Fonterra’s holistic sheep farming approach

The dairy co-operative giant is one of the larger sheep farmers in Southland. Karen Trebilcock paid their Edendale site a visit.

Dairy co-operative Fonterra is one of the larger sheep farmers in Southland.

It’s a fact that amuses farmers at open days but it’s good for the company and good for the environment.

Fonterra owns 1100ha all within 5kms of its Edendale plant, used to irrigate wastewater from the factory under a variety of consents issued by Environment Southland up to 2032.

From late October until the end of March, grass is cut on the farms and supplied to about 25 Fonterra farmers nearby as either silage or balage.

After that about 12,000 store lambs arrive, on grazing contracts from Alliance Group, and as they come up to weight and leave by the end of May they’re replaced with between 5000 and 6000 hoggets from local sheep farmers which are grazed through the winter.

The sheep are not put behind wires, instead given whole paddocks and their light tread on the soils is what is needed to keep the grass under check until conditions allow tractors back on in late spring.

“Southland soils can at times be quite wet,” Fonterra’s South Island regional farm operations manager Steve Veix said.

“So we have to be careful to avoid soil compaction and damage to pastures to minimise leaching.”

But the farms also have some of the best soils in the country for growing grass.

Usually about 12 million tonnes of dry matter each year goes off as grass – 1 million tonnes as balage and the rest straight into nearby dairy farms’ silage pits.

That’s 11t DM/ha/year plus fat lambs and hoggets grown using wastewater.

Local contractors do the harvesting work and there is a waiting list of farmers wanting cut and carry grass.

Described as “ghost farms” because of their lack of stock in a February 2021 RNZ article, later published on the Stuff online news site, Steve said these farms are far from it.

“They’re working farms and they’re farmed holistically.

“In fact it’s a symbiotic relationship. The grass we grow goes to the cows which make the milk which goes to the factory where the water goes back to grow the grass.”

It’s a story repeated throughout the country at a number of the Fonterra nutrient management farms and Edendale is a strong performer.

“We’re producing some of the larger volumes per hectare of grass here across the Fonterra-owned farms.”

in tHe public eye

All of it is in the public eye. The recently completed diversion of State Highway One around the township of Edendale cuts through one of the farms and others border the state highway and nearby main roads.

The wastewater comes from cleaning the plant and contains the remains of milk residue and cleaning agents.

Water testing calculated at Edendale 251kg N/ha went on for the seasonending 2019 in the water, 258kg N/ha in the season-ending last year and this year looks like it will be similar.

It’s above the 190kg of N/ha/year of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser allowed under the government’s new freshwater rules effective from 1 July but Steve said soil tests on the farms show nitrogen is lacking.

“It’s because we’re taking so much grass off the farm every year.

“We do have to put some fertiliser on but it’s mostly potassium.”

Ballance’s Sustain 25 is used which contains potassium and SustainN – a product that halves the amount of nitrogen lost as ammonia compared with urea.

While it’s Steve’s job to look after the farms, Fonterra’s Edendale environmental manager Malcolm Peacey heads the irrigation staff.

He said in recent years cleaning processes have been refined and the irrigated water contains less nitrogen and phosphorus than ever before.

“It makes sense. We don’t want to lose a lot of milk when we’re cleaning.

“We’re a bit like a dairy. We have a lot of stainless steel and we’re producing a food product so we have alkaline and acid washes. We’re just on a much bigger scale.”

How much water is irrigated on varies from year to year depending on rainfall but it’s somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion litres.

Left: Some of the 12,000 lambs on the farms in April. Sheep are run instead of cattle because they don’t damage the wet Southland soil. Right: Contractors plant a riparian area in natives at Fonterra Water Management, Edendale.

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It goes through the wastewater plant built in 1996 and is irrigated through four centre pivots which cover about a third of the 900ha under irrigation and the rest is done with in-ground sprinklers.

Soil moisture is determined using handheld soil probes and soon to be added are remote Wildeye sensors.

“We’ll still use the hand-held probes. With Wildeye (monitoring) as well it will be the best of both worlds,” Malcolm said.

When the land is too wet to irrigate, and has no water holding capacity, the treated wastewater goes into a 100 million litre capacity pond or, and if the conditions are right, into the nearby Mataura River.

Water teSting

Lysimeters placed strategically on the farms suck up water for testing.

“We have had some nitrogen hot spots, especially in some areas depending on what was farmed there previously, that we watch closely,” Malcolm said.

“There is a time lag of nitrogen filtering through the soils but over time we are slowly seeing improvements.”

Bore water testing upstream, on the farms and downstream every three months show nitrogen levels at about 10 to 12m down between 1.4 milligrams per litre (mg/L) and 8.4mg/L.

World Health Organisation advises 11.3mg/L and below is safe for drinking.

“The groundwater nitrogen levels we are finding here is pretty much what we see throughout the South Island,” Steve said.

“And it’s not just us influencing it. We’ve got dairy farms around us, sheep, potatoes, even tulips.”

Also, as part of the consent obligations with Environment Southland, water in the Mataura River is tested every week upstream and downstream for pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous levels.

Every three years a full river check is done looking at the river sediment and checking the invertebrates and other life in the world-renowned brown trout fishery.

As the Edendale site has added more dryers, more land has been bought for irrigation with the last block in 2018.

Houses and dairies are removed and fencing for cows changed to fencing for sheep and sheep yards built.

Fonterra’s South Island regional farm operations manager Steve Veix (left) and Edendale environmental manager Malcolm Peacey with wastewater from the Fonterra Edendale plant irrigated behind them using in-ground sprinklers.

“With the sheep in the winter we don’t push them. We spread them out as much as possible so they don’t damage the soils.”

The sheep come shorn and vaccinated and are fed only on grass. Balage is on hand if it snows.

Although no crops are grown at Edendale (hemp and miscanthus are grown at Darfield), there is an active regrassing programme with about 230ha renewed in the last couple of years.

“Because we are cut and carry, we do have a problem with grass grub so we’ve resown with cultivars which are more resistant to porina and grass grub and it seems to be working,” Steve said.

“With the sheep in the winter we don’t push them. We spread them out as much as possible so they don’t damage the soils.

“That’s why we have sheep and not cattle. It’s all about protecting the vulnerability of the soils.”

There are three farm staff looking after the sheep and in the summer they catch up on farm maintenance.

Looking after the irrigation is three staff on, three off on the four-day roster.

With much of the land farmed for over 100 years, large macrocarpa trees are becoming a problem.

“People will see some of them going soon. They are a safety issue, a lot of them are top-heavy,” Steve said.

“But we will be replacing them with other trees. On the Edendale farms we’re putting in about 10,000 plants, mostly natives.

“Where there are willows and poplars we’ve added more of those but we’ve fenced off a lot of riparian areas and planted natives there and we’ve got an ongoing programme with contractors to look after them.

“We’ve got the Ota Creek and Oteramika Stream and a lot of wetlands that drain eventually into the Mataura River so protecting those by planting the banks is really exciting,” Malcolm said.

“We’re really looking forward to seeing those plants grow.”