier it becomes.

The challenges are what make me tick, Thomas Chatfield says.

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2017

What will 2017 be remembered for at your place?

Was it an annus horribilis or a red letter year?

We took a look back at the past year and teased out what we thought were the Impact Players of 2017 for agriculture.

From the foul weather to better wellbeing, from labour challenges to new leaders, from the latest technology to great leaps forward in science and biosecurity ballsups to political powersharing, it was a rollercoaster year.

Issues were tackled and goals kicked, with the odd scrum collapsed and try thwarted, but agriculture and our industry’s indomitable spirit of survival was the winner on the day. And as all farmers know, there’s a whole new season next year, full of possibilities.

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Weather technology

The BIG wet Mud, mud, mud. Farming soaked up more extreme weather events than ever in 2017. The miserable spring and slower-than-normal pasture growth created new challenges for farmers.

Sheryl Brown reports.

M

ost farms in New Zealand received their annual rainfall by spring and have experienced cooler temperatures than they It’s been a have in years. challenging year, “NZ had a bulls-eye on its back for with half the country receiving low pressure this year,” MetService its full annual meteorologist Georgina Griffiths says. norm of rainfall by It’s been rather extreme on rainfall and October. temperature fronts for all regions and nobody really missed out, she says.

Stormy south-westerlies hit the country at the start of the year and brought Awamutu says farmers in the Waikato and increased rainfall and cooler temperatures across other sodden regions had one of and a quick end to everybody’s summer. their most challenging seasons.

From autumn onwards NZ was hit with “I was going through a few sets of wet a lot of Tasman lows, which brought weather gear every day just to keep dry. changeable temperatures through autumn You’re used to doing that for a week, but and winter. this was every week.

“Last year we saw a mild winter, this “From June through to September it year temperatures slipped through the year was continuous rain, the water level was every couple of weeks.” constantly above ground.”

The temperatures While Fonterra’s milk were lower than have Fonterra Milk Collection collection is up for the year been seen for a number (millon L) 2017 2016 overall from January, some of years, Griffiths says.

172.5 175 January regions have had a reduction “We had quite a in onfarm production. Farmers frosty winter and it’s 140.9 144.1 February had to make decisions they been a while since 147.1 136.1 March normally wouldn’t have had we’ve seen a normal 117.7 111.8 April to make, including purchasing winter so it was a bit of extra supplement or putting a shock to the system.”

66.5 67 May cows on once-a-day early in This year’s weather 11.8 9.9 June spring to ensure top animal has taken its toll 17.2 16.3 July care. on people, cows 93 96 August “Even top farmers who and machinery. made timely decisions were Federated Farmers 171 175 September grizzling,” Chris says. dairy chairman Chris 208.8 204.2 October Pugging damage was high Lewis who farms at Te

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Farmers are starting to use Ensemble forecasting to give them higher accuracy pushing out to a four-week window. Ensemble forecasting uses multiple models to give a more robust forecast than a single model.

“Farmers know their weather very well and they’re starting to adopt ensemble usage quickly,” Metserivce meteorologist Georgina Griffiths says.

“It’s because there is power in the pack. We’ve got a lot of rural customers that now use the four-week ensemble information which really helps with their planning. If they knew they were going to be in for an extended run of really hot weather over the South Island and less but still warmer than normal weather over the North Island, then that gives them information to do something with.”

Ensemble forecasting doesn’t focus on daily weather, but goes well beyond two weeks and picks up the big highs or lows and rainfall events or drought events really well, she says.

That long range makes it useful for operational decisions on farms, she says. The future is pretty bright with the technology and information now becoming available for farmers.

“Ensembles are probably the way of the future.”

To subscribe: www.metservice.com/ rural/monthly-outlook and a lack of spring grass silage this season has seen a lot of farmers increase cropping hectares.

“Farmers do a lot of planning, but it’s hard to budget for the unexpected and there a strain on the system. As a result farmers are building a lot of resilience into their systems now.

“The changes farmers had to make this year, could be the way they have to do things in the future. You’ve got to look at what’s best for your staff and family, your cows and the environment.”

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2 Katie Milne on her farm at Rotomanu.

Feds set for continued influence Bob Edlin Whether dairy industry lobbyists would have less influence with a Labourled Government became a matter for conjecture when the new Speaker, Trevor Mallard, announced he would be reviewing the list of corporate lobbyists with privileged access to Parliament.

Greenpeace’s Steve Abel claimed the time for cleaning up New Zealand’s rivers had come, “yet Fonterra and Federated Farmers, already with huge influence to lobby vigorously against any laws which make them accountable for their climate emissions and water pollution, have special access cards to Parliament”.

He demanded the Government cancel all lobbyists’ parliamentary access cards.

Other commentators foresaw farm lobbies having less influence, anyway.

Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor told Dairy Exporter, he had a good long-term relationship with the Feds (“and Katie Milne is another good West Coaster”). He had “a passion for Fonterra as our biggest and most successful company”, although he was always prepared to challenge them and anyone else when he thinks they are wrong.

As to influence – “it depends on how they behave. If they want to close one eye and simply campaign against the Government, as they have done in the past on issues, then clearly that’s not terribly productive”.

Asked about the Feds’ influence, Milne said they had worked constantly with the last Government, “and will continue in exactly the same manner with the next one”.

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The federation’s job was to ensure legislation affecting farming was properly considered and developed, based on solid evidence and sound analysis and after “running a rural lens” over it.

Asked for the Feds’ biggest success in political persuasion last year, Milne responded with a list of accomplishments and gave a pointer to the issues she would like the new Government to address.

She said the Feds worked extensively with ministers, officials and agencies on animal welfare, gun ownership, water and irrigation management, Resource Management Act reform, stock exclusion and tax calculation.

They had worked closely with WorkSafe to achieve a sensible outcome for the carriage of passengers on quads and helped gain cross-party support for an amendment to telecommunications legislation which enabled installation of fibre optic cable along overhead powerlines crossing farmland, with a connection discount for the affected landowner.

By highlighting the pressures facing rural communities, they had influenced Government commitments for extra funding for tourism infrastructure (to address pressures caused by tourists, including freedom camping) and biosecurity.

The Government had accepted it was illogical and unfair to put agricultural livestock emissions under the Emission Trading Scheme when there were few mitigation measures farmers could take, whereas NZ’s trading partners were not subject to the same imposition.

Milne didn’t think the relationship would change much under a Labour-led Government.

“We’ll engage with them in a constructive way to get the best positive outcome we can for farming families,” she said.

“We know there will be changes and we’ll work through those. We don’t ever expect to be heard ‘sympathetically’, regardless of the government, council or court we are speaking to. All we do is make sure the impact of any regulation, law, policy, plan, rule, bylaw – or whatever else they might be called – is fully understood by the people making them, that they understand how they will affect the primary sector, and the $40 billion in value the industry is tipped to bring into the country next year.”

The federation was always optimistic Kiwis eventually would realise farmers had worked – and would continue to work – to improve waterways and water management for more than a decade.

This would show up in improving water quality, “so it’s not just about changing urban people’s perceptions but also the reality”. Hopefully water quality then might be less of an emotive issue.

Climate change and the roles of farming and plant-based protein also deserved careful discussion, Milne said.

“We’d like to get on and work on other things we see as equally important, such as increasing onfarm productivity through technology and innovation, increasing the availability of enthusiastic and talented workers for the primary sector and working to get better and more robust market access for New Zealand products around the world.”

DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle, welcoming primary-sector portfolio allocations, said the new Government was promoting a new direction for the country when the dairy sector faced a decade of transformation.

“We have a strong mandate to concentrate on productivity – to produce more from less – and to do so sustainably,” he said.

“We support initiatives that incentivise farmers to use the best environmental practices, we’ve been openly welcoming of the discussions around water, and we know agriculture has a role to play in ensuring New Zealand meets its climate change targets.”

DairyNZ’s focus was on ensuring a balance between dairy being competitive and profitable while also meeting the expectations of consumers and communities.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

December 2017

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2

We’re facing major disruption, Damien O’Connor says.

A different world Damien O’Connor was Associate Minister of Agriculture (among other portfolios) when New Zealand’s previous Labour-led Government was defeated in 2008. After nine years in Opposition he is back as Minister of Agriculture, Biosecurity, Food Safety, and Rural Communities and Associate Minister for Trade and Export Growth. He talks to Bob Edlin about changes over the past decade and his ministerial agenda.

Fonterra and the dairy industry have grown rapidly since Damien O’Connor chaired the select committee that considered the legislation which established the co-operative in 2001.

Concerns around environmental impacts have grown too and whether volume or value should be Fonterra’s focus.

“So we’re now in a different situation when looking into the future,” O’Connor observes while reflecting on changes over the past decade.

Plant-based milk and cheeses are among the threats.

“It’s a different world. We’re facing major disruption around artificial protein - or substitute protein, both in meat and in dairy.

“I’m not convinced that Fonterra or the big players in the meat industry are truly taking on board the threat they face.”

Developing a strategy to combat the challenge is urgent, O’Connor says.

“You only have to go into any café and look at the alternatives they have for adding milk to coffee or go to a supermarket to realise that cow’s milk is not the only white liquid the public are consuming.

“Just as oil companies have had to look at new energy as the way of the future, I think food companies are embracing this alternative source of protein and the question of where that will leave New Zealand needs to be asked fairly quickly.”

The Government has a responsibility to lead, “given the industry seems to be fairly slow to react”.

O’Connor reiterated “leadership” when asked what farmers can expect from the new Government.

“It will focus around leadership on the crucial issues, environmental management, ensuring that a story, or brand, or reputation is upheld by best practice internally around animal welfare, around environment and soil management, water quality… all of those things.

“We’ve got to walk the talk because virtually every consumer in the world now 20

has an ability to check the integrity of the products they are consuming.

“And we have to be beyond reproach when it comes to the perception that when you buy something from New Zealand, you are buying safe, high-quality and the finest produce.”

Biosecurity is a priority. O’Connor has concerns about the handling of the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak (“I’m still seeking more information to try and ensure that we’ve got this under control”).

For dairy, legislation is needed before the end of May next year when several competition-fostering measures in the 2001 Dairy Industry Restructuring Act expire. “We have to make sure that changes there deliver the best long-term direction for dairy and Fonterra”.

‘We have to be beyond reproach when it comes to the perception that when you buy something from New Zealand, you are buying safe, high-quality and the finest produce.’

O’Connor’s concerns about the meat industry include NZ’s biggest meat cooperative being controlled by a foreign company. The dilution of Kiwi control over direction is the issue, as he explains when asked if China’s moves into dairying concern him: “Not of itself, other than we have to realise that with foreign investment and foreign ownership we reduce our ability to determine the future direction of our economy. That has some risks.”

Foreign investment which brings new ideas and developments should be welcomed, but simply taking over ownership and control of existing NZ assets “is not necessarily always netpositive for our country”.

A crucial objective should be anything

which opens opportunities for young people to get into agriculture. Anything that might reduce those opportunities must be carefully examined.

Land ownership comes into considerations. When moving to regulate foreign investment in housing the Government signalled it will be looking at farmland as well to ensure any investment brings “real additional benefit”.

Also on the agenda: • The Ministry for Primary Industries is being restructured. Forestry and fisheries have separate ministers and will be set up as independent agencies. A greater focus on biosecurity and food safety is intended; how this will be reflected in the final structure “is being worked through”.

• A review of NAIT needs to be hastened “because there are indications it hasn’t worked as intended”.

• Doubling agricultural exports by 2025 “is a pretty dumb goal and it’s hardly a vision”. As a former farmer, O’Connor says you can double your output and finish up a lot poorer, “so what we are trying to do is improve the rewards and the value for New Zealand from primary industries”.

And the biggest challenge?

O’Connor says it will be resistance from traditional conservative players across the sectors.

“No one likes change but it is coming… and the long-term interests of our country might be compromised unless we face up to the challenges”.

See Manutuke to minister, p30

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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3 Waiting game for overseas dairy investors Jackie Harrigan The past year or 18 months has been very quiet in terms of dairy sector foreign investment, MyFarm executive chairman Grant Rowan says.

“Everyone has been sitting on their hands a bit trying to figure out where the value sits,” Rowan says, adding New Zealand companies had still been active in other sectors.

Settling up equity partnerships and investments in the sector and then managing the portfolio was bread and butter for MyFarm over the past 20 years.

The company, riding a wave of low land prices and good returns, invested in and converted many dairy properties, later selling, divesting or managing for overseas and local investors.

Rowan strongly rebutts any notion that overseas investors drive young Kiwi farmers out of the first farm ownership market, calling it a media beatup and being rolled out by politicians while being 100% wrong.

They are two wildly different markets, Rowan says.

‘Overseas investors are essentially active in the $10 million-plus range, but first farms are in the $3m and less bracket.’

“Overseas investors are essentially active in the $10 million-plus range, but first farms are in the $3m and less bracket.”

Transaction costs are high for overseas buyers, he says, – up to $100,000 per transaction by the time the OIO and legal costs are covered, and all overseas investor farms need a management overhead – also expensive on a small farm.

There are not large numbers of domestic buyers with appetites to buy properties over $10m, Rowan says, and for every purchaser who has competition, there is a vendor who is happy to have competition in the market.

“Frankly, I find it annoying – it’s a 22

A limit to how much debt the industry can build, Grant Rowan says.

political football. I don’t see any relation between overseas investors buying land and what’s happening with young farmers.”

The indebtedness of Kiwi dairy farmers is a factor holding back local investment.

“We strongly believe that we can’t keep continuing on with existing farmers buying others out – there is a limit to how much debt the industry can build.

New money needs to come from outside the existing local pool, from institutional investors or from overseas.”

The Reserve Bank warns the dairy industry has $41 billion of debt with the average farm holding debt of $22.60/kg milksolids (MS) and 40% of farmers having debt of more than $30/kg MS. Kiwi investment from other sectors and from institutional investors has also been subdued due to the volatile nature of earnings and the very resilient land prices in the face of those lower prices, Rowan says.

“In our assessment the value of good quality land has only come back by 7%.

Assets have held their value despite lower earnings – so clearly that indicates there is optimism about the future of the industry.

“But the sharemarket has represented better value in the past couple of years.”

Rowan is confident the tide will turn but it will be a measured growth.

“Investment returns are low all around the world and money is looking for a safe return. NZ is a well-run and safe economy, which makes it attractive to investors – not just in agriculture but in other parts of the economy as well.

“Dairying is still our largest primary industry and one of the larger NZ industries. I think there will continue to be some interest, but I don’t think anyone needs to worry about a landslide of overseas investment.”

On the flip side, Rowan says foreign investment has brought many positives into local communities who by and large welcome them.

“We have seen growth in investment and increased productivity, improved environmental outcomes, increased employment in regions where we have done conversion projects, more walking access and revenue into the local economy and relationships with the contractors who carry out the work.”

The OIO monitoring programme requires annual reporting and auditing which Rowan says is a “pretty solid” process to make sure the conditions of the investment are met.

From MyFarm’s perspective, the company has diversified its dairy portfolio to encompass sheep and beef properties, viticulture, pip fruit and kiwifruit and some of the original overseas investment relationships set up have matured and changed or finished up.

“Dairying remains at the core of our business and we are watching very closely, waiting for the time when investment opportunities are attractive and investors are also attracted to the sector again.”

LATEST: Late November the Government announced a plan to ensure the net benefit test is robustly applied to prospective overseas buyers of all rural land over 5ha, including boosting resources at the OIO to ensure vetting and follow-up checks happen.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

4 Chris Lewis: new immigration rules are complete frustration to both employers and immigrant staff.

Contract worker delays Anne Hughes

Frustration at new rules Anne Lee Immigration policy was again one of the biggest influencers on the farm labour market in 2017.

New rules implemented in August mean dairy staff, other than those at farm manager level, are likely to have to renew their work permits annually for up to a maximum of three years.

After three years they must stand down for a year which means they’ll have to leave the country.

The addition of pay bands to the essential skills visa requirements means anyone earning less than $35.24/hour is deemed “lower skilled” and so is likely to fall into the annual renewal category.

Federated Farmers dairy industry group chairman and national spokesperson on immigration and labour Chris Lewis says the new rules relating to “lower-skilled” staff are a complete frustration to farmers and their migrant staff.

“Every year we’re going to see people have to reapply and then wait to hear.”

The rules were brought in by the National Government and Lewis is hoping that despite the pre-election bluster on immigration the new Labour Government will take a more pragmatic view when it comes to immigration rules and farm staff.

“Once cabinet ministers have been fully briefed we’ll be seeking to sit down with them and explain the situation for farming,” he says.

“I’m hopeful they’ll be pragmatic and they’re not going to want rules that are going to get in the way of (farming) businesses contributing to the economic success of New Zealand.

“The talk pre-election was more relevant for the effects immigration can have on things like Auckland housing whereas in rural New Zealand

that just doesn’t hold true.”

In fact, in rural NZ the complete reverse arguments could be made given that immigrant staff and their families contribute to rather than create any burden on the rural community, particularly when it comes to rural schools and small town services.

The South Island Contribution visa is a one-off chance to obtain a workto-residence visa and must be applied for before May 2018. It was introduced in May this year and has had strong interest.

It’s estimated about 1600 staff already living in the South Island could be eligible. Lewis says no such provision was granted for North Island staff and that’s something that will be discussed with the new minister too.

“We want a situation where, as long as farmers have followed good process, advertised and been genuine in their search for a New Zealander, they should be free to employ immigrant staff onfarm.”

Farmers were working behind the scenes to lift farming skills with such initiatives as Federated Farmers’ new apprenticeship.

“But we need to see the Government work alongside us on this and at the same time be pragmatic about ensuring we have the people we need to run our farms.

“Farmers have a raft of rules and regulations that have to work under now – health and safety, effluent – so we can’t afford to have just anyone turn up on a farm and work on it.

“They have to be able to follow farm policy, keep themselves safe and be ideally suited to farming otherwise we’re going to be in the headlines because the wrong people have been employed.”

10 Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

Delays in approval for seasonal migrant workers are leaving some rural contractors sweating when preparing for the busy season. Planning and preparation for the peak season – usually starting in summer, but as early as spring for some contractors – starts well in advance and contractors need to know early on that they have their staffing requirements filled.

Rural Contractors New Zealand president Steve Levet says registered contractors are bringing in about 600 skilled machinery operators with approval in principle from Immigration New Zealand.

Being approved in principle allows contractors to hire as many migrant workers with essential skills as they need, without repeating the labour market test.

Approval in principle makes the process easier for employer and employee.

Levet says it does work, but there have been some major delays in receiving approvals. One contractor lodged his application in January for the 2017-18 season, which was not approved until July.

Levet says contractors really need their labour sorted for the coming season well before then. Ideally, approval in principle numbers will be issued in February, so migrant workers can get the work visa process under way.

“We’re hoping we’ll get more clarity and more decisive decisions being made.”

Dealing with a bureaucratic organisation also has its challenges. Levet says the shifting of Immigration New Zealand’s head office from Wellington to Christchurch and regular personnel changes are among those challenges.

“You’re telling them the same story yearin, year-out and that gets frustrating.”

Rural contractors have had to get on board with health and safety requirements and Levet says most farmers they work for have now also embraced it.

His own Wellsford-based contracting business carries out random drug tests on employees in an effort to maintain a safe workplace.

Levet says the whole issue of drug testing is pretty straightforward, as long as it is spelt out clearly in the employment contract.

“There’s a lot at stake. You want your own peace of mind.”

2017 December 2017

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5 Tech influence trends upwards Lynda Gray Globally an estimated $4.6 billion in 2016 was invested in agri and food technology companies across a broad spectrum including e-commerce, robotics, biotechnology and drone technologies.

“There’s an upwards trend (in technology development) because people are increasingly interested in ways to produce more food but in more sustainable and efficient ways and they’re looking for solutions,” says Hadyn Craig, an Abacus Bio consultant with special interest in emerging technologies.

Traditionally, tech developments within the New Zealand agri sector have been “incremental” rather than “disruptive”, however this is starting to change.

“Technology such as variable-rate irrigation, robotic milking is still about doing the same thing but more efficiently, although walk-over weighing in the dairy industry is a good example of technology that’s led to a new way of doing things.”

Also, there is a big focus on generating data to improve decision making, and the best tech products and applications analyse and present the information in a user-friendly way. Hawkeye from Ravensdown is a tool just released to be able to upload, share and track soils and nutrient data across users and making analysis, accurate application and tracking and monitoring fertiliser usage easy and automated.

New technology will redefine and in many cases challenge traditional livestock, crop and farming production. Plant-based protein production systems are up and running using the latest technology and could prove to be disruptive in every sense.

“I think a lot of people are underestimating how it could change agriculture.”

At the same time improved technology is bringing muchneeded cost efficiency to vertical story and hydroponic plant growing systems.

Robotics was another potential cost-efficient technology which Hadyn saw in action at the recent AgriTech Investment Showcase

Smart tech

CRV Ambreed’s Milk Urea Nitrogen (MUN) breeding value is an excellent example of relevant technology because it is a smart and practical solution for reducing nitrogen excretion and leaching, Hadyn Craig says.

He also rates highly AgriTrack, a phone-based farm logistics system that let farmers monitor in real time harvest operations. Auto-steer or self-driving technology has been widely adopted and made a real difference in the cropping sector since release in 2003 by increasing precision and reducing driver stress, Precision agriculture specialist Dan Bloomer says. GPS and camera-based technology that allows farmers to more precisely line up implements for cultivation, cropping and harvest is another example of practical and value-adding technology.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Keeping it real Planning and management system FarmIQ is Landcorp’s key info tech tool.

Landcorp, a 15% investor in the PGPdeveloped system, has FarmIQ fully operational across its 125 farms. The next stage is to integrate and link in information from key providers.

Landcorp is working on core infrastructure, getting 10MB links at every farm for uninterrupted internet access, and improving the Samsung smartphone hardware platform to reliably run base technology.

Ford says Landcorp is always on the lookout for value adding, efficient and simply operated tech a recent example being Spikey, a tractor towed urine detection and treatment implement for dairy farmers.

Technology that improved on-farm efficiency would always be important but increasingly so were applications for traceability up the supply chain that would satisfy consumer demand for information about the provenance and production of the food they bought.

in London where a small prototype tractor automated for cultivations and sowing was showcased.

“It sounds out there but it had the same functionality as a normal tractor and was lighter, safer because it removed the risk of injury or harm to a driver, and is a solution to labour shortages.”

Developments in agri-biotechnology and genomics would continue and had the ability to be transformative.

“There are lots of animal and plant breeding technology developments that really have potential to create greater efficiency.”

His advice on whether or not to buy the latest gadget software or subscribe to the latest app boiled down to exactly how it will benefit your own farming system. The cost benefit is an obvious consideration, and in his opinion EID was an example of a technology that offered long term economic benefits due to better breeding and culling decisions based on stock performance data.

But there were other intangible, social and environmental benefits of a tech application were also important, especially as consumer perception and expectations around production systems were starting to have more influence.

Other clever techs: Computer skills learning: bit.ly/onlinecourses2017 Remote computer access TeamViewer (teamviewer.com/en) Remote ‘cloud’ storage access: Google Drive (dependent on

a Google account), Microsoft’s One Drive, Apple’s Icloud Mega (mega.nz), Dropbox (dropbox.com) • Talk, video and chat tools: Whats App (whatsapp.com) and

Viber (www.viber.com) • Environmental management tools: NIWA (niwa.co.nz).

• • •

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6 Boost ahead for R&D Science has underpinned the development of the agricultural sector over many decades, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods says.

As agriculture faces a range of significant challenges there also come opportunities.

“The Government has signalled its intention to move more rapidly on greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater goals, and for the agricultural sector to play its part in this. Science and innovation will continue to play a key role in supporting the adaptation needed to meet these challenges.”

The Government wants to raise economy-wide investment in research and development to 2% of GDP over the next 10 years.

“To achieve this and the Government’s other goals will require New Zealand research institutes to continue to conduct world-leading science and work in partnership with industry and communities.”

LowN Sires to breed greener cows CRV Ambreed’s genetic discovery anticipates it will reduce nitrogen leaching on NZ farms by 20% within 20 years.

CRV Ambreed’s LowN Sires were introduced in March 2017.The bulls will reduce the milk urea and milk urea nitrogen concentrations in their progeny.

Milk urea nitrogen concentration is directly related to urinary nitrogen output per day, cows sired by LowN Sires are expected to have reduced nitrogen excretion, reducing leaching into groundwater and waterways.

Reducing farming’s N footprint is a key focus for all farmers and a genetic solution is attractive because it can be implemented with minimal impact on farm management. Modelling, over a 20-year

26

period, shows N leaching is potentially reduced by 20% through breeding.

CRV Ambreed’s LowN Sires marketing manager, Katrina Evans, reports uptake of LowN has seen 190,000 inseminations from LowN Sires.

The release of LowN Sires has attracted international interest including a number of American breeding organisations that picked up on CRV Ambreed’s genetic breakthrough and appear set to include milk urea nitrogen in breeding objectives.

A NZ partnership of key research organisations is awaiting confirmation to research fundamental mechanisms causing some genetic lines to partition dietary nitrogen away from urine and into other outputs.

Managing director Angus Haslett says after six years of CRV Ambreed research it’s great to be able to provide farmers with an attractive genetic tool designed to combat nitrogen leaching. There is potential application of LowN Sires to beef and other species such as sheep.

Transition cow nutrition overhaul Four years of research funded by NZ dairy farmers, through their levy, and the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment, has rewritten the proverbial textbook for transition cow nutrition.

Century-old dogma claimed it is vital that cows are fed as much as they can eat in the weeks before calving, however, new work and an accumulating body of evidence globally in support, does not agree, principal scientist at DairyNZ John Roche says.

“The overwhelming evidence from our work was that provided cows had achieved condition score targets a month before calving, the cows’ immune system after calving was improved, thereby reducing

the risk of mastitis and metritis, and the risk of metabolic diseases, like milk fever and ketosis, were reduced when cows consumed approximately 10% less than their requirements during the two or three weeks before calving,”.

The programme also dismissed a recent fallacy that the speed of BCS gain in autumn is important. Some industry commentators have claimed cows that gain BCS quickly in the autumn, lose this condition quickly after calving as well.

“The evidence from our NZ research is that cows that gain BCS quickly in autumn while dry and achieve BCS targets at calving have a better metabolic health profile after calving than cows that gained BCS slowly through late lactation and the dry period.”

Ecotain Seed company Agricom has bred a specific plantain genotype Ecotain that reduces nitrogen leaching from the urine patch in four ways: it increases the volume of cows’ urine which dilutes the concentration of nitrogen, it reduces the total amount of nitrogen in animals’ urine, it delays the process of turning ammonium into nitrate in the urine patch, and it restricts the accumulation of nitrate in Ecotain-growing soil.

The environmental plantain was bred

by Agricom which is working alongside Lincoln, Massey University and Plant & Food Research. In one of the research programmes where Ecotain is used there was a reduction in nitrogen leaching by as much as 89% from the urine patch.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Nitrogen management with the power of 4.

Stacking up the benefits 1

Huge reduction in N leaching from the urine patch - up to 89% depending on sward blend*

2

Increases feed quality and/or supply during summer and autumn

3

Improves speed of sward recovery after summer dry

4

Improves cool season activity of pasture base

5

An ideal source of minerals for animal health and performance

B RO U G H T TO YO U BY:

*Lincoln University lysimeter studies (Woods, 2017)

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

AGC 1575

The future is in your hands

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7 Strong result for beef New Zealand beef exports

Thousand tonnes

60

40

20

0

Jan

Mar 5-­yr ave

May 2017

Mel Croad Farmgate beef prices have held well above average throughout 2017 after a relatively strong start to the season compared to previous years. This has been somewhat of a surprise as earlier expectations pointed to the beef market easing in response to higher global beef production.

These concerns regarding increasing United States beef production stifling any further pricing improvements were soon put to rest. New Zealand’s weather patterns played a significant role in dampening these concerns as autumn turned out to be one of the best on record. This led to beef supplies tightening across the country as farmers closed the gate to control autumn growth, something many hadn’t experienced for a number of years.

It also had an impact on the volume and timing of the autumn cow kill. NZ beef exports through March and April posted the lowest volumes for those months in more than five years as a direct result of fewer cattle being slaughtered.

Overseas markets rallied to secure product from NZ. North Island farmgate beef prices lifted on average by 55-65c/kg for manufacturing beef between January and April and 40-45c/kg for prime and local trade. Typically farmgate prices fall between 10-25c/kg through this period.

It was a similar situation in the South Island where prices lifted by 25-35c/kg. Supporting NZ’s cause 28

Jul

Sep 2016

Nov Source: B+LNZ

was much tighter Australian beef supplies – a result of the second year of herd rebuilding.

It wasn’t until well into June and July that NZ beef exports finally lifted, reflecting the late run of cull dairy cows. This was much later than previous years and slowed the usual farmgate pricing upside normally seen through these months. US imported beef prices also tapered off through late winter as concerns mounted again about the supply of beef in the US in the second half of 2017.

The late run of NZ beef exports into the US combined with a lift in Australian beef exports due to a dry winter had US importers on their toes. What many had failed to realise was that beef demand in the US and other key export markets had strengthened to a new level. Much of the increase in US beef production was absorbed either domestically or into export markets. This realisation led to imported prices firming in November as supplies from Australia and NZ tightened again.

US imported beef prices lifted to well above November 2016 levels, which supported a year on year 30-40c/kg lift in November farmgate prices.

While it is expected strong global economic conditions will support beef demand into the New Year, demand will need to continue to grow to offset even further lifts in global beef production in 2018 and prevent beef prices from sliding below historical levels.

DAIRY Rollercoaster ride Amy Castleton Falling milk production in the second half of 2016 triggered a recovery in dairy commodity prices through 2017. But dairy markets are always a rollercoaster ride and we now look to be heading back down again.

Fonterra’s initial forecast for the 2016-17 season was $4.25/kg of milksolids (MS). The final price paid ended up at $6.12/kg MS, reflecting a remarkably better season than anticipated.

European milk production fell through the second half of 2016 and first half of 2017. While some of this was driven by European Commission incentives to reduce production, it had the desired effect of lifting commodity prices and farmgate returns for European farmers. We are now seeing European production trend back up – and commodity prices come back down again.

Butter prices soared to record levels this year.

European butter reached a dizzy US$8000/tonne in September. Oceania butter and anhydrous milkfat also reached records, though not quite those attained in Europe. Milkfat prices have since come down but remain at historically elevated levels – and are expected to stay there for the foreseeable future.

Processors are reluctant to produce too much more milkfat as this also means producing more by-product skim milk powder (SMP) and adding to the mountain that remains. Europe is holding on to close to 400,000t of SMP under its intervention scheme, and there has been little indication of how the commission intends to get rid of it all. In NZ, we finished the 2016-17 season with production down just 0.6% on the previous season, as a very poor spring was tempered by an exceptional autumn. History is repeating itself this season, as a very wet spring resulted in poor production. But the market is paying little attention.

Whole milk powder (WMP) prices, which would normally trend with NZ production figures, have slipped below US$3000/t in November. Expectations are for WMP prices to remain fairly flat.

The falls in commodity prices mean Fonterra’s $6.75/kg MS forecast for 2017-18 will be very challenging to achieve. However a milk price above $6/kg MS is still looking likely, so turning a profit should still be achievable for most dairy farming operations.

Butter prices 8400

6400

4400

2400 Oct-16

Feb-17 GDT

Jun-17 EU Quotations

Oct-17 CME

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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8 From Manutuke to minister Bob Edlin “Primary industries” was Meka Whaitiri’s answer, when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern phoned at the end of Labour’s coalition negotiations with New Zealand First to ask what portfolios interested her.

“I’ve always said I want to be the first woman Minister of Primary Industries,” Whaitiri later told Dairy Exporter.

“And what’s wrong with that?” She laughs. “Have a dream.”

Mind you, the portfolio name has been changed to Agriculture and Whaitiri hastens to acknowledge the Government “obviously has got good people like Minister O’Connor… I’m very respectful of Damien’s knowledge in this area”.

She works well with him and is proud to be his associate minister, she says.

“We would like to make some significant progress in the portfolio.

“It’s early days. Obviously the 100day plan is a priority for the coalition Government but that doesn’t stop me and Minister O’Connor in determining what our long-term strategy is going to be for the sector.”

Whaitiri’s primary-sector experience has not been on the farm.

“We’re not farmers but we work in the farming sector – shearing sheds, freezing works, horticulture, all of that.”

She knows how to shear and she has been a rousey.

More recently, she initiated a restructuring of Ngati Kahungunu iwi’s

asset investment company, a body charged with managing a $36 million fisheries claim settlement. This led to the incorporation’s purchase of Tautane, one of the North Island’s biggest sheep and cattle stations near Herbertville.

Whaitiri outlines her ministerial objective in broad terms: “Well, clearly we want clean rivers and we clearly want a progressive dairy primary agriculture sector.

“We want – or I want – long-term planning so we are clear on how the decisions we make now are going to enhance the sector going forward, whether it’s the quality of our produce, whether it’s our work force capability, whether its opening new and exciting markets.”

More specifically, she emphasises the need to ensure land stays in the hands of New Zealanders.

“I’m a big believer in keeping our resources in the hands of Kiwis.”

Being Maori reinforces her support of the coalition agreement’s plans to further restrict foreigners from buying NZ farm lands.

“We’ve lost 95% of what we originally had. We are talking now of about 5% in Maori freehold title.

“Treaty settlements have enabled lots of iwi to go back to purchasing land and that’s good for New Zealand because we know once the land goes back into iwi ownership it’s not going to get sold.

“So I think there’s a nice alignment there with what we’re trying to do, and

not just [Maori] being the land owners but being the developers of the land and the drivers and I’m encouraging them to do that.”

The threat from synthetic protein, an issue highlighted by O’Connor (see p20), is among her considerations too.

“We’ve just got to be ahead of the game,” Whaitiri agrees.

In Opposition, she railed against the Ruataniwha dam project (it “simply doesn’t make economic sense”) and claimed the National-led Government was committed to “minimal standards” of water quality and the environment, not “minimum standards”.

As Associate Minister of Agriculture, what are her biggest concerns about the environment and dairying?

Her reply is measured: “I think the public do need to have a better understanding of the contribution dairy makes to the economy.”

Some farmers perhaps won’t be performing as well as they should be “but the public need to know there are some very progressive dairy farmers out there who are doing some wonderful things”.

She believes dairy and urban people both want clean rivers.

She goes to the Ballance farm awards in her electorate and is “amazed at what some of our farmers are doing, particularly the dairy industry”.

She wants best practice to be celebrated.

“A lot of education probably needs to happen for the urban people to understand what dairy farmers are doing,” she says. Her parents had emphasised the importance of education.

Her father became a high school teacher of Maori language after 26 years as a meat inspector.

She studied for a BA degree in education at Victoria University after returning

Meka Whaitiri •

Born in Manutuke, near Gisborne, in 1965 and raised in the Hastings suburb of Whakatu.

• Head girl at Karamu High School.

• Worked in shearing gangs on the East Coast and at Whakatu Freezing Works.

• National representative for netball and softball.

• Master’s degree in education from Victoria University of Wellington.

• Joined the Department of Labour in Wellington 1986 and became a deputy decretary.

• Negotiator for Rongowhakaata’s Treaty of Waitangi settlement.

• Senior adviser for Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia 2007-2009.

• Chief executive officer of Ngati Kahungunu Iwi 2009-2011 • MP for Ikaroa-Rawhiti 2011.

• Minister of Customs; Associate Minister of Agriculture, Crown/Maori Relations

and Local Government 2017.

30

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

from a year as an exchange student in the United States although she never wanted to teach.

During varsity vacations she would get jobs in the fruit and vegetable fields around Hastings, delivering mail or at the Whakatu freezing works where her father, uncles and aunties worked. She worked in the casings department – it was “very, very smelly.” But it paid good money.

In the last year of her BA studies she got a holiday job at the Department of Labour, where Parekura Horomia – later Minister of Maori Affairs – was her boss.

It became a 16-year job where she cut her teeth in the public service.

At Horomia’s urging, she went back to university to complete a masters degree.

He sponsored her while she worked fulltime at the department, attended classes and wrote a 30,000-word thesis.

She became a deputy secretary, often briefing and advising ministers on labour market immigration and occupational safety and health issues (“so I was very familiar with how government worked”).

She had no ambition to be a politician, she insists, and rebuffed Horomia’s requests for her to work in his office when he became Minister of Maori Affairs in 2000. After a restructuring at the department in 2006, however, she accepted a fresh offer to join his staff, became his ministerial office manager and helped set him up in his new office after Labour’s election defeat in 2008. She was encouraged by Ngati Kahungunu to apply to become chief executive of their incorporation that time. She had spent many years in Wellington; this would enable her to go back home with all the experience she had accumulated of how government works. She got the job and the incorporation’s purchase of Tautane was among the subsequent highlights.

“I’m very pleased that a parting gift to the iwi was to restructure and now we

are into farming and all sorts of things.”

She became MP for Ikaroa-Rawhiti after Horomia’s death, aware from her experience in his ministerial office of the huge demands made of him, the personal sacrifices he had made and the great respect for him in the electorate. “It came with huge expectations, and I knew if I put my name in the hat I was looking to at least 10 years of my life in this role”.

She spoke with her family, other people pressed her to run, “and so here I am”.

But she told herself she would do the job for only 10 years “which puts the pressure on me to work really hard”.

She had done four of those years when she became Associate Minister of Agriculture. So what will she do if O’Connor retires with – let’s say – six months to go before her 10 years are up and she is told his job is hers for the asking? Another laugh.

“I would honestly have to really, really cross that bridge when I come to it.”

For now, she intends focusing on being the associate minister for the next three years and on building relationships.

“In any portfolio it’s important that you build relationships with key stakeholders and say, ‘this isn’t about me’ and doing this in isolation…it’s about us and how do we make this portfolio hum?”

There’s one more laugh.

“I often say to Mr O’Connor ‘you better get your skates on, mate, because you’re going to have somebody chomping at the side’.”

Whatever he assigns her to do, she aims to use it as an opportunity to lift the sector.

“So just give me whatever you want and just watch me.

“That’s all I can say in terms of supporting his vision as minister, but I want to add my shoulder to the wheel of progressive change.”

8 Regaining trust Anne Hardie Earning the public’s trust again is a key goal for Federated Farmers president, Katie Milne, and she is seizing every opportunity to remind them farming is about producing food.

The West Coast dairy farmer has been a farming advocate since her early 20s when she realised she had to stand up and tell her farming side of the story to politicians and regulators making the rules.

These days she rarely has time to milk the cows on the 200-cow farm near Lake Brunner she shares with partner, Ian Whitmore, and instead advocates for the wider agriculture industry on issues such as the urban-rural disconnect, the Emissions Trading Scheme and genetically-modified organisms. All are big nuggety issues she says someone has to tackle, while farmers get on with the job of producing food.

More than ever, Katie says a farming entity such as Federated Farmers is needed to speak up for the industry and it needs sufficient resources to get the best out of the new Government and a new way of communicating with people to get positive messages to the public.

It’s been quite a journey for the farm girl who started working life in a freezing works and was at one stage the only woman in the slaughter room, to a job that takes her to the capital every week to rub shoulders with government officials. Her commitment to the dairy industry in particular has earned her the Dairy Woman of the Year award, before being the first woman elected Federated Farmers president in its 118-year history. A woman at the top of the political farming ladder is a novelty in mainstream media and she says that has given her a valuable platform to get positive farming messages to an urban audience.

Jason got his bridge installed, in just six days..

See Continued influence, p18

Jason Colebourn, Farm Manager

At Humes we don’t just make great bridges, we can also get your bridge installed without any hassles. We can help you sort out your resource consent, engineers and contractors so your bridge is ready when you need it. Too easy.

When you need a bridge, talk to Humes. Give us a call on 0800 4 BRIDGES (0800 427 434) or visit www.humes.co.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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9

Sam Whitelock, Farmstrong ambassador.

Opening up to wellness Jackie Harrigan While the pressures of farming may not have let up on farmers, they are proving better at finding and adopting strategies to combat mental health stresses and conditions.

A survey from the past year by Farmstrong, (founded by FMG and the Mental Health Foundation with funding support from the Movember Foundation and strategic partner ACC) found farmers have increased ability to cope with the ups and downs of farming life and are getting better at sharing and opening up about issues they face.

Gerard Vaughan, spokesman for the Farmstrong initiative says he has noticed a lot more openness in talking about mental health challenges.

“I spend a lot of time hanging out and having conversations in rural settings and I have noticed that mental health and wellness are much more on people’s radar.”

The increased use of the Farmstrong website shows through in the digital stats and Vaughan says other factors have helped – Good Yarn workshops, Doug Avery’s talks and book on resilience, the Healthy Thinking Workshops and other collaborations across the sector.

All Black Sam Whitelock has been an ambassador for the initiative for the past year and Vaughan says he has attracted a crowd wherever he has been.

“Everyone loves a celebrity and a

sporting one, but Sam is very relatable – he is very humble and loves chatting to people and having a cup of tea – and farming is a huge part of his world – one he has always said he will come back to.”

The added benefit is having someone who can draw parallels between operating as a sportsperson and a busy farming business person – the stresses, expectations and reliance of others, Vaughan says.

“Sam is sharing practical strategies, tips and knowledge of how important management of mental wellbeing and performance is in that circumstance – over 300,000 people have watched Farmstrong video clips of his and others’ messages.

“The mental side of performance is the winning edge – that top two inches of the brain which is involved in managing loss, disappointment, visualising how things should go – it is totally similar to managing healthy emotions and has been translated into the Healthy Thinking workshops.”

With ACC onboard as a strategic partner for three years along with FMG, Vaughan says plans are afoot to share the behaviour changes of early-adopter farmers so the momentum builds around changing the culture of the sector.

“Bedding-in thinking strategies and personal WOF checks for mind and body will come from farmer-to-farmer persuasion and storytelling.”

Farmstrong plans to build on their platforms and include interactive skillbased learning while continuing to create

Farmstrong • 121,908 visitors over two years • 16% repeat visitors • 1000 new visitors each week • 8574 spend more than five minutes reading • 8335 Facebook followers • 1673 Twitter followers • 296,200 video views

Support Agencies 1737 Need to Talk: Text or call 1737 for someone to talk to Other support agencies: farmstrong.co.nz/contact-support Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 Lifeline: 0800 543 354 Rural Support Trust: 0800 787 254 Youthline: 0800 376 633 opportunities for community events and to extend the reach of the audience to farming partners and families.

Big C gives shake-up Terry Brosnahan

Every day is now a good day for Terry Brosnahan.

32

Health-wise, 2017 was a crap year for me. Early in April I was struck by a thunderclap headache which felt like someone had hit me with a fence batten. A scan showed bleeding from a cancerous tumour on my brain behind the left ear. It was secondary and a body scan showed the real culprit, cancer in the right kidney.

I have regular health check-ups but there were no obvious signs like back pain or blood in the urine. Thankfully we still have a neurosurgical unit in Dunedin and the brain tumour was quickly removed in the public hospital.

The kidney was taken out at Mercy, the private hospital.

With the public health system (my wife Eleanor and I) learned quickly you only listen to the consultants and surgeons. Early

on, when I was still bewildered with what was happening to me, a junior doctor sat on my bed and told me the outlook was not good.

Statistically he was right as the cancer had travelled in the blood and there was a 30% chance of living past five years. However, the consultants later said the stats include a large portion of elderly people and renal cancer outcomes are very much case-bycase. Good health and a positive attitude help.

We also learned one needs

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

You’re not alone

FOR LEARNING THAT’S

Glenys Christian Julie Jonker is a master of disguise – disguising mental health messages for farmers by incorporating them into events which draw communities together so they know they are not alone.

Northland’s Rural Support Trust coordinator has been in the job for the last seven years during which time the role has changed considerably. The groups were set up around the country to handle the Government funding made available when there was a rural adverse climatic event.

“But it became clear there was a bigger need if people felt overwhelmed,” she says.

Northland and Southland were the last two of 14 Rural Support Trusts set up around the country, which all handle the help they supply to local farmers in different ways. In the north a series of collaboration dinners have been held over the last two years, attracting more than 500 people to take some time off-farm.

A series of lunchtime meetings where St John Ambulance members updated farmers on resuscitation techniques was also held recently. And back in October the Umawera Farm Clearance Auction raised more than $1000 to repaint the local hall from donated goods contributed by local farmers.

“The dinners will have their time again,” Julie says.

“People can get tired of the message that they need to look after their mental wellness, so you need to disguise it.

Farming can be very isolating.”

Men will often deal with stress by going out on the farm and working harder.

“But women will want to talk about it and get a solution and that can cause a lot of disharmony.”

It’s important for friends to know when and where to have the courageous

champions in the health system otherwise you are in danger of falling through the cracks. Make sure you have a good, proactive GP. Use any medical friends or contacts for advice and what questions to ask the consultants. Take extra support people to medical meetings.

A couple is too involved and someone less-involved hears clearly what the surgeon or consultant is saying.

I have moaned for 16 years about paying private insurance premiums but it has been worth every cent being able to jump waiting lists for surgery, scans and consultations. Be proactive with scans and treatment. Don’t rely on them

conversations which may be required as a result.

“But people don’t know how to make that approach or what they can say to someone who is obviously struggling,” she says.

The first step is often to see their local GP to be referred to the best agency to help. Or they can phone 0800 RURAL HELP. “They will get a person and from there we can work out what help they need.”

While the need for financial advice seen in dairying over the last few years has now lessened Julie says that’s been replaced by an increase in employment issues, made worse by the recent wet spring. Trust facilitators are well able to help out by suggesting different avenues to pursue then guiding both parties to the best option available.

Julie, who with husband Brent Erceg, now runs a 70-hectare beef grazing unit at Waipu after selling their 250-cow dairy farm at Mata, spends around 20 hours a week on trust work not including regular courses she attends and travel.

“But I find it very rewarding,” she says.

“It’s great when you find that solution for someone.”

Tailored TO

YOU

Overwhelming stress A study into rural suicides in New Zealand has shown little relationship with major financial events such as the dairy price downturn over the last two seasons.

But suicides in the dairy industry made up one-third of all farm suicides from 2007 to 2015. And overall young male farm labourers accounted for almost twice as many cases compared with farm owners or managers. ➥ p34 remembering or you may slip through the gaps. There seemed to be a lack of communication between the neurology and urology teams treating me so I went privately to an oncologist. He was able to keep a watching brief and ensure I got the right scans and treatments early.

Finally, surround yourself with positive people. In hospital you only want positive people visiting.

My cancer is more than likely to come back, but depending on how much and where, there is a range of treatment options available to nail it.

Now, every day is a good day and nothing is a problem.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Strengthen your Business Educate your Board Develop your Directors Understand your Financials www.businesstorque.co.nz

33

5 Ways the way to go The Northland Rural Support Trust has been helping with the Five Ways to Wellness events at local Farm Source stores in recent weeks. Here Federated Farmers and trust representatives talk to farmers coming in and ask them to complete a survey on issues which might be concerning them to go in the draw for a $50 gift voucher.

The idea is to pick up on any worries farmers might not be aware of as well just have a chat with a range of farmers.

The initiative by the Rural Health Alliance (RHANZ) federation and trust was trialled at Fieldays this year and gives farmers five simple tools to maintain wellbeing.

Connect: Stay involved in your community.

Give: This can be as simple as offering to help out by feeding the neighbour’s dogs while they are away.

Be active: A lot of farmers don’t notice that for a variety of reasons they’re not getting the exercise they used to.

Take notice: Stop sometimes to look at the small things such as the view when you’re getting the cows in.

Learn something new: This can be carried out off-farm, such as studying a new language, or onfarm, by attending discussion groups.

• Great suggestions and strategies are on the Farmstrong website: farmstrong.co.nz

Dr Annette Beautrais, from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Canterbury, carried out the study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

With the drop in dairy prices affecting farmers’ incomes in recent seasons as well as severe floods and droughts in some regions there was extensive political, policy and public concern about there being a higher suicide rate, she says. So she studied coroners’ records to look at risk factors in a consecutive group of 185 people in farm and agriculture-related jobs who died by suicide and for whom coronial inquiries had been completed.

Unemployed and retired farmers were included because they were still affected by farm-related stressors.

Data from the Office of the Chief Coroner showed there were 17 farmer suicides recorded in provisional figures to June 30, 2016, compared with 26 in the whole previous year, and 20 in the year before that. In both the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 years 29 such suicides were recorded.

Suicides were overwhelmingly male at 169 out of the 185 cases studied with the mean age 42. Risk factors were similar to those in the general population, but almost 40% of farm suicides involved firearms, compared with 8% in the general population over the same time.

10

2017

10 Outbreak highlights hoRrors Anne Lee The horror effects of biosecurity breaches were highlighted in 2017 with the appearance of Mycoplasma Bovis in South Canterbury.

More than 5000 cattle will be slaughtered as a result of the disease, with 1000 of those added to the cull list in November.

As whole herds were trucked off to the meat works, it’s been a grim wakeup call to just how vulnerable the agricultural sector and indeed the whole country is to biosecurity threats.

It’s timely then that livestock sectors including DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb and the deer industry are seeking a mandate from farmers they represent so they can sign up 34

Financial stresses made little contribution to farm suicides, with many involving young men often with fragile or failing relationships. They’d often had no contact with health services before their deaths, suggesting rural suicide prevention efforts needed to be part of community, farming and sports organisations, as well as health and social service providers. Programmes in agricultural colleges and polytechs which strengthened personal coping could be useful with support and advice also able to be offered via Internet programmes and Facebook groups.

A second risk group was farmers with a severe or terminal physical illness or older, often retired farmers, with physical illnesses, who were often known to primary care providers and mental health services.

Mental illness was the most common single major contributing factor to farm suicide, with Beautrais saying depression, anxiety and substance abuse were often present in people showing other risk factors.

“Improving rural mental health services, including crisis management, would seem sensible,” she says.

“Suicide prevention programmes to benefit farmers and rural areas need to be implemented as part of broader rural health, and mental health, strategies.”

to the Government Industry Agreement (GIA) Deed for biosecurity.

Signing up to the GIA will not only give farmers representation in deciding how responses to incursions are carried out, it will also give them a greater voice when it comes to their expectations for stopping incursions at the border in the first place.

DairyNZ general manager policy and advocacy Carol Barnao says by DairyNZ signing up to GIA on behalf of dairy farmers the sector will get a seat at the table and be involved in identifying and prioritising biosecurity threats.

As well as having a say in readiness activities it will also be directly involved in drawing up specific response plans to particular threats should an incursion eventuate.

MPI’s Carol Barnao.

Representatives would be part of the groups overseeing that response, ensuring the pre-agreed plans are implemented in a timely and effective way.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) can seek input but the sector’s involvement is limited.

Being at the table, though, comes at a cost and part of the proposal is to allow a

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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new levy to be collected to help fund response activities.

That’s over and above the industry levy already collected and would only be collected if an incursion occurred. The cost of carrying out the readiness activities will come out of the commodity levy.

Barnao says a lot of work has already been done to determine just how much dairy farmers could be asked to contribute and an annual fiscal cap of $4.95 million in any 12-month period is being proposed.

The maximum levy rate would be 0.27c/kg milksolids (MS).

The fiscal cap has been worked out on a worst case scenario example of a foot and mouth disease outbreak.

The costs of the response will be shared between the Crown and the industry sectors with the Government footing most of the bill in most circumstances.

The more serious the pest or disease is to the wider economy the greater the Government’s share will be.

For an outbreak of similar national socioeconomic significance to foot and mouth disease the Government will pay the entire response cost of a large outbreak but 90% of a medium outbreak and 80% if it’s small-scale.

Industries affected will front up with the rest.

If the pest or disease is deemed to cause production losses that wouldn’t significantly affect the national economy the Government would fund 70% in a large outbreak, 60% if it was a medium scale event and meet half the response costs if it was small scale.

Again though the fiscal cap would apply.

Barnao says changes to the Biosecurity Act and signals from MPI have made it clear the ministry will seek cost recovery regardless of whether an industry is a signatory to GIA or not. By being a signatory, though, the industry gets to have a say as to the response and will be better-placed to understand potential costs.

Federated Farmers vice president Andrew Hoggard says farmers will also expect that if they’re contributing to activities post border, then it’s reasonable for them to expect better security before and at the border.

He fully supports signing up to the GIA and says any farmers opposed to paying a new levy should think pragmatically.

The cost of not dealing with an incursion properly could far outweigh the levy contribution cost shared across the whole sector. GIA made way for each biosecurity threat operational agreement to include how compensation would be handled – something Hoggard believes is critical to promoting good behaviours and early identification of pest incursions.

If farmers knew they would be fairly compensated for livestock losses the risk of someone disposing of an animal themselves and hoping to control any spread was minimised.

“They need to know if they do the right thing everyone else in the sector has their back.”

36

Good housekeeping: vet Chris Norton cleans his ute as a part of personal biosecurity.

Biosecurity awareness onfarm When veterinarian Chris Norton came home from working in Cumbria during the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 he was so paranoid about inadvertently bringing the disease in that he immersed himself in a bath of Vircon.

“It’s not something I’d recommend. I’d done everything else by the book but I was still having nightmares before I came home.

I’d thrown any last clothes I’d even worn at the office into a bin at Heathrow,” he says.

Norton was one of the longestserving New Zealand vets in the United Kingdom outbreak and his experience managing responses onfarm has stuck with him.

One of the risks farmers don’t pay enough attention to is that of foreign staff returning to work after visiting their homeland, he says.

DairyNZ has a recommended stand-down period of eight days or five days if they’ve had no contact with animals. But how many staff get off the plane and are back at work within a day or two?

At the very least they need to stay away from animals and definitely stay out of the farm dairy.

Farmers need to make sure staff understand the biosecurity risks of footwear or even clothing if they’ve been around animals.

The Mycoplasma bovis outbreak had heightened awareness around biosecurity protocols and good practice – something all farmers should be taking the opportunity to review with their farm teams, Norton says.

The importance of NAIT and accurate recording of stock movements couldn’t be over emphasised, he says.

In the wake of a biosecurity breach it’s vital to know exactly what animals have

moved, where and when, if there’s going to be any chance of containing it.

In NZ and particularly the South Island there’s a lot of stock movement with cows wintering off-farm, sometimes with groups of cows from other farms, young stock rearing off-farm and bulls coming on to farms at this time of the year.

Domestic biosecurity was often underplayed too.

Diseases such as BVD could be better kept in check if farmers were disciplined about sighting documentation on BVD testing results.

Pink eye, Salmonella brandenberg and even Staphylococcus Aureus infections could all be brought into a herd very easily but were also diseases that could be protected against and prevented through good protocols with animal health, testing and movement controls.

Getting all the paper work and testing animals before being brought on to the farm was just good practice.

Farmers could be lured into turning a blind eye to it because of a perceived hassle or to get a bargain but they could end up paying a much bigger price if they brought in a disease or pest problem.

“It’s not a matter of being really paranoid about these things but if you can turn left instead of right, make a simple decision and do the right thing you can still end up in the same place without the risk of a disease that could potentially hit your productivity really hard.”

Stock are destroyed during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Protecting your farm Biosecurity is about reducing the risk of diseases, weeds or pests entering, spreading, or leaving your farm.

Protecting profits

Protecting health

Disease outbreaks, new pasture pests and weeds can

Some diseases can be passed from animals to humans.

have serious long-term financial impacts.

Biosecurity planning helps protect the health of your stock, family, farm team, and visitors.

Use this checklist to identify ways you can help protect your farm

Checklist Disease status of new stock is considered carefully before animals are bought or moved Visitors arrive with clean equipment, clothing and footwear and disinfect upon arrival Boundary fences are secure and prevent nose-to-nose contact with neighbouring stock

Young calves are given special protection

Potential weeds and pasture pests are identified and prevented

Animal pests are controlled

Biosecurity signs are clearly visible and easy to follow

For more info dairynz.co.nz/biosecurity Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

37

SYSTEMS │ CROPS

Submerged crops put strain on system The big wet hit Brad Cockrell hard when flooding wiped out much of his fodder crops. Glenys Christian reports.

Brad Cockrell with the view over his farm showing pastures back to how they should be looking.

Glenys Christian

S

ummer crops are a key part of Brad Cockrell’s farming system and there’s been plenty of change over the last few years with a move from buying in maize silage to growing fodder beet for late lactation.

But two severe wet weather events early in the year threw a real spanner in the works. In the first, in March, 300 millimetres of rain fell on his Mangatawhiri farm, south of Auckland in just one week. While he usually relies on rain to come at this time this event delivered quarter of the yearly average rainfall and the result was completely submerged paddocks.

“Our peat country grows exceptionally good chicory,” he says.

“But in the low-lying paddocks it just disintegrated. There was just too much water to handle and the chicory took a big hit.”

It’s part of a regular pasture renovation programme which see about 13% of the 330-hectare milking platform planted in chicory every year. It is planted from September 20 to October 15 which works best on this property.

“We really fight weeds but we’ve found by spraying Weedmaster 540 from Nufarm they’re suppressed enough for the chicory to get to the four-leaf stage,” he says.

38

The main problems are water pepper, black nightshade and Canadian fleabane.

The chicory easily drills its tap root down to hit the abundant water source so grows extremely well on the farm’s peat flats.

“It’s not like palm kernel where you can feed them seven kilograms and they’re still hungry,” he says.

“With chicory after that much they’ve got full rumens so the cows are happy and contented. It ticks all the boxes for us.”

‘We grow a lot of grass and we grow a lot of weeds and you’ve got to be on point with weed control.’

They hope to get five grazings off their paddocks so in late March this year it had really done its job in feeding the cows. But the 6ha of fodder beet they’d sown was about to come into its own, and that was also submerged.

“We use fodder beet as a buffer, like a silage stack,” Brad says.

Usually it would be fed through April and all of May to get the cows through to drying off at the end of that month.

Palm kernel was fed out in trailers in the paddocks as there’s no feedpad to compensate for the wiped out beet crop.

“Because of the flood we entered winter with 1800 kilograms of drymatter (DM), and used a lot of palm kernel which saved our bacon,” Brad says.

He used to be a carpenter and came to 320ha Mooka Farms with wife Ellie back in 2008 as a development project he undertook with his parents, Charlie and Sue. The farm had been used to grow maize but there were still a few stumps that needed to be ground down.

“This is an ongoing process developing our peat,” he said.

“We have found the same paddocks need recultivating with the stumps ground every six years.”

A new water reticulation system had to be put in, fences overhauled and the 50bail dairy reclad and new plant installed.

In 2012 they bought a neighbouring 53ha block giving access to 11ha of hillier country so it could be added to the milking platform. Milk production was 398,000kg milksolids (MS) in the 2014-15 season then 436,000kg MS in 2015-16.

Three staff are employed, who live on farm, as well as one swing man, who can be moved to different tasks around the farm as required.

“We spend a lot of time making sure summer feed is right,” Brad says.

“The benefits are huge.”

Fodder beet has been grown for the last

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

three years, with him now preferring it to maize silage.

“The cows can graze it in situ and if you do it right you can get it down the cows’ throats for 8-10 cents a kilogram DM. It’s great in extended dry periods instead of scrambling to find any spare maize silage,” he says.

“And I generally don’t like scrambling because it costs a lot of money and is stressful.”

Previously 40ha of maize was grown for grain.

“We don’t want to bite off too many areas and that wasn’t one of our primary areas but now we prefer to buy the maize in and grow better grass for our replacements,” he says.

Vegetable waste, mainly a mix of potatoes and carrots, was used on the farm so the herd has no difficulty taking to fodder beet.

“We always fill the cows up on grass first.”

Brad stopped using vegetable waste three years ago mainly because it was available at the time of year when the farm grew a lot of grass, during October, November and December.

While he had believed the paddocks where the fodder beet was grown were high enough not to flood, this year he’s made doubly sure of paddock selection, choosing areas on higher ground.

Brad says he wouldn’t take a good pasture-producing paddock out of grass to put in fodder beet, but fortunately that type of decision hadn’t been required.

“We’ve also learned to get the soil pH right.”

As well as getting the phosphate required applied eight tonnes of lime will go on chicory paddocks and three tonnes on different blocks of pasture as required.

Weed control has been an issue with the fodder beet.

“What happens south of Taupo is not what happens here with fodder beet,” he says.

“We grow a lot of grass and we grow a lot of weeds and you’ve got to be on point with weed control.”

The solution has been to buy a boom sprayer and have the spray mix ready in the evening to get out on the fodder beet paddocks at 6am. About $65,000 was spent on new grass seed, mostly One50, to regrass areas which had to be undersown after the March rain. But then in mid-April on Good Friday there was another heavy rain event, ruining all that remedial work.

This time a pump on the property, owned and maintained by Waikato Regional Council, jammed and blew up when a sandbag slipped into its workings.

It can pump 280,000 litres a minute, equivalent to more than 11 household water tanks away from low-lying areas on the farm so the two weeks it took to replace

This is what the Cockrell farm looked like days after the March flooding with the black areas showing dead grass.

A much-needed stopgap Although Brad Cockrell’s herd’s fat evaluation index (FEI) levels have been straight A’s he believes strongly that further discussion is needed between Fonterra and its farmers about using the supplement after an adverse event.

“I don’t want a system built around palm kernel,” he says.

“We use it as a backstop to grain when the payout doesn’t support its use. But in a flood or another catastrophe I think you should be able to use it.”

Fonterra, which will introduce demerits for high FEI levels from September 1 next year, has said it would look at relaxing these penalties in adverse weather events, but no details have yet been spelled out to farmers.

While Brad usually feeds from 700 to 1000 kilograms per cow of palm kernel and kibbled maize through the in-dairy feeding system, that’s been dropped back to around half that amount due to lower payouts in the last few years. At the moment it’s blended with tapioca pellet.

But after the two floods earlier in the year it was invaluable as a stopgap, with the use of the supplement in trailers to feed cows in the paddock.

“You can’t have a system built around feeding three to five kilograms of palm kernel a day, but it’s a handy thing to have around when you lose half of your pasture,” he says.

“You can feed your cows and it’s cheap. It’s got a lot of guys out of trouble. ”When you need it you need it.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

39

it with two other pumps put together was an anxious time. Replacement pumps mounted on the back of tractors were brought in by the council which he said is good to work with.

“That pump is as precious to me as pivot irrigators for Canterbury farmers,” Brad says.

The incident has shown him the importance of having spare parts readily available and in the country, as at one stage it was thought a replacement 1.2 tonne hydraulic motor might have to be shipped from the United States, taking six weeks to arrive.

With paddocks unable to be grazed for a second time they struggled to feed their cows, resorting to palm kernel in trailers in drier paddocks. The result was a hefty drop in milk production from the targeted 420,000kg MS to just 376,000kg MS for the season.

“We were on track to hit our targets on top of two poor payout years.

“But you can’t take the end of summer for granted. We took a big hit with a $250,000 loss in income.”

He estimates more than 50% of pasture died as is clearly seen in a GoogleEarth screenshot of the farm a couple of weeks after the flooding.

“There was about 160ha affected but that was rarely 100% of the pasture in one paddock.”

Brad admits the flooding took a huge emotional toll and managing resown pastures where half of it may be made up of seedlings but the rest of the paddock is 3000kg DM/ha was a real juggling act.

“I was hoping for a dry winter to nurse the paddocks along and then a dry spring, but both were wet,” he says.

Brad Cockrell and his father Charlie.

Poa rapidly established itself after the flooding, outcompeting the newly sown ryegrass and putting even more pressure on it. Due to its low metabolisable energy levels the herd’s milkflows didn’t peak as high as they usually did.

“Fast forward six months, now the Poa has gone to seed and is dying.

“After a round of topping we could see the lines of ryegrass there underneath so while the Poa has been a hindrance that was a nice surprise.”

He’s scaled back to 900 cows this season with around 33% coming in as replacements as the result of a partial change to winter milk production in the 2015-16 season.

“We dabbled in it and I didn’t really enjoy it.”

About 200 cows were milked through

the winter but he soon realised the farm didn’t have the right infrastructure.

Even with a new three-million litre above-ground Kliptank effluent tank being installed in 2014, allowing effluent to be sprayed by travelling irrigator on to 110ha, that would have needed to have been further upgraded. Fortunately there were plenty of other farmers wanting winter milk contracts when he decided to go back to solely spring calving.

“I’m happy with the farm now.

“Through autumn, winter and spring I was surviving but in the last four weeks I’ve felt we’re in production mode.

“It builds your resilience but you start to question everything and wonder if your stocking rate is right.

“Seven months is a long time in farming when you’re under pressure.”

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SYSTEMS │ PRODUCTION

LIC general manager NZ The number of New Zealand Markets, Malcolm Ellis, says dairy herds was slashed by 170 the stats reflect a shift in the in 2016/17, along with the industry. national herd size declining for “Farmers are acknowledging the second year in a row. It’s the that, as an industry, if they are first time cows numbers have not going to be milking more declined two years in a row, with cows then they need to be the last dip in 2005/06. milking better ones,” Ellis says.

The national dairy herd has Matt Newman.

Changes in dairy breeds dipped from 4.99 million to continue, with Holstein4.86m cows. This could be an Friesian/Jersey cross-breeds now indication of environmental pressures and comprising 48% of cows (up from 40% that the industry has broken its growth in 2010-11). Holstein-Friesians make up trend, DairyNZ senior economist Matt 33.5% of the national herd and Jerseys Newman says.

9.3%.

But despite the decline in cow numbers, The number of cows mated by artificial dairy companies processed very similar insemination (AI) increased to 72.7%, milk quantities – 20.7 billion litres of milk up slightly on the previous season. The containing 1.85b kg milksolids (MS) in number of yearling heifers mated to AI 2016-17. The previous season was 20.9b also increased. litres of milk (1.86b kg MS).

The average six-week in-calf rate Over the 12 months to June 2017, the decreased 0.9 percentage points to 65.6% average dairy cow produced more milk in 2016-17 (from 66.5% in 2015-16). containing more MS than ever.

Farm ownership structures have also The average dairy cow produced 4259 changed, with 27.3% of dairy herds litres in the 2016-17 season, containing a operating under a sharemilking agreement total of 381kg MS, compared to 4185 litres in 2016-17, compared with 32.4% in 2014and 372kg MS in 2015-16.

15.

Newman says the trend for increasing Within the sharemilker herds, variable per-cow production shows farmers are order sharemilking (VOSM) herd numbers opting for animals that are year-on-year declined in 2016-17. In particular, 20-29% more efficient at converting grass into of sharemilkers decreased by 235 herds milk.

(-29%) to 586. In 2013-14, there were twice “We are producing similar milk as many VOSM herds compared to today quantities from fewer cows, partly because (1357). we are breeding better animals and feeding Herd-owning sharemilkers (50:50 them well,” Newman says. sharemilkers) declined (-91 herds) for “The average herd is now 414 cows, the fourth consecutive season and now down from 419 in 2015-16. Currently we account for 19.8% of all herds. are at the lowest level of cows milked since Owner-operator herds increased 188 to 2012 – with North Island cow numbers 8503 herds in 2016-17, reflecting VOSMs declining 90,000 to 2.89 million, while moving to contract milking after financial South Island numbers decreased 46,000 to challenges with low milk prices.

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5.0 4.5 4.0

2016-­‐17

2015-­‐16

2014-­‐15

2013-­‐14

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2011-­‐12

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SYSTEMS │ ENDOPHYTES

Lamb endophyte testing at Lincoln University’s Ashley Dene farm.

It’s a long way between a world class bioscience lab in Melbourne, and deliberately overgrown summer ryegrass paddocks at Lincoln University, but both are key elements of the hunt for New Zealand’s next novel endophyte breakthrough.

Using advanced molecular technology, scientists at the lab have discovered and genotyped more than 400 potential endophytes, and developed many more.

The best of these then find their way into the field at Lincoln to make sure they are safe for livestock to consume.

This is the latest development in a 30-year-old private research programme which started with ryegrass seed collected by hand in Spain, and has now progressed to cutting-edge biotechnology.

The lab in question is AgriBio, a joint agricultural bioscience R&D venture between La Trobe University in Melbourne, and the Victorian government, by way of its Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources.

Since 2006, scientists there have been working with NZ plant breeder Agriseeds to discover and develop the next generation of endophytes for NZ pastures.

Endophytes are essential for pasture persistence on NZ farms. They are fungi that have evolved to live in harmony with ryegrass, producing natural compounds which protect their host plants from pests like Argentine stem weevil and black beetle.

Such insect control is natural, in-built and lasting, as opposed to synthetic chemicals, but care is needed with endophytes because they also affect livestock health. That’s where those overgrown ryegrass paddocks at Lincoln University come in, along with insect and persistence trials (see next story).

Back in the lab, Agriseeds science manager Colin Eady says recent

developments at AgriBio in Melbourne are exciting for both the company and farmers.

These include detailed alkaloid analysis of herbage samples; low-cost robust endophyte typing that can detect different strains to ensure seed purity onfarm, and precise site-directed mutagenesis which can be used to develop designer endophytes.

“AgriBio is a valuable research partner for us because it offers a complete compliment of technologies and capabilities at one site. These range from

NEA endophyte (L) vs ryegrass without endophyte at Poukawa, Hawke’s Bay.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

the latest gene-editing technologies, which are being used to reduce endophyte toxicity to animals, through to complete genome sequencing; biochemical profiling; detailed plant/endophyte interactions, and toxicity testing against insects,” Colin says.

“This whole system capability provides fast and flexible analysis and manipulation of grass/endophyte combinations so that Agriseeds can better understand how they are likely to perform in the field. It is a costly exercise to take an endophyte to market and Agriseeds does not want to get that wrong.

“Proving animal safety and efficacy against insects (and other stressors) is very important if trusted products are to be released. This requires a partnership between AgriBio for biological assessment and Agriseeds for real-world testing by agronomists and production teams.”

The AgriBio lab work is only one part of a large ongoing technology effort that dates back to 1987. That’s when Agriseeds became the first company in the Southern Hemisphere to begin researching and developing novel ryegrass endophytes.

Today it markets more endophytes than any other company in NZ. These include both its own NEA family (NEA2, NEA and the new NEA4) and AgResearch-licenced AR endophytes (AR1 and AR37).

NEA is a unique group of endophytes which collectively now accounts for much of the total NZ ryegrass endophyte market, and can be found on thousands of NZ farms.

Because they pose very little risk of ryegrass staggers in sheep, beef cattle and dairy cows, NEA endophytes have an outstanding animal safety record. This comes with good control of key pests like Argentine stem weevil and black beetle, which together with other NEA characteristics help to support pasture persistence.

43

Agriseeds’ Colin Eady at AgriBio, Melbourne, with an alkaloid analyser.

endophyte) and one that is known to have no effect on animal health (AR1 or no endophyte). These are compared to the new ryegrass/NEA combinations.

Every year, lambs grazing ryegrass with Standard endophyte exhibit signs of staggers to a greater or lesser degree. Every two to three years, this is severe enough for the lambs to be removed for welfare reasons.

‘We have to know our NEA endophytes are safe before they are released to the market, so since 1998, we’ve been testing ryegrass/novel endophyte combinations in this manner.’

The cow-friendly grass protector Why would scientists use sheep if they want to find out how ryegrass endophyte affects dairy cows?

Agriseeds science manager Colin Eady says there are two good reasons: “Sheep are more sensitive to ryegrass staggers than cattle, and because they are smaller, higher numbers can be run on the same area, providing more robust statistical data. So if it is safe for the sheep, it is more than likely to be safe for the cow.”

He’s talking about endophyte animalsafety trials being run this summer.

As in previous years, these aim to test new grass-endophyte combinations under ideal conditions for ryegrass staggers.

With careful supervision, separate mobs of lambs will be grazed for eight weeks at the height of summer on pure swards of perennial ryegrass deliberately allowed to become overgrown and stalky to maximise production of the endophytes’ chemical defences.

As the trial progresses, the lambs will

44

graze the swards down toward the base of the plant where most endophyte chemicals are produced. This tries to mimic a ‘worst case’ exposure of the lambs to the chemicals.

Those which succumb to staggers, or a decline in body condition are removed as required and the grass-endophyte combination they were grazed on is not progressed.

New animal safe grass/endophyte combinations that do not cause issues are progressed and the information used to further improve Agriseeds’ safety data.

“We would never encourage anyone to manage their animals and their pastures in this way,” Colin says. “But we have to know our NEA endophytes are safe before they are released to the market, so since 1998, we’ve been testing ryegrass/novel endophyte combinations in this manner.”

Each trial contains three replicates of one treatment known to cause severe staggers (Standard, or common toxic

By contrast, “since 1998, we have never seen severe staggers in lambs grazing ryegrass with NEA2, which first became available to farmers in Tolosa ryegrass in 2001; NEA, which is the endophyte in Shogun or NEA4, which is our new endophyte combination.”

Testing for insect control meantime involves growing grass/endophyte combinations in both pot and larger plot trials. The bioassay pot trials are conducted in a highly controlled environment, and assess ryegrass/endophyte combinations for their tolerance to predation by black beetle, Argentine stem weevil, root aphid and pasture mealy bug.

“Plot trials take longer to test and are more variable in the response they give because you never know precisely what the conditions will be or how many insects will show up. However, plot trials better reflect real-world farm pasture conditions.

“Having better insect control is part of improving persistence. In many of our trials we’ve sought out farms with known pasture persistence problems, and placed our material there,” Colin says.

Ryegrass/endophyte combinations Agriseeds considers for commercial release are put through this protocol. Tests have been running since 1991, and will continue as long as the company pursues endophyte discovery.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

ADVERTORIAL

co-operative, there’s still some confusion about their offer. One of the biggest misconceptions revolves around a perceived commitment to purchasing Fonterra shares in the future.

“We found there’s a perception that farmers are ‘locking’ themselves in”, says Hobson.

“But our contracts are some of the most flexible around. Farmers can opt to supply for just one year – no strings attached as far as sharing up.

And they can do that every year for five years if they want to.”

New initiative gives dairy farmers a head start.

Farmers who supply Fonterra subsidiary company MyMilk are set to receive additional support to become fully-fledged shareholders in the co-operative thanks to an innovative new scheme.

Currently, MyMilk farmers incur a contract fee which reduces their milk cheque below Fonterra’s Farm gate milk price. In the new initiative, that contract fee will be held on the supplier’s behalf.

The money will be used to purchase Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund units, which in turn can be converted to shares upon transition to Fonterra.

The units will also earn a dividend, which will be used to purchase more units.

A true partnership.

MyMilk CEO Hamish Hobson says the scheme is a reflection of the subsidiary’s ongoing commitment to the farmers they work with.

“We’re very much about listening to farmers and making sure we’re aware of their needs”, he says. “Every year we review what we’re doing to develop new ideas that help farmers achieve their business goals. This scheme has come out of those discussions.”

The Fonterra subsidiary is three years old this month and has now signed 85 suppliers.

Hobson says the subsidiary company was set up for new, existing and expanding dairy farmers as a pathway to become fully sharebacked co-operative members. The company has three aims – to attract new suppliers, retain existing ones, and aid transition.

“Because MyMilk is a small, lean operation we can be a bit more nimble. That’s enabled us to develop innovative solutions for farmers wanting to be on a pathway to supply a New Zealand owned co-operative”, says Hobson.

Hamish Hobson CEO

The freedom of choice.

However, while the subsidiary has successfully secured more milk for the

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

After five years, or at any time through that period, they can opt out. But Hobson hopes farmers would see the benefits of supplying the co-operative long-term for more than just the obvious benefits of ownership and control. The MyMilk team offer the personalised support and all the specialised on-farm services provided by Fonterra which deliver real value back to the farm.

“For farmers buying their first farm, expanding their businesses or converting, there are a lot of unknowns and a lot of demands on their capital.

‘Because MyMilk is a small, lean operation we can be a bit more nimble. That’s enabled us to develop innovative solutions for farmers wanting to supply a New Zealand owned co-operative’ The MyMilk approach is to help them with some of those unknowns, and give them time to transition in.”

“Fundamentally, our aim is to work with farmers to help them find the best solutions for them, their family, and their business”, says Hobson. “It’s a very personalised approach, offering plenty of insights into the benefits of being a member of the larger co-operative family.”

For more information see the MyMilk website: www.mymilk.co.nz 45

SYSTEMS │ CO DIARY

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Trevor Gee We all know farming is so much more than managing cows and grass, it’s also about supporting people too.

Have you ever asked someone to do something, then been disappointed with the results?

If you’ve answered yes, did you give clear instructions, or simply think ‘it’s a basic task, how hard can it be?’

I’ve seen posts on Facebook from farmers frustrated by the way their team-mate has put up a break fence or put away fencing equipment.

To be fair, some of them are quite funny. Others are disappointing because it’s often clear that a slightly different way of providing instructions may have made all the difference to the outcome.

It’s something we all know – everyone is different and one person’s approach to a task maybe different to ours.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

‘Everyone has a different way of doing things.

What it demonstrates is that common sense isn’t actually common and it highlights the importance of having clear systems in place to set your staff up for success.’

Five keys to successful systems: What does the process look like now?

Draw the process from start to finish with all the actions required to complete the task. Start with the most time-consuming and frustrating tasks. Make sure you map out what happens right now, including how different people do things differently. For example, putting up a break fence.

Frustrations and problems Now that you have mapped-out your process, think about the frustrations and problems you have with the process. The key is to focus on the process not the people. Allow everyone to share their different frustrations and for the moment do not try and find solutions.

How will you solve the frustrations?

Having said that, I think we often forget and assume people think like we do.

This has never been more true than when DairyNZ people developer Francie Turner gave a workshop about this at a recent Hunter Surrounds Discussion Group.

Francie, a former Olympic cox, knows a lot about leadership and teamwork. She was the coxswain for the New Zealand women’s team at Rio. At the workshop, Francie split the farmers into small groups, gave them six fencing standards and a reel of tape, then asked them to make a hexagon. That’s the only instruction they received, even if they asked for more details.

As you can imagine, each hexagon was different. Some were large, others small.

There was no consistency.

“The exercise is always a real eyeopener,” Francie says.

“It shows that everyone has a different way of doing things. What it demonstrates is that common sense isn’t actually common and it highlights the importance of having clear systems in place to set your staff up for success.”

Procedures are invaluable as they ensure everyone is on the same page and complete tasks in the same way. This can

As a team, come up with solutions to the frustrations. Often this can be deciding on what the best and most-effective process is for everyone and standardising how tools are put away. It is about designing a great system that sets everyone in the team up for success.

Draw up the new process Redraw the process ensuring all the necessary steps are in place to make sure all team members can clearly understand what the process is. Also think about what else can help set the team up for success such as photos.

Continuous improvement and document The most efficient processes are the ones that are the simplest and continually improved. Once the initial standardised process is completed keep seeking out new and more efficient ways of doing things as a team. Start at step one again and look at what has changed and progress through the steps to find new opportunities. It is also important to document the process and have it visible where you completed it.

help you save time and increase efficiency on-farm. Francie says the trick to making systems stick is to involve the entire team.

“Get everyone to share their current approach to a task, their frustrations and then develop a system to standardise the job.”

Pleasant Point farmer Rob Holt was among those to take part in the activity.

“People management is such an

important part of farming. The exercise really made me think twice about the way I communicate with my staff.”

For more information about how you can improve efficiencies on your farm visit dairynz.co.nz/farmtune or take part in the Waste Hunt Challenge.

• Trevor Gee is a DairyNZ consulting officer in Timaru.

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47

SYSTEMS │ DAIRY NZ

Farmers step ahead with EnviroWalk app Adam Duker There’s an app for almost everything these days. And farming isn’t an exception.

One the latest was created to help farmers assess environmental input on their phone, as they walk around their farm.

DairyNZ’s EnviroWalk app makes it easier for farmers to assess fertiliser use, effluent, waterways, races, cropping, water use and irrigation, and create an action plan on their smartphone. It replaces a paper version and is already receiving good reviews from farmers, having been downloaded close to 3000 times.

Hopkins Farming Group in Manawatu trialled the app and now plans to do an EnviroWalk on all 12 of their farms.

Hopkins Farming Group chief executive Shaun Back, who oversees the group’s 10 dairy farms and two support blocks, says the app has been great to identify areas to improve.

“Some of those areas are around

capital infrastructure, while others are around staff training and ensuring procedures are written and understood. A lot of the actions the app suggested for our farm were fine-tuning our existing processes,” he says.

“I’ve used the old paper version but I prefer the app because it’s easier to follow because it breaks down actions into sections and there’s not a lot of writing. Plus, the app directly refers you to information.”

‘The best part for me is that the app puts responsibility on managers to think about the environment and the effects of what they’re doing onfarm.’

The app asks a series of yes/no questions and suggests solutions or actions. These form the basis of a customised action plan, which can be downloaded, printed and updated at any time.

“We completed the whole

assessment on one of our farms within two hours, with no outside help needed. If you know your farm well, you can work through the assessment easily,” Shaun says.

The app is also a great tool for training staff, particularly the younger generation who will be looking after the environment in the future, he says.

“The best part for me is that the app puts responsibility on managers to think about the environment and the effects of what they’re doing onfarm. The app questions farm procedures and staff training and brings to light why this is so important.

“We need to continue to be proactive in the environmental space. If all farmers complete an EnviroWalk action plan, as a sector we’ll have the ability to measure the changes we’re making on-farm in real time.”

Keen to try the EnviroWalk app?

The app can be downloaded on any device via the DairyNZ website, Apple App Store or Android Google Play Store.

• Adam Duker is a DairyNZ engagement leader in Palmerston North and led the development of the EnviroWalk app.

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SYSTEMS │ ECOLOGICALLY SPEAKING

Leaders do the right thing Alison Dewes Most farmers I have been lucky enough to deal with want to do the right thing and be good stewards.

The Tomorrow’s Farms Today group I studied in the Upper Waikato between 2010 and 2014, tried to do the right thing by seeking to understand what farming systems had a lighter footprint – on water, climate, people and animals.

Twenty five farmers exposed all their financial and environmental data annually, in a four-year project. They were given a hard time by their industry peers for doing so.

At the end of the project, they were clear which the most profitable, lowest footprint systems were.

Many in this group destocked, by 1530% in some cases, prior to the milk price drop in 2014 and fared reasonably well during that difficult period as they had fewer, more efficient cows, with similar profitability.

Other farmers we have worked with also wanted to do the right thing. They put in sheltered stand-off areas, reduced cow numbers, adjusted their systems, and also upgraded their effluent systems, in some cases to the tune of $300,000-$400,000 per farm.

Again, they did this because they wanted to do the right thing and to look after their social licence to operate.

At the same time the Waikato Plan Change was under review and has been released last year, indicating that all farm enterprises in the Upper Waikato will be grandparented to their nitrogen output on Overseer, in the years 2014-2016.

Unfortunately, innovative farmers – trying to do the right thing – who

consciously lowered their nitrogen leaching, greenhouse gas and environmental footprint, are now penalised in a number of ways under the new Plan Change 1.

They have been grandparented a Nitrogen Reference Point (NRP) lower than the average because they lowered their footprint by 20-40% ahead of time, and well ahead of the industry trend.

These leading dairy farmers are in the same situation as the sheep and beef farmers, who will also be grandparented a NRP, that will be on average around one fifth of the dairy average for the Waikato region.

Dairy farmers who put in fully compliant effluent systems, with full pond lining and irrigation systems that did not allow soil saturation, are also penalised despite spending a lot of money because this is already counted in the Overseer model that measures the NRP.

Rewarding poor-compliance, higher-emission farming and being slow to change is the wrong message for agriculture right now.

Furthermore, these good farmers are only some of a handful who have done the best they could, to try to get fully compliant, yet the regional authority had not enforced change on the rest.

In August 2017, in a press article it was revealed only 2% of all farms monitored

by Waikato Regional Council were deemed fully compliant to a high level for effluent.

On interpretation of the rules, this would be taken to mean there is “no risk of contaminants from effluent storage and spreading of effluent – if having connectivity to ground or surface waters”.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

This is a sad message in a lot of ways, to good farmers and those that have tried to show leadership.

One does not get rewarded for it, but instead the present system of grandparenting of nutrient loss rights using Overseer, favouring intensive leaky systems in high milk price years, being slow to change, coupled with a low level of enforcement by regional authorities, means leadership in farming is penalised rather than encouraged.

Rewarding poor-compliance, higheremission farming and being slow to change is the wrong message for agriculture right now.

We have change coming, increased public scrutiny and pending pressures from climate change, nutrient restrictions, consumer perceptions and an increasing demand for transparent and ethical behaviours. We have had a few decades now, where the leaders in agriculture have been penalised, via unfair allocation systems and rewarding pollution, and tardy behaviours endorsed.

NZ has a problem. The best performers should be rewarded.

Industry leadership is also increasingly under the spotlight – being asked for ethical, transparent behaviours. What does swimmable rivers really mean? Is it the threshold that is double the level of E coli we had in 2003, does it mean only the big rivers swimmable by 2040, as per the NPS FW? No company can honestly claim they are sustainable until they demonstrate “responsible procurement” practices with their supplier farmers.

A first base issue should be that their farmers have best-practice effluent disposal systems rather than relying on a regional authority permitted activity – that has been poorly enforced.

Farmers who have done the right thing should be recognised and gain a premium if the companies they supply are serious about encouraging and driving more responsible and sustainable procurement.

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SYSTEMS │ SOUTHERN DAIRY HUB

Hub gets down to business Karen Trebilcock ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz @KT_at_Exporter When farmers at the Southern Dairy Hub’s first field day on November 14 were asked what research the farm should concentrate on the answer straight away was environmental issues.

About 100 people attended the day, the first of its kind since the nearby Southland Demonstration Farm closed more than a year ago, and the farm and its research projects were showcased.

The hub’s business manager Guy Michaels said as soon as the cows had arrived on the farm in early winter research had started.

“They came off the truck and almost straight away we were doing blood tests,” he said.

A winter crop trial, led by DairyNZ senior scientist Dawn Dalley, was comparing kale and fodder beet feeding at both target DairyNZ senior scientist Dawn and high rates and was already Dalley speaks at the Southern showing interesting results but Dairy Hub’s first field day. data analysis was ongoing.

Body condition scores (BCS), not impact on the economic viability of metabolics through blood the hub. testing, animal behaviour (lying and “If we want to do something that is standing times), colostrum quality, health going to impact on production then those incidences, reproduction and lactation costs will be factored in and be paid to the performance through until Christmas were hub.” all being recorded.

Communication was key, she said, So far colostrum quality appeared better urging farmers to regularly check the from cows on high allocations of fodder hub’s website and also to like the farm’s beet and those cows also gained the most Facebook page. condition but they also suffered from more “We want to be honest and open. If we incidences of mastitis. make a mistake we will put it out there so As well, their blood phosphorus halved you don’t make the same mistakes. between early June and mid-July.

“But we want you to tell us what you Dawn said results were already on the want to know. That is our plea to you. We hub’s website www.southerndairyhub. want to know the issues you think this co.nz and it would be regularly updated. region will be facing in the next 10 years Now that calving was over, she said the so we will have the answers ready for you.” farm was essentially four farms in one with A quick brain-storming session followed the herd divided into four mobs, each with and showed most farmers at the field their own paddocks. day were worried about environmental “You will know of the research we do issues including nitrogen limits, reducing elsewhere on research farms but these are nutrients getting into waterways and the only with mobs of 25 to 30 cows. Here we validity of Overseer. will be able to do research on a commercial AgResearch’s senior scientist Ross scale.

Monaghan said research was being “We will be taking the risks on your planned to start next year on nitrogen behalf. We can find out if it really works leaching. The stream which drains the here before you take it to your own farms.” upper terrace on the farm would also be However, she said the research would

50

‘You will know of the research we do elsewhere on research farms but these are only with mobs of 25 to 30 cows. Here we will be able to do research on a commercial scale.’ monitored and the results of riparian planting and fencing onfarm would be studied.

Guy said this season would supply a baseline for research at the hub and the difficulties of a new conversion were still being overcome.

“There have been a few challenges in the last five and a half months but an exceptional southern spring has helped,” he said.

“With 80% of the farm with new grass on it, and nowhere to stand cows off except for the dairy yard and the laneways, we had very limited options to protect the paddocks.

“As well, when the new grass was sown in the late summer, we didn’t have the stock to give it a grazing before winter so a lot of the soil structure in the paddocks is still very soft.”

He said a focus during summer would be to improve drainage as the new tracks had disrupted the natural flow of surface water on the farm.

The spring feed wedge had been extraordinarily flat and exceptional growth had caused issues with pasture quality.

However, the farm was still on track to do 400kg milksolids (MS)/cow and 1200kg MS/ha but had coped some flak on its Facebook page from farmers wondering why the cows hadn’t peaked higher.

“Most of the herd, because they came from the North Island, had mid-July calving dates and about 30% are heifers.

“As well, most had never seen fodder beet or kale before and that’s what we wintered them on.

“We ended up having a 17-week calving spread.”

Calving cows were on pasture measured only 10.1ME which also affected production, he said.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

SPECIAL REPORT

WOMEN in dairy

52 The farmers’ chief lobbyist 54 Leading a safety culture 55 Skills go untapped 56 Listening to farming women 57 Putting on the gumboots 58 Making things happen 60 Battler on a burning platform 63 Giving it a go - one more time 66 Taste trail gals 68 Stepping up

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

The farmers’ chief lobbyist Celebrating women in dairy farming – right across the value chain.

For the special report this month NZ Dairy Exporter profiles a selection of this industry’s amazing women, who put their time and energy not only into supporting and working actively in their families’ farming operations but are involved in governance, health and safety, accounting, environmental and community projects, bringing up children, off-farm work and numerous other endeavours. It’s true what they say, if you want a job done, give it to a busy person. We salute you all!

Anne Hardie verbatim@xtra.co.nz

After 100 days in the job as Federated Farmers’ president, Katie Milne acknowledges being the first woman to take on the role has created opportunities to tell urban New Zealand some of the positive stories happening in the farming industry and try to earn their trust again.

The rural-urban disconnect creates some of the farming industry’s biggest hurdles and Milne says there are few chances to get the positive stories into mainstream media and it’s going to be an ongoing battle. Posing for a camera has become familiar territory for her since taking on one of farming’s top jobs in June and for a change, it has often been mainstream media where she can tell some of those stories.

The West Coast dairy farmer has been involved in politics since she was 23 when the implications from the incoming Resource Management Act prompted her into action. Milne and partner Ian Whitmore faced a $46,000 bill for rock protection works and she realised that was just the start of the bills if she didn’t stand up and make herself heard.

At an RMA meeting, people from outside the region with their own prejudices were trying to bring in rules that had little relevance on the West Coast and Katie wasn’t one to sit quietly.

“I had a knot in my guts about people who had no knowledge about how to farm making decisions about how we were going to farm. So I got in my psyche really early that you have to be part of these conversations and

52

give people the proper understanding of how that will apply on the farm and what it will mean. They had no idea because they had never been a farmer.”

Today, she gets little time to milk the cows on the 125-hectare property at Rotomanu which has been in Ian’s family since 1918. Native bush, including a designated Significant Natural Area covers part of the farm, with 96 effective hectares farmed for their dairy operation. With Katie working away from the farm and Ian contracting locally for a sideline business, they have welcomed the return of their scientist daughter, Andrea, and her carpenter husband, Simon, to the Coast to work on the farm.

This season the family has opted to milk the herd of 200 high-BW Jersey cows once-a-day (OAD) to create an easier lifestyle for everyone.

They haven’t raised the stocking rate since switching to OAD, so production has dropped, but Katie says they expect production to recover to a level close to twice-a-day milking over time and overall it has been a positive change.

She is passionate about farming and their cows, but just as passionate about working for farmers and alongside her Federated Farmers role, Katie is also a director of Westland Milk Products and has been at the forefront of addressing environmental issues in the region. As busy as she is, she remains a long-time member of the volunteer fire brigade at nearby Moana.

For an outdoor, farm girl who loves her stock, her own lifestyle now entails a weekly trip across Arthurs Pass to

Christchurch where she catches a plane to Wellington. She spends a couple of days a week in the capital where she spends much of her time lobbying on behalf of farmers so their side of the story is heard and hopefully taken into consideration by politicians.

Though farmers are bombarded with good farming stories and information about the technology, genetics and farm systems that are continually making improvements, town people do not have that information in front of them and the majority no longer have any connection with farming, she says.

Katie thinks the rural-urban disconnect began with social change when Sky TV enabled people to stay home and watch the rugby and other events that previously brought communities together. Social media followed and society has looked inward rather than outward, she observes.

People no longer know what happens on the farm and how food is produced and instead target farming for changes to reduce climate change without understanding the consequences.

“I don’t expect them to understand farming, but we want to remind them at a basic level that we’re producing food. And that we’re Kiwis who love New Zealand and that we work outdoors by choice, so we have a real affiliation with the environment actually, and taking good care of animals. But we have some legacy issues of how we’ve got to where we are now.”

One of the problems is that rectifying some of those

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

legacy issues will take time, despite mitigations being put in place and Katie says that is where farming is going to have to gain the public’s trust that those mitigations will make a difference.

Crucial also, are the conversations with politicians and regulators about issues such as the Emissions Trading

Katie Milne is grabbing every opportunity to earn back the public’s trust.

Scheme (ETS) when tackling climate change, to make them aware of facts and consequences in the farming industry, she says.

“Penalising people because their animals have four stomachs is pretty harsh,” she reckons. “Because of climate change we’ve had the spotlight put on us. Yet we are very efficient and our litre of milk in New Zealand is the most carbon-efficient of anywhere in the world.”

The danger is having regulations enforced without a good conversation with all the facts and Katie refers to the recent mining ban on all conservation land that was brought in without discussion.

Farmers also benefit from a smaller carbon footprint on the farm and done right, the ETS will take into account all the factors on a farm to achieve that. Done wrong though, Katie says it could have unintended consequences that prompt farmers to intensify just to pay the imposed costs.

Again, it comes down to having a conversation with those designing the ETS so that they understand what is being done on farms now and in the future, as well as the implications of how agriculture is included in the scheme.

“The key is to be fully included in discussions. There’s some trepidation there – how many things are already decided before we have the conversation?”

Emissions trading is just one of the big nuggety issues she will have to tackle during her tenure as Federated Farmers’ chief. Another is genetically modified organisms – GMOs – an emotionallycharged debate that needs an open-minded conversation, but will struggle to achieve that, she concedes.

“The GMO stuff is quite contentious with people, but again, if there are opportunities to be explored of how we can help mitigate climate change, with more efficient animals that have less emissions coming out of them; grasses more efficient that are drought-tolerant and are not affected

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

by insect pests – why shouldn’t we look into that more fully?

“I think people are getting a bit hung up on branding. I think, let that exploration happen and it will then be put through the rigorous processes of the EPA (Environmental Protection Authority) to check the risks before any release.

“You can have your cake and eat it too, if you’re careful. And that’s the thing, we want to get it right.”

Again, it comes back to getting the public back on side by understanding what happens inside the farm gate and talking about food production, she says. Last year she was part of Global Women’s Breakthrough Leaders Programme in Auckland where she was the only person with any affinity to farming. So she made a point of giving them an insight into farming whenever an opportunity arose.

“It was an opportunity to tell them that we are normal families who happen to be farming. We never set out to harm the environment in the process and knowing that in places we have, are now trying to figure out how we can do better. We’re producing food in New Zealand to feed families in New Zealand and internationally.

And one of them came up to me and said: ‘now when I think of farmers and farming, I think of food. You did that.’

And I thought, awesome! Brilliant.

I’ve made a bit of traction here, so it is possible to get the simple message through to people who find farming a mystery.”

Katie says it may be even harder convincing the next generation that farming is all about food and that animal products are a good nutrient source.

“The younger generation that gets its information from the internet are being told – rightly or wrongly – that good nutrition doesn’t have to involve animals in the process. And they’re a massive part of the population coming through.”

One of the goals of Federated Farmers is to collect information on all the catchment groups and good environmental stories on farms around the country to show just how much is already being done within farming and is ongoing. During the election, when farming became a political football, misinformation gave the urban population the impression the dairy industry in particular had been languishing under a soft government for nine years and had done little to mitigate environmental problems.

53

SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Leading a safety culture Safety leadership has long been a focus of Rebecca Keoghan’s career journey and her latest appointment as general manager of Pamu Academy will see her tackling safety issues throughout the agriculture industry.

The West Coast dairy farmer is also business manager of Pamu’s seven farms in the region (Pamu Farms is the brand name for Landcorp), a director of Westland Milk Products and on numerous other boards and committees which altogether led to a New Zealand Order of Merit award in this year’s Queen’s Birthday honours. Last year, her contribution to the dairy industry led her to be named Dairy Woman of the Year and now the mother of two who comes from a background in medical science wants to help transform the safety challenges inherent within the agricultural industry.

As general manager of the Pamu and Wilson Consulting Group initiative, Pamu Academy, Rebecca’s role will be overseeing a suite of programmes to develop the skills and safety leadership culture that is needed to reduce the accident rate in the industry.

Her journey in workplace safety began in a former role with the former Holcim Cement plant at Westport where she led the growth of ‘zero harm’ culture for her staff. When she took charge of seven Landcorp farms on theCcoast, including five large dairy farms, one of her goals was to improve safety and now she is extending that to the wider agriculture sector.

“It follows through from Pamu’s safety journey and now we are pledged to take it out to the agriculture industry as a whole because we kill far too many people.”

It’s a massive challenge, she concedes, but a necessary one to reduce the risk within an industry that averages 20 workplace fatalities a year.

While her ambitions are around board tables and heading companies where she can make a difference, it all revolves around the 200cow dairy farm she runs with her husband, Nathan, just north of Westport. Several members of the extended family live on the 300-hectare property, with much of it still in native bush, and she says those family links are an important part of their values.

“If you just come out and defend something, well then you’re losing,” Katie says. “You’ve got to keep going with the positive stuff.”

More than ever, Katie says a farming entity such as Federated Farmers is needed to speak up for the industry.

“It’s always been important but right now it’s a real key to have the right amount of resources behind us to have enough policy people and a different way forward.

“The way we’ve always done it may not be the best way going

forward but we have to have the resources to get the best out of a new Government and a new way of communicating with people, like social media. That’s a direction we are going to have to go to help with the ruralurban disconnect.”

When groups such as Greenpeace try and tell the public farming is not sustainable, the industry needs to be able to tell them otherwise.

“We need to show people that farming can be sustainable. We’ve heard some lessons about the things we’ve got to fix, but it doesn’t mean

Anne Hardie verbatim@xtra.co.nz

“making milking easier and faster”

We kill far too many people, Rebecca Keoghan says.

it’s only fixable by removing half the farming out of the country. We’re on the verge of some amazing technology.

Some of it is here and there’s more to come.”

Now, the novelty factor as a woman at the top of the political farming ladder has given her a valuable tool to put those messages to a wider audience.

How often does Federated Farmers and the farming industry get the chance to have a profile in magazines such as New Zealand Geographic, The Listener and – wait for it – New Zealand Women’s Weekly? Not often.

See our website or phone for more info.

for circular and s te ga g in ck ba e iv ct fe About ef rectangular dairy yards

K. H. McConnel Ltd. Hamilton, New Zealand

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www.mcconnel.co.nz

Phone: +64 7 849 2122 Fax: +64 7 849 2128 Email: sales@mcconnel.co.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Skills go untapped Sheryl Brown

The dairy industry has an abundance of untapped knowledge and skills and most of it sits with women.

Women involved in dairy farm businesses who come from various professional backgrounds have skills that can add value to their business and the wider industry, Dairy Women’s Network (DWN) chair Cathy Brown says.

“All education is transferable. These women in the dairy industry are an untapped resource.”

DWN is working to harness that talent by building connections with women in the industry and offering platforms for these women to contribute.

Women from other industries bring a different perspective and diversity of thought which could help dairy to adapt and change in a quickly shifting world.

“We need to embrace change. I don’t know what’s coming down the track, but I know it’s going to come fast and to have fast change without speed wobbles is difficult.”

Women will be fundamental in seeing those changes happen onfarm and supporting farmers and rural communities through that process.

Women can also provide muchneeded diversity of thought on boards and within groups that will influence policy and the direction for the dairy industry in the future.

There is a need for more women to be in these representative roles and DWN provides opportunities for women to develop their skills and put themselves forward, Cathy says.

One of her passions is to encourage more women to invest time in their personal development.

“Women need to invest in a personal development programme early on so they understand themselves a lot earlier and they will go further. For young women, time is on their side.

They can start putting tools in their tool box to utilise later.”

Women are equal partners in their dairy farm business and make decisions from investment in new technology onfarm to the overall business

‘Women need to invest in a personal development programme early on so they understand themselves a lot earlier and they will go further. For young women, time is on their side. They can start putting tools in their tool box to utilise later.’ strategy. Their involvement needs to be recognised and the value of them developing new skills and knowledge understood.

“We don’t invest in ourselves – and that’s women as a whole, not just in the dairy industry. The farm comes before everything else and there is little left over for you. Prioritising yourself can be really hard.”

Spending money on your personal development, however, can add value to the farm business and the wider dairy industry, Cathy says.

Looking after the talent pool Women in the dairy industry are facing the same struggles as women in town, balancing worklife and family.

Cathy believes rural women bore the brunt of the dairy downturn, with many having to pick up more work onfarm or find work off-farm to help with cash flow.

Their well-being was put last in a lot of cases and it needs to be looked after.

“Women are the glue of the family, the business and the community, but who is looking after the women?”

The wellbeing of rural women is often overlooked when programmes are developed, which is something Cathy wants to change.

DWN started running Wellness and Wellbeing workshops during the last couple of years in response to the pressure that came on during the dairy downturn.

A lot of wellbeing support traditionally came from within rural communities, but it is no longer as accessible, Cathy believes.

Some rural communities have fewer events that welcome and include new

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

people to the area and people can find themselves feeling isolated.

In some respects technology has made it easier to communicate. Social media provides an excellent platform for people to touch base and reach out to a new community, but it also allows people to isolate themselves. People still require human connection.

“The role of social media has its pros and cons, people can reach out and be anonymous, but people still want a real connection. I think you can be even more isolated today.”

DWN primary focus is to create opportunities for people to get off farm and connect with others, by offering multiple workshops and events to cater for onfarm and off-farm needs.

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Listening to farming women Zelda de Villiers

In July 2017 Dairy Womens Network embarked on research project that included 15 face-to-face interviews and 250 farmers completing an online survey.

We asked members a wide range of questions, including what provides them with the greatest source of pleasure as a farmer? What are causes of concern onfarm and what are the greatest obstacles they face daily. Experienced facilitators also interviewed a range of farmers individually and listened to their stories.

We found some surprising trends, along with confirmation of some insights we already knew. Passion still rings true, no matter whether you were farming in 1998, when DWN was established, or in the present.

Farmers still find the greatest source of pleasure onfarm to be animals, being outdoors, living rurally, owning their own business, being masters of their own destiny and – most importantly – having pride and satisfaction in what they do. Some causes for concern were just as evident 20 years ago. Naturally during a low payout year, money or financial concerns are high, but also, the weather, workload or work hours and succession planning rated highly.

We believe some causes highlighted by farmers have increased in importance in recent years, like payout volatility, availability of employees, animal welfare and environmental regulations, We have also noticed relatively new causes of concern for entrants to the sector such as compliance/regulation and negative perceptions of farming/ farmers.

Members bring considerable experience from previous careers or studies. They are willing to jump in onfarm and to bring much needed off-farm income to the business.

Sometimes they fulfil the role of a part-time or full-time labour unit onfarm but they are also commenting

they are overwhelmed and “there are many roles on this farm – and I feel unprepared for them”.

Increased external demands like health and safety, human resource management, animal welfare and environmental compliance and sophistication of business practices (cloud accounting, payroll and rostering and apps) have pushed dairy women into quite different roles than their counterparts 20 years ago.

A large portion of these demands have impacted on what has traditionally been perceived as the woman’s role onfarm, typically paperwork, the books and administration around people management. The role of dairy woman onfarm is becoming increasingly important for the survival and thriving of business partnerships.

When we support, mentor and invest in capability-building of dairy women, we are investing in the part of dairy farming that has to adapt most to changing external demands.

Heart-warmingly, we have also noted a trend of more women farming independently.

Sometimes as part of a partnership (she farms, and the other partner works off-farm), both life partners run farms separately or if she is single, she farms independently as a farm owner/ sharemilker or contract milker or works as an employee.

Underlying all the research trends, changes and demands, it’s crucial to remember that when the farm business is also the home, concerns and challenges become very

Check out the programme for the DWN conference in their twentieth year called DWN18: our land our people in Rotorua, March 22-23, 2018. For information and registrations: www.dwn.co.nz/dwn18-conference

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personal and at times very painful.

When one of the greatest pleasures of farming is being the master of your own destiny, you take pride in being a farmer and are passionate about what you do and it’s also where you and your family live, negative external perception becomes very personal.

When things become personal we need to harness our passion and pride and utilise the momentum it provides to tell a positive story that represents the industry we work in.

When I joined Dairy Women’s Network as chief executive nearly four years ago, I quickly received push-back from regional co-ordinators that they did not want to be called regional leaders – they said they didn’t feel like leaders, which saddened and astonished me. But two years ago, at annual regional convenor training Dr Maree Roche from Waikato University presented on female leadership.

At the end of her workshop some of the volunteers started to refer to themselves as leaders. This year, nearly 90 volunteer regional convenors voted unanimously to be called regional leaders.

Wendy Morgan from SealesWinslow spoke about her journey with DWN as a presenter at the SealesWinslow calfrearing modules.

“Over the years, I’ve seen some great changes in DWN regional group convenors, now aptly renamed regional leaders.

Everyone has such different personalities – some who love public speaking, some who are petrified by the very thought of it.

“DWN gives them a push (otherwise known as encouragement and support) and a Zelda de Villiers, reason to gain more Dairy Women’s experience in this and Network chief many other areas.” executive

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Putting on the gumboots Glenys Christian glenys.christian@nzx.com

Charlotte Rutherford’s team of 10 at Fonterra “have a giggle” when she says she’s heading out onfarm and ask if she needs to borrow their gumboots.

But the joke is really on them.

For while the co-op’s general manager of sustainable dairying is now more involved in the strategic end of environmental management, involving plenty of meetings and office time, her first job out of university was as a dairy inspector based in Rotorua.

Charlotte Rutherford – returns now coming back to farmers.

“It was a very practical role pulling milking machinery apart and putting it together again,” she said.

“It was eye-opening for me and for the farmers.”

But she said the 18 months she spent in the role first for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry then for QCONZ she felt totally accepted by the farming community, and that’s been a constant throughout her career.

She had completed a Bachelor of Agricultural Science at Massey University then a post-graduate year studying marketing before the position came up. Then with her partner/now husband moving to Hamilton to study law she approached Dexcel about what positions might be available.

She was interviewed by Peter Boedecker before he moved to become chief executive of Dairy InSight for a role as a technical analyst.

“But when he heard part of my role had been inspecting effluent ponds he told me he reckoned this was going to be quite a big thing for the industry,” she said.

“It was a steep learning curve but he had that insight and supported me. I was the only face doing this in the dairy industry for a few years.”

With the signing of the Clean Streams Accord came her move to Fonterra 15 and a half years ago, as policy manager then as accord manager.

“It was a challenging time because it was a first step for the dairy industry, asking for investment onfarm,” she said.

There was strong pushback from some farmers and she found herself attending meeting with co-op directors as they heard directly and bluntly from farmers about the constraints this would impose.

“That was character-building,” she said.

“But farmers have come so far. It’s really been a change management programme working out how people could get involved.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Charlotte said trying to put more than 10,000 dairy farmers into the same box was as futile as trying to do that for people generally, as they all adopted new practices and ideas at different rates.

“We still deal with a tiny handful of laggards when it comes to waterway fencing,” she said.

“But we’re slowly getting their support and that’s through working with them in their businesses onfarm.

We can give specific advice and usually we will shift the vast majority although it’s expensive and time-consuming.”

She describes her team as being “lean and mean” and based around the country to be closer to farmers when they’re designing programmes for their use. There’s another team of 17 sustainable dairy advisers working for Fonterra who take these messages directly out to farmers for them to put in place.

“And those numbers will double over the next two to three years with our new water commitments,” she said.

One of the steps the co-op has taken recently has been a service to allow farmers to leverage the information they will require when regional council environment plans come into force around the country.

“There will be no extra charge above the investment farmers have already made as co-op shareholders,” she said.

But if they’re not with Fonterra they’ll in most cases need a consultant to put that information together for them to be submitted to their council. It’s been estimated the cost for an average dairy farm could be between $3000 and $7000 with the process taking about half a day onfarm and another day in the office.

“Farmers have worked so hard and now the returns are coming back to them,” she said.

“The journey ahead is around making sure New Zealand trusts us in this space and that’s where the Fonterra commitment is so strong.

“I’m really excited at where we’re at because I’ve seen a lot of change in the last 15 years.”

And where she was on December 10 was at one of the Open The Gates days where 40 Fonterra farmers around the country showed off to visitors best environmental practice on their properties.

And yes, she was wearing gumboots.

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Making things happen Dairy farmer and Fonterra shareholder councillor Julie Pirie grew up in the 1960s and 70s in a time when women were protesting for equal rights. After 30-plus years working in the dairy industry she believes women now have every opportunity available to them. Sheryl Brown reports.

“People often ask me how I get on as a councillor being a woman, and I always say I don’t know because I’m not a man – I can’t compare. I do my best and if people don’t like it (because I’m a woman) that’s their problem not mine.”

Julie Pirie (nee Laurence) is a fifthgeneration New Zealand dairy farmer.

Since she was young she wanted to work in the industry and own her own farm.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science at Massey University and got her first job as a Dairy Board consulting officer (later LIC) where she stayed for 10 years.

The CO role was a great environment to learn about the whole dairy industry and to understand farmers and how they tick, she says.

“My role as a CO has helped me as a Fonterra shareholder representative knowing the farms and the farmers – although there is a whole new generation coming through now.”

when she had Celine. Women who are working, raising a family and also contributing at a community or governance level need to have a good support system behind them, she says.

There is a reason men retiring or receiving accolades for their work often acknowledge their wife.

“When taking on off-farm roles you’ve got to have that support, regardless of gender. I have friends I rely on now to help look after Ella if I have a meeting.

“You’ve got to have that support network and if you don’t, you have to pay for it. Sometimes I’ve had to choose not to do things, or had to employ extra staff or a babysitter – I’ve got a husband who is busy too.”

Her role as a Fonterra Shareholder Councillor is paid, which helps cover the extra costs so she can put time into that role.

Being a busy mother has had a positive effect on her daughters, Julie believes.

‘The best piece of advice my father gave me, was you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.’

She ran 20 farmer discussion groups, including a women’s group, which was created to give women their own platform without feeling intimidated.

But things have changed a lot since, she says.

During that time she married Brian, the couple bought their first dairy farm at Ngatea and started a family, Celine, now 19 studying Agri-Science at Massey University, and Ella, 12.

Working fulltime, looking after the farm finances, working onfarm at weekends was sometimes a difficult bundle to manage, Julie says.

“It created some conflicts at various times. When you’re young you just do it, but I look back now and it wasn’t easy.

“The best piece of advice my father gave me, was you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”

She stopped working off-farm

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“They’ve both got a good work ethic and they’re organised. You don’t raise babies, you’re raising your children to be independent adults.”

In 2001 Julie and Brian had their second daughter Kelsi, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and who later died unexpectedly at the age of two.

During her experience caring for a child with a disability Julie realised she had a strength in making things happen and helping other people in the community.

“When you have a child with a disability you put your life on hold. I saw my life was going to be involved with advocacy and raising funds and we had even talked about selling the farm and moving so we could be closer to the city for care and support for Kelsi.

“During that time we had a lot of community support and I became a

Key facts Owners: Julie and Brian Pirie Location: Ngatea, Hauraki Area: 234ha milking platform Farm dairy: 70-bail rotary, DelPro milk meters, ACR Cows: 880 crossbreds, with a herd of 160 J14 registered Jerseys BW: 103 PW: 126, 99% recorded ancestry 2016/17 Production: 366,788kg MS 2017/18 target: 380,000kg MS Pasture: 18-20t DM/ha Runoff: 160ha Supplement: 98t meal, 170t palm kernel, 170-200t maize silage Nitrogen leaching: 23 kgN/ha

helper to other parents with children with disabilities. It made me realise I had a natural ability to find out things and help people.”

After Kelsi passed away Julie got involved with numerous other community roles, from kindergarten committees to school board of trustees, being on the hockey club committee and the organiser of the Hauraki Rural Show. She also invites local town children out to her farm to participate in calf club.

Stepping up to be a Fonterra Shareholder Councillor four years ago was a way to further support and represent farmers in her region.

“I’m a person that makes things happen. You can’t sit back and wait for things to happen for you.

“I probably identify more as being a representative then a governor. They’re both important roles, but I feel my natural fit is representing people.”

Acting as a shareholder councillor and taking farmer ideas and concerns to Fonterra is part of the co-operative and other farmers shouldn’t hesitate if they want to run, she says.

Farmers need to engage. As a councillor she doesn’t get as many

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

phone calls from farmers as she should. If farmers have a good idea or solution they should be talking to their representative, she says.

She’s a strong advocate that women should earn and take on such roles without the pressure of positions being created for women as a way to bring diversity or equal opportunity.

The people on boards or in representative roles should be the right people that want to do it and have the time to do it, she says.

“It shouldn’t matter what you look like on the outside, diversity of thought is far more important.”

In NZ and in the dairy industry the doors are wide open for women without having to put special gender regulations in place, she believes.

“Perhaps in the past I may have been overlooked for opportunities, or I have chosen to overlook them. But I don’t think there are any opportunities in the dairy industry that wouldn’t be available to me or other women now.”

Julie and Brian employ a mix of women and men on their farm, and had a female farm manager for five years before this season.

“I believe technology is helping women’s role in farming, you don’t have to be as physically strong as was necessary 30 years ago.”

Having good staff on farms isn’t about gender, it’s about group dynamics and getting personalities that complement each other, she says.

calved 30 cows the last couple of years.

This year they got out of half of their winter milk contract because of the flooding in autumn.

They have been looking into going autumn calving, but Julie is still unconvinced about the economics, particularly after this year’s wet autumn conditions.

The farm is a DairyNZ System 3, with meal and palm kernel bought in. But Julie believes NZ dairy farming will probably have to revert to pasture-fed practice to meet market opportunities.

Historically the NZ dairy industry has had a clear direction – producing milk cost-effectively, but the future is becoming increasingly hazy with environmental challenges, public perception and changing global markets.

Farmers and industry will need to engage in a collaborative process to determine what path the

industry should take, and how farmers will meet those changes, Julie says.

The future generation and women will play a key role in that collaborative process and making changes on farms.

“We have got to manage our way through the collaborative approach with communities. Many women have got good intuition to be a part of that process.

“NZ dairy farmers will have to adapt to the changes. There’s some things you need to fight and there is some changes you will need to embrace.

There’s still a place for old-fashioned, grassfed cows outside in my opinion.”

Farming the Hauraki Plains Farming on the Hauraki Plains comes with its own set of challenges, none more than this year which has been the wettest in living memory.

Hauraki Plains have been hugely altered from their natural state. What is today a grid of farms and straight roads was once a flood plain of bog, swamp, kahikatea forest and overflowing rivers.

This transformation is the work of a vast network of canals, drains, stopbanks, floodgates and pumping stations.

Brian and Julie’s farm is marine clay soil underneath peat, with private and public drains that need to be cleaned regularly, meaning they can’t do any riparian planting. The farm is also on town water supply.

The farm was flooded in autumn and they lost about 10ha of pasture, which they had to resow.

They winter about 300 cows on their 160-hectare runoff and have autumn-

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Julie – all opportunities are open to women in the dairy industry.

View a video of Julie talking about her calf club programme on NZ Dairy Exporter Facebook Page.

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Battler on a burning platform Anne Lee

The West Coast is a pioneering, battler kind of place so it could be seen as apt that its dairy co-operative takes the honours as having the country’s first female chief executive.

“It is a pioneering thing to do I guess – but that’s very Westland,” Toni Brendish says.

Not only is it pioneering but Australianborn Toni also had a tough, battler kind of job on her hands right from the start.

It’s been a task that’s required her to come in and “fix things” and to do that at pace.

Having had to dip into its coffers to even make what was a non-competitive payout in 2015-16, her brief, when she was employed, was one of transformation and building capability – making Westland Milk Products sustainably competitive with Fonterra and other processors.

Her experiences and approach to business both before and during her time at Westland hold lessons relevant to all business types whether that be farming or a large-scale nutritionals enterprise.

First up when she arrived at Westland was to lift the level of capability and get everyone heading in the same direction.

“We did have a huge amount of capability already in the organisation but what they lacked was a clear direction in terms of what they should be working on and accountability.

“If you’ve got good capability but there’s no accountability some people will work to certain level and stay there.

“If you say sorry, good is actually up here and that’s where I want you to be working and if you slip I’m going to hold you accountable for that then generally people deliver.

“Unfortunately though, it can mean having some tough conversations with people you think don’t want to be on the bus.”

A number of new people are now in the leadership team and some new senior roles have been created.

“You have to start at the top,” she says.

She describes herself as a hard task master, expecting a lot from people.

The ability to set the bar, hold people accountable and have the hard conversations is a skill she’s developed over her 34-year career, much of it in senior management and leadership roles.

“It does get easier over time. I don’t think you ever enjoy those tough conversations though but you have to keep it in perspective.”

In her role at Westland there was also a sense of urgency.

“The communication to the team was – we have a burning platform and if we don’t fix it, the outcome is not going to be very attractive for anybody.

“When you have a burning platform – well it gives you permission to say I just don’t have time to wait for you to get to that point.”

Toni has also focused on closing the gap in terms of operational efficiency.

“That comes down to a lack of accountability but I didn’t have time, given the circumstances, to wait for the culture to seep through the organisation to get results.”

Instead she set up the Powerhouse project to identify why and where the gaps existed and what could be done about them, then implement the plans to narrow or eliminate the gap.

It was carried out with a focus on “ruthless efficiency” when looking at the company’s processes.

PWC was engaged to help with the project that identified $78 million worth of cost reductions and operational improvements that are now on track for the business.

‘If you say sorry, good is actually up here and that’s where I want you to be working and if you slip I’m going to hold you accountable for that then generally people deliver.’

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Connected values

Customer facing

Her modus operandi in business is very much customer focused.

After graduating from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Commerce, her early years in business were in marketing, first with Unilever i n its graduate programme in Australia, then with Coca Cola through the mid to late 1980s in the United Kingdom.

She’d gone on her OE for 12 months but ended up away for five years.

“They were very exciting times to be in the UK. Maggie Thatcher was changing the world; Europe was signing the Single European Act. It was very global, very dynamic and I was in my 20s.

“When you’re in a job you enjoy there’s a real energy that comes with that.”

When she returned to Australia she

Toni’s five tips for aspiring businesswomen  Trust yourself, trust your abilities and be prepared to promote yourself.  Choose your life partner well, make sure they’re supportive of you and your aspirations.  Make sure you’re doing what you love.  Hold true to your core values.  Be accountable and expect accountability.

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Toni describes her leadership style as values-based –where the leadership connects the values of the company with those of employees.

“I’m passionate about the values that are important to me – integrity, accountability and delivery and I spend a lot of time finding those in other people.

“And that doesn’t mean they have to ‘look’ like me or have the same work experience – what it means is we all work on the business with the same values.”

That comes back to the purpose of the company and setting that from within the organisation so that people really connect with the company’s mission and direction.

She experienced that during her time in Malaysia managing Danone’s Dumex, a company that produced infant formula and growing up milks. While the company was running well there was a level of complacency around why people were working there as opposed to somewhere else.

“I asked them why are you here, what gets you up in the morning?”

Within her leadership team she also looked at the company’s purpose.

“We were clearly there to make a return to shareholders but we had to work on what motivated us as a team.”

By asking the questions she found Malaysians were devoted to their children and providing security for them.

But she also found Malaysian children had the highest obesity rates in South East Asia.

“With those insights in mind we developed a purpose – to make healthy food for Malaysian children.”

With that new sense of purpose everyone in the company stopped thinking of the business in terms of the usual metrics and thought more about their end consumer – Malaysian children, she says.

It drove everything they did – from cutting sugar out of manufactured product to how staff thought about their jobs.

“It was a transformational point for the business, it lifted the level of engagement, raised productivity and drove innovation.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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Future-proofing the business Westland Milk Products chief executive Toni Brendish wants to see there come a day when Fonterra’s farm gate milk price doesn’t even feature as a benchmark for the co-op.

“My goal in the future is to make it completely irrelevant,” Toni says.

A hint to where her long-term vision lies is in the co-op’s new purpose – “Nourishment made beautifully for generations.”

She points out the new purpose hasn’t been set by her alone – it’s come from within the co-op but she also points out it’s not restricted to milk or dairy.

The payout comparisons are made on a per kilogram milksolids basis but if some of the products Westland makes don’t contain milk solids at all then that comparison becomes irrelevant, she says.

“We should be in a position where as an organisation we are so successful in what we offer our shareholders and how we pay them – whether that be through payout or something else – that it’s irrelevant to compare returns.

“How we turn it away from a per kilogram of milksolids (basis) is my goal – to muddy the waters of a Fonterra farm gate milk price being the measure.”

Maximising processing assets to maximise returns to shareholders is a key aim.

What any new products might be isn’t part of the discussion as yet but the company has assets in its tetra pak UHT plant at Rolleston that could lend themselves to packaging a wide range of “nourishing” products.

What has been signalled clearly and on a closer timeline horizon is the idea of product segregation within the dairy milk pool.

That’s part of the company’s refreshed strategy – “To offer differentiated products that leverage our heritage and location.”

Segregation, Toni explains, could be about taking a group of farms, tracing the milk from paddock to glass for instance and processing it into a differentiated, specialty milk that attracts high returns.

She doesn’t have a lot of angst about the rise of “alternative milk” – products that boast the word milk in their title but are plant-based.

That’s because Westland has an ability to differentiate its dairy products on a clean, green platform and, with a mindset that it’s about delivering a beverage or food product that’s nourishing and “absolutely made beautifully”, it doesn’t really matter if it came from – for example – cows’ milk, nuts or both, she says.

But don’t expect segregation or alternative products in the short term.

“We’re not planning on doing these things by the end of the calendar year but they’re part of futureproofing our business.”

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worked for Colgate Palmolive before being approached to join Kimberley Clark in a general management role.

For the young woman who had known since the age of 10 or 11 that she wanted to be in business, this was exactly what she wanted to do – to take a wider management role and put all her skills into play – from marketing to managing people and running more areas of the business. She’s not sure what drove her that way exactly. Her parents weren’t in business but involved in the public service and the travel industry.

She’d lived overseas – something she believes developed a level of resilience.

Her job with Kimberley Clark brought her to New Zealand briefly before she returned to Australia for a short stint in telecoms. In 2004 she took up a job with Nutricia as managing director Australia and New Zealand and in 2009 took up the Malaysian role as managing director of Danone’s Dumex until 2013 when she moved to Jakarta to be Danone’s managing director of dairy in Indonesia and the region.

That business involved the complete supply chain from farm to end product. She worked for Nutricia and Danone for almost 11 years and was managing director in Malaysia during the WPC80 false botulism scare, which she refers to as the WPC80 disaster.

In 2015 she took up the position of vice president at fast moving consumer goods company DKSH in Bangkok.

But it was years before, while in Sydney, she met and married Kiwi Mark Baker – an award-winning news and sports photographer.

They have two children Joshua, studying at university in Sydney, and Catherine, who is at boarding school there.

“Choose your partner in terms of a life partner well – no one does this on their own, you need a supportive partner, someone who believes in you,” she says.

It was Mark who urged her to take the promotion and move to Malaysia.

“I didn’t really have any aspirations to live overseas but he saw the opportunity it could be for me and the opportunity for us as a family, for the kids.

“I’d been very successful at building teams but I’d never pushed myself in a cross-cultural situation. I’d never had to confront – how do you convey key principles and messages when you don’t speak the language? How do you understand the culture quickly so you don’t offend people?”

The experience shaped her leadership style particularly when it came to people, she says.

“The people aspect of business is the big challenge you’re always dealing with – how do you develop people, attract and retain them.”

For now, Toni is fully immersed in putting Westland back on a strong footing, a job she knows is critical for the success of the co-op’s farmer shareholders, her staff and the people of Westland.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Giving it a go,

one more time Anne Lee

For Canterbury dairy farmer Linda Hofsteede converting to dairying was about the future – for her, her children, the land and young people wanting to progress. It was something she and her late partner had considered when they bought the 356-hectare property eight years ago just a few kilometres east of Staveley in Mid-Canterbury.

They had been farming at Mayfield, predominantly grazing dairy heifers and doing dairy support. Linda had also been running her own hairdressing business. When they got an offer for their property, they initially considered down-sizing and semi-retiring.

“Then we thought no, we’re too young for that. We’ve got one more project in us, let’s give it a go one more time.”

Linda says they looked at more than 100 farms and walked over 50 – some as far north as Kerikeri.

“After all that, though, we ended up 15km away,” she says.

Tragedy struck when her partner took his own life just a year into owning the new farm. It was devastating for her and her two children Mia – then aged 15 and Liam 13.

The pain for those left behind is intense and she urges anyone suffering to seek help (see contact information at the end of this story).

Linda and her children needed time to heal after their heartbreak and they made a decision together to lease the main 236ha block out for the next three years. They remained in the house which was on a 120ha block across the road from the main farm. During that time Linda set to work re-fencing and

developing the block while she thought of options for the main block. Then four years ago she was ready to think about the next step and sought advice.

“I don’t have a lot of people around me but the people I do work with are fantastic. I value them, they’re who make the farm tick and are there to say what’s best for the farm. So with ongoing advice from Mike King and Jansen Travis from agricultural consultancy firm Tambo they did a feasibility study and budgets, she talked to the bank and then got on with the job.

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Homestead Farm

Since you have to do it You may as well do it right

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Area: 371ha Milking platform: 247ha Support block: 124ha Cows: 866 Production: 445kg MS/cow, 1670kg MS/ha Supplement: 610kg DM/cow Farm working expenses: $4.02/ kg MS

Linda Hofsteede – always an eye to the future.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

delaval.com | 0800 222 228

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Although the farm had consents to drill for water it hadn’t been irrigated. Drilling for water though in one of the wells came up blank and, with Barrhill Chertsey Irrigation (BCI) scheme about to come straight past the gate, the decision was made to buy into the guaranteed water source.

The farm itself was stripped back so it was essentially a blank canvas.

The dairy was sited in the centre of the farm with two main lanes in either direction.

That’s meant cows only walk a maximum distance of 700 metres on a lane before they’re into a paddock.

The paddocks were fenced to be of similar size, allowing for about three day’s grazing in each.

Linda invested in technology where it could Linda Hofsteede – it was important to save time, money and Linda to provide good staff housing. improve sustainability.

Four pivots were installed to make the most efficient received a B only because she hadn’t use of water and a ReGen completed bucket tests on all the system put in to monitor and manage pivots. irrigation and effluent.

A B grade means the auditors won’t The soil moisture meters and weather return for two years and she fully data allow for accurate application expects the next audit to be an A. of both irrigation water and effluent There are five houses on the dairy which is both cost-effective and good farm and Linda built the three new staff environmental practice. houses with staff needs in mind. All are She installed the Protrack Vantage double-glazed and well-insulated with herd management system in the dairy the laundry and bathrooms close to the with automatic drafting. It also gives back door. variable in-bail feeding and is fully The manager’s house had a integrated with MINDA. significant upgrade too.

Linda worked with Rural Building Within 18-months of deciding to Solutions to manage the shed build convert they were putting cups on project and had a check list of cows. It timed in perfectly with the everything she wanted included. all-time record low payout – something “It was a matter of what we needed Linda says wasn’t ideal but ensured and what we could live without, but I the business was set up to weather the was always looking ahead, too, so we lows. were future-proofed as much as we “Starting out in a low payout meant could be.” we kept the budget tight and still do.”

A Vari-Cool snap chilling milk cooling After the first year’s variable order system was installed knowing milk sharemilker didn’t work out she opted chilling rules were changing. The water to take on a farm manager, Sean Hope, delivered by BCI is warmer than water now in his second season. from a bore and the energy-saving “That’s worked out really well,” she technology in the system meant it says. could deal with the warmer water In the first year he worked in closely without pushing the power bill up. with the farm adviser and Linda but this The effluent pond, too, was built to season she’s pulled back a little. give storage that’s well beyond the “My plan was always to help young consenting requirements. people step their way through. It does She has a farm environment plan take hard work to make it in farming through BCI which is audited and in but if someone’s prepared to do that her last audit, which was also her first,

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‘I don’t have a lot of people around me but the people I do work with are fantastic. I value them, they’re who make the farm tick and are there to say what’s best for the farm.’ then I’m prepared to help them with their goals,” she says.

For Sean the next step is contract milking and they’re working on making that happen next season.

Linda employs three Filipino farm staff who report directly to Sean.

She’s helped them with new visa requirements and has paid for their Work to Reside visas.

“I really value them. They’re great employees and I find it pretty sad that the rules have changed. It’s so much harder for them to be here with their families.

“They’re great contributors– they spend in the local economy and their children go to the local schools. They do a good job onfarm and they’re so passionate about the cows.”

Linda signed up with MyMilk to help ease the share purchasing transition and to allow her to be part of the cooperative.

“This way I had five years – I’m in my third year of that now and I’ve bought a few shares so far.”

Pasture a priority

The farming system is pasture-first.

“Every blade of grass is critical,” Linda says.

“And that’s the way Sean manages it – he runs is as if it’s his own.”

The farm’s walked every week and the paddock covers loaded into Minda Land and Feed, setting the plan for the week.

Once a month there’s also a meeting with farm adviser Mike King.

The farm runs on a System 3 with imported supplement used in the fringes of the season.

They use about 600kg drymatter (DM)/cow of supplement which includes 320kg/cow of wheat fed in the farm dairy. They use palm kernel but are working on cutting that back.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

learning something new.”

MyMilk, Minda and ReGen all have apps so Linda can see the status of the farm from wherever she is, another factor that will help her step back a little more from the day-to-day operation of the farm.

“Having a passive income with good people running the farm means I can also have a life outside the farm now too. It’s been all-consuming getting it to this.”

Linda and farm manager Sean Hope – the farm’s ideally set up with the dairy right at its heart.

new partner in her life. He has his own business as an electrician and isn’t a farmer.

“He has his business and I have mine,” she says.

“I’m still on a steep learning curve with the dairy farm and every day I’m

Lifeline 0800 543 354, Txt 1737 any time, www.mentalhealth.org.nz/get-help Rural Support Trust, 0800 RURAL HELP, www.rural-support.org.nz Contact your GP.

We don’t just snap-chill your milk. We’re also freezing our interest rates at 0% on any purchase of a DeLaval chiller for the next 24 months.

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Since you have to do it You may as well do it right

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Independent body condition scoring is also carried out at critical times of the year and the information used to get cows to target condition scores.

Lighter cows are assigned to preferential feeding groups with oncea-day milking also used to manage condition. The block Linda developed at the outset has been added to and now acts as the support block enabling the farming business to be self-contained in terms of stock.

All the young stock are reared there and cows wintered on fodder beet there also.

“The herd was sourced from the North Island and comes from two 30-year old plus herds. They’re little pocket rockets with good genetics and I want to keep building on that.”

She synchronises the heifers and AI’s them, which all adds to the rate of genetic gain.While the conversion was about succession for her children and they were included in the decision, she made it clear she didn’t want them to feel pressured to make dairy farming their careers.

She did, however include them in the governance of the farm to help in their growth and personal development while encouraging their outside careers.

When Mia turned 21 she became a director as did Liam.

“They’ve both milked before and they’re not afraid of hard work,” Linda says.

Mia’s now had enough governance experience with the farm that Linda’s confident that if anything happened to her Mia could take over.

The three are close and the energetic Linda, a keen horsewoman, has just taken up barrel racing in the rodeo scene to join Mia and Liam in their hobby.

“For me the hardest thing about dairying and being a woman by myself is not having a partner to bounce ideas off.”

That’s why her circle of professional advisers is so important. Linda now has a

If you or anyone you are worried about needs help or support here are some places to start.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

delaval.com | 0800 222 228

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Taste Trail gals Cheyenne Nicholson

Three young women passionate about promoting local primary industry businesses are the brains and brawn behind the successful Horowhenua Taste Trail.

Catherine Lewis, Kristy McGregor and Kathy Mitchell are the organising committee for the Taste Trail and proud Horowhenua locals.

They are masters of multitasking – juggling full-time jobs, children and other ventures with planning a largescale community event, all in the name of community spirit and promoting their local producers to put the district on the map.

Catherine Lewis – Producer and event spokesperson and owner/ operator Tender Tips Asparagus When Dairy Exporter last caught up with Catherine it was to talk about all things asparagus (See Dairy Exporter

November 2016). This time we had a chat about her other venture – the Horowhenua Taste Trail. Catherine’s been involved in the Taste Trail since the idea was first created by her fatherin-law Geoff.

“He had this idea of doing a trail to celebrate the region’s produce and tell the story of the region. When Kristy came along with the idea of doing a long table lunch it was a natural progression to work together with her to create the trail.”

The asparagus business and accompanying dairy farm feature on the trail and is a prime opportunity for Catherine and husband Cam to open their gates and educate people on the ins and outs of asparagus and life on the dairy farm.

In its second year the Taste Trail has as grown beyond what they ever dreamed at the start.

“We’ve reached a point now where it needs more than the three of us in the

Multitaskers, left to right: Catherine Lewis, Kathy Mitchell and Kristy McGregor

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Dairy 2017

Kristy McGregor

planning committee. There’s been this amazing uptake in interest in the trail and so many new ideas in the mix. It’s grown so much in two years.”

“I’m really passionate about promoting the primary sector in the Horowhenua, I think we are really underestimated. We have such a wide variety of things that are produced here. We don’t just specialise in one thing like the Bay of Plenty or Hawke’s Bay tends to. We have all these niceproducing entrepreneurs having a go and want people to know about us.”

For Catherine, the trail has been an opportunity to promote women in the primary sector.

“Too often you go to rural things and there’s this real lack of women representation. It’s something else that I’m really passionate about and I’m proud that we can say that the trail has been organised by the three of us.”

“We have to make that change and promote the primary industry as an awesome place for women to be involved with.”

With more women starting to come through the ranks in the various businesses involved in the trail Catherine is hoping the trail will not only put the spotlight on produce in the area, but also female representation in the primary sector.

Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December

Catherine Lewis and husband Cam

Kristy McGregor – Resource management consultant and Taste Trail committee member With a full-time job as a resource management consultant at Mitchell Daysh and a masters project on the go you would think there would be little time for anything else for Kristy McGregor, but she has a third hat she wears. Kristy has been an integral part of getting the Horowhenua Taste Trail off the ground and turning into a raging success.

With a wealth of experience in planning events in her home state of Queensland, Australia, it was only a matter of time before she got stuck into a community event in the Horowhenua.

Since moving to New Zealand four years ago and landing in the Horowhenua she noticed the huge amount of produce coming out of the area and saw that no-one was celebrating it.

“It’s not really celebrated much just the amount of produce and different varieties coming out of the area. I thought it would be cool if we had a long table lunch or something.”

Armed with a good concept she

started approaching local families and struck gold with the Lewis family of Tender tips asparagus who were on the same wavelength. The relationship grew organically as did the idea and plans for the taste trail.

“We thought it best to pool resources. We started planning in July 2016 so had to think about what we could achieve in a four-month window.”

The first event was focused on a one-day event for the community to go out and trip around various producers with a launch event the night before.

This year, the trail has expanded.

From a cocktail evening to open the event with catering from famous local foodie Ruth Pretty to Indian vegetarian cooking classes and a champagne breakfast.

“We are seeing people come along with friends from outside the district.

There’s massive community buy-in and it’s building pride in our district which is something I’m really excited about.”

Kathy Mitchell – Stay-at-home mum and Taste Trail media liaison Once dismayed at the idea of moving to the Horowhenua, Kathy is

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

now a major advocate for the region.

Although not involved in the agricultural industry directly, her family has a long history with the district, with her husband’s family being involved in the local Mitchpine sawmill for the past 30 years.

When she was approached by Kristy and Catherine to see if the council was interested in being involved in their new venture Kathy immediately saw the opportunity to showcase the district in a positive light.

“Lots of people don’t think that the Horowhenua is a good place to be. Heck when I was moving here I thought the same thing. But it really is a neat place to live and we have so much here that we probably take for granted.”

Kathy’s key role on the organising committee is being in charge of communications and marketing. She sees the trail as a fantastic opportunity to promote not only the local producers but the district as a whole as a place for people to visit and live.

Completion of the new highway on the Kapiti Coast makes travelling out of Wellington easier and is opening doorways for tourism in the district and potential homebuyers.

“We have so many amazing local producers right on our back doorstep and lots of natural attractions like the beaches and trails that some people just don’t know about and being able to showcase them is going to do a lot of good for the community.”

Kathy came on board in 2016 and was in charge of communications and marketing.

“Last year two days before the trail I had a baby so I wasn’t able to do a heck of a lot but I wanted to stay on as a volunteer because I really think it’s a great event to be a part of and adds so much value to the district and is over.”

Kathy says one of the best things about being part of the organising committee is working with two passionate women in Catherine and Kristy.

“We are all really driven. With other events I’ve been involved with everyone just sort of goes with the flow but Catherine and Kristy are committed to putting on this amazing event and have so many ideas.”

“We are all at slightly different stages in life and it’s neat to see how we can all juggle our various life things and work on this event.”

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SPECIAL REPORT : WOMEN IN DAIRY

Stepping up Karen Trebilcock ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz @KT_at_Exporter

Southland dairy farmer Suzanne Hanning carefully, in her own words, “pokes bears”.

Her farm’s Facebook page Bristol Grove Dairies Ltd has almost 400 followers but gets thousands of views and she tries to post at least weekly what is happening onfarm.

In mid-November it was weaning calves and the arrival of the Hereford bulls on the Grove Bush farm.

“I use Facebook to tell our side of the story, to try to explain what we do and the why we do it. I have heard some people are using the posts as a teaching resource which is so awesome. It makes me really happy to think someone is getting something out of it.

“We had the hoof trimmer arrive the other week and I videoed what he did and it got lots of views and a few comments.

“There had been some stories in the media about farmers with lame cows so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show what we do to try to stop it happening.”

Calves and their antics are the stars of many of the photos and videos but also the cows, the two full-time farm staff, the assistant calf-rearer, Suzanne’s husband Maurice and anyone or anything that shows to the rest of the world what happens on a Southland dairy farm.

It takes her at the most 15 minutes a week but she says the results were timeless.

“I try to look at farming critically, as someone from the outside looking in would and I want people to ask questions. If we can get a conversation going or if someone wants something explained, that’s a success because we have engaged with the wider community.

“Too much of the time as farmers we’re being negative on social media, saying it is not us, you’re always picking on us but if people are ill-informed whose fault is that?

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Suzanne raises about 200 dairy calves and some beefies each year.

“It’s ours for not stepping up and explaining the issues in a respectful way. People who aren’t involved in agriculture aren’t dumb. They just don’t understand because no one has taken the time to tell them.”

She says farmers still need to lift their game when it comes to environmental practices and animal welfare but it is important to show they are trying.

“Society’s expectations are changing so quickly and it’s hard to keep up.

We don’t know the solutions, but we’re doing what we think is right with the knowledge we have now but sometimes it’s not right and we have to accept that. We need to be patient with each other.

“And we have got to stop being defensive about it.”

Suzanne is unashamedly passionate about farming and is hands-on, doing what needs to be done whether it is raising the calves, spraying the lanes for weeds, getting cows in or milking.

She blames her father for her work habits.

“My dad worked so hard to get where he did. He emigrated to Canada from Belgium in the 1960s and all he has done is work.

“He and Mum started with nothing. They built up a family farm, got all five children to tertiary education and have just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They have been so successful, but there was very little work/life balance.”

Growing up in Ontario, her dad had a pedigree Friesian herd and milked three times a day, 365 days a year so when her father-in-law Pat suggested the Southland family farm be converted to dairying Suzanne knew more than any of them what they were getting into.

“I said it’s fine with me as long as I’m not going to be milking the cows. But of course I couldn’t help myself.”

The Hannings have been on the farm

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

‘If that cow is converting feed efficiently then not only is it making us money but it’s better for the environment, for the water, for the soil, it’s putting out less nitrogen in the urine and less methane.’ for five generations – even the road is named after them.

Suzanne met Maurice in a Southland pub on her OE in the 1990s after finishing a vet technician course in Ontario. She had been to Belgium with her parents so wanted to go somewhere different. The choice was South Africa, Australia or New Zealand.

“I was less likely to get eaten in New Zealand so I came here.”

After they were married they both worked multiple jobs off farm so they could continue “supporting their farming habit” of running 3000 ewes on the family farm.

Maurice worked nights at the meat works and Suzanne started off working as a wool handler, then was a soil tester for Ballance Agri-Nutrients and an AI technician, and later on, a sales rep for LIC. They also started a cow scanning business pregnancy testing cows.

That all came to an end when they went dairying.

“People talk about conversions as being stressful but really, it was a lot of fun. We did 18 months’ preparation doing budget after budget down to the very last cent.

“And because of all our off-farm jobs we had access to some really clever people. We said to ourselves, who has the best lanes in Southland and we went and saw them and how they did it, and who has the best cows and who has the best dairy.

“We were very fortunate and are very grateful and this farm is a testament to all those people who helped us and gave us advice.”

Maurice was in charge of lanes and grass and Suzanne “got to go shopping” for cows, travelling the South Island looking at herds.

And in spring 2007 they started milking – the conversion completed on time and under budget.

They now have a 650-cow herd, although it started as a mix of Friesian, crossbred and Jersey. It is now mostly crossbred with a strict three strikes and you’re out culling policy.

“That’s any medical intervention – mastitis, lameness, whatever. We call it the law of the jungle. Hypothetically, if the cow wouldn’t survive in the wild then it’s gone.”

They’ve kept the stocking rate low, at 2.8 cows/ha, to protect the farm’s light soils and the herd is in the top 5% in the country for BW and PW. “We want a kilogramme of MS per kilogramme of bodyweight. We want an efficient cow.

“If that cow is converting feed efficiently then not only is it making us money but it’s better for the environment, for the water, for the soil, it’s putting out less nitrogen in the urine and less methane.

“If you think about the nitrogen we are putting on our paddocks. If it ends up in the waterways, that’s not where we want nitrogen. That is a loss for us.

“We want it in the soil growing grass so keeping it out of the water is important for us financially as well as what is best for the country.”

Her interest in the environment has seen her help form the HedgehopeDunsdale Catchment Group with another local farmer Jeanette Topham in 2015. The group includes all the farming types in the area and is working on identifying water quality and sharing good management practices.

“First we had to understand what is good water quality and we’ve liaised with the regional council and we’re starting to get some really good data.”

As well as her Facebook posts, Suzanne and Maurice welcomed a class from a low-decile Invercargill school onfarm last year when the teacher asked for help explaining to the pupils why maths was important.

Suzanne had her three pet cows on the rotary with test buckets and the kids, in three teams, had to guess how

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

much milk each cow would give and then, when milking was finished, they had to measure the milk.

“They were getting their hands in it and tasting it. It was great. Then we looked at how much grass a cow has to eat to produce that milk and got them to fill drums, pretend cows, with grass from a mown paddock and figure out the drymatter content, again in the teams. You could really see them starting to understand it.

“The teacher told us the next day one of the kids worked out the drymatter of his Weetbix at breakfast the next morning so that was pretty exciting that they had taken it on board.

“Farmers are one of the most underrated groups in society but we have such a wealth of untapped knowledge. I just wish we were brave enough to share it more.”

Suzanne and Maurice’s three children Nicole, who has just finished her second year of a BComAg at Lincoln University, Rebecca (15) and Naomi (12) also enjoy the farming life but Suzanne wants them to “experience other stuff” before deciding whether they will take the family farm on and make it generation number six.

“Farming is something you have to be sure you want to do. If our girls want to come home to the farm, it will be their choice.

“We don’t want them to get to 30 and wish they had tried something else first.

“I know you hear it all the time but it is true, we are only stewards of this land, caretakers. We don’t look at this farm as our farm, it’s the generations who have owned it and this is just our time on it, our privilege and responsibility to do the best that we can with it.”

The family have no regrets that they converted to dairy although they have kept six sheep, just for when Maurice starts to miss shearing and dagging.

“With dairying, we have been able to help make more people’s lives better. It does sound like warm fuzzies but when we were sheep farming we were so busy working off farm that we couldn’t be part of the community.

“Now we can be and we can try to help lift everyone else up around us, instead of just trying to survive.”

Check out the Bristol Grove Dairies page to see Suzanne’s videos of what happens on a dairy farm.

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ENVIRONMENT │ ONFARM

FUTURE-PROOFING

farm development Merging two, tired South Taranaki dairy blocks into a modern operation was a challenge to be relished for Vanessa and Jacques Le Prou. Jackie Harrigan reports.

Vanessa and Jacques Le Prou with Xavier, 5, Poppy, 3 and Maggie 10 months.

F

uture-proofing their farm and dairy business was foremost in the minds of Vanessa and Jacques Le Prou when developing their rundown Pihama dairy farm.

Five years ago the Le Prous bought two adjacent coastal Taranaki dairy blocks featuring old infrastructure and 60-year-old run-out dairy pastures in partnership with Jacques’ parents. Putting the two blocks together to form a 140-hectare unit has been a massive project for the young couple who relished the challenge but say it was like doing a whole-farm dairy conversion.

“In some ways we were able to start with a clean slate and plan it to be just as we wanted it so we took the opportunity to look 10-15 years out and see where the industry was heading.”

The forward-thinking couple developed a farm with new central dairy shed, reformed races, fences, water system and a new, upgraded effluent treatment system, all built to handle an increased stocking rate.

The new dairy shed is a 60-bale rotary placed in the centre of the farm, with a new bridge bringing walking times down to 20 minutes from more than an hour from the back of the farm. The shed has minimal automation, other than cup removers, but along with the yard and feedpad is capable of handling 600 cows should the couple wish to expand the operation to that level.

Both Jacques and Vanessa worked in the dairy industry after Lincoln • Milking platform: 140ha effective University B Ag • Runoff: 14ha Comm degrees • Cows: 400 Kiwicross cows (where Blenheim• Production: 160,000kg MS/ha (1142kg born Vanessa MS/ha) met Opunake• Target: 450 cows producing 100% of born Jacques), liveweight (202,500kg MS) guaranteeing

Farm Facts

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Effluent system wishlist Low labour requirement: many systems they investigated took lots of tidying up and shifting of solids and liquids. Jacques and team member Jason Fieldsend keep the whole operation to two fulltime employees with Vanessa’s help with calves and accounts.

Low mechanical intervention: Vanessa and Jacques say neither of them are mechanically minded – they wanted to minimise mechanical and electrical parts to decrease any breakdowns and intervention required.

Low water: low water requirement ticks boxes for both cost and usage. The water scheme the farm belongs to inevitably has increasing costs over time.

PIHAMA

Cropping mix • 17 ha maize • 12ha plantain • 9ha chicory • 4ha turnips • 3ha rape • 7ha maize on runoff

many robust discussions about policies, stocking rates and feeding levels, among other things. Vanessa spent two years as a DairyNZ consulting officer on the coast before working for Pioneer while Jacques was in the fertiliser industry before going dairy farming and sharemilking for family concerns.

While they planned for a 600-cow operation, a halving of the $8-00/kg milksolids (MS) payout when they were part way through building the new shed and developing the farm made them

rethink the resilience of their business and how dependent on bought-in feed the operation would be at that stocking level.

The farm is operating a System 2, importing around 10% of feed, but a stocking rate of 4.2 cows/ha at 600 cows would need much higher levels of inputs, Vanessa says.

“Ideally we want a system that works well on any payout – so we are targeting 450 cows producing 100% of their bodyweight, around 450kg MS/cow, while keeping costs under control.”

Taking into account the ‘peak cow’ rhetoric of the election and looking forward in the industry has made the couple rethink their targets for 600 cows and decide to aim for higher per-head production, using crops to fill feed gaps and drive production.

CROPPING FOCUS Part of future-proofing the business involves the aim of moving away from palm kernel and growing their own crops – so Vanessa and Jacques are experimenting with different crops and forage mixes, and using the cropping programme to renew old pastures.

“We don’t want to be susceptible to feed prices on the open market so we are experimenting with crops and insulating ourselves from falling payouts so we are

not forced into pulling out feed from the system,” Vanessa says.

A quarter of the farm is cropped each year and from that 12.5% of the total area is sown into new permanent pastures.

“Half the farm was very old pastures and the other half around 20 years old, so the plan is to finish renewing the older pastures in three or four years and then start on the younger ones.”

Just two years into the cropping programme they are still experimenting but enjoying the diverse pastures resulting from the mix of crops and forages.

“We have decided we don’t want a solely ryegrass sward – we are planning for a mixed sward with ryegrass, clover, chicory and plantain.”

Coming out of the maize half of the area goes into the permanent mixed forage and half will be further cropped with an annual ryegrass, chicory, plantain or in the past rape.

The first maize crop was sown into plantain clover mix which grew really well through the winter – a very good result, Jacques says.

“We have undersown grass into the chicory for the first time this autumn, so we have the grass growing in those paddocks in the winter when the chicory is dormant,” Jacques says.

With the success of the undersowing

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

71

the couple have increased the chicory area from a small calf paddock to nine hectares.

The coastal strip can get summer-dry, so turnips, chicory and rape are grown to keep the cows fully fed – although last summer turned out to be more wet than dry so the rape wasn’t really needed, Jacques says.

“We need to have enough crop on-hand to provide 4kg drymatter (DM)/day for each cow between December and March/ April in a dry year to supplement any pasture and maize we have on hand.”

Maize is grown on both the milking platform and the runoff to ensure enough is ensiled to fill any feed gaps to the tune of one tonne/cow along with the turnips and rape. A further 300-400kg/cow is bought in – a mixture of palm kernel and dried distiller grains, but the couple plan to phase out the palm kernel and fill the gap with other forages in the future.

ABOVE: Farm boy: Xavier Le Prou has just started school, but loves to get out on the farm when he gets off the school bus.

LEFT: The diverter diverts effluent from one side of the weeping wall to the other.

BELOW: Xavier and Poppy searching for frogs.

NEW EFFLUENT SYSTEM Feeding any supplement on the feedpad minimises wastage and the Le Prous built silage bunkers adjacent to the pad to cut down on time and distance travelled. They also oriented them to capture seepage or runoff in their new effluent system, along with runoff from the dairyshed wash, and green floodwash from the yard.

In designing their new effluent system they also took a future-thinking approach, designing it for what might happen rather than what is happening now, Jacques says.

They looked around Taranaki and sought advice from the Taranaki Regional Council (TRC), but didn’t see anything that fitted their criteria of low labour requirement, low mechanical parts/intervention and low water requirement.

TRC has rules about moving to land application away from the old three-pond system and the Le Prous were aware that the draft annual plan was under review.

“Here in Taranaki we are lucky with our geography and forgiving soils, but we can see a time where the nutrient and effluent rules will become tougher – we wanted to be ready for that,” Vanessa says.

“We didn’t see any system in Taranaki that we wanted to replicate. People seemed to be forever scraping and moving muck

and then shifting it again – it seemed very time-consuming and time-wasting – we wanted to do it once and do it right.”

They visited the Waikato Effluent Expo and through getting in touch with the Fonterra sustainability adviser were able visit Waikato farms and research their systems.

Meeting Davieth Verheij, a specialist effluent engineer from AgFirst Waikato Engineering was a turning point and through his association with Coastal Agri Services in Opunake they were able to get him to visit their site and to discuss all the options.

Green cost savings The saving from the weeping wall and greenwash systems are substantial with Vanessa and Jacques banking an extra $9000 each year.

Water: $3000 each year is saved on water purchased through the water scheme.

Fertiliser: A $3000/year saving on the fertiliser forgone on the crop/maize area where the dried solids are spread. Recent nutrient testing of the weeping wall solids showed 160kgN/ ha applied over 16ha, a saving of $1600, plus savings from P, K, S and Ca nutrients. These savings will grow in the future as maintenance fertiliser will not be needed, Vanessa says.

Power: savings of $3000 each year from not having to stir the effluent in the pond, the smaller pump required to pump liquid only and less hosing with the gravity-fed floodwash and a scraper on the backing gate.

Added benefits are the savings from low servicing and no breakdowns.

72

“He was awesome – he had been through it all and knew the ins and outs of all the systems so we settled on two weeping walls which we had seen in the Waikato,” Vanessa says.

The Le Prous say it was definitely worth while getting an engineer involved, as theirs was the first installation of double weeping walls in Taranaki.

Splitting the weeping wall in two with a solid barrier in between and a selector gate is an innovation that allows one side to dry out ready for scraping while the other is still in use and the size of the pond is minimised.

The angle of the slope of the feeder trough to the wall is counter-intuitive, but it works really well, Jacques says.

“The slope is away from the wall, and so the solids are not pressed up against the weeping wall slots, causing blockages.

“Rather just like you pour sand into a cup of water, the water rises up and the solids sink to the bottom and the water is drained out over the lip.”

The liquids from the green recycled floodwash and the clean hosedown water seep through the weeping wall and are pumped through a small pump to the lined effluent pond next door. No agitator

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

The double weeping wall is separating effluent solids and saving $9000 each year for the Le Prous.

Green floodwash in action – recycling effluent liquids saves on water, power, pond capacity and time spent hosing the yard.

While the effluent system cost $60,000 more than a standard system without the weeping walls and green floodwash, Vanessa and Jacques say a payback period of six to eight years and the longevity of the simple system made it worthwhile.

“The system is very simple and robust, it should last many, many years.”

Next on the development list is the

automation in the shed. Jacques says.

“The payout was too low to afford any automation other than automatic cup removers so one person could milk, next we would like to get some technology that weighs and monitors the cows and their health – that would be great for early detection of lameness and mastitis and help detect cycling.”

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is needed in the pond as only liquids are pumped in there before they are pumped out into the greenwash tank or irrigated on to 60ha of the farm.

While the farm is consented to spread on to 15ha the Le Prous irrigate 60ha with a travelling irrigator and because there is little solid content the cows don’t mind eating the resultant grass.

Pumping costs are low due to the liquidity of the material needing only a small pump, which fills the floodwash tank and also irrigates the land. The water is recycled many times through the 25,000 litre floodwash tank into the yard, and occasionally down the feedpad through a similar system before it goes on to the pasture. The pond size is also smaller because of the greenwater being recycled.

The solids sit in the concrete trough and build up for six months then the effluent is diverted to the other channel and the first one dries to a low drymatter through drainage and evaporation. Once a year the Le Prous pay a contractor $1600 to scrape out the dried solids and apply them to a maize paddock before cultivation.

Deciding to line the clay pond with a synthetic liner was another future-proofing decision.

The couple say the whole system has worked really well, is very easy to run and maintain and gives peace of mind that they can happily go away and leave someone else to run it.

“The labour requirement is really low, it’s not complicated, you literally push a button and it works.

“It’s like a big composting system. We can push the calf bedding down the chute too.”

The Le Prous rear 100 heifer calves each season, trying to build their numbers and move on some cows of “mixed ability and mature years” they inherited with half of the farm a going concern and the other half of the cows bought cheaper in the downturn.

“There were a few age groups missing and the cows were of very mixed production, so we are breeding up and retaining more heifers – it will be another three or four years until we hit out straps with a good mixed age herd,” Jacques says.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

73

STOCK │ DAIRY SHEEP Some of the 800 East Friesian and Lacaune crossbred ewe lambs grazing on Spring Sheep Milk pilot farm.

Why sheep milk?

Sheryl Brown

T

he global demand for alternative dairy and non-bovine dairy products is growing significantly and there is enormous potential for New Zealand sheep milk products, particularly in Asian growth markets.

The nutritional benefits of sheep milk are becoming more apparent, and early research is supporting that dairy sheep have a lower environmental footprint than traditional dairy cow operations.

NZ research continues to support more growth in the sheep milk industry, which gives significant weight to further expansion into dairy sheep.

Spring Sheep Milk along with Maui Milk and Kingsmeade Dairy have worked with AgResearch as part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) $5.5 million-funded programme Boosting exports of the emerging NZ dairy sheep industry.

The research, facilitated by AgResearch, is aimed at growing exports of the established NZ dairy sheep industry by creating greater value from milk through knowledge of its composition and the functionality of its components, improving net volume and value of harvested ewes’ milk, and establishing

Pilot progress Spring Sheep Milk Co pilot farm has 800 East Friesian and Lacaune crossbred ewe lambs grazing. The lambs are due to be mated early next year with the aim to start milking from July. Fences, races and waterlines are all established, red clover has been planted for summer crops and earthworks for the milking parlour and barns are set to start before Christmas.

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Thomas Macdonald, business manager of Spring Sheep Co.

‘There is a significant amount of research going into establishing sound practices for farming and processing sheep milk, so the building blocks are there for when the industry expands.’ criteria to ensure the environmental sustainability of sheep dairying in NZ. This value-chain approach to sustainable sheep dairying will result in a more attractive industry to new entrants and suppliers, further boosting its growth.

All the research is related to finding the paramount farm system for dairy sheep in NZ and the best way to farm to meet market demands, Spring Sheep Milk Co. business manager Thomas Macdonald says.

“There is a significant amount of research going into establishing sound practices for farming and processing sheep milk, so the building blocks are there for when the industry expands.”

Spring Sheep Milk. is undertaking a number of trials on their farms along with

other members of the program so that other farmers will be able to execute the most profitable, efficient and sustainable business, he says.

AgResearch trial results are underlining the benefits sheep milk has to offer when it comes to nutrition and digestion.

Sheep milk is a high value-add product that has superior nutritional qualities and may be suitable for those who are sensitive to regular cow milk. It has up to twice as much protein and calcium as cows’ milk, higher in all 10 essential amino acids, and is richer in many vitamins and minerals than goat and cow milk.

Because of its fat composition and absence of the A1 protein, sheep milk may be easier to digest which makes it an

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

attractive proposition for Asian markets, where milk sensitivity is generally found to be more common.

Sheep milk is rich and creamy with twice the solids of cow milk, it has no strong aroma and has a clean, slightly sweet taste.

Its fat-to-protein ratio also makes it perfect for cheese, one of the most common and traditional sheep milk products found in Europe.

Meanwhile, due to sheep milk’s natural superior nutrition profile and digestibility benefits, there is significant opportunity for advanced nutrition products in Asian markets.

Research by AgResearch includes analysis of 500 milk samples collected at different times of year over the last three years.

Results show that on average, NZ sheep milk has higher levels of protein and twice the fat of cow’s milk, with high levels of calcium, phosphorus and magnesium.

The work shows sheep and cow milk cause different effects on gastrointestinal physiology in rats.

For example, in a study using rats they found sheep milk made solids pass through the animals’ systems rapidly – which suggests improved gut comfort, reduced constipation and general improvement for a sluggish gut. Rats fed sheep milk required less solid food than rats given raw cow milk to maintain the same level of growth. This supports the view that sheep milk is an excellent source of nutrition.

In another study with rats, sheep milk proteins were more readily digested than cow milk proteins, with higher levels of essential amino acids.

Sheep Horizon Three In 2016 a Primary Growth Partnership programme was established ‘Sheep – Horizon Three’– a six-year programme from 2016 to 2022, funded by $12.56m investment from MPI and $18.83m from Spring Sheep Milk.

The PGP programme between MPI and Spring Sheep Milk – a company owned 50:50 by Landcorp and a number of independent NZ investors.

This programme will focus the next level of research aiming to build a high value and sustainable NZ sheep dairy industry by building a fit-for-purpose NZ sheep milk farming system that is commercially viable, environmentally sustainable, suited to imported genetics and replicable by other NZ farmers.

The PGP programme will also fund extensive market research to determine which marketsegments have the greatest profit potential and how to access those markets successfully, and create high margin products to meet demand in the target markets.

A further study showed a major waste stream from sheep cheese – whey – has the potential to be processed into a stable base ingredient for beverages or soup stocks under controlled circumstances.

An AgResearch N Leaching Trial is looking at the nitrogen leaching footprint from a dairy sheep system. It’s estimated dairy sheep could leach up to a third less nitrogen than dairy cows.

A field study is under way on Spring Sheep Milk’s Taupo farm where 2000 ewes are milked. There are 300 nitrogen collectors in the soil measuring nitrogen leaching under a range of farm systems, from fully grazed, to a hybrid system with sheep housed during the day and grazing outside at night.

Urine spotting work is looking at nitrogen concentration levels.

The objective is to gather data required to build an Overseer model for dairy sheep, to demonstrate the environmental footprint, relative to other systems.

An AgResearch Feeding Trial has compared sheep fed fulltime in a barn on a total mixed ration diet, with ewes kept partially housed during the daytime and grazed outside overnight.

The overall objective is to find the best system for the animal, for milk production and for the most sustainable and financially profitable operation.

Another part of the research is looking at milk functionality and milk composition to work out the various effects on milk quality, production and taste in different farm systems.

“We have looked at seasonality of sheep milk, early and late lactation and what happens to the milk from day one and what that means for flavour, for processing and for production levels.”

The best system for rearing lambs is also being researched. Spring Sheep Milk has trialled three types of milk powder on their lambs to see which delivers the best weight gain and best animal performance.

Earthworks for the Spring Sheep Milk Co. milking parlour and barns are set to start before Christmas.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

75

STOCK │ UDDER INFECTIONS Chris McCullough

Developer Cory Spencer with the scanner.

Goat farmer develops detection system

Missed udder infections and subsequent missed treatments are costing global dairy farmers a massive $10 billion worth of production a year.

Smaller family dairy farms are hit the hardest with the financial burden as udder infection detection rates in these situations can be low.

A Canadian company is now focusing on addressing the issue with its own detection system that is not only accurate, but affordable.

EIO Diagnostics has come up with a new system that scans udders in the dairy, either via a mounted scanner in robotic milking systems or a handheld device, and relays the images to a screen where infections can be identified easier.

EIO claim its solution detects these infections dramatically sooner, and cheaper, than any other approach currently on the market.

EIO uses a technique known as multispectral imaging which detects udder abnormalities as they form.

Animals affected by harmful pathogens, even at Somatic Cell Count (SCC) levels which are generally considered subclinical, can then be identified by farmers.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

‘No other product also works with dry cows or pre-calving animals that don’t regularly pass through the milking parlour.’

Being able to identify a Staphylococcus aureus infection, even when a standard SCC test is showing levels below 200,000 SCC, gives farmers an effective tool for increasing herd health and minimising production losses.

The handheld device, about the size and shape of a small tablet, can tell the health of an udder in less than a second.

Used in bigger automated dairies the mounted device identifies and monitors cows as they enter the stall or robot. It integrates with DeLaval VMS or Lely Astronaut robotic milkers and can also be integrated with automated feeders, leveraging existing animal identification systems.

The brains behind the detection system is Cory Spencer, who started EIO off in the barns of his The Happy Goat Cheese Company in the Cowichan Valley, Canada.

Cory is a full stack developer and goat cheese maker, and had experienced a mastitis problem with one of his 100 goats. Along with his fellow rural-living tech neighbour Damir Wallener, a proof of concept solution was brought to life over the spring and summer seasons of 2017.

Damir is the chief executive officer of EIO and says the interest the company is receiving from farmers indicates their system is unique.

“From the intense interest we are receiving from actual dairy farmers, the answer has to be no, there are no similar systems on the market.

“There are automated SCC and electroconductivity devices available, but they share the problem of trying to identify udder infections by measuring something indirectly related to the actual infections.

“No other product also works with dry cows or pre-calving animals that

Udder infection detection on screen.

don’t regularly pass through the milking parlour,” he says.

The EIO Diagnostics system is being tested in several commercial dairy farms on Vancouver Island, using both goats and cows. The company is also preparing for its first large-scale deployments, one in New Zealand and one in Wisconsin.

EIO say it prices the system on a service model rather than individual hardware sales and each system will differ on the number of scanners required.

“It very much depends on the usage model and milking parlour style,” Damir says. “For the same size herd, a rotary milking platform needs fewer devices than, for example, a double 12.

“From the dairy’s perspective, though, it all works out the same, as EIO prices on a service model rather than a hardware sales model.

“EIO manages all the hardware, software, updates and maintenance, for a fixed price, with no surprises. For goat dairies, the pricing is $3 per month, per goat. For cows, it is $5 per month, per cow.

From the farm’s perspective, by reducing per-animal lab tests, or saving just one bulk tank from being dumped, the service pays for itself very quickly.”

Once the device visualises an udder, it

The scanner system set up in the dairy.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

takes a number of measurements from various parts of the spectrum. These are run through a complex mathematical model, generating a pass or fail signal.

“This takes less than a second,” Damir says. “The measurements are also pushed to EIO’s software cloud, where they are combined with all the other imaging done at all the other barns.

“Over time, improved models are pushed back down to the devices, allowing every farm to learn from what is happening on every other farm.

“The system can send emails, text messages, and it can use messaging apps like Slack or update a cloud-based dashboard. Basically, any internetdependent communication channel is either supported, or easy for us to add.

“Unfortunately for farmers, current approaches based on SCC and electroconductivity generate high false positive rates, so the standard is quite low.

“Over the next couple of months, in partnership with a highly regarded university dairy science programme, we will publish fully quantified results showing how well our detection matches up with actual pathogen tests.

“The system is in commercial deployment with select customers. Our core motivation as a company is to ‘make something people love,’ so it is important for us at this stage to not take on more than we can properly manage.

“Right now we have the capacity for perhaps two or three more customers, with general release planned for fall of 2018.

“The beta and test farm deployments are in Canada. The first commercial deployments, happening right now, are in New Zealand and the United States.

“As those come to life, we will be looking for our first EU deployment, and then working with NGOs to bring this solution to small-herd farmers in Africa,” Damir says.

77

STOCK │ VET VOICE

Hitting peak lactation, staying on high Katie Mason As we pass the peak of mating and move into mid-lactation the aim is to promote ‘persistency’ of milk production, in other words to encourage cows to produce as much milk for as long as possible.

New Zealand dairy cows are producing more milk than ever, with average milksolids (MS) yield up from 15 years ago; from 259kg MS/cow in the 1992/93 season to 372kg MS/cow in the 2015/16 season according to DairyNZ. Our pasture-based systems and seasonal calving are ‘matched’ such that peak lactation in October largely coincides with the most plentiful and highest-quality pasture.

Typically in early lactation, body reserves are used for milk production and cows are in negative energy balance for six to eight weeks after calving. After calving, cows will consistently ingest more and more kilograms of drymatter until ‘balance date’ when pasture growth matches cow energy demand and intake. Until then cows will use their own body condition to provide energy in addition to that being consumed from the pasture and any other feed offered.

By mid-lactation body weight loss has ‘turned a corner’ and cows begin to stabilise body weight. There is a steady decline in pasture quality, drymatter intake and milk production during this time, despite liveweight being constant.

After reaching peak lactation about four to six weeks after calving, the cow’s appetite is at full capacity to be able to consume all the nutrients required for production, providing the diet is of high enough quality. A high quality and plentiful diet is important in mid-lactation 78

to sustain production. In late lactation the energy required for milk production declines, but energy is still required for pregnancy and increasing body condition score for the next lactation.

In order to reach peak milk production, cows need to be offered a plentiful supply of high-quality feed. There is a settled period when mating is complete when it is possible to really focus on churning out the milk solids. If mineral deficiencies (such selenium and copper) have not been checked by blood or liver sampling and corrected prior to mating, then this should be addressed now.

In order to reach peak milk production, cows need to be offered a plentiful supply of high-quality feed.

Two major factors determine total lactation yield: peak lactation yield and the rate of decline from peak lactation yield. This is determined by a number of things: • body condition score at calving • peak milk yield itself i.e. how much the cows produced at peak • nutrient intake following peak yield • other factors such as disease status and climatic stress such as heat stress in the summer which may depress dry matter intakes • genetic factors – ‘persistency’ of milk yield is heritable but not as highly heritable as peak milk yield.

Many of the things listed above, have already been predetermined by the time mid-lactation comes around so it becomes important to focus on the factors within your control like nutrient intake and disease status.

In NZ dairy cows the rate of decline of milk production from peak is about 7-8% by month, but this can range significantly from between 3% and 4% a month to 12% a month. As well as reducing milk production; poor feeding can also cause cows not to cycle for many months. It is not uncommon to find herds where a high number of empty cows at pregnancy testing have not shown signs of heat. Cows will also dry themselves off prematurely if they receive insufficient nutrients to maintain milk production.

Since high quality and plentiful feed are paramount to maintaining milk production, frequent farm walks and measuring of pasture residuals and intakes is key. DairyNZ’s quick nutritional checks are useful: • check your pasture residuals before and after every grazing • monitor daily milk solids yield and milk fat and milk protein trends • check your cows are eating the supplements you offer.

Try to avoid under-allocating pasture as restricting pasture allowances to less than cow requirements can cause significant drops in milk production. Try also to avoid over allocating pasture as residuals of more than 1500kg DM/hectare will reduce subsequent pasture quality and regrowth potential.

Assessing your herd’s performance and observing trends is key.

Are your cows declining in milk production by 7% or more by month between November and January?

Is total milk solid yield declining rapidly over a 10 day period? This could be an indication that cows are insufficiently fed.

Is milk fat percentage increasing? This may mean that cows are mobilising body fat stores and losing body condition due to insufficient intakes.

Is milk protein percentage declining?

Close observation of these trends can allow you to remedy the situation early and promote a lengthy lactation with a slow decline in milk production.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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Freephone 0800 10 22 76 Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Helping grow the country 79

PROGRESSION

Matt Snedden with his dog, Coast.

Doesn't do town After a few years of moving around through a range of dairy roles, Matt Snedden and his wife Kortne want to settle down as a contract milker.

Glenys Christian reports.

M

att Snedden has come a long way since winning the Northland Dairy Trainee of the Year title back in 2014.

The 24-year-old moved south to Helensville to take up a farm manager role for two years and now is into his first year of a three-year contract-milking position on Narbey Farms.

He and wife Kortne have bought a house in Warkworth with his parents and the couple are also expecting their first child next April.

“I don’t do town or neighbours,” he says.

“I always knew I was going to go farming but the only way to move forward was to get into dairying.”

80

His parents, who live on his grandparents’ 160 hectare sheep and beef farm out of Warkworth, work off-farm as a midwife and an electrician.

“So I saw how hard that farming is unless you’re on a larger scale,” he says.

He left school at 16 and went north to Whangarei to complete a six-month Ruraltech course then in 2011 went to work on a family friend’s 400-cow farm out of Te Awamutu. But he had to take time off for a knee reconstruction after a sports injury at 13 caused multiple dislocations.

Moving north he found a position working for wages on Mark Keskic’s farm, milking 280 cows. Then the next season he went further

north to Kerikeri to Mike Deal and Michelle Shepherd’s farm running a herd of 520 cows where he had his Dairy Industry Award victory.

The following season he stayed in the north managing Clive Walden’s farm in the Bay of Islands.

“We milked 650 cows once-a-day and there was also some bull beef run as well as young stock,” he says.

During this time he’d completed Primary ITO courses up to Level 4 and is in the process of embarking on Level 5.

An advertisement caught his eye when he was wondering what his next move in the dairy industry would be, which was placed

by Helensville farmer, Scott Narbey, who happened to be holidaying in the north at that time.

They met up and the next step was for Matt to go south and have a look at the farm, where Scott and wife Sue milk 400 cows twice-a-day until drying off. The big advantage he saw was the dairy which had only been built three years previously.

“It was well set-up with a lot of technology and all the bugs had been ironed out as everyone learned the new systems,” he says.

Matt had used Protrack before but was enthusiastic about the amount of new technology now at his fingertips which includes automatic cup removers, Protrack drafting, automatic teat spraying, heat detection and in-dairy feeding.

“It’s just about everything you can have without a robot,” he says.

“Scott was willing to put the money up to make life easier.”

After moving every year he and Kortne, who had completed her secondary teacher training at Auckland’s AUT, were happy to put down roots and look to the medium to long term.

“The area appealed because I knew it,” he says.

“It was close to town and there were multiple schools where Kortne could get a job.”

Six months after they arrived she obtained a position teaching maths at Mahurangi College, Warkworth, which they’d both attended and where they met.

To start with Scott took Matt on in a manager’s role, which they thought would last for one year but they agreed at the end of that time another year was more appropriate than

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

‘What I do affects my income a lot more now so I put a bit more pressure on myself and the farm’s the better for it.’

him moving straight into a contract milking role. Scott employed both Matt and full-timer, Robbie Travers, who was working towards retirement. But now as contract milker Matt supplies staff in the form of full-time worker, Rory Rogerson, who lives onfarm.

“We met through Primary ITO courses and Scott knew his old boss who was moving to Kerikeri so it wasn’t quite a poaching situation,” he says.

Kortne used to do relief milking but now a youngster living locally comes in at weekends and a 15-year-old is also employed to carry out weed spraying. Being only a kilometre or so away from Helensville as well as close to a number of other settlements on Auckland’s fringes means it’s a good area from which to attract a wide range of staff.

Rory does most of the milkings with Matt helping out three or four times a week depending on what other work he has on. He will spend a couple of days a month on the Narbey Farms’ runoff at South Head where Scott’s father, Murray, lives. This 95ha is used to run calves and young stock and is also where 21ha of maize is grown as well as grass silage being cut.

He also occasionally helps out on Sue’s parents’ beef block at Waitoki which now takes more of Scott’s time.

“We still see each other every day and we keep communication open,” Matt says.

“If you take an ‘I’m the boss’ attitude you’re just going to butt heads. It’s different having the owner living onfarm and it holds you to higher standards. You do things properly because it’s going to be seen if you don’t.

“What I do affects my income a lot more now so I put a bit more pressure on myself and the farm’s the better for it.”

He has no hesitation in saying feed management is his favourite part of the job and running a DairyNZ System 4 to 5 operation there’s no shortage of attention required.

“I enjoy balancing everything but not so much when I don’t get it right,” he says.

About 300 to 320 tonnes of palm kernel has been used every year with some going into the in-dairy feeding system and some

used on the feedpad. That’s balanced out with maize with 3ha grown on the home farm to supplement that coming from the runoff.

About 580t of grass silage is cut from 38ha.

Matt’s been carefully monitoring Fonterra’s fat evaluation index (FEI) scores.

“In spring it was pretty nasty and we got to a C,” he says.

“It’s just going to have to be managed. We will probably feed the same amount through the year but vary what we’re feeding at any one time.”

From September 1 next year there will be demerits for FEI levels from C to E which means milk can’t be used in some processing options because of customer requirements.

One answer for Matt is to vary the dried distillers grain (DDG) and palm kernel mix usually fed in the dairy, by using kibbled barley or soya bean pellets which could add more cost.

He’s also looking closely at the farm’s pasture renovation programme. Last autumn 15ha was sprayed out and an annual and plantain mix sown which the cows will graze through until summer. While the strike rate wasn’t so good in some areas he says the new pasture is now pulling its weight.

“The plantain’s come into its own in the last round,” he says.

“At first the cows turned up their noses at it because it’s a bit bitter but it’s a lot hardier than chicory.”

Matt and Kortne’s end goal is most definitely farm ownership but they fully expect getting there to take some twists and turns.

“It will depend on what doors open,” he says.

With their equity in the Warkworth house they could look at 50:50 sharemilking positions.

“But the pathways are different to those of 20 years ago,” he says.

“With more corporate farms there’s a lot more permanent employee positions.”

They also have the opportunity to take over grazing on both their parents’ properties with Kortne’s having a sheep and beef trading operation on their small farm at Hunua, south of Auckland. To that end they hope to start raising their own calves next season or the one after.

Off farm Matt loves outdoor pursuits.

He was a keen bow hunter put now prefers the rifle when hunting deer on some local farms or in the Ureweras. He fishes the Kaipara Harbour or else launches his boat from Muriwai in to the Tasman. He goes spearfishing on the east coast, scoring several snapper of more than 20 pounds and “a couple of nice kingies”.

Asked why he feels more young people don’t want to get involved in careers in agriculture he’s quick to name the hard work involved.

“It’s not a job you can come to just to eat your lunch.”

And he’s keen to play his role in turning perceptions around when Narbey Farms hosts school groups a couple of times every year and takes part in Fonterra’s Open The Gates initiative.

“You have a take a long-term view.”

Matt Snedden in Narbey Farms’ dairy which he says has “everything but a robot”.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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SCIENTISTS Words by Anne Lee

Researchers focus on the urine patch

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omen and girls have been under-represented in science both at high school and tertiary levels but at Lincoln University a group of smart young women are bucking that trend while simultaneously coming up with findings on one of the most vexing issues facing dairy farmers.

All have been doctoral students focusing on forages that can reduce nitrate leaching – some investigating what forages are best at reducing nitrate losses and others looking at how to optimise the plants’ production in the farm system.

Farmers at the South Island Dairy Event

Dr Roshean Woods Roshean Woods’ PhD studies confirmed the enormous potential alternative pasture species have to help farmers meet environmental limits with one experiment showing an 89% reduction in nitrogen

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(SIDE), held at Lincoln University earlier this year, appeared heartened not only by the potential of the research findings presented by the five but also by the very potential the five exhibited themselves.

Culverden dairy farmer Emlyn Francis attended their workshop and said the work presented by the young scientists added to the confidence he has that science will find the answers to environmental challenges.

“I am an eternal optimist and I’m very confident that science will help us out with the environmental issues we’re facing.

“Having these great, young, enthusiastic scientists doing this kind of research is definitely to our advantage. What they’re

leaching from a urine patch.

At SIDE Roshean said that by using lysimeters she was able to compare the nitrogen losses under various pasture mixes when cow urine was applied.

Losses under the urine patch are the critical environmental risk because of the high concentrations of nitrogen in cow urine.

Initially Roshean looked at the effect of growing Italian ryegrass, comparing it to a traditional ryegrass-white clover sward.

It was chosen because of its coolseason activity and Roshean explained one approach to limiting nitrogen losses is to use plants that take up more nitrogen – especially during the cooler months when the risk of leaching is greatest.

One experiment, featured in the Dairy Exporter, November 2016, showed among other things that leaching losses from a

working on is exciting stuff,” he said.

DairyNZ senior scientist Ina Pinxterhuis has led the Forages for Reduced Nitrate Leaching programme and says the research carried out by the PhD students has provided valuable information for what’s going on at a urine patch level.

The next step is working out how they fit into a farm system.

One issue is that while greater nitrogen uptake and plant yield can reduce soil mineral nitrogen it could also result in more cow grazing days which could negate some of the beneficial effect.

“The farm system puzzle is what we’re working on now,” Ina said.

urine patch under Italian ryegrass were 35% lower than under a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward.

Her investigation suggested the reduction in losses in the Italian ryegrass sward were due to increased cool season growth with that species taking up 2.1kg N/ha/day on average compared with 1.6kg N/ha/day for perennial ryegrass-white clover.

Her initial studies used urine with a standardised urinary nitrogen content but she then went on to simulate a situation that would more-closely reflect the on-farm environment and used urine from cows that had grazed the forages she was testing.

She also expanded the alternative pasture mix to include plantain so the comparison was done between a typical ryegrass-white clover sward and an Italian ryegrassplantain-white clover mix.

If the urine was standardised (at 700kg

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

N/ha) she found the inclusion of the plantain meant even less nitrogen was lost with her results showing a 45% reduction in nitrate leaching from a urine patch compared with the typical ryegrass-white clover mix.

But when the urine was from cows grazing the respective mixes, she found a dramatic drop of 89% in nitrate leached from a urine patch for the Italian ryegrassplantain-white clover mix compared with ryegrass-white clover.

The concentration of nitrogen in the urine of cows grazing the alternative forage mix was 508kg N/ha – significantly lower than the 664kg N/ha concentration in the urine from cows grazing ryegrasswhite clover.

Importantly she also found there was no significant difference in drymatter yield between the two forage types.

Roshean has been awarded her PhD and is now working at AgriMagic in Canterbury as a farm environmental consultant.

Lisa Box Lisa Box’s studies looked at the urinary nitrogen concentration and urine volumes of cows grazing plantain as well as any effect on milk production. She found that when plantain made up half the sward along with a ryegrass/white clover mix, urinary nitrogen concentrations were reduced by 33%.

If cows only grazed plantain their urinary nitrogen concentrations were more than halved at 56% lower than cows grazing ryegrass/white clover. The study was carried out over a 10-day period in autumn with cows grazing either plantain only, 50% plantain and 50% ryegrasswhite clover, or ryegrass-white clover only.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Milksolids production was greater for cows grazing plantain only (1.67kg MS/cow/day) than those grazing pasture (1.50kg MS/cow/ day), with milksolids production from cows grazing the 50-50 diet intermediate (1.60 kg MS/cow/d).

Other studies have found urinary nitrogen concentrations are directly related to the amount of nitrogen cows take in with their diet – the more nitrogen in the forage the more nitrogen in the urine. But in her experiments there was no difference in the apparent nitrogen intake between pasture and plantain indicating something else may be at play.

Lisa also measured urinary volumes and found cows excreted a greater total volume of urine on a daily basis if they grazed forage where plantain was included.

Using the concentration and volume data she collected and assuming a urine patch size of 0.2m2 Lisa was able to calculate the urine nitrogen loading from cows on pasture was about 700kg N/ha in autumn and 670kg N/ha in spring. The good news for farmers was that cows grazing plantain would have an N loading of about 450kg N/ha in autumn and 320kg N/ ha in spring. Lisa has submitted her PhD thesis and hopes to work in the Waikato region in the agronomy or sustainability areas.

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Anna Carlton Anna Carlton’s PhD studies looked at irrigation and the effect this can have on nitrogen loss, but rather than investigating the effect of over-irrigation and drainage Anna looked at what happens if not enough water is applied.

She wanted to quantify the effect of optimum versus deficit irrigation on the uptake of nitrogen by diverse and typical forage plants and also on the losses from spring deposited urine.

Her experiments set out to test the

Grace Cun Grace’s studies centred on grazing management for diverse pastures and looked at whether lax grazing in one rotation followed by pregraze mowing in the next could improve both pasture and milk yield.

Grace explained that lax grazing was where the sward was allowed to get to a slightly higher pre-graze cover and that rather than grazing to 1500-1600 kg drymatter (DM)/ha, the post grazing residuals were allowed to be at 18001900 kg DM/ha. A lax grazing regime may improve pasture persistence.

While a lax grazing regime may improve pasture persistence she said it was known that leaving behind a higher pasture residual in spring could reduce the quality of the sward in the subsequent grazing leading to a drop in 84

theory that optimum irrigation improves plant growth and therefore nitrogen uptake during the summer months.

The diverse pastures included a mix of perennial ryegrass, white clover, red clover, prairie grass, plantain and chicory while the “standard” mix included perennial ryegrass and white clover only.

Anna applied urine at two concentrations – either 500kg N/ha/year or 700kg N/ha/year and then subjected her trial plots to either optimum or deficit irrigation from November to March.

She told the SIDE audience that at a urinary nitrogen concentration of 700kg N/ha initial leaching losses from the urine patch under optimum irrigation were 88-97% lower than those from deficit irrigation regardless of whether the pastures were diverse or standard.

The results showed that adequate moisture over summer improved soil nitrogen use by plants and reduced nitrogen leaching from spring-deposited urine in grazed pastures.

Anna has submitted her PhD thesis and is working in the environmental team at Ravensdown.

milk production. Her research aimed to find out if the pasture species included in “diverse pastures”, which can help reduce nitrate leaching potential, would be similarly affected by a lax grazing regime and whether that would have the same effect on milk production.

She found that the lax grazing regime in spring coupled with a longer rotation length of 27 days rather than 21 days, led to a greater pre-grazing mass equivalent to more than 1000kg drymatter (DM)/ha but it also contributed to a lower milk yield in November or during the following rotation in December.

Growth rates didn’t benefit from the lax grazing approach. While pre-graze mowing did improve the quality of the pasture in the subsequent round it wasn’t enough to improve milk yield.

It was unlikely then that a lax grazing approach to diverse pastures could provide any milk yield benefits compared with a more normal grazing management approach, she said.

Grace will complete her PhD from Lincoln University in March 2018 and her goal is researching economic feed sources (crops/ forages) that are readily available in an area and determine if the crops/forages or its byproducts can be used as a feed source for dairy cattle while minimising the environmental impact without hindering milk production.

Kirsty Martin Kirsty Martin has tackled the agronomic question of nitrogen fertiliser use when it comes to diverse pasture species, looking at different nitrogen fertiliser rates on plant yield and the nitrogen content of the diverse pasture species themselves.

Using monoculture plots Kirsty ran a cut-and-carry trial over 12 months comparing six annual fertiliser rates ranging from zero to 450kg N/ha/year.

The six forage species she investigated were perennial ryegrass, Italian ryegrass, white clover, lucerne, chicory and plantain.

Her results showed that Italian ryegrass and plantain outdid the other pasture species in terms of yield at all nitrogen fertiliser rates. She also found that once the fertiliser rate went above 180kg N/ha/ year the nitrogen content of the plant itself increased too. In the grass forage species, the nitrogen content lifted from 2.4% to 2.8% while the herb species’ nitrogen content increased from 2.9% to 3.3%.

As the nitrogen content of the diet increases so too does the potential for urinary nitrogen losses and the risk of leaching. Kirsty said that while it’s apparent there are yield benefits to higher nitrogen application rates the environmental risk needs to be considered.

She said the higher response rates of herbs such as plantain meant that maintaining nitrogen fertiliser rates at the optimum for grass growth would also see benefits in yield for any plantain included in the pasture. Kirsty noted that her experiments were cut-and-carry so there was no urinary nitrogen input from grazing animals. Under a grazing situation the yield responses are likely to show a point at which increasing nitrogen fertiliser application rates have less of an effect on yield but further increase nitrogen concentration.

Kirsty will complete her PhD from Lincoln University early next year and will start work for Canterbury-based company Dairy Farm Management Services.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

RESEARCH WRAP │ SOUTHLAND Southern Dairy Hub farm manager Jason Phillips with the Longveld Gas Stack

Easier, cheaper hot water Karen Trebilcock ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz @KT_at_Exporter Heating water for the plant and vat hot wash can be a major onfarm cost but at the Southern Dairy Hub two pieces of equipment are making it easier and saving money.

The new dairy near Invercargill, which opened in late winter, has a Longveld Gas Stack instead of a traditional electric hot water vat in the 60-bail rotary.

The 600-litre unit is vertical with the storage tank on top and the dump tank underneath so it takes up only about a metre in diameter in the plant room.

Less pipework is also needed compared with a conventional electric hot water system.

Installed by the team at Southland Farm Services, headed by Jeremy Dawson, it runs off a bottle bank system although in other parts of New Zealand there is the possibility of bulk gas tanks.

“These units heat water very quickly to 85C,” Jeremy says. “It takes about an hour to heat 600l from cold.

“And there is a huge cost-saving compared with using electricity – about 40% on average.”

The unit can be programmed in advance so hot water is available when it’s needed.

The Southern Dairy Hub’s unit also features a 55C on-demand hot water outlet which has an endless supply of water heated to 55C, ideal for washing calf feeding equipment.

‘We’ve got hot water when we need it and enough of it to clean the plant and the vat the way we want to.’

The Longveld Gas Stack is available in 400l, 600l and 1000l sizes and with its all-in-one enclosed design, rodents, insects and birds can’t get into the dump tank making sure the water to be used for cleaning is sterile. It is also tamperresistant with lockable entry points which means it’s safe if children are around.

Jeremy says it can be installed into existing dairies in two days without disrupting milking. On day one the gas pipework is installed so it can be certified by a gas inspector and on the second day the hot water system is connected between milkings.

But what is really remarkable at the Southern Dairy Hub’s Longveld Gas Stack system is not heating the water from tap-

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

water cold to hot. Instead it’s using water pre-heated by the milk cooling system.

“We’ve installed the Delaval CWC30 snap chill unit and the water flowing from that during milking is up at about 50C from the heat exchange,” Jeremy says.

“It means the Longveld Gas Stack is only used to take the water from that temperature up to 85C so it’s a substantial energy saving.”

Southern Dairy Hub farm manager Jason Phillips says both systems have been easy to use and worked well together.

“We’ve got hot water when we need it and enough of it to clean the plant and the vat the way we want to,” he says.

“It’s a very impressive system.”

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The first, (anaerobic) pond is covered with polythene sheeting, trenched in around the sides to make it airtight. The cover is supported only by the methane produced, which is collected by a network of PVC piping. All photos supplied by Dairy Green Ltd.

Winning with poo power Methane capture from the effluent pond on a Southland dairy farm is proving to be a win, win. Electricity generation, water heating, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions are the wins at Fortuna Group’s Glenarlea Farm. Tim McVeagh reports.

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ith the exponential growth in Southland dairying in the 1980s and the accompanying greening of waterways, farmers were required to discharge treated effluent on to land rather than into water courses. But with limited storage farmers had no option but to discharge effluent on to wet soils, with similar results.

John Scandrett of agricultural engineering consultants Dairy Green Limited initiated a Sustainable Farming Fund project called Dairy Green. The 10 farms involved included Glenarlea farm.

This project concluded: • effluent must be applied at a rate that the soil can accept • there must be a soil moisture deficit when effluent is applied • the effluent must be analysed so that the nutrient loading is understood.

In the meantime, Fortuna Group Executive Director David Dodunski extended the pond storage at Glenarlea to avoid applying effluent to wet soils. One of the consequences was an odour issue.

Scandrett consulted NIWA who indicated the only way to stop the odour was to cover the pond, “and if you’re going to do that, you may as well catch the biogas”.

NIWA asked if they would be prepared to help with trial work in Southland if they were going to cover the pond and the rest, as they say, is history.

While trialing low-rate effluent irrigation at Glenarlea, Dodunski had brought up the idea of capturing methane from the pond

88

and using it as fuel to generate electricity.

The thinking up to this time was that dairy effluent is a very low-strength waste and anaerobic digestion doesn’t break down lignin, a significant part of dairy effluent.

A couple of years later Dodunski and the Fortuna Group won the Ballance Supreme Farm Environment award for Southland.

Part of the prize was a scholarship to study some aspect of dairying that could benefit Southland or the dairy industry.

His application for a scholarship to study methane and biodigesters was declined as it was considered not applicable to New Zealand dairying.

“We wanted to use some Kiwi cunning to improve recognised technology from overseas,” Dodunski says. “John Scandrett became more interested and Steve Canny of Venture Southland was trying to push it as well, and trying to get some funding for it.

“We did eventually get some funding from EECA, but Fortuna has largely financed the project, something I consider very unfair. In the two toughest years in the dairy industry over the last 35 years, we had to fund the full cost of developing a new technology. This development cost about $230,000, with John Scandrett doing a lot of the conceptual work at no cost.”

Methane production is a two-step process. First bacteria break down solids to simple compounds, (short chain fatty acids), and then methane is produced from these compounds. The first step happens quickly and leads to odour, including hydrogen sulphide.

Scandrett and Dodunski really only had overseas biogas digesters to model on, and these were not for dairy effluent.

Conventional biogas digesters operate at elevated temperatures and not at Southland ambient temperatures. Research has shown covered anaerobic ponds would

While the electricity is used principally to power the dairy, at times there is a surplus.

It is hoped this can be directed via the national grid to Glenarlea staff houses or other Fortuna Group farms. Electric farm bikes at Glenarlea are indirectly poopowered.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

produce a similar volume of methane, but produce it much slower. A long retention time would be needed for the comparatively low-strength effluent at cooler temperatures.

The system is up and running at Glenarlea and as Dodunksi says: “it’s running sweet, very sweet… and producing good quantities of gas”.

The Glenarlea dairy has a round yard with automated yard washing using green water. The washdown goes into a sump with sand trap, and is pumped from there to the covered anaerobic pond. The pond for this 900-cow herd is about 30 metres by 25m and 4m deep.

The cover consists of polythene sheeting and is supported only by the gas from the pond. Trenching in around the pond has made it airtight. A PVC pipe network under the cover collects the gas and pipes it to the generator shed about 100m away.

The gas is filtered, compressed and stored at low pressure in gas bottles outside this shed. The gas supplies the generator engine. This diesel engine was converted to run on CNG at a Wellington hospital, and is now adapted to run on biogas.

While biogas motors are available overseas, this one was considered particularly suitable as it has monitoring equipment on it and it can run on a stand-alone basis. Three-phase, 415-volt electricity is produced by the generator.

There is no battery storage of electricity produced but rather the energy storage is in the gas under the pond cover and compressed bottled gas.

The engine has a heat recovery jacket on the exhaust manifold, and a plate heat exchanger to cool water going into the engine. Water from the engine at 91C is piped to the dairy hot water cylinders.

They produce three or four times more hot water at the dairy than is needed for plant and silo cleaning.

Effluent from the first covered pond is discharged into a second pond, from which it is irrigated.

While the system was being developed, people tried to sell them products to reduce activity. This didn’t make sense

to Dodunski who wondered why there wasn’t something that could be put into the ponds to make them more active and produce more methane and so more energy.

Before getting the cows for the morning milking, the engine is fired up to generate electricity and heat water. The water in the cylinders is hot enough for plant cleaning at the end of the morning milking. The generator runs through the day as long as there is gas, generating electricity for refrigeration, milking plant, water and effluent pumps. Last November it was running 16 hours a day to burn the gas being produced. They currently run two electric farm bikes and are looking at an electric vehicle.

“They are essentially poo-powered, which is pretty cool,” Dodunski says.

The farm is seasonal supply. While winter gas production is low, so too is electricity demand. In spring, as effluent is added, gas production increases. At the start of the season some power is drawn from the national grid as gas production cranks up. The generator can produce up to 40kW, but the dairy can use up to 55kW, so power is drawn from the national grid then. And the grid is better than the generator at absorbing shock loads like the refrigeration unit cutting in.

At times more power is produced than is needed. The generator does not export power to the national grid. Incoming power costs about 22c/kWh, while exported power earns about 4 c/kWh. So it makes sense to minimise the power they have to buy in, rather than export it. If the grid goes down then the generator has to shut off immediately so it doesn’t liven lines that may be being worked on. So the generator has a fairly complex control system, but can be used as a standby generator when the power is down.

Dodunski is hopeful the surplus power can be exported to Glenarlea farm houses or to other Fortuna farms, but there may be some legislation in the way.

Monitoring the system is ongoing to assess its feasibility, as well as practical aspects like the effectiveness of the

hydrogen sulphide filter, engine oil performance, and engine tuning data.

With no manuals available for a system like this, trialing, recording and analysing is the only way of assessing performance.

“We have shown that it is definitely feasible,” Dodunski says. “Capital cost for a system similar to this would be around $200k installed, and it would produce most of the power and all the hot water needed at the dairy. Payback is likely to be about seven years.”

There may be ways to improve the efficiency of methane production by adding chemicals, surplus feed, or the effluent from feed pads or calving pads.

Dodunski would like to get some funding to look at pond additives that will make the pond more efficient.

“We are struggling with this. I refuse to pay for this as it’s an industry issue, which should be funded by the dairy industry and one which may bite the industry in the butt in the next few years. Perhaps funding might be more forthcoming with the change of government,” Dodunski says. They bought one additive and added it to the pond, which then set like yoghurt, and couldn’t be pumped or dug out.

Dairy Green is getting a lot of inquiries from interested farmers all over the country. For farmers seriously considering methane capture they will do a feasibility study.

“One of the things worth considering is that we are converting methane, a nasty greenhouse gas, (about 25 times worse than CO2) to CO2. The whole process is carbon neutral. On current values of carbon at $17/tonne, the carbon credits for Glenarlea Farm are about $17,000 pa. It may well be that farmers get paid for converting methane to CO2 by just covering the pond. They could flare the gas and use this for heating water,” Scandrett says.

“If and when we get charged for methane emissions into the atmosphere, the payback time on current prices could be as little as five years,” Dodunski added.

LEFT: The now methanepowered engine which drives the generator was originally a diesel engine converted to run on CNG for Wellington hospital. Its monitoring and standalone capability made it particularly suitable for Glenarlea.

RIGHT: Compressed methane is stored at low pressure in a series of bottles outside the generator shed.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

89

DAIRY 101 │ FORAGE VALUE INDEX

STARS FOR THE RYE Karen Trebilcock ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz @KT_at_Exporter

S

o you want to regrass a couple of paddocks but which grass seed should you choose? The choices seem endless and the cost difference for the seed is hundreds of dollars a bag. And with new cultivars coming on the market almost every year, it’s not going to get any easier.

Luckily there is the Forage Value Index (FVI). Developed by DairyNZ in collaboration with the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association (NZPBRA), it gives each ryegrass cultivar a star rating.

The rating is from data collected from the National Forage Variety Trials. Each trial runs for three years and there are plans to include longer-term trials so pasture persistence can be added as a trait.

The FVI works a bit like BW in cattle.

Just as breeding bulls are given a rank for their daughter’s proven fat, protein and volume of milk and a few other things, ryegrass is ranked on drymatter grown in winter, early spring, late spring, summer and autumn. Metabolisable energy (ME) concentration economic values are planned to be added shortly.

When you look at the FVI rankings you’ll see the star rating (five stars outstanding, one star maybe think again before planting), and next to it a $/ha figure. The $/ha figure is the expected return you may get if you plant this cultivar compared with what the FVI calls the genetic base.

These are the first group of cultivars tested before 1996 and include your father’s and probably your grandfather’s favourites – Nui, Yatsyn and Bronsyn.

So if you grow, for example, the five star

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DairyNZ scientist Cáthal Wims at the Southern Dairy Hub near Invercargill.

cultivar Base AR37, you should expect at today’s economic values, to be between $621 and $487 better off per hectare than if you grew Nui, a one star cultivar – if you’re in the upper North Island.

That’s because the FVI also takes into account regional variation. We all know some grasses love Northland’s muggy heat and not so much Southland’s frosts and vice versa so the FVI list is divided into the upper North Island, lower North Island, upper South Island and lower South Island.

Data from growing trials are also included from outside each region to get the best statistical picture.

On the list next to each cultivar is also recorded its endophyte (the fungus that grows with it and gives it resistance to being eaten by bugs ), whether it’s a diploid or a tetraploid (more on that later), its heading date (when 50% of seed heads have appeared in spring), who sells it and the confidence ranking of the information.

Cultivars with a low number of trials are more likely to change their star ranking as more data about them is added to the FVI.

The confidence ranking shows the number of trials the cultivar has been tested in and range from a few to 10+.

Cultivars with a low number of trials are more likely to change their star ranking as more data about them is added to the FVI. Lastly there is an interim ME figure which is the mean ME concentration value

(MJME/kg DM) for each cultivar across a year and tetraploids, of course, do well here.

That’s because a tetraploid has a bigger cell size and has a higher ratio of cell contents (soluble carbohydrates) to cell wall (fibre) which makes them highly digestible in the rumen.

What makes a tetraploid a tetraploid and a diploid a diploid is the number of chromosomes (the DNA stuff) per cell in a plant. Diploids have two, tetraploids have four.

Although tetraploids love to brag about having those extra chromosomes, they are not always the easiest of grasses to manage as they don’t like the wet, or the dry, and can be prone to ov ergrazing.

Besides considering whether you want to plant a diploid or tetraploid, you should also consider heading dates.

Heading date is defined in days, relative to Nui in a “typical year” (day 0). The FVI uses the definitions for the heading date as mid (minus seven days to plus seven days), late (plus eight days to plus 21 days) and very late (plus 22 days or greater).

The actual date the grass will head on your farm will change each year due to temperature and grazing.

Later heading cultivars have better late spring pasture quality, thanks to delayed development of the lower quality stems but can take some time to get going in early spring. The current recommendation is to make sure no more than half of your farm is sown in late or very late cultivars to avoid early season feed pinches.

The FVI tables can be downloaded off the DairyNZ website and are dated so you know you have the most recent one.

They are divided into perennial ryegrasses, 12-month ryegrasses (also known as annual ryegrasses) and winter feed ryegrasses and then there is a table

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

A paddock ready for grazing at the Southern Dairy Hub.

Another of the perennial ryegrass and white clover paddocks at the Southern Dairy Hub.

A paddock at the Southern Dairy Hub post grazing.

One of the perennial ryegrass cultivars at the Southern Dairy Hub.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

for each of the four regions of the country.

Italian ryegrasses are included as well.

However, and it is a big however, the trial data used for the FVI is from growing trials where the ryegrass is grown in small plots. In the plots there is typically no clover or any of the weeds commonly found in established pasture and high amounts of nitrogen fertiliser are used to make the grass grow. Plus the small plots are well looked after – in other words they don’t have a herd of hungry dairy cows walking over them after 10mm of rain.

So DairyNZ wants to validate the trial data on a real farm and the brand new Southern Dairy Hub near Invercargill has given them just the opportunity.

In a great example of ‘don’t try this at home’, the 349-hectare farm was 80% regrassed in autumn and in 32 of the paddocks (about 93ha) four perennial ryegrass cultivars were sown – that’s one cultivar in each of eight paddocks. Two of the cultivars chosen are found at the top of the FVI and two are at the bottom for the lower South Island region.

Sowing rates were 20kg grass seed/ha with 4kg white clover seed/ha and the paddocks are not being given any special treatment – they are being grazed, fertilised and mown as per the rest of the farm.

DairyNZ scientist Cáthal Wims, based at Hamilton, is in charge of the project and hopes the research will validate the FVI. “We’ll look at the seasonal and annual drymater yield of each paddock and measure pasture quality and see if the high FVI cultivars deserve their ranking,” Cáthal said.

The perennial ryegrass ground cover will also be measured each winter to look at the persistence of the cultivars.

“We’ve sown the cultivars under bestmanagement practice and then handed them over to the farm staff, which for scientists, is a bit unusual for us to do.

“But we’re doing it to see if the predicted differences in seasonal drymatter yield from the FVI are realised when the cultivars are grown under realistic dairy farm management conditions.”

The research in Southland will hopefully validate the FVI index for the lower South Island and, for the upper North Island, similar research is being done at DairyNZ’s Scott Farm near Hamilton.

There pasture grown, milk production and profit (all measured on a per-hectare basis) of cultivars with different FVI rankings will be measured.

Half of the pastures at Scott Farm have already been established and milk production measurements will start from June next year.

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VIEW FROM THE TOP │ LEWIS ROAD CREAMERY

Building on success at home Peter Cullinane

Lewis Road Creamery chief executive

I

t’s possibly a bit rich for me to be writing a ‘View from The Top’ for the Dairy Exporter. Lewis Road Creamery is still at best a little hillock rather than a mountain, so my view is very much upwards and outwards. Why outwards?

Because the first five years of our existence have been very much focused on the New Zealand market. As yet, we export nothing.

But now it’s time.

But I hope that is about to change. I hope if I’m asked for my view in five years’ time, I’ll be able to look from somewhat loftier heights with a more ‘worldly’ vision.

When I started Lewis Road Creamery, I had a very singular focus and that was to create dairy products NZ could be proud of. That’s not to say that NZ wasn’t already producing world-beating products. We were, and are, but they are too often, in my view, commodity products that others add value to.

I thought we needed to produce products that at an individual level, at a finished packaged level represented our very best. Back just five years ago, it was largely held that NZ couldn’t compete with finished branded products, ones that would compete on a supermarket shelf in any key market around the world.

The ‘wisdom’ was that building branded products was best left to other companies in other countries. We should stick to our commodity knitting with volume over value.

I thought that thinking was wrong then

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Yes, companies like Nestle have had a head start – they’ve been going more than 100 years.

But the rules have changed beyond recognition with the advent of the internet and the growth of social media which it has spawned. and wrong now. Look at Nestle, a massive global brand company. What’s so special about Nestle that they can do what we can’t? Switzerland’s population isn’t much greater than ours and we certainly produce more of the raw ingredients that should be going into finished branded products.

Yes, companies like Nestle have had a head start – they’ve been going more than 100 years. But the rules have changed beyond recognition with the advent of the internet and the growth of social media which it has spawned. It’s now possible to make up those 100 years in nanoseconds. In fact, being a new entrant is an advantage. There’s no baggage.

And from the very beginning, I also believed the future for NZ brands had to be built on success at home. Ever since the first shipment of mutton and butter on the SS Dunedin in 1882, we Kiwis have rushed to export as the solution and have paid too little attention, I believe, to our domestic consumer. I really do believe that to be successful abroad, you need to be successful at home first.

By some measures, and if you’re inclined to be kind, I believe we can call Lewis Road Creamery successful. We have strong positions in milks, butters, and ice cream – quintessential dairy products. So, while there’s still much to do in the local market, I believe we have earned the right to look offshore and see if we can carve out a

position in Australia, Asia (in all its vast diversity), the United States and, a market dear to my heart, the United Kingdom.

Why the UK? Because NZ has a storied history as a provider of dairy to that market and I would love to see us pick up where we left off.

Can we do it? Has A2 Corporation done it? The answer has to be yes. Yes we can if we put in the smarts, the effort and the resources required to do it well to work.

I do not believe the task is herculean nor do I believe the resources required are too daunting. Social media has changed the playing field beyond all recognition. Not only is it approximately level but there are parts of the field where being small, nimble and focused on quality branded finished goods puts us at an advantage.

Or so I believe. Talk is cheap of course and the proof is in the pudding. Hopefully, I’ll have something to show if I’m invited back for a comment or two in five years’ time.

In the meantime, can I take this opportunity to thank everyone in the dairy industry who has supported and encouraged us. And that’s pretty well everyone.

NZ dairy is co-operative by nature. Let’s turn that co-operation into successes for all the new dairy company entrants that I’m sure we’re going to see in the years ahead – both at home and abroad.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Hopper feed system for herringbones.

DairySolutions

Hopper feed system for herringbones Times are changing for in-shed feed systems for herringbone sheds.

The PPP Smart Hopper is a game changer for in-shed systems and it offers more than just a feed system – it can also ID your cows in the shed, PPP general manager Nick Morison says.

With the development of the new patented travelling feed hopper for herringbone sheds farmers finally have a tool that will offer them the advantages of a rotary shed – a unit that can feed out more than one type of feed with an inbuilt mineral dispenser.

Quietly and with amazing precision it distributes individual recipes if linked to herd management software or easily adjusted recipes of different feed amounts and types between milkings if just blanket feeding in its simplest form.

The system has the ability to feed

more than one type of dairy ration at the same time (similar to rotary sheds) with the added advantage of an inbuilt mineral dispenser, Morison says.

There will be three options available: Standard blanket feeding (non-EID) – every cow gets the same amount of feed, Grouping (EID) – farmer can select four or five different groups and target these groups with different feed amounts and or different types of feed when the system is connected to silos with different dairy ration, and Feed to Yield (EID) – allows the farmers all the advantages of a rotary shed.

Other advantages include: • Ability to start off with the basic model and upgrade with software and hardware to read ear tags at a later date • Ability to easily ID cows in the shed

for herd testing • Add alerts on cows when in the shed – this is a penicillin cow etc • Manufactured from stainless steel • Ability to feed two different types of feed • Ability to feed minerals • Ability to feed molasses and other liquids • Farmer can check off site on feed amounts given to cows, total feed used per day • Less clutter in the shed • Less moving parts • Lets more natural light in the shed • Assists with rowing up cows very quickly • Very quiet when operating • Misting option for discharge chute to reduce in-shed dust.

Check out online video: www.goo.gl/s9Nw2y

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Intergrain NZ LTD Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

PROPERTY │ NORTHLAND

Set up for a

solo operator

H

uge infrastructure improvements have been made on a 107-hectare Northland dairy farm just 15km from Whangarei’s CBD and set up to enable its sharemilker to operate it by himself.

The farm, which is for sale by auction, milks 255 cows on 95ha effective and has a forecast production of 120,400kg milksolids this season, with a focus on growing and utilising pasture.

Just south of the city at Mata, which is a recognised dairying area with very good soil type and higher-thanaverage production per hectare, the farm spreads over an appealing contour with 83% on flat land that has been laser drained and the balance on easier rolling country.

‘It’s a farm that would suit an absentee owner who wants to keep the second house for themselves to come and potter on the farm, with the beaches only 10 minutes away.’

Dennis Wallace from PGG Wrightson Real Estate says the owners have made huge strides in the past seven years by improving fertility, races, fences, the two houses and support buildings to a high level.

As a result of their input, production levels have grown and the farm is now a very sound financial investment, he says.

A central race connects the 55 paddocks with the 20-aside herringbone dairy which Wallace says is a very functional asset that flows well and has a yard to hold 250 cows.

The three-pond effluent system is compliant to 260 cows, with the contents irrigated over much of the flats using a travelling irrigator.

Nearby, a recently constructed 108 square metre calf-rearing facility, plus a covered wintering barn/feed pad has made management easier, while a palm kernel bin with a retractable roof, an implement shed and a hay barn add further facilities.

Out in the paddocks, turnips and chicory have been grown for the past seven years with 8ha cropped annually in rotation around the farm.

About 85ha can be cropped and pasture renewal has been ongoing to produce a solid base that is predominantly clover and a rye mix with minimal presence of controlled kikuyu.

Water is a summer-safe feature of the property and is sourced from both a dam and a stream.

The sharemilkers live in one of the two houses on the farm, with the other rented out and Wallace says the second house provides options for a new owner.

“It’s a farm that would suit an absentee owner who wants to keep the second house for themselves to come and potter on the farm, with the beaches only 10 minutes away.

It would also suit someone who has been milking 600 to 800 cows and wants to milk a smaller number of cows and farm nicely and without labour. It provides options and you could rent the other house out to someone who will do some of the milkings.”

Nearby beaches, including Ruakaka, are part of the appeal of the farm, as well as the city’s amenities to the north and combined with good presentation and production, make it a very special property, Wallace says.The farm will be auctioned on December 14.

To view the farm visit www.pggwre. co.nz/WHG27014 and for further information contact: Dennis Wallace on 022 312 7704.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

95

PROPERTY │ TARARUA

Good infrastructure near Pahiatua Pahiatua is known for its summer growth and it is an important aspect of Birchwood Dairy which has a milking platform of 216 hectares and support area of 32ha.

In all, Birchwood Dairy encompasses 282ha 23km southwest of Pahiatua in the Tararua district, where it stretches over flat land for the dairy platform and rises to medium hill on the support area. The farm is for sale by negotiation and has a 2014 rateable value of $5.45 million.

‘It’s a tidily presented farm in an area noted for summer growth and provides a great opportunity for investors or owner-operators to capitalise on the development already undertaken and farm into the future.’

On the milking platform, the farm has traditionally milked between 430 and 440 cows at the peak to produce a three-year average of 170,771kg milksolids.

During those three-years, supplements consisted of balage, grass silage, hay and palm kernel, totalling 318 tonnes of drymatter (DM) per annum, or 740kg DM/ cow.

The policy has been to winter 250 cows off the property for eight weeks with the

96

balance of cows and all the young stock carried on the farm.

Jared Brock from Property Brokers says the farm is an amalgamation of several properties over the years and that gives it several titles and flexibility for a new owner.

For the past few years, the farm has been owned by a consortium with a 50:50 sharemilker in charge of the day-today management of the operation. The sharemilker has now been with the farm for six years and Brock says they are keen to stay.

Good infrastructure is a key factor of the farm, from the 36-aside herringbone dairy with automatic cup removers and variablestage vacuum pump, to the 1000-squaremetre feedpad. A silage pad is based on crushed rock with a lime pad, while numerous sheds from four to nine bays provide shelter for implements, calves, hay and palm kernel.

Rounding it off are three “really good” homes and Brock says the main home is a superior house with the benefit of a swimming pool to take time out and relax.

“It’s a tidily presented farm in an area noted for summer growth and provides a great opportunity for investors or owneroperators to capitalise on the development already undertaken and farm into the future.”

Favourable consents allow for more production growth, with the effluent consent catering for up to 550 cows and it has an intensive land use consent through to 2030.

From a management aspect, the farm has great all-round access as it is dissected

by three roads and the milking platform is subdivided into 91 main paddocks which are all connected to an extensive lane system. The support land on the hill is tracked and subdivided into 10 paddocks.

On the milking platform, about 20ha is direct-drilled each year with turnips and grazed through January and February before being sown into grass and this season an additional 4.5ha of kale was sown.

To view Birchwood Dairy, visit www. propertybrokers.co.nz ID PR57720 and for further information contact: Jared Brock on 027 449 5496, John Arends on 027 444 7380 or Phil Wilson on 021 518 660.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

PROPERTY │ MANAWATU

Retirement brings opportunity pasture to vegetables. As a dairy farm, it has produced up to 185,000kg milksolids in the past from up to 380 cows, as well as producing silage from surplus feed.

‘This is a genuinely good property with outstanding soils and layout in the heart of a traditional farming area of the Manawatu.’

At the heart of the property is the 30-aside herringbone dairy that Cain says is very functional, while adjacent to the dairy sits a concrete feed pad. Silage is stored in two bunkers and one of those has a concrete floor. Ample shedding on the farm caters for plant, machinery and calves.

“A feature of the farm is its four good homes with the main family home set in lovely grounds.

For further information, contact Les Cain on 0274 420 582.

GENUINELY GOOD DAIRY FARM

OPPORTUNITY TO GROW

• 116 hectares in five main titles situated on Hansens and Rangitikei Line, Newbury.

• Very well farmed with soils that would grow anything from pasture to vegetables.

• Centrally located 30 aside herringbone dairy, with adjacent feed pad and silage bunkers.

• Featuring four family homes, with the main set in established gardens.

• Very good well water supplied via a 50mm main line to stock troughs.

• The farm is currently running a dairy herd and supplying Open Country Dairy.

• With outstanding soils, great location and potential to subdivide this is a great opportunity to grow your farm business or land bank your future.

• Price $6,250,000. Call Les to inspect.

Sallan Realty Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

Google ‘Sallan Realty’ Your Farm Sales Specialist

• Situated south of Whanganui is this 175 ha farming opportunity.

• Features a 20 aside herringbone dairy and 300 cow yard with adjacent feed pad.

• The herd is split calving and milked all year round supplying Open Country.

• Exceptional bore water supplies water to stock troughs, dairy and houses.

• Large machinery shed, large silage bunker.

• There are two three bedroom family homes set in their own treed surrounds.

• Your chance to buy this farm with a flexible takeover date and take advantage of the coming season.

• Price reduced to $2,995,000.

Call Les to inspect.

CC0087832©

Buyers are spoilt for choice as an ageing ownership base and a wet start to the season prompted many farmers to put their farm up for sale, Les Cain from Sallan Realty says.

“You would have to be asleep not to notice that there are heaps of dairy farms for sale at the moment,” he says. “People always ask us ‘when is the best time to buy a farm?’And our standard answer is ‘when it is for sale’. It’s hard to buy a farm if the owners don’t want to sell it.”

Some farms are only available once in a lifetime, such as a 116ha dairy farm in the tightly-held area of Newbury near Palmerston North, he says.

After many decades of dedication to dairy farming, its owners are retiring and Cain says that creates an opportunity for buyers who want to live in the popular area.

“This is a genuinely good property with outstanding soils and layout in the heart of a traditional farming area of the Manawatu.”

The location combined with several titles is a key factor of the property, with soils capable of growing anything from

LES CAIN 0274 420 582

Licensed Agent REAA 2008

97

PROPERTY │ SOUTHLAND

High production at Grove Bush Country between Winton and Invercargill is renowned for its reliable pasture growth, enabling a 570-cow herd on a 233-hectare dairy farm to operate a grass-only system and still achieve more than 1000kg milksolids (MS) per hectare.

The Grove Bush farm produced 237,501kg MS from 550 cows last season, is targeting 240,000kg MS from 570 cows this year and is for sale at $8.39 million.

Wayne Clarke from Southern Wide Real Estate describes it as very strong, productive land in a reliable farming district that achieves consistent growth.

The farm is run by sharemilkers who operate a simple, low-cost system to achieve high profitability and Clarke says its simple layout makes it easy to manage for both sharemilkers and absentee owners.

‘It’s very reliable land in a very reliable farming district that is halfway between Winton and Invercargill, so you can go any which way you want for amenities.’

Sixty-three paddocks subdivide the flat-to-easy contour of the 210 effective hectares and these are connected by a lane system to the 50-bail rotary dairy with two yards that cater for 500 cows.

A woolshed with large covered yards are used for calf-rearing and the farm also has two implement sheds with a workshop, plus a hay barn.

About 250 bales of balage are usually made each year and silage is often bought in, to be stored in a concrete silage pad or a second self-feed silage pit with an effluent pond.

Meanwhile, effluent from the dairy is pumped through a weeping wall to a large storage pond and irrigated on to 60ha of land via underground hydrants to two lines of K-line pods.

A three-bedroom brick homestead built in 1990 sits on an elevated site with views over most of the farm, while two other homes provide further accommodation for staff.

Location is a key feature of the farm as 98

it lies 29km from Winton and just 20km from Invercargill to provide plenty of choices for amenities.

“It’s very reliable land in a very reliable farming district that is halfway between Winton and Invercargill, so you can go any which way you want for amenities.

It also has a very simple layout that is easy to manage, so if someone wanted to

put sharemilkers on or be absentee owners, it works well.”

To view the farm visit www.southernwide.co.nz ref SWI1535 and for further information contact: Wayne Clarke on 0274 325 768 or Paula Laughton from Country and Co on 027 533 1268.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

December Events Find out what’s on near you For information on all the dairy industry events happening in your area, visit dairyevents.co.nz

Facts & Figures App DairyNZ has made an app of its popular Facts & Figures book.

Access the facts you need on everything from cow feed requirements to pasture growth data for your region.

Download today from the App Store or Google Play.

Discussion Groups Interested in farm systems, reproduction, progression, pasture management, budgeting, people management, or milking smarter? We hold a range of different discussion groups on specialist areas of interest as well as other topical field days and road shows around the country. Find out what’s on near you at dairynz.co.nz/events or phone your local consulting officer.

Dairy farmers share their budgets DairyNZ’s budget case study farmers have provided a summary of last season, sharing insights into what was a challenging time for many. They have also updated their 17/18 forecast budget. Visit dairynz.co.nz/budget-case-studies

Take an EnviroWalk DairyNZ has created the EnviroWalk app, an easy-to-use tool to help farmers quickly identify areas of environmental risk. Use the app to create a customised action plan. Find out more and download the app at dairynz.co.nz/envirowalk.

Change of Address

W

ITH

D A I RY

NZ

CONSULTING OFFICERS – CONTACT DETAILS Northland Regional Leader

Chris Neill

Far North

Denise Knop

027 499 9021 027 807 9686

Lower Northland

Mark Forsyth

021 242 5719

Whangarei West

Chris Neill

027 499 9021

027 483 9820

North Waikato Regional Leader

Phil Irvine

South Auckland

Jamie Haultain

027 486 4344

Hamilton North

Jaimee Morgan

021 245 8055

Matamata/Kereone

Frank Portegys

027 807 9685

Morrinsville/Paeroa

Euan Lock

027 293 4401

Hauraki Plains/Coromandel

Annabelle Smart

021 242 2127

Regional Leader

Wade Bell

027 285 9273

Te Awamutu

Stephen Canton

027 475 0918

Otorohanga

Michael Booth

027 513 7201

South Waikato

Kirsty Dickins

027 483 2205

Regional Leader

Sharon Morrell

0274 922 907

Western Bay of Plenty

Wilma Foster

021 246 2147

Central Bay of Plenty

Kevin McKinley

027 288 8238

Central Plateau

Colin Grainger-Allen

021 225 8345

Eastern Bay of Plenty

Ross Bishop

027 563 1785

South Waikato

Bay of Plenty

Taranaki Acting Regional Leader

Simon Sankey

021 228 3446

South Taranaki

Ryan Orchard

021 246 5663

Central Taranaki

Sarah Payne

027 704 5562

Coastal Taranaki

Michelle Taylor

021 276 5832

North Taranaki

Lauren McEldowney

027 593 4122

Regional Leader

James Muwunganirwa

027 499 9020

Horowhenua/Wanganui/South Taranaki/Southern and Coastal Manawatu

Scott Cameron

027 702 3760

Lower North Island

Wairarapa/Tararua

Tim Ferguson

021 244 3428

Hawke's Bay

Gray Beagley

021 286 4346

Central/Northern Manawatu/Rangitikei

Jo Back

021 222 9023

Top of South Island/Westland Regional Leader

Wade Bell

027 285 9273

If you’ve shifted farm or changed your supply company, make sure you’ll still receive your copy of Inside Dairy – visit dairynz.co.nz/address and let us know your new details.

Nelson/Marlborough

Mark Shadwick

021 287 7057

West Coast

Angela Leslie

021 277 2894

Regional Leader

Virginia Serra

021 932 515

Got a summer management plan?

North Canterbury

Teaghan Lourie

021 246 2775

Planning summer strategies in early December can help ensure the herd’s production remains profitable for the remainder of the season. DairyNZ’s Summer Management Plan can help you make those decisions.

Visit dairynz.co.nz/summer.

Canterbury/North Otago

Central Canterbury

Natalia Benquet

021 287 7059

Mid Canterbury

Stuart Moorhouse

027 513 7200

South Canterbury

Virginia Serra

021 932 515

North Otago

Trevor Gee

021 227 6476

Southland/South Otago Regional Leader

Richard Kyte

021 246 3166

South Otago

Mark Olsen-Vetland

021 615 051

Central/North Western Southland

Nicole E Hammond

West Otago/North Eastern Southland Liam Carey

0800 4 DairyNZ (0800 4 324 7969) I dairynz.co.nz Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017

021 240 8529 027 474 3258

Eastern Southland

Nathan Nelson

021 225 6931

Western Southland

Teresa Anderson

027 702 2219

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2017