Business Rural Autumn 2015

Autumn 2015

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Plains sets up shop in Central – page 44

INSIDE

‘We don’t know how lucky we are’ – PAGE 6

Bull breeders set to sell - PAGE 12

Rural service providers - PAGE 26

South Island produce - PAGE 59

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ASHBURTON NEW ZEALAND 22-24 JUNE 2015 Find out more at: www.wwag.co.nz Hear from international and farmer speakers about options for lifting your farm production.

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RURAL PEOPLE » Exquisite Blankets

Business Rural

Exquisite Wool Blankets has expanded its range to include customised cushions, throws and pet pillows.

Blanket business extends cover Kelly Deeks Wool runs thick in the Betts family. John Betts has been a wool merchant and exporter for years. His daughter, Polly McGurkin, set up a division within his company, Yaldhurst Wools Ltd, to import highquality wool blankets from England.

In six years in business, Exquisite Wool Blankets has developed the the most diverse range of colours and the largest blankets available in New Zealand, Now the Christchurch-based business has

extended its selection of products through the addition fo customisable cushions, throws, and pet pillows, and Natural Legacy woollen coffins and ash caskets.

Yaldhurst Wools has been supplying New Zealand wool to the Hainsworth mill in West Yorkshire, England for 37 years.

Some of that wool goes into making John Atkinson blankets, a high-quality product that has adorned many prestigious beds, including those of royalty across Europe and the Middle East.

McGuckin established Exquisite Wool Blankets to bring the John Atkinson Harlequin blankets and

throws to New Zealand for the first time.

A self-confessed lover of wool products herself, she can’t emphasise enough the benefits families and children can get from using wool products.

“Wool products are good for your health, good for your family’s safety, good for the environment, and good for your home,” she says.

“John Atkinson blankets can allow you to sleep up to 25 per cent deeper, with research proving that when you are sleeping under wool, your heart rate lowers and you wake up feeling more rested and refreshed.

As a 100% natural fibre, wool has breathability,

is resistant to bacteria, mould, and mildew, has a low allergy rating, and causes fewer bed bugs. It is inherently flame-retardant, and an ecologically friendly product. Wool products are durable, last for decades, and are warm in the winter and cool in summer.

McGuckin says she is always on the look-out for ways to add to her services.

Five years ago she added a 100% New Zealand wool cushions and inners to her inventory – with a selection of designs and capability for

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“You cannot beat NZ Wool it is naturally grown from grass”

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RURAL PEOPLE » Don & Jess Moore

Business Rural

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Designer deal delights all Karen Phelps Neither Jess nor Don Moore come from farmingfamily backgrounds. Yet their aptly named company – Moore Milk 2009 Ltd – is helping them race up the dairy-industry ladder. The Moores will own their herd of 950 cows at the end of this season, rvrn though they started sharemilking just four years ago.

The couple are quick to say this has not been the result of just hard work, but also the opportunity presented by farm owners – Jeff and Edith, and Bruce and Sue Cunningham – who have given the Moores an opportunity to gradually expand their business.

The Moores managed the farm for two years and, after success at the 2010 Southland New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards, where they won the farm manager of the year title, they were offered the opportunity to become lower-order sharemilkers.

After another year, they had the opportunity to move to 50:50 – only they didn’t have the equity to take on such a large farm.

But the owners were keen to keep the Moores on and asked them to come back with an idea of how it could work.

The Moores, who had 120 cows at the time, came up with a proposal and asked to lease the rest of the cows from the owners, and continue to buy more of the herd each year until they reached total ownership.

“They were willing to give us an opportunity and relinquish equity gradually,” says Don Moore. “It has allowed us to grow and to remain here.”

The owners also initially employed the staff and control of other aspects of the farm, and have gradually handed more and more over to the Moores as their business and skills have grown.

The farm is now owned by Bruce and Sue Cunningham, and the Moores say the arrangement has been beneficial for both parties as it has given opportunity to plan for long-term improvements to the farm and see them through to fruition.

“When we came here, I wanted to plant a lemon tree and Don said there was no point as sharemilkers move so fast in this industry I’d never see any lemons,” says Jess Moore. “Well, I’m pleased to say I’ve now eaten some of those lemons.”

She comes from a livestyle block at Governors Bay, on Lyttelton Harbour, while Don was raised at Koromiko, between Picton and Blenheim, on the only property in the valley that wasn’t a dairy farm.

He gained experience milking while at school, then went deep-sea fishing before returning to dairy

We wouldn’t be doing what we are doing now without having entered the awards ourselves. It has allowed us to look at our business and also to have it judged from the outside... to improve the business as well as ourselves personally. farming. They moved to the farm they are on now at Gore in 2008.

The crossbred herd is milked through a 50-bail rotary shed. The difficulty is the length of the 325-hectare dairy platform, which involves threekilometre walks either side of the shed.

The Moores have solved this problem by putting half of the herd on once-a-day milking, which has cut down walking from 1400 to 900 kilometres a year.

This season, as for most farmers, the payout is their biggest challenge. They plan to cut back expenses as much as possible while maintaining production. Wet weather until mid-December, then summer dry, has affected their grass-growing ability. They are thankful for a good relationship with a local grazier as well as advice from their farm-owners.

The Moores, who won the 2013 Southland and National Sharemilker/Equity Farmers of the Year competition, are helping to organise the Southland/ Otago New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards for 2015.

“We’ve really enjoyed meeting the contestants and seeing how they are running their businesses.

It’s really exciting to be able to give back to the competition that has give us so much,” says Jess.

“We wouldn’t be doing what we are doing now without having entered the awards ourselves. It has allowed us to look at our business and also to have it judged from the outside...to improve the business as well as ourselves personally. It has helped us achieve our goals faster so that we can move into farm ownership, our ultimate goal.”

Don and Jess Moore . . . racing up the dairy industry ladder.

Coffins for dyed-in-the wool types • From page 2 customisation of colour, size, text, and stencil image.

The southdown wool used in cushion inners is sourced in the South Island by Yaldhurst Wools. It has 34 cubic centimetres per gramme of wool – one of the highest bulk readings of any fibre.

“When you buy an Exquisite Wool cushion inner, you can be assured it will be with you a lifetime given the durability of wool,” McGuckin says.

“Wool keeps its shape, has the ability to bounce back, and does not need constant ‘fluffing up’. Wool

fibres will not break down, therefore wool inners will not need regular filling.”

The cushion range now runs to pet pillows.

These support and warm pets’ joints, include a zip for laundering, and can be customised with preferred size and the pet’s name.

Natural Legacy coffins and ash caskets – available in New Zealand for more than two years.

McGuckin says feedback from customers has demonstrated that a woollen coffin or an ash casket can help with the grieving process. People can see that their loved one is cosy and comfortable in their final resting place.

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RURAL PEOPLE » Dylan & Sheree Ditchfield

Business Rural

Dylan and Sheree Ditchfield (left) farm a 155-hectare dairy unit, Freedom Acres, at Wendonside in Southland (right).

Empowerment reaps rewards Karen Phelps Reports on the New Zealand dairy industry have long highlighted the industry’s problems around staff employment and retention. Now a South Island farming couple believes they might have found the answer to happier and longer serving staff, resulting in greater productivity with more time off for farmowners to boot.

Dylan and Sheree Ditchfield farm a 155-hectare effective (160ha total) dairy unit at Wendonside, in Southland. They milk 500 crossbred cows and have a 134ha lease-block for wintering and harvesting supplements.

They admit that until the last few years, they were dealing with staff just like many other farmers.

“I found I was always the lynchpin in the operation, and without me the place couldn’t run,” says Dylan. “This meant that I was constantly putting out fires and had no time to put into

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developing staff as I was too busy running the farm.”

When recession hit in 2008, the financially stressed couple were forced to start making changes. The Ditchfields got a business mentor as well as other support structures in place and started looking at how they could develop their farm into a profitable and enjoyable business for all involved.

“We wanted our business to be sustainable and able to function even when we weren’t there,” says Dylan, “Part of achieving this was consolidation to give us flexibility to deal with things we couldn’t control such as payout and weather. The other part was developing a vision – purpose and values for the business. Why were we dairy farming?”

Out of this the Ditchfields realised their main focus was to have a positive impact on people and to encourage excellence. They wanted staff to have opinions and be passionate about the job. They

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wanted the same goals for themselves, and they wanted to facilitate an environment of two-way learning between themselves and their staff.

Dylan Ditchfield says clarifying that vision and purpose made it easy for them to identify exactly what type of staff they needed, and sped up the process of employment.

He is quick to point out, though, that vision must be combined with having the systems and processes to support it.

“Together, these provide clarity in decisionmaking and become the heart-beat or rhythm of the business. Everyone is tuned into the same frequency, encouraging productivity and engagement within the team.”

A shift from task orientation to staff responsibility was vital, he says.

“This is a mindset shift where people are paid to be responsible rather than to complete tasks.

Everyone’s roles are really transparent. This provides ownership, accountability and pride.

“The challenge as farmers, being hands-on, practical people, is in letting go of the day-to-day tasks and delegating responsibility, ensuring whole business coverage.

Coaching and mentoring of staff are paramount to achieving positive outcomes.”

Although he and Sheree are now not fully hands-on, they obviously have to keep in touch with staff and the farm, and have found that the best approach is to have structured meetings, he says.

“We set the meeting days, times and an agenda

in advance to ensure everyone can prepare. In doing this, meetings are efficient,” he says.

“This discipline allows information flow for analysis, proactive planning and decision-making, as well as cohesion.”

As proof that their systems are working, the Ditchifelds came back from a three-week holiday during which they spoke to the farm manager just once a week and were e-mailed with anything they needed to look at urgently.

When they returned, the farm was running exactly as they had envisaged. More impressively, the manager and two other full-time staff have combined experience in the dairy industry of less than 18 months.

“As farmers we store a phenomenal amount of information in our heads,” says Dylan Ditchfield.

“Formalising this resource into systems and processes captures the things that are unique to, and already contribute to, the success of your own business and empowers the team giving them a strong foundation to build from.

“Because we are not tied to the day-today running of the farm, this provides clarity in decision-making and productive time for governance and strategic thinking.”

As an example the Ditchfields have just set up their own website (www.ditchfieldgroup.co.nz) with a special log-in area for staff members so that they can download templates and forms, such as

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RURAL PEOPLE » Michael & Julie Walsh

Business Rural

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Shift south: plusses, minuses Sue Russell Making the decision very early on in their married life to choose farming as their career has been key in the success Canterbury dairy couple Mike and Julie Walsh have subsequently experienced.

The couple began this life commitment to dairying back in 1986 at Opunake, in Taranaki, when they took over the family farm.

Wind the clock forward 25 years and the Walshs have embraced a very different style of farming in the South Island.

“We’re in our third season here,” says Mike Walsh, “having come from years in the North Island on a much smaller farm and surrounded by a rich history of farming to this much more intensive situation.”

There certainly is a different set of stresses involved in farming on the scale and intensity that is common in the area. There are plusses and minuses too.

Walsh thinks farm staff who have the opportunity to start their careers working in a smaller farming enterprise probably experience a more diverse range of tasks and develop a wider set of farming skills.

“I feel quite sorry for some of them to be honest.

You’re either a milk harvester or in some other farm specialty because of the nature of the farm’s

infrastructure. It’s geared to specialisation to get the most productivity.”

The Walshs’s shift south had definite family links to it. Their youngest son, Brendon, was 23 at the time and was very much wanting to take over running a farm, Mike and Julie saw moving as a means of giving him this opportunity.

When Mike Walsh began farming, the pathway towards eventual farm ownership seemed very achievable and quite straightforward.

“You only had to share milk 50:50 for three to five years before you could get to farm ownership.

It’s important to nail a bit more asset into the equity as soon as possible.”

The totally grassed-based farm they’re on is near Rakaia, in Mid Canterbury.

They run 1250 friesian, friesian-cross and kiwi-cross stock. A new centre-pivot has recently been installed and the farm is stocked at a 3.5 ratio.

Managing grass is an ongoing commitment with often twice-weekly walks through the flush, says Walsh.

“It’s all about retaining pre and post-grazing residuals and, given we’re entirely dependent on extracting as much nutrition as possible from every blade, this monitoring is essential to the farm’s success.”

His staff have a United Nations feel to – an Israeli manager, a South African 2IC, two Filipinos, an Irish exchange student from Dublin, one Kiwi.

When the Walshs first came on the farm, all the staff were Kiwis.

“They have since moved on to various other roles. We like to have a good team environment, but at the same time, with an operation of this size and scope, you need to have good systems in place.”

Mike and Julie take care of all the calves and rear 25 per cent of them.

Mike says an important role for him is keeping his head about four weeks into the future, trying to mitigate challenges or taking advantage of opportunities. He’s also the farm ‘floater’, putting his hand to anything needed, taking care of maintenance and, in conjunction with the farm manager, looking after the paper work and staff meetings.

As part of the South Island-based Dairy Holdings Ltd group, the farm is audited once a year, with areas such as communications, farm operational procedure, staff development and improvement of business performance assessed.

“At the last audit we were accredited for three years.”

Mike Walsh acknowledges that it was hard to move from being self-employed and owning a farm in a very different farming climate.

“We saw this move in part as giving our son a heads-up with his own goal to farm ownership, and it has been good for me to be part of a different approach to farming.”

You’re either a milk harvester or in some other farm specialty because of the nature of the farm’s infrastructure. It’s geared to specialisation.

Farm manager Gerry Coetser (right) and Dylan Ditchfield plan strategy at weekly meetings.

MIDLAND SPREADERS LTD Love of farming reinvigorated • From page 4 appraisal sheets and meeting agendas, whenever they need to.

Because staff feel more challenged and fulfilled, staff retention issues are significantly reduced, say the Ditchfields.

“Instead of recruiting at the top end, we recruit at entry level,” says Dylan. “Succession occurs when people all step up the ladder into new roles when the top-end position is vacated for further progression within the dairy industry.

“People transition successfully into new roles or progression outside the Ditchfield Group business.

People are retained for time-frames that optimise returns to the business. The risk to the business in people retention and recruitment, governance and strategy is reduced.”

The couple say the systems and processes they have put in place have created such a positive work environment they no longer need to advertise for staff because people come to them by word of mouth.

A personal result for the Ditchfields has been a reinvigoration of their own love of farming. They now have plans to develop a business model to take out to the wider dairy industry to help other farmers achieve similar results in their own businesses.

“As farmers, we love farming but we can become task-oriented as we often don’t have the experience with people,.” says Dylan. “That means people can become a commodity or a by-product of what we do.

“Because of this, we are losing some good people from the industry and farm-owners also struggle to find ways to farm without being there all the time themselves.

“This means they sell out and a huge amount of wisdom is lost from the industry. Farmers need to realise that people are our greatest untapped potential.

“It has been a real privilege as well as incredibly fulfilling and exciting to witness and participate in the personal development of people. If we can help to change the way the dairy industry employs and deals with staff, it will be very positive for the industry.”

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RURAL PEOPLE » Simon & Kirstin Engelbrecht

Business Rural

No place for doom and gloom Neil Grant “Most farmers are fortunate in what we do.

We have a good level of income. Just look around the world and count your lucky stars.

We don’t know how lucky we are.”

These are not the words of Fred Dagg, and the last sentence was not sung. They were spoken by the somewhat frustrated Simon Engelbrecht, who is getting more than a little tired of the gloom merchants being quoted in various media and at meetings.

Like everyone else, especially on the eastern side of the country, he has had a reasonably dry summer, which has taken a bit of juggling.

But he’s been farming long enough to know that you have good years and bad years; and you have good days and bad days.

“I’m sick of a lot of buggers whingeing about how bad sheep-and-beef farming is,” says Simon Englelbrecht.

“It’s all I’ve ever done. We’ve managed to raise a family and buy two farms, so it can’t be that bad.

“I’m not saying there’s not room for improvement, but relative to most of the population in the world, we’re in bloody paradise. We’re not living in fear of radical groups, there are no huge religious divides, we’ve all got a roof over our head. Life’s pretty good really.”

Engelbrecht and his wife, Kirstin, have a 611-hectare farm at Stoneburn, near Dunback, inland from Palmerston. It’s flat to rolling country with some steep faces, and they have been there for 10 years.

In 2013 they bought another 170ha nearer the coast at Goodwood, and have just added The view across Simon and Kirstin Engelbrecht’s Stoneburn sheep and beef property, near Dunback.

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RURAL PEOPLE » Simon & Kirstin Engelbrecht

Business Rural

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at Stoneburn another little block from a neighbour’s property.

The Goodwood block is undergoing some revamping – fencing and fertilising – and will be the farm’s trading block, fattening cattle and lambs.

“It’s early country. It lies well to the east, and holds on a bit better.”

Their ‘get on with it’ attitude may have had plenty to do with the Engelbrechts winning the 2014 New Zealand Ewe Hogget competition (they also won the crossbred-breed section.

“I’d never entered a competition before,” says Simon. “Charlie Ruddenklau, from Waimate, asked me why didn’t I give it a crack.

I hummed and hahed. I knew I had a good flock of sheep, but it’s good to get someone else to assess things.”

He’s not making a song and dance about the win, but you can tell he’s pretty chuffed about it just the same.

“We’ve had coopdales for the last six years.

I buy a specific type of ram. In any breed there is a huge variation. You’ve got to like what you’re looking at. So the first thing for me is eye appraisal, and then look at the figures.”

He reckons the coopdales are good animals for his farm. They have a decent clip, are high scanning, and have a high survival rate.

“The price of wool is nothing to get overly excited about, but it’s still profitable.”

Lambs are sold to Silver Fern Farms for slaughtering. Pretty much all business is done with this company, and Engelbrecht says they have a good relationship.

Along with their sheep are hereford and angus cows served by simmental and charolais bulls. They do not breed replacements, and are steadily reducing breeding cow numbers so they can finish more cattle.

The Engelbrechts’ children are of an age to enjoy being helpful on the farm, and they

employ Stuart McIntosh at lambing time. He is spoken of with quite some respect. Contractors are brought in to do most of the machine work other than spraying.

“They’ve got all the gear,” says Simon Engelbrecht. “I don’t enjoy machines much.

If I’m sitting on a tractor, stock aren’t getting shifted. I’m better at stock than machines, and stock make the money.

“I’m hard on myself, and don’t like making mistakes. I’ve got 6500 to 7000 stock units, and can’t do everything. You do what you enjoy and what you’re best at. We try to stay flexible with decision making, and don’t farm out of a diary.”

That flexibility harks back to his remark about the drought. Anticipating a dry season, the Engelbrechts got rid of any stock they did not need well before Christmas, weaned beef calves in late January, and killed cows that were to be sold after the calf sales in April.

The cows averaged 310 kilograms dead and, with the good beef schedule, there was no point in taking them as there they were no longer needed as part of the farming operation You’ve got to stay on the front foot, Englebrecht reckons.

Reflecting on the discussions about the future of sheep and beef farming, and rumours of the establishment of a Fonterra-type model, he is cautious.

“If it was an easy fix, we’d be somewhere down the path by now.

The much-talked-about over-capacity in the the meat industry has allowed farmers to get large numbers of stock processed over the dry period.

“Without this ‘over-capacity’, I suspect that this summer might have been like the bad old

• To page 8

I’m hard on myself and don’t like making mistakes. I’ve got six and a half to seven thousand stock units and can’t do everything. You do what you enjoy and what you’re best at.

We try to stay flexible with decision-making, and don’t farm out of a diary.”

The Engelbrechts took out the 2014 New Zealand Ewe Hogget competition.

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RURAL PEOPLE » Simon & Kirstin Engelbrecht/Graham Berry

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Business Rural

Home hydro Kelly Deeks

Coopdales are good animals for the Engelbrechts’ flat to rolling country farm,.

They have a decent clip of wool and high scanning and survival rate.

South Westland dairy farmer Graham Berry has found another way to use the water on his farm, and is currently constructing a hydro-electric power scheme in a creek at the back of his property.

Berry has owned the farm, located near Franz Josef, for 10 years come June. He has a milking platform of 145ha where he is milking 270 cows this season, and also leases and adjacent 12ha run off block.

He says about seven years ago he started thinking of using the creek to generate electricity, but it wasn’t until he found out about a South Canterbury farm running centre pivots from its border dyke system that he realised the true potential he had in his creek.

“The idea behind this is for us to become selfsufficient and live up to the clean green image of New Zealand dairy farming,” he says. “I think when

you’ve got these natural resources on your back door, you should use them.”

Berry is designing and building the system himself, with the help of some engineers, a linesman friend, and the company supplying the piping.

He has ordered a $65,000 turbine from Hong Kong, and says the largest cost is the piping at $130,000. The whole system will cost $300,000 to set up, and the payback period is about nine years.

Construction of the hydro-electric power scheme will begin with making a track through some ‘tigerous’ jungle country, then putting an intake system through the creek to remove water, while leaving enough water for the creek and fish to flow freely.

The scheme will generate about 55kw of electricity per hour.

The majority will be used to run the farm, the Berry’s home, the staff accommodation house, and also the farm stay holiday home the Berrys have

No place for doom and gloom • From page 7 days, with farmers unable to get stock killed for weeks, and works ewes still on the farm late into the autumn.

“The Fonterra model hasn’t stopped the dairy payout dropping. They haven’t had the ability to control the milk price globally.”

And then, taking a swipe at those who seem to

be getting pleasure out of the drop in payout, he says: “Over the last few years when dairy farming was going well, I was rapt for them,” says Engelbrecht. “They took the risk, the staff issues and the environment issues. So I wished them all the best. “ Now, we shouldn’t be feeling pleased at someone else’s misfortune.”

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RURAL PEOPLE » Graham Berry

Business Rural

|9

scheme to power farm on their property, and the remainder sold back to the grid.

Berry winters his cows, grazes all his young stock and replacement cows, and also rears bulls at home for CRV Ambreed.

“We work closely with CRV Ambreed sire analyst Phil Beatson, and have a bull entering their crossbred team this year, with a number of contract matings,” Berry says.

This season he is on target to produce 370kg milksolids per cow, with 30% of the herd first calvers.

“We had to buy some in last year because we went up in numbers by 15 cows, just to push the farm a bit and get more production,” he says. “We also had a 12% empty rate last season.”

This was attributed to a decision to pull the bull out early to bring the calving forward 10 days in order to get all the cows calved by the middle of October and allow them a couple of weeks to recover before mating.

This season Berry has done things a bit differently, reducing the mating period again from 10 weeks to nine weeks, and putting teaser bulls in for three days before starting AI. “Anything that hadn’t cycled, we put on once a day in the milking herd before they started cycling,” he says. “With that and the teaser bulls, I think it’s worked out and I’m expecting 7% or 8% empty this

The creek on the Berry farm which will provide the water for the hydro-electric scheme. South Westland farmer Graham Berry plans to generate his own power from a creek on his property near Franz Josef. The hydro-electric system will cost $300,000 and will provide power to run the farm, the Berry’s home staff accommodation and a farm stay holiday home.

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10 |

RURAL PEOPLE » Matt & Amanda Ward/Telford Dairy Farm

Business Rural

Telford aims Karen Phelps Telford Dairy Farm faces a number of challenges as it prepares to complete its involvement in the Pastoral 21 research programme, says new farm manager Justin Pigou.

The project has been looking at “nextgeneration dairy systems”.

Pigou, who has been farm manager for nine months, says it is too early to determine exactly what the changes will be for the farm. But, he says, the four years of data on the three farmlet systems will help in deciding how best to run the farm.

“For example, the data on individual paddock performance indicates which paddocks we need to invest in to lift production. Drainage and re-grassing

are key areas we have already identified needing attention.”

Pastoral 21 is a collaborative venture between DairyNZ, Fonterra, Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, Beef + Lamb NZ, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Its goal is to provide accessible, systemslevel systems for profitably increasing pastoral production while reducing farms’ environmental footprint.

Pigou says it has been challenging to combine PHOTOS Below: Cows under cover at the Telford Dairy Farm.

Right: Justin Pigou – Telford Dairy Farm is aiming to lift performance and reduce its environmental footprint,

Amanda and Matt Ward with children James (left) and Cooper.

Land sorted – now for production and costs Kelly Deeks Mid Canterbury dairy farmers Matt and Amanda Ward have taken control of their grazing and supplement with the purchase a year ago of an 110-hectare run-off block across the road from their 550ha dairy farm.

The equity partnership, of which the Wards are part of, bought the Hinds dairy farm as a 400ha block three seasons ago.

It was a high quality, dairy-support block, and the only development required was to build the Wards’ new house and an 80-bail rotary dairy shed, with automatic cup removers, teat sprayer, and Protrack system.

Ward and the farm staff began milking 1700 cows in the first season, with Amanda looking after the bookwork and the couple’s two children. The the partnership has since bought 100ha of adjoining land, then another 50ha, and increased cow numbers to 1900.

“When we took over the new blocks of land, we decided to undertake a reasonably intensive development programme,” Ward says. “We took the approach of getting the soil fertility up to scratch

straight away, rather than over a couple of years.

Our fertility levels and our pasture-growth levels are now pretty good.”

The purchase of the 110ha run-off last March has given the Wards more control over their grazing and the quality of their supplement, The block’s main role is to look after the calves, winter a small number of the herd, and grow silage.

It had been a cropping farm and, as it came out of crops, those paddocks were re-grassed. Ward says he will continue to grow 90ha of grass and 20ha of crops there.

The Wards now have their attention on improving operating efficiencies; their goal is increase per cow production and reduce costs.

With the emphasis on land acquisition over the last three years, herd quality has not been improved much. As young stock come through now, the Wards will look to cull non-performing cows a bit harder.

The cows are currently producing 460 kilograms of milksolids per head. The target is 480kg.

The herd currently eats about 500kg of barley and 100kg of grass silage. Ward says the payout could impact on buying in feed.

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RURAL PEOPLE » Telford Dairy Farm

Business Rural

| 11

to ‘pick the best bits’ Work done with groups while on winter crop indicates that huge savings potential in sediment and nutrient run-off can be achieved by protecting critical source areas in a paddock.

caption

this emphasis with a full commercial farm enterprise.

“In the past the farm has had a farmer advisory group of local dairy farmers to help give it direction and advice. We are re-establishing this group in anticipation of the end of the Pastoral 21 project.: He says the aim is to pick the best bits from involvement with Pastoral 21 and bring them together to lift performance and reduce environmental footprint.

Telford’s herds are split into across three

FOLEYS

farm systems to help determine and compare productivity gains and environmental footprints.

Each farmlet system runs 110 matched cows, with the control group embedded in the main herd with 440 other cows.

The control farmlet is based on typical dairy farm systems in South Otago/Southland, including forage-crop wintering, summer turnips and using annual rates of nitrogen of up to 130 kilograms per hectare.

Cows in the optimal farmlet are mated two

weeks later, calve onto higher pasture covers and require less spring supplement. There is more italian ryegrass in this farmlet and wholecrop barley silage is made for use in autumn to reduce nitrogen build-up in soils, which can easily be leached over winter. Lower rates of nitrogen fertiliser are also used in this system.

The third restricted farmlet uses a loose-housed barn to implement duration-controlled grazing in the shoulders of the season and to winter the herd.

“The aim is to reduce the amount of pasture damage during spring and reduce the amount of urinary nitrogen deposited on pasture during autumn,” says Pigou.

“Wintering in the barn also protects the soils from damage over the wetter months. The offpaddock wintering approach also reduces losses of nitrogen to water for this farmlet.”

Although it is too early to derive final conclusions from the Pastoral 21 research, Pigou says early wins from work done with the control and optimal groups while on winter crop indicates that huge savings in sediment and nutrient run-off can be achieved by protecting critical source areas in a paddock.

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The restricted group, which spends time in the barn during the shoulders of the season to reduce soil and pasture damage in spring, uses data from Aquaflex probes to indicate soil moisture levels and how prone soils might be to damage.

Pigou says simplifies decisions around removing cows from the wet soils. Reducing paddock grazing time in autumn has also meant less urinary nitrogen has been deposited to paddocks, reducing the risk of nitrogen leaching to water. Investigation into using low-depth and low-rate applications of effluent to land during winter is also showing promising results, which could have major benefit to the wider dairy industry, he says.

Pigou stresses that the main purpose of the Telford farm, aside from running as a successful commercial enterprise, is to provide a practical training venue for students who will go on to become the next generation of farmers.

He says that the key challenge will now be to find workable systems for farmers to incorporate some of these principles and strategies into their own farming system while getting the best return from the capital invested in any required infrastructure such as wintering barns or other systems.

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12 |

BULL BREEDERS » Twin River Charolais

Business Rural

Challenge of farming `kind of takes over’ Karen Phelps It was the challenge of farming that attracted Fergus and Katrina Templeton to a career in the industry.

It also led to the start of their stud, Twin River Charolais.

“I had been playing rugby and copped a bit of a knee injury and wasn’t supposed to play,” says Fergus Templeton. “So I thought ‘right, I’ll buy some cows, and this is where we’ve ended up because it kind of takes over.”

That was about 14 years ago and their stud now has 120 registered stud cows. Around half of the 100 yearling bulls and 120 yearling heifers are also registered. Twin River sells cattle privately, which, he says, means they can get to know their customers and their requirements, and get feedback from repeat customers.

The Templeton’s prime aim is to produce structurally correct cattle. Temperament is next on the list as people have to be able to work with the animals. As Twin River cattle are sold for use as terminal sires, they also focus on meat and the ability to finish cattle early.

Fergus Templeton admits he is not too hung up

on figures when it comes to his stud: “I’m really not a figures person. Figures are there as a guide and, used in the right context, are useful.

But they are not the be-all and end-all. I go on the look of the animal as well. I’m a raw data person – if they are putting on weight, that’s what I need to know.”

Importantly the herd is run commercially on their farm: “We have to keep them nice and functional, so they are run as part of our everyday business.

That’s a big selling point for people.”

Both Fergus and Katrina grew up in the Tokanui area where they farm. They bought their property off Fergus’ parents, Stuart and Jessie, who originally obtained the farm as a 126-hectare ballot block. It was swampy ground, so extensive drainage has been done over the years.

Fergus helped out on the farm while he was growing up and when his father died, took over the farm in partnership with his brother, John. The pair also bought another 182ha unit and ran the farms together for about 10 years. Fergus and Katrina took over the business in 1996 and have expanded its scope to 730ha.

They also run a breeding and fattening unit

I go on the look of the animal as well. I’m a raw data person – if they are putting on weight that’s what I need to know.”

Beefed up: Twin Rivers Charolais bulls. of 2500 wairere romney breeding ewes and 800 hoggets. They finish up to 5000 store lambs.

Fourteen years ago they decided to convert to wairere romneys from traditional romneys, and they have no regrets.

“It’s an easier-care flock, and lambing percentages and weights have both lifted,” says Fergus. “We were probably struggling to do 120% before and now it’s 163%.”

He says southern Southland can dish up some pretty tough stuff (weather) at lambing time: “I used to be chucking dead lambs at the gate. Wairere romneys are hardier. The lambing percentage has

lifted 10 per cent just on survival rates.”

This year the weather produced extremes – rain every day in November, the just 25mm since December. But that’s just part of the everyday challenge of farming for the Templetons.

Both have an active role on the farm and they employ one full-time staff member. They have three children: Emma, 12, Anna, 10, and Libby, seven.

“We’ve expanded the business from 121ha to 730ha,” says Fergus, and. I’d like to go further.

We’re open to anything. You have to be open to life.

I don’t think you should be a closed book. My door is always open to another challenge.”

Twin Rivers Charolais cows and calves make their way along a farm track at Tokanui.

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BULL BREEDERS » Beresford Simmentals

Business Rural

| 13

Bulls thrive despite extremes Jo Bailey Despite a season of extremes, Warren Burgess of Beresford Simmental Stud is happy with how the bull catalogue is shaping for his on-farm sale on May 20.

“All the young stock are picking up and putting on weight after a difficult start to the season. The sale bulls should finish up a similar weight to last season’s stock.”

Warren and his wife, Steph, farm 1180 hectares of rolling to steep bush country in the Catlins. They are nestled between Catlins Forest Park, and the Table Hill Scenic Reserve.

Around 200ha of the property is still in bush, and the varies from from tidal river flats to close to almost 460 metres at its highest point.

It is a challenging environment, with an annual rainfall of around 1200 to 1500mm.

This season a dump of 340mm in the second two weeks of November was followed by a “drier than normal” spell that lasted until late January.

“We get one or two dry summers like this only every 10 years or so,” says Warren Burgess. “The ground went from being sodden to concrete within a week. Luckily we’ve had some good rain since the dry broke in January, so things are coming right.”

From an original crop of 60 bull calves, he has selected around twenty 18 to 20-month sires to feature in the upcoming sale. Selection was based on structure, temperament and a selection of EBVs. “We’re very pleased with the bulls, which are soft, easy-doing cattle with EBVs well above the breed average. They have also scanned up extremely well for eye muscle and intra-muscular fat.”

The unpampered, tough, naturally bred bulls have the ability to shift anywhere in New Zealand, he says.

“Our stud cows are run easy-care, calving in rough bush blocks up to 460 metres. We don’t weigh the calves at birth as breeding survivability is more important to us.”

Photos: Big and rugged – two of the sale bulls in the Beresford Simmental Stud 2015 catalogue. Bottom: A Simmental cow and calf.

He says Beresford presents one of the heavier catalogues of simmental bulls in the country, with the stud breeding “big, rugged, heavy muscled sires”.

“Our bulls are large, sound cattle grown out to their potential in order to put weight and size into our buyers’ progeny. The progeny from these

simmental sires can be killed at any age from 14 months through to big heavyweight bullocks, and the heifers will still grade very well.”

The herd is brucellosis accredited, TBC10 and sale-tested clear, The Beresford Simmental sires BVD and EBL tested negative, have been vaccinated twice and have been eye-muscle scanned.

Burgess was pleased with the $4900 average from last year’s sale, with the bulls going out to various clients and environments.

He grew up at Beresford where the family establishing the simmental stud in 1981.

This year the stud will calve around 150 stud simmental cows and heifers, along with 80 murray greys and 50 simmental/hereford-cross cows.

Around 50 bull calves, 60 heifer calves and 10

sires are also run at Beresford, along with 4200 Turanganui ewes and 1100 hoggets that are farmed under the same easy-care policy.

The remainder of the Beresford calves were sold at the Owaka Calf Sale in March,. THis has been the practice for the last 60 years.

The stud recently hosted a busload of simmental breeders as a stop on a bi-annual herd tour run by the breed society.

“The roadshow is held in different parts of the country, with Otago simmental breeders visited this time. It was very worthwhile to mix with other breeders and give them an idea of the environment and way our operation is run before our sale.”

Our stud cows are run easy-care, calving in rough bush blocks up to 500 metres. Our bulls are large, sound cattle grown out to their potential in order to put weight and size into our buyers’ progeny.

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14 |

BULL BREEDERS » Glencairn Limousins

Business Rural

Farming ‘like playing a game of Karen Phelps A love of developing countryside into productive land has been one of the incentives Rob Johnstone to develop his farm.

This passion started from a young age when his parents bought a farm just north of Outram, which Johnstone admits, was “fairly rough land”.

The land was still in need of development when he finished his studies at Lincoln University, completing a Diploma in Agriculture and a Diploma in Farm Management, and bought into the unit some years later. The scrubby manuka and gorse have gradually given way to productive pasture.

“I found I really liked the development side of farming,” he says. “With fertiliser, fencing etc, it developed into quite a nice unit.”

The 700-hectare, hill country farm climbs to almost 400 metres above sea level at its highest point with the mainstay of the farm sitting just over 300 metresl.

The farm is complemented by a 32ha block on the Taieri Plains, which is used for running young cattle and wintering.

The main enterprise for Rob and Jean Johnstone is sheep. They run 3400 ewes and 800-900 ewe hoggets, and produce prime lambs for ANZCO (formerly Canterbury Meat Packers). The Johnstones have a contract to supply Waitrose, a top-end English supermarket chain.

“They like lambs around 17-18 kilograms average and quality lambs,” says Rob. “For us, it’s good to have a contract price as we know what we are going to be getting for the season.”

As limousin breeders, the Johnstones say their priority is meat yield.

Their main ewe flock is wairere romney, which they find produce easy lambing stock and a good

• To page 15

Rob Johnstone pictured with his limousin cattle on his 700-hectare hill country farm near Outram.

Rogernomics behind formation of cattle stud Outram farmers Rob and Jean Johnstone run Glencairn Limousins, a cattle stud which they started in 1984.

“In the early ‘80s when Roger Douglas got rid of subsidies,“ says Rob Johnstone, “It made farming difficult. Developing land wasn’t economic at the time, so I was

glencairn limousins

looking for another passion and thought a small cattle stud would be fun.”

That stud now runs around 80 cows, plus progeny. The Johnstones rear all the progeny and keep the best 15 heifers each year, and sell up to 12 bulls privately. Yield is the Johnstones’ priority.

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“In our view, limousin is superior to anything else in terms of meat and muscle,” says Rob. “A bull will yield 66% average carcass weight to liveweight. Of the carcass, more than 80% will be saleable meat, so the limousin is a very efficient animal at converting food to meat.”

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BULL BREEDERS » Glencairn Limousins

Business Rural

| 15

chess’ • From page 14 carcass. About 2500 of their ewes go to a wairere romney and they obtain their replacements from this progeny. The balance of their stock goes to a su folk/texel terminal sire. Ewe hoggets are mated to a cheviot ram for one cycle.

Although farming has been his life, Rob Johnstone admits he might be ready to start indulging in his off-farm passions a bit more – fly fishing and time with family.

But he obviously isn’t ready to give up farming yet. The Johnstones own a share in a 2500ha deer farm near Roxburg, and have also just bought into an equity partnership with their farm manager, Nick Roulston, on a 700ha unit near their Outram farm.

Typically, the land needs work and they are fencing, and clearing gorse and scrub. The farm runs 2800 perendale ewes and calves 60 angus cows.

“We just had our first lamb sale selling nearly 3500 lambs,” says Johnstone. “It went well. We enjoy farming a lot. It’s the variety, the outside environment and the management. You’ve got all sorts of things to deal with.

“It’s like playing a game of chess – making decisions and then carrying out your plans.”

We just had our first annual lamb sale selling nearly 3500 lambs. It went well. We enjoy farming a lot. It’s the variety, the outside environment and the management. You’ve got all sorts of things to deal with. It’s like playing a game of chess – making decisions and then carrying out your plans.

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Sheep are the main enterprise for Rob and Jean Johnstone. They run 3400 ewes and 800-900 ewe hoggets for ANZCO and have a contract to supply English supermarket chain Waitrose.

16 |

BULL BREEDERS » New Zealand Charolais Cattle Society

Business Rural

New head on a mission to push charolais Karen Phelps Drew Dundass, the new president of the New Zealand Charolais Cattle Society, has made it his mission over his four years of leadership to promote the benefits of the charolais breed as a terminal sire.

“I like all cattle, and all breeds have their strong points,” he says. “But there is room for farmers to take a real opportunity to utilise the benefits of the charolais in their herds.”

Dundass points to the results of a seminal study released last year. The study, done by the society in conjunction with Charolais Breeders NZ, compares a weaner-calf system mating angus breeding cows to either angus bulls or charolais bulls on a typical coastal east coast, hill country breeding station.

“An analysis was carried out to identify whether specific beef-breed marketing agreement premiums that are passed on to calf-producers at weaner fairs are sufficient to compensate for the loss of hybrid vigour when within-breed mating cattle.

“A gross margin analysis was calculated comparing the gross margin per cow wintered and cents per kilogram of dry matter consumed per cow wintered for within-breed (angus) and terminal-sire (charolais) mated.

“The analysis showed that terminal-sired calves were, on average, 34 kilograms liveweight heavier than the within-breed sired calves at weaning; and they returned $30 per calf more income.

This resulted in terminal-sire mated cows achieving $31 per cow wintered and 0.7 cents per kilogram of dry matter higher gross margin than within breed mated cows. For a 100-breedingcow herd where half of the cows are mated to a terminal-sire bull, this represents an extra $1550/pa margin to the breeding-cow enterprise as a whole.

“The study showed that the premiums available for purebred beef cattle via breed-initiated marketing schemes that are passed on to calf-breeders at weaner fairs are not adequate to compensate for the loss in hybrid vigour from not using terminal sire bulls.”

Dundass says other benefits of using charolais include easy identification (no problems getting replacement stock back into the herd) and, in a dry season, farmers have the option to sell calves as charolais-cross animals, which tend to sell well at sales.

“In the last couple of years I’ve tried to go to as many weaner-calf shows as I could in the Otago/ Southland region. I’ve gone through the descriptions and prices the animals sold for, and the charolaiscross averaged $100-150 better than any other breed.”

The charolais breed was developed and established in the Charolles district in central France. Today’s charolais is suited to drought, but also produces highly rated meat for market.

The first charolais semen imported to New Zealand came from the United Kingdom in 1965 for

trials at Lincoln and Ruakura. The following year commercial semen was brought in after a New Zealand farmer had seen charolais while on holiday in France; he was so impressed by their size he was determined to introduce the breed to the New Zealand.

Between 1969 and 1981, 61 bulls and 302 females were imported into New Zealand from the UK, forming the basis of the full french charolais.

Most of the purebred cattle have been bred by grading up, using a french charolais sire over a base angus, friesian or hereford cow. This has resulted in a charolais that retains growth rate and muscle, but is better suited to New Zealand beefproduction systems.

The New Zealand Charolais Cattle Society was formed in 1968 to help promote the breed in New Zealand.

Dundass, who with wife Carloyn, runs the Taiaroa Charolais Stud, has been on the society council for three years.

Taiaroa Charolais Stud was founded by Carolyn’s father, Tom, in 1968. Dundass, who had had little to do with the breed, says he was impressed quickly. They farm at just over 900 metres with 150 days of “winter” a year, and their cattle don’t get supplements until they come down for calving.

For farmers wanting to try the charolais breed in their herd, Dundass recommends selecting a certified charolais breeder to be sure of the quality of genetics. There are two main breeds in New Zealand – the full French charolais is thicker and sturdier and not as “rangy” as the North American bloodlines, which include more polled genetics.

He says the NZ Charolais Cattle Society is hoping to establish a small scholarship for an agricultural school. The society is also keen to answer farmers’ questions. Contact: 0800 242 765..

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BULL BREEDERS » Seadowns Herefords

Business Rural

| 17

Baton changes – gradually Karen Phelps After a lifetime of farming Colin and Lynne Gibson are ready to let their son, Scott, and his wife, Nicky, take over the reins. Almost.

“We’ll still live on the place and help out. But I won’t have the stress or have to pay the bills. That’ll be the best bit,” says Colin.

Two years ago Scott and Nicky joined the family company, Seadowns Herefords, buying into 50 per cent of the stock on the farm.

This has meant the farm no longer needs to employ staff – all the Gibsons take a role in the dayto-day running of the 300-hectare unit at Rosebery, eight kilometres inland from Oamaru.

It has also allowed Scott and Nicky to build equity to take over the business. The couple lease a 52ha farm nearby which they use to rear bobby calves to fatten and sell for additional cashflow.

Seadowns Herefords has 130 stud cows and, according to Colin, “not molly-coddling” the stock is the key to success as they transfer well to the hill country.

The stud was founded in 1994 and uses genetics sourced mainly from Australia. In the early days it took a while to build up clientele, but as the stud’s reputation has grown, so has the number of repeat clients.

“I used to go into shearing competitions when I was younger to make the job more interesting,” says Colin Gibson. “Stud breeding is the same – it makes farming more interesting as you are always trying to do better. It adds an extra layer to things – all our cows have names and numbers unlike an ordinary herd.”

The stud favours horned herefords with only a few polled varieties, which is unusual for New Zealand. Meat and temperament are other focuses of the breeding programme. Surplus young stock are sold for breeding – Seadowns Herefords sells 20-30 heifers and around 60 bulls each year, 30 at an on-farm sale and the remainder leased or sold to dairy farmers.

The annual sale is scheduled for May 25.

Some of the bulls offered will be the first progeny from new sires Glendon Park Federation (a meaty Australian bull), Merawah Highlight (an Australian polled bull) and Locharburn Vagabond Cape (a New Zealand bull).

The Gibson farm also runs a dorset down stud with 80 ewes. There are 1000 ewes and 250 hoggets on the farm. Lambs are fattened and 10001200 are sold each year.

Genetics are mainly from New Zealand. A good meaty type of ram with a good constitution has been bought recently to help breed better muscling into the flock. Fifteen to 20 rams are sold privately each year.

There’s history on the Gibson farm too.

The remnants of a gravity-fed water-race system run along the farm boundary. The system used to supply Oamaru from in the Waitaki Valley.

A cave on the property, found by the Gibsons’ children many years ago, has evidence it was used as accommodation by the men who built that race – Chinese writing is scratched into the rock surface.

Colin Gibson, who was brought up at nearby Ardgowan, was shearing for a number of years.

He says he scoured the country in search of a first farm to buy, only to end up a matter of kilometres away.

Photos: Colin and Scott Gibson (left) run Seadowns Herefords, a 300-hectare, beefand-sheep farm, and hereford stud in North Otago.

That was in 1979 and the farm was 222 hectares. It has grown slightly through the purchase of neighbouring land.

Colin says Scott and Nicky are doing a good job of running the farm, which no doubt gives him and Lynne security as they prepare to hand over to the next generation.

But even as he is enjoys semi-retirement, Colin Gibson is keeping busy. He has been to the North Island twice this year to judge at shearing competitions and world-record attempts.

I used to go into shearing competitions when I was younger to make the job more interesting. Stud breeding is the same – it makes farming more interesting as you are always trying to do better. It adds an extra layer to things – all our cows have names and numbers unlike an ordinary herd.

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18 |

BULLS » Kakahu Angus

Business Rural

EBVs, genetics the crux Neil Grant Kakahu Angus Stud, near Geraldine, has been in business since 1954. Gerald Hargreaves’s father set it up, and passed it on to Gerald and his wife, Sue. Now they have passed the running of the stud to their son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Anna.

So, retirement loomed. If anyone thought retirement would mean pipe and slippers by the log fire for Gerald Hargreaves, they were much mistaken. Never one to keep his opinions to himself, – especially when he knew he was right – he now has the time to reflect on where he has been, what he has achieved, what’s good about the industry, and what needs doing.

In the early 2000s he took a trip to the United States. Convinced until then that American angus were big and useless, he soon realised this was a simplification, that the size of their industry meant there were animals there, and records to back them, that could revolutionise angus breeding in New Zealand.

“It boils down to estimated breeding values and genetics,” he reckons. “EBVs are a giant progeny test. There is clear evidence through actual progeny testing in Australia in the bench-marking programme ( which includes New Zealand bulls) that EBVs do work.

“People try to find holes in this because it doesn’t suit them, but it’s critically important we get genetic progress. Working with EBVs is slow and laborious – it takes three generations to really see results. But if farmers want to make a difference to their bottom line, they can, and are.

“Farmers should see the purchase of a bull as an investment, not an expense. Buy a bull in the top 25 per cent for the breed. This will make you future profits!

“Some New Zealand stud-breeders across all breeds put out only the figures that suit them.

This denies people the opportunity to see what an animal is all about.”

Hargreaves believes it is vital to explore globally for productive genetics. He to the US annually and

PHOTOS – Above: Kakahu Angus cattle on the road in South Canterbury. Below: Five years ago the Hargreaves bought the Centrewood Charolais Stud of 150 cows, and now run 100. Stud animals are selected especially for good temperament and feet, as well as growth and carcase attributes.

• To page 19

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BULLS » Kakahu Angus

Business Rural

| 19

PHOTOS Left: The view across the Hargreaves property, just a few minutes south of Geraldine.

Lower left: Angus bulls grabe the achance to kick up their heels.

Duty to provide ‘consistently good eating’ • From page 18 to Australia frequently, spending time with angus breeders and ranchers and selecting genetics that suit him and New Zealand conditions.

What impresses him in the US is the vast amount of information he can get about any animal he sees.

As well as all the EBV scores, from calving ease through gestation length, to eye-muscle area and retail beef-yield – 17 in all – he can also get expected progeny difference (EPD) figures that provide everything you get in Australasia, plus heifer pregnancy rating, rated daily gain, docility, yearling weight, feed efficiency and others.

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But sometimes, of course, all the figures in the world do not match an animal’s actual performance, “By going to America and sourcing the bulls and their progeny, we can sort these out.”

He tells of one client who wanted to see if his figures were dinkum. He bought a line of heifers from Kakahu breeding and a line with pure New Zealand breeding and ran them together.

“He called me up and said, ‘The Kakahu cattle killed out a month earlier at 260 kilograms. The others were over-fat at 220kg a month later.’

“To me that is a progeny test. But this isn’t about me, it’s about the industry. If we continue as we are, not embracing modern technology, we won’t

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lift ourselves out of the grinding market into the high-price market.

“Change won’t come from stud breeders. It will come only by farmers not buying bulls from those who don’t embrace modern technology. Some breeders are too institutionalised, and they’re quite dominating towards young farmers and stock agents. So the farmers buy bulls for reasons other than production through genetic gain.

He believes angus farmers have the biggest opportunity the world has seen to be supplying high-quality, grass fed, well-marbled beef. And marbling is the key – it’s what separates angus from other breeds. But, the heavy marketing and successful genetic progress of pork and chicken

meat as protein means that the angus industry has to wake itself up.

“Instead of getting 53% carcase weight, which is the average, farmers can be getting 58-60% – a profit above the norm. That’s what records are about, increasing efficiency and and profitability of cattlemen in New Zealand.”

He says angus are on a high at the moment, but other breeds are catching up. He predicts that in five years, animal production will have advanced globally, and angus farmers must meet the challenge using modern technology.

“It’s my duty as a stud-breeder to produce the cattle which, down the line, will deliver to the consumer a consistently good eating experience.”

20 |

ON FARM » Michael & Karen Blomfield/Todd Agri

Business Rural

Sustainability across the board Sue Russell In the 21 years Michael and Karen Blomfield have owned their 291-hectare dairy farm 50 minutes’ drive north-west of Invercargill, they have poured an enormous amount of energy into making it not only as productive as possible, but also as environmentally sustainable as possible.

They bought the farm in 1994 from Michael’s parents, John and Joan, and converted it from sheep and beef to dairy in 2007-08 – a pragmatic decision to improve farm succession. They have since concentrated on raising production benchmarks.

They plan to increase their herd of 720 kiwicross cows to 740 – a stocking ratio of three to the hectare from the 255ha milking platform.

They have planted trees to fill in gullies and non-productive farm spaces, although Michael acknowledges there is still room for more.

“I have always enjoyed planting, but you have to be careful about where you place things like flax.

A major benefit of extensive tree planting is that they cut down wind-chill factor, creating a bit of a micro-climate.”

Three years ago the couple’ farming business received won top honours in the Southland Ballance Farm Environment Awards, prompting a lot of media

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PHOTOS – Left: This pond reflects the Blomfields’ philosophy of working towards keeping their land as environmentally sustainable as possible. Right: The Blomfields – standing, Hamish, Michael, Charlotte and Karen; sitting, Lachlan and Matthew. attention. However, Michael Blomfield prefers to talk about the broader perspective.

“We have always been concerned to reduce debt as quickly as possible and this has meant we haven’t gone out and bought new farm equipment that wasn’t necessary. My motor bike is 12 years old and still going well.”

As part of achieving a good solid grass cover, he has been prepared to try various varieties to learn which are best suited: “Our grasses tend to last because we try to look after them as best we can.”

An adjoining 69 hectares recent;y brought into the operation has created additional capacity.

The couple employ Nathan Knight as herd manager and Jacinta Bryan as farm assistant.

A couple of relief milkers help at peaks and an assistant calf-rearer in spring.

Production was expected to surpass last year’s 305,000 kilograms of milksolids, but this is unlikely given what Michael describes as a “horrible October and November” and, according to statistics, the worst spring since 1957.

The Blomfields say they have reached a consolidation phase. The farm now demands less frenzied activity to produce well, which allows them more time with their 16-year-old triplets (Charlotte,

Hamish and Matthew) and 14-year-old Lachlan.

Says Karen: “My perspective after spending a lot of years treading water and hard work to get to where we are now is that we want to be a bit more cruisy. Farm-wise it would be nice to take another step back, employing either a farm manager or contract milkers.

“It’s too early to know whether any of the children will take on the farm, but we can afford now to have a bit more balance in our lifestyle.”

She is on the Central Southland College board of trustees, says she is looking forward to spending more time riding her horse.

Young farmer gets his feet firmly on the Karen Phelps Hall Silage are pleased to support Blomfield

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At 28 Stephen Todd already owns his own farm and has shares in the family business.

He bought his 1400-hectare (450ha effective) farm, Tutaki Heights, two years ago and has been busy developing it into a dairy unit milking 1050 predominantly crossbred cows.

The farm may be large, but Todd says a lot of the land is covered in native bush and scrub, and is unusable. Around 600ha is farmable and he is busy developing it.

The herd is milked through a 60-bail rotary shed

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Stephen Todd grew up on the home farm, a 1500ha (180ha effective) property next door. This farm is also covered in native bush and scrub, and has steep sections.

Around 400ha of it is used for grazing beef, young and dry stock, and wintering dairy cows. The farm milks a herd of 480 crossbred cows through a 54-bail rotary with automatic cup removers, milk meters and automatic drafting.

The family also owns Tiraumea, a 190ha (150ha effective) farm next door, which milks 350 cows through a 32-bail rotary. This is the only one of their farms with irrigation. Each farm has a herd manager.

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through drainage and clearing scrub. New raceways have been installed on Tutaki Heights so that the cows do not have so far to walk to the shed.

Bridges – two on Tutaki Heights recently and eight on the home farm a few years ago – have been built to protect waterways.

With more land in the system, the Todds are working on raising production by better feeding and culling. Around 800 tonnes of wheat grain will be bought this season.

Last season the farms produced 560,000 kilograms of milksolids in total. This season the target is 615,000kg.

The family employs nine full-time staff all units, and John and Debbie are still actively involved.

Stephen is the fourth generation to work this land. The original block came into the family as a ballot block after World War 2. Neighbouring blocks have been bought over the years.

Stephen Todd says his aim is to own all the farms – and he is well on his way. He admits family support has been key and admits, that after buying his own farm two years ago, it’s “nice to have a bigger slice of the pie”

ON FARM » Keith & Joy Calder

Business Rural

| 21

Couple enjoy dairying life on ‘low-stress’ property Karen Phelps Rain is the biggest challenge facing South Otago farmers Keith and Joy Calder, who 50:50 sharemilk for owner Mavis Mosley on 80 hectares (76ha effective) at Kaitangata.

Many years ago half the farm was part of Kaitangata Lake, now drained and developed into farmland. But, with the land sitting so close to sea level, the water table is high and, when the heavens open, the farm can become saturated quickly.

The silt-loam soils don’t help either – they make drainage slow. The Calders cope by standing the herd off on old railway tracks that run through the

farm and provide a convenient and cheap dry area.

If there’s damage to pastures, they drill in a bit more grass when things dry up. They aim to re-grass 5-8ha a year.

Now in their sixth season on the property, they say it has nearly reached its full potential. The 275 crossbred and friesian cows are milked through a 22-a-side herringbone shed. It’s a sound herd, with a breeding worth of 126 and a production worth of 206.

The couple lease a 110ha block – 60ha of it usable and the rest gullies, gorse and rough land – in the hill above the Clutha Valley about 15 kilometres away. They winter their stock there, grow 12-14ha of swedes and fodder beet, and bring 110,000 kilograms of dry matter of silage back to the farm.

They employ one part-time worker, but their five children have helped on the farm. Mason, 18, and Madison, 14, are both studying and return to help at weekends, while Aaron, 20, who is also studying, returns during his holidays. Samantha, 15, and Kimberley, 13, still live on the farm and help with milking three nights a week for pocket money.

They also own a 141ha sheep-and-beef farm at Wairuna in an equity partnership with Joy’s father, Dave Sutherland. The farm runs 500 ewes, 100 dairy grazers, 50-60 beef cattle, and young stock from the dairy farm.

The Calders go to Wairuna several times a week.

Samantha has recently started a stud, Leighfeild Charolais, there with six breeding cows.

“She has been showing at shows around the area and has won the Southern Rural Life Herdsperson of the Year a number of times, although this year Kimberley won it at the Gore show in February,” says Keith.

Production on the dairy unit last season was 115,000 kilograms of milksolids, and this season’s target is 118,000-119,000kg. Their next target is 121,000kg.

Both of the Calders have farming backgrounds – Joy from a sheep-and-beef property at Wyndham, and Keith from a dairy farm at Gore.

They have worked their way up the system and say they are satisfied on this farm with no immediate plans to move.

“We are quite happy here,” says Keith. “It’s a low-stress farm and we will carry on paying off the sheep-and-beef unit.”

PHOTOS Above: Keith and Joy Calder says they are happy with their present farming set-up.

Below: While the high water table makes the Kaitangata property susceptible to saturate, snow is also a possibility in winter.

Far left: Feeding time for the Calders’ 275 crossbred and friesian cows.

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A J LYALL CONTRACTING PHOTOS – Stephen Todd is involved in three farms in the Murchison area – he owns one himself, and is in an equity partnership with his parents in the other two.

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22 |

ON FARM » Mark & Diane Phillips

Business Rural

Above: All of Mark and Diane Phillips’ farm is irrigated – “We made a conscious decision that we don’t farm where we can’t irrigate because otherwise you can’t control your farm,” says Mark. Right: The Phillips girls and young farmers in the making....Bella, 10 (left) and MacKenzie, 15 months.

Hard yakker brings reward Karen Phelps Oamaru-based farmers Mark and Dianne Phillips have worked harder than most to get to their goal of farm ownership.

They are in the process of buying 140 hectares of their farm, which they were previously leasing.

Their journey to get there has included running four farms at one stage.

“Our bank manager told us we were one of only a few farmers in New Zealand running so many contract-milking jobs at the time,” says Mark Phillips.

He grew up in Auckland, but when he was 13 the family moved to a farm at Waipu, in Northland, then ventured into the South Island.

As soon as he left school he started working on dairy farms and moved up through the system on various units in the South Island.

When he and Dianne married in 2000, they decided to move to Canterbury where they worked for Andrew and Jenny Calder for five years.

They say they learned about a more financially focused way of farming. In fact, they continue to use the same systems in their business.

“It was about working smarter, not harder,” says Mark Phillips, “a more business like and financial approach to farming.”

The couple then took on their first management position, on a 700-cow unit at Balclutha. They

It’s nice to have reached our goal of farm ownership, and shows that If you are willing to work really hard and think outside the square and have good people to support you, it’s still possible without family assistance. stayed there for two years before moving to a lower-order sharemilking position on a 500-cow farm for Neil Smith.

“When we came back from Balclutha, we decided we never wanted to milk more than 500 cows. We didn’t enjoy bigger jobs,” says Mark.

These proved to be famous last words.

Over the years that followed, the Phillipses ended up lower-order sharemilking three farms for Smith – as well as converting their first dairy farm.

At peak they milked four farms, a total of 2500 cows, and managed 14 staff.

But last season they ended all their lowerorder sharemilking positions, and they are now concentrating on their own 181ha farm, 41ha of it leased, where they are milking 680 kiwicross cows.

“We were really lucky Neil gave us such a great opportunity to sharemilk three of his farms,” says Mark Phillips.

“He also let us put in an extra silo in his own dairy shed when we bought our land so that we could start milking immediately. We did this for two

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years before we built a shed on our land.”

Their farm now has a 36-a-side herringbone shed, and they are in their fifth season of milking the property.

The shed is typical of their approach of building their business by thinking outside the square and doing as much as they can themselves.

They bought the shed second-hand, moved it to their farm, then completed the painting, compacted the yard, and did whatever else they could themselves.

The result was a shed that cost them about half of a new build.

“The moral of the story is that you’ve got to get off your arse and work hard, and then anything’s possible,” says Mark.

There is little doubt the Phillips are extremely hard workers. Dianne reared 950 cows by herself at one stage of their career. Both still milk in the shed and Dianne gets out on the tractor and spreads urea. They employ only one staff and do most of the work themselves given the lower payout this season.

They winter their stock on a 150ha lease block where they also growing supplement and contractgraze 250 cows.

Good systems have proved crucial to their success, says Mark Phillips. “We have everything written down so that everyone is on the same page.

That was really important when we were running four farms and a large number of staff.

The same systems were used on all farms so that we could transfer staff around the farms if we needed to.”

Now the Phillipses are chasing production through re-grassing. They have guaranteed water from the Lower Waitaki irrigation scheme, and the whole farm and run-off is under irrigation.

“We made a conscious decision that we don’t farm where we can’t irrigate because otherwise you can’t control your farm,” says Mark.

“We don’t like that risk.”

Last season they produced 215,000 kilograms of milksolids from 540 cows; their goals are 275,000kg for this season and 300,000kg for next season when cow numbers will rise to 700.

The farm is run as a family operation with Bella, 10, spending time in the dairy shed after school and MacKenzie, 15 months, strapped into her baby seat on the tractor when Mark shifts irrigators.

The couple credit the assistance of other dairy farmers as invaluable in helping them attain their goals.

“It just goes to show you that there are still some really good people out there,” says Mark Phillips. “It’s nice to have reached our goal of farm ownership and shows that if you are willing to work really hard and think outside the square and have good people to support you, it’s still possible without family assistance.”

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It has taken a while and a lot of hard work, but Mark and Diane Phillips now have their own shingle hanging at their farm gate.

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ON FARM » Boyd & Annette Slemint

Business Rural

| 23

Exchange part of couple’s life Sue Russell Boyd and Annette Slemint have been employing young rural-exchange farm-hands for nine years – and say it has been 90-95 per cent successful.

The couple employ four staff on the Dairy Holdings farm they sharemilk at Oxford, nearly 50 kilometres north-west from Christchurch.

They have a senior Kiwi worker and three exchangees through a government-approved scheme designed to give young people (18 to 30 in age) from overseas opportunities to experience New Zealand farming for up to a year.

“They are initially surprised by the size of our cows (smaller), the seasonal nature of our farming practices, and the fact our farming is outside and our feeding is grass-based,” says Boyd Semint.

“That’s a lot for them to take in, but they soon adapt and get into the pattern of daily life.”

He says having a constant stream of foreign farm-workers calls for a fair measure of patience in the first month until language barriers and change of systems are overcome.

“It suits most of them to arrive here through July and August from the northern hemisphere because of the opposite seasons to us. From our perspective, early August is the latest because it is just so busy by then.”

The Slemints’ interest in exchangees should not come as a surprise. Annette, who comes from Switzerland, came to New Zealand as a rural exchange worker herself. The couple met when they were working on neighbouring farms in Rakaia.

These days Annette deals with the administration and company accounts, but is available as a permanent standby.

The farm has a milking platform of 224 effective hectares and 760 cows are put through a 50bail rotary shed. This season’s goal is 300,000 kilograms of miksolids. By adding a few extra inputs, they achieved 307,000kg last season.

This is the Slemints’ seventh season with Dairy Holdings Ltd, which has all of its farming assets in the South Island.

The company places strong emphasis on maximising return by targeting pasturemanagement systems that increase the amount and quality of pasture grown and harvested.

“We make sure to always get pasture residuals to 1500kg dry matter per hectare and eat every blade of grass we’re growing,” says Boyd Slemint.

Farm worker Soren Madsen, from Denmark, feeds calves on the 224-hectare Dairy Holdings farm Boyd and Annette Slemint sharemilk, “We plan to extend our round-length earlier to push pasture quantity and then make sure we break feed to maintain quality.”

Irrigation is supplied through two centre-pivots that cover 85% of the farm.

The Slemints have recently bought a 90ha farm at Glentui, which they intend using for the young stock. Their goal in the next five years is to continue 50:50 sharemilking or move to their farm.

They have three children (Nicholas, Connor and Sonja); Boyd coaches at the local rugby club and goes mountain biking.

Asked about any advice he would give young farmers setting out on their farming career, Boyd’s comments are simple.

“Find the right farm, find the right employer who’s going to support you, and ask plenty of questions. That’s the best way to discover what you’re capable of and to find your feet.”

Annette and Boyd Slemint, with children (from left) Nicholas, Connor and Sonja.

Boyd Slemint discusses farm jobs with staff.

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24 |

ON FARM » Guido & Elise Van Kessel, Bart & Vanessa Van de Ven

Business Rural

Unique partnership the key Karen Phelps An equity partnership between Dutch friends Guido and Elise Van Kessel and Bart and Vanessa Van de Ven has helped the two couples to fast-track their dairy business. In just seven years, they have grown from nothing to a herd of more than 1000 cows.

Guido Van Kessel puts this down to not only the partnership, but also the unique sharemilking system in New Zealand. He came to New Zealand after completing a bachelors degree in agriculture in the Netherlands.

“In the Netherlands if you don’t come from a farming family or have a heap of money, it’s very difficult to ever own a farm,” he says.

“The sharemilking system in New Zealand is unique in the world.”

The Van Kessels started as farm assistants in the North Island before progressing to farm managers on farms of around 250 cows. They decided to go to Southland when a call from an old school chum suggested they check out the opportunities.

“He said if you want to make money, you need to go south. So of course, being Dutch, I jumped on a plane,” says Guido with a grin.

What struck him immediately about South Island farming, compared to that in the north, were the larger farms and more business-oriented approach.

In 2007 the Van Kessels had formed Orange County Farms Lte with their friends from the North Island, the Van de Vens. The company owned 40 calves and, in 2008, bought 200 cows, a tractor and other farm equipment.

The Van de Vens had taken on a 50:50 sharemilking position at Te Aroha, which operated under Orange County Farms Ltd, while the Van Kessels were busy with a management position, also in the North Island.

A year later, when the Van Kessels moved to a 450-cow, contract-milking position for Mike and Kathy McDonald at Drummond, in Southland, the two Dutch couples formed a second company, Orange County Dairies Ltd. The income generated

by Orange County Dairies provided Orange Country Farms with cashflow.

The Van de Vens later moved to the South Island bringing the cows from their sharemilking position and secured a job with the McDonalds.

The two couples stayed with the McDonalds for four years in total, operating together under their company and increasing the herd to 800 cows.

They then moved together to a 1150-cow, 50:50

Bart Van de Ven (left) and Guido Van Kessel are good friends and farming partners, sharemilking 1000 cows at Clydevale for Whitestone Trust. The 400-cow feedpad, put in by Whitestone Trust, enables an earlier start and a later finish to the milking season. sharemilking position on Catley Farm, at Clydevale for Whitestone Trust, and they are still there.

The 370-hectare (effective) farm is supported by a 160ha run-off. The herd is milked through a 50-bail rotary.

And it’s a real mixed bag of genetics – friesian, kiwicross, ayrshire, jersey, montbéliard, norwegian red, brown swiss.

The couples are trying three-way crossing of brown swiss friesian cross, montbéliard and norwegian red, which they believe will result in a strong, sturdy cow with high capacity, high fat and protein.

They admit it’s an unusual cross, but they are convinced it works.

“It won’t index well, but they are good cows – big and heavy,” says Guido, He says he is convinced that a good herd always sells.

“A good cow on paper is not necessarily a good cow in the herd. I never go for figures – it’s all about picking a good cow by sight, and I can see if a cow is good or not from miles away. Now we

We couldn’t have done it alone. We’ve grown fast from nothing to where we are now. Next season we’ll calve 1200 cows. We are hoping to buy a farm next year as part of the partnership For us to move forward, we would aim to keep sharemilking on this farm and put a manager on the farm we buy. Doing everything together – that’s always been our strength.

have everything is in place to be able to cull more aggressively.”

The 1000-cow herd produced 380,000 kilograms of milksolids last season. This season the target is 430,000kg.

Guido is quick to admit that the unique partnership between the friends has been the key to their success. Bart primarily runs the cowshed and records, while Guido takes care of the pasture, maintenance and tractor work.

Elise and Vanessa rear all the calves in spring, and Vanessa takes care of young stock and artificial breeding and Elise the farm accounts.

“He gets the milk out; I make sure the cows are producing the milk,” says Guido. “We couldn’t have done it alone. We’ve grown fast from nothing to where we are now. Next season we’ll calve 1200 cows. We are hoping to buy a farm next year as part of the partnership.

“For us to move forward, we would aim to keep sharemilking on this farm and put a manager on the farm we buy. Doing everything together – that’s always been our strength.”

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Business Rural

ON FARM » Kintore Farms

| 25

PHOTOS Left: The sun sets over the irrigation pond at Kintore Farms.

Lower left: Nick Hoogeveen (left), Brendon Steer (centre) and Chris Barr check daily production data by computer.

Bottom: Plaintain and grass silage is mown on one of Kintore’s run-offs.

Daily email tells bovine story Jo Bailey The use of daily, high-tech monitoring is helping Kintore Farm get the best out of its 1565 cows. Nick Hoogeveen general manager of the operation’s two dairy units at Carew in Mid Canterbury, has used his university-gained computer skills to advance the farms’ cowshed monitoring systems.

“We harvest the data and import it into spreadsheets that create a series of daily graphs and tables. These provide us with information and comparisons across a range of parameters, including production, feeding, and cow weight.”

The reports are emailed to Hoogeveen and his two farm managers each evening. They can also be accessed by the farm’s shareholders (the Waddington, MacFarlane, Rodwell and Hoogeveen families) at any time.

Cow weights at each milking are some of the key indicators that impact on daily management of the farms, says Hoogeveen.

“The average weight per cow across the herd is compared against the average from the last five morning or afternoon milkings. If the current average is lower, a text message is automatically sent to the farm managers and me, and the cows are fed more to make up for the shortfall.”

He has a simple philosophy when it comes to feeding: “Stuff as much high quality grass in as you

can, and make sure the cows are fully fed every single feed. If cows are losing weight, you’re not going to make condition-score targets and you’ll lose production.”

Total cow numbers across the two units are around 70 fewer than last year in a bid to improve the quality of the herd and feed them more grass.

“We are doing better production than last season with more cows. We budgeted to do 503 kilograms of milksolids per cow and we’re on track to achieve 528kg with the same costs and less feed.”

The farms are spray-irrigated from two storage ponds (181,000 cubic-metre total capacity), so haven’t been badly affected by the summer dry.

Water use is also monitored, both automatically via soil moisture monitors on the irrigators and through regular site visits from Hydro Services.

“We keep a close eye on things to make sure we are not wasting water or leaching nutrients out of the soil profile unnecessarily,” says Hoogeveen.

Kintore’s herd is split between its two units – the 238-hectare (effective) Wainui Dairy, and 212ha (effective) Katoa Dairy. Each farm has its own infrastructure, farm manager and staff.

“There is good, healthy competition between the farms, which are constantly measured against one another. However, our guys understand they all worki for the same business. They understand their

success is measured by how they bring people up and help them grow. One of our core values is to help others, rather than trying to outdo them.”

All cows are wintered at Kintore’s Newparks or Broadfields support blocks on kale and fodderbeet.

“We started experimenting with a couple of paddocks of fodder beet about six years ago – it was a disaster as we got only about seven tonnes per hectare. We’ve slowly improved and we’re still tweaking allocations, as the cows can easily get too fat and end up with metabolic problems on it. Last winter we limited their fodder-beet intake and added a bit more silage and straw. The cows weren’t as fat, but they performed better.”

The farms also use the Conedose in-shed mineral feeding system which, he says, is working well after some early problems were ironed out.

Given this season’s lower payout, he has kept a close eye on budgets, and has cut costs where sustainable.

“We didn’t take out anything that would create a long-term impact for a short-term result.”

He says the Kintore shareholders have accepted the farms won’t make too much money this year.

“You have to take the good with the bad in dairy farming. In some ways the lower payout has been good because it has forced us to refocus on having a more sustainable farming system. We’re walking the talk with pasture management and becoming far less focused on higher cost supplements.”

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RURAL SERVICES » Bowden Environmental

26 |

Business Rural

Photos (from left): Bowden Environmental consultant Erin Harvie tests the thickness of an irrigation pipe. A flow meter installation. Environmental consultant Christine Mawhinney and engineering consultant John Talbot check a farm effluent pond. Christine Mawhinney measures water levels (far right).

Specialist helps farmers prepare Jo Bailey Supporting farmers to develop sustainable milk plans (SMP) for dairy farms and farm environmental plans (FEP) for their operations is a growing part of Bowden Environmental’s workload.

SMP templates have been developed by Dairy New Zealand specifically so that dairy farmers can meet Land & Water Regional Plan requirements for all farmers to have their own farm environment plans.

Kaiapoi-based Bowden Environmental is one of several Canterbury firms working with DairyNZ in the SMP roll-out in the region, delivering one-onone advice to farmers and helping them create farm-specific plans.

Environmental consultant Christine Mawhinney says the firm is working with farmers in the Hurunui/Waiau area.

Implementation of SMPs in Canterbury will start with the Selwyn district, she says.

“We’ve been implementing the plans gradually with farmers over the last year. The process involves a DairyNZ-funded site visit to undertake an on-farm environmental-risk assessment, which generally takes around three hours. Then we put the plan together and send it out to the farmer and DairyNZ.” The site visit identifies good environmental

It can be quite confusing and stressful for people to meet the requirements of the Resource Management Act and Environment Canterbury, especially now the rules are becoming more complicated...It can be a nightmare for a lot of farmers.

Environmental consultant Erin Harvie takes a water sample. management practices already in place on the farm and highlights where improvements may be required.

Over the next couple of years it will become mandatory for all farmers to have completed a sustainable milk plan – or a farm environment plan for non-dairy operations.

“Farm environment plans are being rolled out gradually. based on nutrient allocation zones, with different time-frames for each zone. The first deadline for this work is January 2016.” she says.

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Farmers can choose from a list of approved consultants they would like to work with on these plans, including Bowden Environmental.

“We’ve working with new and a lot of our established clients on the SMP and FEP roll-out. It works well as we are already very familiar with their operations.”

The firm was established as Bowden Consultancy in 1997 by former Canterbury Regional Council chief executive Michael Bowden, to provide specialist expertise in water resources. In 2002, it changed its name to Bowden Environmental.

Director Maureen Toland, who manages the company, has been responsible for the day-to-day running since 1998.

The firm specialises in all aspects of groundwater and surface-water consents, effluent discharges, management plans and storage, bore and aquifer testing, resource management, site investigation and ecology.

It has broad experience in council and environment-court hearings, compliance and environmental-monitoring programmes and reports, and has undertaken several high-profile commissioner appointments on behalf of South Island regional and district councils.

Environmental engineer consultant John Talbot says assisting farmers through the resource

consent process to achieve a successful outcome is very satisfying.

“It can be quite confusing and stressful for people to meet the requirements of the Resource Management Act and Environment Canterbury, especially now the rules are becoming more complicated, with more assessments required. The process can be a nightmare for a lot of farmers.”

The firm’s other environmental consultant, Erin Harvie, also oversees many of the consent applications generated by the company.

She says Bowden Environmental has significant expertise in field-data collection and analysis, and is often called on to provide aquifer testing, surfacewater gauging and water-quality testing.

“When farmers take water from a well, we need to test its capacity and what effect this will have on neighbouring wells. We do a lot of these sorts of tests and calculations.”

Although the company works predominantly with rural clients from Marlborough to Waitaki, it also has some commercial projects.

“One recent one was to assist engineering firm Uretek with consents for the redevelopment of the earthquake-damaged Christchurch Art Gallery,” says Talbot.

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RURAL SERVICES » Westland Dairy Sheds

Business Rural

| 27

Make the most of what you’ve got – shed specialist Karen Phelps The lower dairy payout is driving farmers’ attention to maintenance of their dairy shed, says Steve Mahuika, from Westland Dairy Sheds.

“Farmers are really concentrating on enhancing what they’ve got, and preventative maintenance goes a long way,” he says.

There are a number of ways in which his firm can help farmers save money when it comes to repairs and maintenance, he says.

Regular milking machine checks can pick up small problems before they become larger problems. Although it is compulsory for farmers to check their plant regularly, it is not compulsory for them to fix everything that is picked up.

As a registered milking-machine tester, Westland Dairy Sheds can advise farmers as to what is vital to repair now and what can wait, says Mahuika.

“For example, vacuum stability is vital. If faulty rubberware is not replaced or unstable vacuum is not corrected, it can cause cow-health issues.

And sometimes, a combination of small faults in a milking machine can add up to a large problem.

“That’s where our advice becomes important... so that farmers know what the implications might be, and know what they need to repair urgently

and what can wait until their budget allows. I do everything I can to help my customers out.”

The company also runs an emergency breakdown service and stocks a full set of service pumps and parts. Mahuika says he can always find an exchange pump to install in a customer’s shed while equipment is getting repaired.

But Westland Dairy Sheds also builds new rotary and herringbone sheds. The company is an agent for Read milking systems and can project-manage the entire job. It also supplies, maintains and installs water pumps and effluent pumps.

Mahuika quotes two things that have been

keeping the company busy in the last couple of years – installation of automatic cup removers and meal feed systems in rotary and herringbone sheds.

“Cup removers turn any shed into a one-man operation, very handy when staff levels are at a minimum. They also prevent over-milking and associated problems.

“Meal feeding seems to be the trend of the day for one reason or another, and we can assist with a

quote for a reliable, well built system.”

With Westland Dairy Sheds also due to start work on a new 30-a-side herringbone at Karamea, Mahuika says things are busy and “we can’t complain”.

He and his wife, Christine, started the Hokitikabased firm, and they have been building and repairing dairy sheds for more than a decade. The company works anywhere on the West Coast and is an agent for PPP meal-feeding systems.

PHOTOS Westland Dairy Sheds can do the whole business when it comes to dairy sheds...from the internal workings (above), to the backing gate (left), to the shed itself (lower left)

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28 |

RURAL SERVICES » Waimakariri Irrigation

Business Rural

Higher storage capacity vital Jo Bailey

Construction work on the second water intake.

Waimakariri Irrigation Ltd (WIL) has applied to the Environment Court to advance its proposed $30 million storage pond, designed to improve the reliability of its North Canterbury irrigation scheme.

WIL general manager Brent Walton says the company was issued a building consent in 2013 and a resource consent in 2014.

However, an opposition group, based on concerns around the safety of the storage facility in the event of a earthquake, has appealed against the resource consent.

“Our application will go before the Environment Court in early August. Large-scale scheme storage is a strategic initiative to ensure the reliability of the scheme and provide certainty to farmers,’ says Walton. “It will also reduce risk and provide significant environment benefits.”

The irrigation scheme is placed on limited restrictions when the Waimakariri River levels fall too low and is placed under full restrictions when the river reaches a minimum flow regime as set by ECan, which has happened during this summer’s dry conditions.

In the 2012-13 summer, farmers in the district lost an estimated $30m in production because of irrigation cuts, he says.

The proposed 100-hectare, two-pond storage facility on the corner of Wrights Rd and Dixons Rd will hold 8.2 million cubic metres of water, increasing scheme reliability from current run-ofriver reliability of 73 per cent up to around 92%.

“It should give farmers another 15 to 20 days of irrigation when the river is on full restrictions, which, for most people, will take them through the critical period.”

The Waimakariri Irrigation Scheme was commissioned in 1999, with its third upgrade in 2002 increasing the consented area from 14,000 to 18,000 hectares.

RURAL SERVICES » Waimakariri Irrigation

Business Rural

| 29

for reliability Our application will go before the Environment Court in early August.

Large-scale scheme storage is a strategic initiative to ensure the reliability of the scheme and provide certainty to farmers. It will also reduce risk and provide significant environment benefits “With hindsight, the scheme was developed at an incredibly low cost compared to the cost to build it today,” says Walton.

Waimakariri Irrigation Ltd is a co-operative company owned by around 200 farmershareholders based between the Waimakariri and Ashley rivers – a total catchment area of 44,000 hectares.

Each share entitles an irrigator to 0.075 litres of water per second per hectare. Shareholders are required to hold a minimum of six shares or maximum of nine.

WIL is consented to draw up to 10.5 million cubic metres of water from the Waimakariri River each year; along with 3.5 million cubic metres of Ngai Tahu water; and 2.1 million cubic metres of Waimakariri District Council stock water.

Walton says the goal is to make more efficient use of water through technology and good

management practices.

“If water can be spread further it gives us the opportunity to expand.”

One of the company’s current initiatives is to assist its farmer-shareholders develop farmmanagement plans, a requirement of the Land & Water Regional Plan.

“We are of the view it is better to be proactive and do it well in advance of when we have to.”

The company has developed a web-based farm environmental plan in conjunction with Opua Water that will streamline the process, says Walton.

“As well as looking at compliance, we are also looking at continual improvement by developing better farming practices and using water more efficiently.

“It’s something we’re quite excited about.”

WIL has also installed flow meters and telemetry on 120 of the largest takes off the scheme (of more than 20 litres per second); and is embarking on some water and use efficiency trials in conjunction with NIWA and ReGen. These trials are using a combination of techniques to look at soil-moisture monitoring, flow-meter data, weather forecasting, and soil types.

“These trials will assist us to provide tools to farmers to enable them to more accurately schedule their irrigation and to use water more efficiently.”

Walton says the trials will also help prevent loss of nutrients, and leaching.

“It is purely good management practice. All of the our current initiatives are about the most efficient use of water and meeting the environmental targets required to improve the quality of our river and streams.”

The company has a board. Richard Allison, one of WIL’s founding directors, has retired from the board recently.

He has been replaced by Steven Macaulay, managing director of Oxford-based Mehrtens Ag Services.

Centre pivots supply summer irrigation (top). Upgrading work on the main water race (bottom).

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On-line store gives 24hr access North Canterbury Canterbury owned and operated for over 60 years PLUMBERS • GAS FITTERS • DRAIN LAYERS The Canterbury rural sector is well-served by Clyne & Bennie Plumbing, with its online store providing convenient around-the-clock access to a wide range of plumbing supplies.

Everything from bathroom vanities, basins, spas, showers, baths and toilets; to laundry fittings, tapware, gas heating products, hot water cylinders, boiling and chilling units and even pumps are available at www. plumbingshoponline.co.nz “People can shop and order online from the comfort of their home, then either pop into their nearest Clyne & Bennie branch to pick it up, or we can deliver the items right to their door,” says director Martin de Gouw who owns the company with James Cowles and North Canterbury Branch Manager David McPherson Clyne & Bennie has serviced the Canterbury market since the late 1950s.

Its team of more than 50 plumbing, drainlaying and gasfitting specialists offers a wide range of residential and commercial services such as general plumbing, hot water heating systems, home heating, design and installation of plumbing packages, sheet metal and gas fitting, maintenance, and servicing of boiling water units.

Additional services it provides to the rural sector include backflow prevention testing; and waterblasting of drains and stormwater lines to remove silt.

“Last year we invested in some high-tech CCTV camera gear which provides us with really clear pictures of drains, sewers and stormwater lines for this sort of work.”

Clyne & Bennie also offers a full package of residential plumbing installation and maintenance services to farmers and lifestyle block owners including gas and hot water heating.

“We can assist with the whole process whether it is a new farmhouse or farm workers’ house. We also provide products and services for renovation projects including replacement of hot water cylinders and tapware,” says Martin.

The firm covers the area from Darfield, through to Hanmer Springs and Cheviot, and as far west as Oxford.

In December 2012 it opened a second branch in the fast-growing industrial zone on the southern outskirts of Rangiora to provide enhanced service to the rural, lifestyle and urban markets in North Canterbury.

Clyne & Bennie’s Christchurch head office and branch moved to new premises at 112 Buchan Road in October last year. “The new 980 square metre premises has plenty of room with a good layout incorporating a workshop, storeroom, and separate entranceway to our Mico in-house supply store which provides our tradespeople with 24 hour access to products,” he says.

Clyne & Bennie are specialists in the commercial market, with recent projects including the upgrade of the Hanmer Themal Pools toilet facilities and changing rooms; and full plumbing works to the new Pak ‘N Save supermarket at Wainoni; New World at Redcliffs; Longhurst Medical Centre; Isaac Theatre Royal; and CPIT Health and Wellbeing Centre.

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30 |

RURAL SERVICES » Otautau Tractors & Machinery

Business Rural

A well-oiled Landini ideal model for new owners Kelly Deeks With a range of highly sought-after brand names in the showroom and an array of spare parts in stock, backed up by a service and repair workshop and two service vehicles on the road, Otautau Tractors and Machinery (OTM) aims to cater for its region and save clients from having to travel out of the district to get what they need.

Barry Cook and Grant Kennedy took over OTM in June 2013.

With sales and service divisions, the business runs well alongside the seasons, says Cook. Local farmers and contractors can choose to buy new gear or repair and maintain what they have.

“We had a really good season to start in, but this season is not quite as good,” he says.

“The meat schedule and milk payout are down, and people have tightened up, but we’re still getting enquiries for new machinery. Everything gets worn out eventually, and needs replacing.”

Cook comes from a background of farming and contracting, while Kennedy is a qualified diesel mechanic and has worked for local contractors.

They are backed up by lead mechanic Lyndon Murphy a qualified engineer and petrol and diesel mechanic, and Scott Booth, who joined the staff in October 2013 and is due to finish his apprenticeship soon, well ahead of time.

Cook says Murphy is a bit of a legend around the local community and the business couldn’t do without him, “Grant and Scott both say they wish they had started their apprenticeships in a business like this, as the variety of work is so huge,” Cook says.

“The guys are working on anything from small everyday repairs to clutch and motor rebuilds and some heavy engineering work.

“There’s a variety of makes and models of tractor coming through our doors. One day they will be working on a $5000 tractor, then the next day we’ll get one in worth $150,000. We also get to do

The meat schedule and milk payout are down, and people have tightened up, but we’re still getting enquiries for new machinery. Everything gets worn out eventually, and needs replacing. all the air-conditioning work for the tractor cabs, fit new and used tyres on rims up to 52 inches, and, as an independent Hydraulink service centre, we supply, make and install hoses and fittings.”

Janice Hughes, who joined the OTM staff 12 months ago, has experience that includes owning a service station and working in an accounting firm.

Her mission is to keep the office on track, and her latest challenge is the installation of a stock inventory/point-of-sale system to keep on top of the stock on hand.

OTM has some proven brand names in its show room, including Fairbrother Industries, SAM and Hustler Equipment, James Engineering, Farmgard, Rata Industries, Ag Trailer, Zago mixer wagons, and Pearson Engineering.

The company is also a service-and-repair agent for McCormick and Landini tractors.

Last year Cook and Kennedy added Oregon chainsaw, harvester, and trimmer products to the OTM showroom.

The company supports the wider community with regular donations to local schools, golf tournaments, and nationwide cancer charities.

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RURAL SERVICES » CCMP

Business Rural

| 31

Snap chillers energy efficient Karen Phelps Balclutha-based CCMP has renovated its premises to bring its dairy and engineering divisions under one roof at its Frances St site.

“It’s given us the opportunity to centralise the business and increase efficiencies, says managing director Hamish Keith.

“There will be better logistics and planning and we will be able to use staff better and respond more rapidly to customers’ needs.”

CCMP is an Otago-owned business that started in the 1970s. The company is now owned by Hamish Keith and his father, Bill.

Its main market is the rural sector – the com[any’s core business comes from the dairy industry.

Bill Keith installed the company’s first milking machine in 1979 and the business has experienced steady growth thanks to the increase in dairy farming in the area.

The Balclutha head office is the manufacturing and farm-servicing arm. CCMP also has a branch at Momona, just south of Dunedin, that handles solely farm servicing.

Hamish Keith says that from the outset, the company has valued innovation and diversified into producing farm-related products and services, built and serviced by Otago people.

“It’s our experience that sets us apart,” he says.

“In nearly 40 years, we’ve built literally hundreds of projects. We can take a project from a grass paddock to a finished dairy shed.”

CCMP specialises in herringbone and rotary dairy-sheds. Its turnkey service to farmers takes the porject from initial design to finished shed.

“A new dairy shed is a significant investment, and managing the project from start to finish makes the process hassle-free and ensures the finished product preforms reliably for our clients,” says Keith.

CCMP is an authorised agent for DeLaval milking systems, Grundfos pumps and Reid & Harrison effluent equipment.

The company also offers the DeLaval Inservice programme, which can be applied to any type of shed, not just DeLaval product. This means that long after the shed is built or equipment is installed, CCMP offers technical support and advice, says Keith. Technicians are available around the clock, with qualifications that include registered MPTA milking machine testers. Parts and spares are kept locally.

As milk quality regulations have tightened, CCMP has offered cooling evaluations on dairy sheds, and help for farmers to improve and/or upgrade their equipment and technology.

“We are upgrading equipment, including primary cooling systems, for customers to ensure they meet current and future regulations,” says Keith..

“Many farmers struggle to meet even the current requirements, especially when hot weather hits the area.

“We have found the main problem on farms is pre-cooling before the milk gets to the silo. In some cases, we are installing snap chillers to cool the milk rapidly before it gets to the silo.

“This has not commonly been done in New Zealand until now. The advantages are that the units we are installing are very energy efficient in terms of cooling and also produce hot water as part of the process, which significantly reduces power bills in the shed.

“These systems will put milk into the silo at 4-6 degrees Celsius and produce hot water between 50-70 degrees Celsius. All the sheds we built last year used this technology.

“Other products such as automatic washing machines are also proving popular, especially for larger farms that may have multiple staff, relief milkers etc. This type of automation means farmers know that at the push of a button, the job is being done properly and to the same high level each time.

It’s about helping farmers to take the risk out of the equation and run their farms smarter.”

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A new DeLaval snap chiller installed in a CCMP dairy shed (top) and a completed CCMP rotary dairy project (above).

32 |

RURAL SERVICES » Glassey Contracting

Business Rural

Cow housing boon for silage maker Kelly Deeks Tai Tapu-based rural contractor Glassey Contracting is looking forward to a bright future for business, farmers, and cows, with an up and coming line of business on the increase as demand for cow housing grows in Canterbury.

Glassey Contracting is a long-standing family business which was started in the 1970s by John Glassey. The company is now owned by John’s son Scott, who trained under his father.

The business employs 15 staff, and specialises in bulk silage, earthmoving, and maintenance services for farms and lifestyle blocks in the Selwyn District.

A subsidiary, MG Silage, is owned by Glassey and chopper driver Mark Watkins, who has been with the company for the past 25 years.

Glassey says that as residential development in Canterbury progresses, farms and his work are moving a bit further afield.

“Some of the land I used to cut silage on now has houses going up on it,” he says.

Silage is the key to the business, and everything revolves around it, he says.

“We give a good service. We have Claas Axion triple mowers which allow us to get more done in less time. We have a Rutbuster to properly, safely, and efficiently fill the ruts left by centrepivot irrigators. Then we tend to diversify into the farmers’ other needsl, such as spreading effluent, building and maintaining cow lanes, and tar-sealing if driveways.

While last season’s high milk price had all the local farmers rushing out to buy more cows and putting glad wrap over their silage pits, that could change with the low milk price this season.

• To page 33

Everything revolves around silage for Tai Tapu based Glassey Contracting.

RURAL SERVICES » Milka-Ware Ashburton

Business Rural

| 33

Left: The CEL backing gate supplied by Cullimore Engineering is a completely wireless solar-powered system. Right: A Milka-Ware rotary platform under construction.

Wireless solar backing gates ‘unique’ Jo Bailey Milka-Ware Ashburton can undertake the majority of jobs required to put together a new dairy platform, which means customers don’t need to deal with a variety of contractors.

“There’s not much we can’t do,” says managing director Luke Maginness.

The key is the fact that Milka-Ware Ashburton is supported by sister company Cullimore Engineering, which can take care of the engineering requirements for projects.

Cullimore Engineering has been in business for more than 30 years and offers engineering services that include general machining, CNC machining, fabrication, design solutions and product development.

Milka-Ware Ashburton works predominantly in the Canterbury region. The company does the installation and sales of Milka-Ware rotary and herringbone platforms and milking plant, supplying milking system components as well as its own CEL backing gates. It also does system upgrades.

One of the company’s latest builds was a 70-bail rotary platform for Tiptree Farm, at Dorie. MilkaWare Ashburton supplied and installed the platform, yard and CEL backing gate.

“We spent a lot of time helping the client design

the yard and layout on CAD he that he could picture what he was going to build,” says Maginness.

“This project shows the diversity of what we are capable of as this client had high expectations.”

The CEL backing gate supplied and installed on the project is a product that has been developed by Cullimore Engineering. Maginness says it is unique in that it is a completely wireless solar powered system.

It can be used as a top gate bringing up small numbers of cows at a time, or as a dividing gate between two herds. It operates on a low-voltage 24VDC system powered by batteries that are charged by three, large solar panels eliminating the requirement for cables.

“This solar-charging system will continue to power the backing gate even after a week or two of cloudy conditions,” says Maginness.

“A radio transmitter in the dairy shed sends a signal to the backing gate for different operations.

The low-voltage system used, along with the lack of a troublesome cable down the side of the yard, means stray voltage issues that can be caused by backing gates are eliminated.”

The backing gate also has a steering system that will slow one side down while speeding the other side up, causing the CEL wireless backing gate to track evenly down the yard, eliminating alignment and jamming issues. The main frame of the gate

Increase in cow barns in Selwyn • From page 32 “In these times we’re all going to have to be more efficient. I need to make sure everyone is working efficiently, and everything is cost efficient.”

“One way to improve efficiencies is to get Glassey Contracting to cut your silage rather than try to do it yourself.

“Customer relationships are paramount and customer satisfaction a priority, but at the end of the day. they’re better off utilising their expertise on their farm.”

Glassey Contracting uses Sil-All forage inoculant to assist with the silage fermentation process and also preservation: “This makes things go a bit quicker and cleaner, and there is less wastage.

With everyone working together, we can all improve efficiencies and make a good environment for better production.”

Although the short term may be looking like a bit of a struggle with the low milk price, Glassey says the long term is looking good and there are good things going ahead, like cow housing.

“We’ve completed the ground works for three new cow barns this year. Cow housing is excellent for keeping the cows off the wet paddocks in the winter time, and keeping the cows more

We’ve completed the ground works for three new cow barns this year.

Cow housing is excellent for keeping the cows off the wet paddocks in the winter time, and keeping the cows more comfortable, eating grass,

comfortable, eating grass, and happy all season.” \\ He sees the increase in cow housing in the Selwyn district as potentially leading to more work for his firm, as there will be more silage to cut and more effluent to spread.

has been built from steel pipe and the design means it is extremely lightweight yet strong and robust, says Maginness.

The radio-controlled unit is hard-wired into the main console in the dairy shed, allowing it to be operated by whoever is at the cups on the console.

The gate also comes with an auto-stop feature (which means it will stop automatically when it reaches each end of the yard) and adjustable, timed forward movement.

Wheels are machined by Cullimore Engineering

to match the profile of the top rail of the fence for better traction. Optional extras include load sensing and four-wheel drive.

Milka-Ware Ashburton offers farmers an emergency breakdown service and can service all brands of milking equipment.

Maginness says that, because of the expertise of Cullimore Engineering and the close asociation with Milka-Ware Ashburton, farmers can often be offered a rebuild and repair rather than replacement if that is the more economical option

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34 |

RURAL SERVICES » South Island Seed Dressing & Storage Co

Business Rural

Seed game Jo Bailey While the dairy boom and high export dollar have had an impact, things in the seed industry are starting to level out, says the director of the South Island Seed Dressing and Storage Company “The New Zealand seed industry has a great reputation,” says Brent Clarke. “Although the dollar is high and we are a long way from the marketplace, our product suits northern-hemisphere growers as it allows them to be counter-season productive.”

Clarke has more than 30 years’ experience in the seed industry, having previously worked on arable farms. He, wife Sandra, and his sister, Kay, own the Ashburton-based business, which was established by his father, Rob Clarke, and Mid Canterbury businessman the late Robert Woodham in 1991.

The firm has grown significantly and now has 52 staff. Three full-time engineers do a lot of the machinery fabrication and maintenance work.

“We run 24 hours a day, so we can’t afford to be down for too long,” says Clarke, “We also do our own installations and new builds.”

Summer and early autumn are the busiest months for the firm: “The intake from mid-January to the end of April is typically our busiest time,”

says Clarke. “However, our machines work 24 hours a day for around nine months a year. It’s a reasonably full-on operation.”

The company’s services to the seed industry include crop testing, storage, drying, machine cleaning, treatment application, packaging, machine dressed storage, container loading, freighting and Seed Safe, which allows growers to unload combines directly into high, cubed safe containers that can be placed in the paddock. The same containers can be used for transport and drying.

“Seed Safe is particularly beneficial for highgrade seed,” he says. “The seed stays in one container until cleaning, which greatly reduces the risk of contamination.”

The firm handles seeds of just about every type – from broad beans and hybrid carrots, to peas, ryegrass, field and garden peas, Asian vegetables, chard, hybrid beets, hybrid radish, and domestic cereals, linseed and clover.

It works directly with farmers and a number of seed-merchant companies.

“We often do runs of certain varieties for the larger companies, which creates efficiencies,” says Clarke.

When seed arrives from merchant customers, it is tested for moisture and impurities, and stored until cleaning instructions are received.

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Right: The company’s main office...home to a staff of 52.

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Business Rural

RURAL SERVICES » South Island Seed Dressing & Storage Co

| 35

‘starting to level out’ Storage options included 160-odd silos, thousands of wooden bins, a number of shipping containers, and flat floors for bulk storage of large lines of grass and peas.”

The seeds are then cleaned to the merchant’s specifications on one of the company’s seven cleaning lines. An eighth line is being added to the operation.

Three treatment application machines apply fungicides on to the seeds before they are packaging, especially for export markets.

“A lot of countries specify that certain types of chemicals must be applied before the seeds can be imported,” says Clarke.

Farmers needing their seed to be artificially dried or finished off to meet merchant specifications can take advantage of South Island Seed’s drying service, he says.

“High-value seed often has a very low moisture specification, which can be difficult to achieve naturally when the weather turns late in the season.”

A full packaging service in various weights and formats is also offered, along with transportation options for containerised, bulk and palletised product

PHOTOS – Above: Seed Safe containers in the paddock at harvest. Left, upper: A Cambria seed-cleaning machine. Ledt, lower: A seed treatment machine.

BAc1371

• Foothold in Tasmania: Page 38

Poncho is registered pursuant to the ACVM Act 1997 No. P5967 and to the HSNO Act 1996 No. HSR000694. Poncho oncho® is a registered trademark of the Bayer Group. ©Bayer CropScience 2015. Bayer SeedGrowth™ is a trademark of the Bayer Group.

36 |

RURAL SERVICES » South Island Seed Dressing & Storage Company

Business Rural

PHOTOS: Storage (right) and processing (below) facilities at the Tasmanian Seed Dressing and Storage Company headquarters at Carrick, about 15 minutes from Launceston. The company, a subsidiary of the South Island Seed Dressing and Storage Company, was set up in December 2012.

Tasmanian signs ‘encouraging’ Jo Bailey

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A Tasmanian subsidiary set up by South Island Seed Dressing and Storage Company two years ago is gaining a foothold in the market, says director Brent Clarke.

“The operation is a work in progress. but we’re starting to make good headway,” he says. “The signs are encouraging, and we definitely hope to continue.”

Tasmanian Seed Dressing & Storage Company was set up in December 2012 after South Island Seed bought plant and machinery from the old Roberts company at Carrick, about 15 minutes west of Launceston.

“Many of our New Zealand-based customers

operate in both markets as the climates are very similar in Tasmania and Canterbury,” says Brent Clarke.

“This allows them to spread their climatic risk and also spreads the risk for us,” says Clarke.

Around seven staff are employed at the plant, which cleans a large range of crops, including ryegrass, peas, linseed, lentils and cereals.

“There are a lot of new irrigation projects in Tasmania, and although poppies are the numberone earning crop there, farmers are realising the value of growing good rotational crops as well.”

Clarke says the firm’s proximity to major highways allows easy access to all distribution networks.

The company is two years into a three-year lease with a right of purchase.

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Business Rural

RURAL SERVICES » Power Farming Otago

| 37

Farm machinery firm upbeat Jo Bailey The effect of the drought and low dairy payout on the rural economy has flowed on to farm machinery sales.

However, Steve Ensor, dealer principal of Power Farming Otago remains upbeat about the future of the market.

“We’ve heard estimates of 20 per cent less money doing the rounds for new equipment this year, so we just have to live with it and do our best to make our share. It will be a challenging year but the last few dairy product auctions have been positive, so we hope the downturn will be shortlived.”

To keep tractor sales ticking over, and to help farmers keep up on replacement schedules, the firm has introduced a zero interest deal with no repayments until 2016 on Deutz-Fahr tractors.

“Farmers quite often defer this sort of capital expenditure under these economic conditions.

However, it can take two to three years to catch up and get back on a regular replacement schedule if something is missed. This deal will help our clients still get into their new tractor, but defer payments until next year when they are in a better position.”

Power Farming Otago has represented the German tractor brand for around five years. It also sells Kioto tractors, which are a “well made, well received” brand from Korea, he says.

“These are nice little tractors up to 100 horsepower that are a cheaper alternative to the high-end Deutz-Fahr range, which is available up to 263 horsepower.”

The firm also sells a wide range of other equipment, including “top-of-the-line” McHale hay balers and bale handling equipment, Taarup hay mowers and equipment, Kverneland and Great Plains cultivation implements, and Robertson silage wagons and bale feeders.

Farmers quite often defer this sort of capital expenditure under these economic conditions.

However, it can take two to three years to catch up and get back on a regular replacement schedule if something is missed.

Power Farming Otago is part of a nationwide network of Power Farming retailers.

It has 11 staff at its main base in Allanton, and a further five staff at its Balclutha operation, which was started early last year following the company’s acquisition of Balclutha Farm Machinery.

“The Balclutha operation is going well under the management of our South Otago sales representative, Tony Scanlon. It is allowing us to have product on our clients’ doorstep and provide training to our three mechanics at the branch, which results in enhanced service capability.”

The new branch also has a retail display and parts department with two staff. Ensor oversees both operations, with Russell Burgess as sales manager at the main branch in Allanton.

“We try to do everything as well as we can, with our staff backing our wide product range with parts and service.

“We also get great support from Power Farming’s head office in Morrinsville, which has a huge store with parts available for most tractors and farm machinery.”

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Power Farming Otago specialises in German Deutz-Fahr tractors (top) at its main base at Allanton (middle). The firm also sells a wide range of other equipment (above).

38 |

RURAL SERVICES » Southland Concrete Construction

Business Rural

Firm expands to cater for demand Kelly Deeks Demand for concrete agricultural products has seen Southland Concrete Construction take its services north to South Canterbury, with the company now employing staff in Timaru to cater to an increasing call for feed barns, cow housing, and robotic dairy sheds.

Southland Concrete Construction was established about 15 years ago by Scott Gordon. A carpenter by trade, Gordon has been building with concrete since he was in his 20s.

15 years ago the dairy industry was taking off in Southland, and Southland Concrete Construction began completing mainly dairy conversions.

Gordon says today the company has a large focus on sheds and barns, and about five years ago he entered a joint venture with Winton Engineering to form Advanced Cow Barns.

Advanced Cow Barns specialises in the design and build of dairy wintering sheds from the initial design and consent stage through to the completed job, including importation of fabricated steel products for all types of shed construction, manufacturing of effluent scrapers for dairy sheds, and rubber matting for dairy sheds.

While both companies have had a long and successful history of building dairy wintering sheds both jointly and individually in the past, the joint venture provides clients with a turn key package, taking them through from the initial design and consent stage, all concrete work, cow mattresses, scrapers, bale and water trough manufacture, and installation, to the completed job.

Before Christmas last year, Gordon and Advanced Cow Barns completed one of the world’s

• To page 44

Photos: This huge 13,000 square metre robotic dairy shed (above), one of the largest of its type in the world houses cows for 10 months of the year, has rubber-floored stalls and lanes for cow traffic, and multiple concrete feed lanes. The shed was built for clients Aad and Wilma van Leeuwen at Makikihi and Southland Concrete Construction poured 6000 cubic metres of concrete at the site, the scale of which is obvious from the picture below.

Southland Concrete Construction has a large focus on sheds and barns, and about five years entered a joint venture with Winton Engineering to form Advanced Cow Barns. Advanced Cow Barns specialises in the design and build of dairy wintering sheds from the initial design and consent stage through to the completed job.

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Business Rural

RURAL SERVICES » Southland Concrete Construction

| 39

GROUP

Demand for concrete agricultural products, such as this underpass, has seen Southland Concrete Construction take its services north to South Canterbury; the company now has staff in Timaru.

Robotic shed one of the biggest • From page 43

largest robotic dairy sheds at Makikihi in South Canterbury for Aad and Wilma Van Leeuwen.

The 13,000sqm cow barn started milking 740 friesian cows on 12 DeLaval robots on September 25.

The second half of the barn with another 12 robots and 750 cows was fully functional by Christmas.

The huge barn houses cows for 10 months of the year, has rubber-floored stalls and lanes for cow traffic, and multiple concrete feed lanes on which maize silage, lucerne silage, and protein additives are fed.

The cows are able to decide when they eat, sleep, and are milked through the DeLaval voluntary milking system.

Southland Concrete Construction was contracted to Advanced Cow Barns for the concrete side of the project, with Gordon saying about 6000 cubic metres of concrete went into the construction.

A Hynds Hypond effluent tank was also built

by Southland Concrete Construction on the Van Leeuwen farm to contain the effluent generated in the robot shed. The Hypond is a site assembled precast effluent tank that provides a leach-free result.

With another three sheds on the go straight after finishing at the Van Leeuwens’ farm, Gordon and Andrew Erskine have formed a partnership and set up a new company with four employees called Farmcrete Construction, which will look after the concrete work in South Canterbury.

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Hynds Pipes has heavy rural involvement When John Hynds left his job as a sales rep with concrete-pipe manufacturer Hume Industries 41 years ago to start his own contracting company, he had a vision to become like the contractors he was continually supplying, committed people who took on a contract to do a job, and got it done.

He began specialising in installing crib walls, pipes, and manholes, using Hume concrete products.

When Hume became involved in a major contract and could not supply him with crib blocks, Hynds promptly knocked the back out of the garage at his Papakura home and turned the building into a pre-casting operation to make his own crib blocks, and never looked back.

Today, the Hynds Group is the leading player in its market, manufacturing and supplying infrastructure products to the civil construction and rural sectors. It consists of eight operating divisions employing about 600 people throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Hynds Pipe Systems rural category manager David Nichols deals with providing infrastructure requirements for farms and rural businesses.

Recent highlights include work on one of the world’s largest robotic dairy sheds for Aad and Wilma Van Leeuwen at Makikihi in South Canterbury. Hynds Pipe Systems provided the feed wall down the centre of the 13,000sqm cow barn, and also a new Hynds Hypond to retain effluent from the new shed.

Nichols says the Hypond differs from other effluent storage ponds as it is an engineered pond made from pre-cast concrete panels.

“It’s going to last for 100 years, and it won’t leak,” he says. “No matter how much you try to separate effluent, pond always get a layer of solids building up. These ponds are so big you have to put

a digger in to clean them. With a rubber lined pond you can’t do that, but with the Hypond’s concrete base, you can.”

Hynds Pipe Systems is also involved in the “game changing” Central Plains Water Enhancement Scheme, providing products to contractors building the scheme.

Nichols says Hynds Pipe Systems is regularly involved in constructing underpasses throughout the South Island.

“A lot of these are related to new conversions, and also compliance,” he says. “The regional councils have told farmers they are not allowed to walk their cows down the road anymore, and a lot of these underpasses are being subsidised by the councils.”

The underpasses are constructed using concrete box culverts, which have also been used in another exciting project for Hynds Pipe Systems this year, for Lincoln University.

Lincoln University’s Centre for Soil and Environmental Research needed an underground bunker built on an Oxford farm, where nitrate and nutrient levels in the soil would be tested.

“This is related to the current drive to reduce dairy farm effluent run off into the waterways on a national basis, so this is very important and topical research,” Nichols says.

The Centre for Soil and Environmental Research needed to house in the bunker, amongst other things, a very high-tech and expensive purpose built lysimeter, which measures nitrate and nutrient levels in the soils.

“The challenge of this project was to design and

build a suitable watertight structure, robust enough to endure the underground, protect the equipment being used, and also allow for staff and students to visit and work within the confines of the structure on a regular basis,” Nichols says. “It’s kind of an underground laboratory/classroom.”

Another factor was this structure was to be positioned under the pathway of a pivot irrigator, as the intention was to use actual working farm conditions.

The final design comprised of five standard pre-cast concrete box culvert units to provide the main body of the structure, a purpose designed end wall and two specially designed graduated entrance walls attached to the end box unit that would link to the stairway and seating chamber.

The box units each had a series of holes drilled into them in order for a number of stainless steel pipes to be installed.

These drilled pipes protrude a number of meters out from the box units and will collect moisture from the soil which then can be measured and tested.

Hynds Pipe Systems 0800 WE PIPE; Hynds.co.nz

Photos – Above: This bunker was built for Lincoln University’s Centre for Soil and Environmental Research to house equipment for on-farm of testing nitrate and nutrient levels in the soil.. Left: The Campbell twinspan bridge.

40 |

Business Rural

RURAL SERVICES » Jack Refrigeration

‘Opportunity’ proves itself 10 years on specialises in installing and servicing heat pumps, air-conditioning and ventilation systems, and commercial refrigeration units.

The company’s target territory extends across Southland through to Milford Sound.

“I think one of the strengths of our business is that we plan our work really well,” says David Jack.

“A lot of planning and thought goes into the design and installation phases, and our service vehicles are fully equipped with all that’s needed to get the job done.”

In buying the Mercedes Benz vans, they also had safety in mind, he says. The vans and staff cover a big area and many kilometres.

He says they have concentrated on being customer focused: “If people are prepared to consider using our services, we see it as the

Sue Russell Close to 10 years ago David and Sara Jack saw an opportunity in servicing the rural/farming refrigeration and heating market. Their perception has been proved correct, as nearly a decade on, Invercargill-based Jack Refrigeration Ltd continues to fill that role.

“I could see a hole in the market in terms of delivering our skills and products to farmers and the like, and the fact that we have so many repeat customers says it all,” says David Jack.

In the early days David did the on-site work and Sara managed the administration. Now the company employs a further six people, including technicians and support staff. The firm

We have concentrated on being customer-focused. If people are prepared to considered using our services, we see it as the beginning of a long-term relationship.

David Jack: ‘We’ve very much built ourselves up on the hard work. on consistently high expectations of our products and services, and on delivering what the region needs.’ beginning of a long-term relationship.”

With 25 years of experience in the industry David Jack has seen many significant advances in technology. International standards demanding the quicker lowering of milk temperature in the farm vat has been coupled with greater energy efficiencies.

“By June 1, 2016 the New Zealand Primary Producers organisation is implementing new standards on the cooling of milk. As a consequence, a whole raft of new equipment has been coming in. We’re happy to supply advice and install specialist refrigeration equipment specifically to comply with the upcoming changes.”

He says most of the newer dairy conversions in which his company has been involved have the right gear to meet the new standards.

Jack Refrigeration designs and builds systems for dairy sheds, along with cool-storage facilities and freezer rooms for the produce industries. David Jack really enjoys the variety of work. No two days are alike.

He does all the design work, and particularly enjoys on-site dairy work. He finds it very satisfying to see the job well done and up and running.

“These days a lot of companies come and go.

We’ve very much built ourselves up on the hard work, on consistently high expectations of our products and services. and on delivering what the region needs. This is something I’m proud of.”

Jack Refrigeration also supplies and installs heat pumps into residential homes and farm cottages, and services them annually.

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24

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Business Rural

RURAL SERVICES » The Lodge & Cottages Wedderburn

| 41

PHOTOS The Lodge & Cottages Wedderburn spans the Central Otago Rail Trail – riders go right through the middle of the complex. It’s also aty the ha;fway mark of the Rail Trail and 200 metres’ walk from the Wedderburn Tavern.

You can’t miss it – really Jo Bailey

The Duncans are among many farming families on the Maniototo Plains who have diversified into tourism since the inception of the Central Otago Rail Trail in 2000.

But it wasn’t an overnight decision to start up The Lodge & Cottages Wedderburn at their highcountry sheep-and-beef operation, Penvose Farm, says Lorraine Duncan.

“My husband, Stuart, and I looked at the venture for about four years with Stuart’s parents, Graeme and Alison, before deciding to go ahead.”

They talked to a lot of people riding the trail, and some suggested the Duncans should offer only backpackers’ accommodation.

“In the end we thought people would appreciate more comfortable facilities with their own kitchens and en suites after riding 30 or 40 kilometres.”

The punt has paid off. The complex has proved a hugely popular stop-off point, hosting up to 50 people each night through the busy summer period.

The Duncans let the farm’s original 1928 homestead, The Lodge, and 14 self-contained cottages, purpose-built by Christchurch-based Cottage Co and moved to the site. Some smaller miner’s cottages with shared bathroom facilities are being developed.

One of the Duncans’ biggest pluses is that they are at the central point of the Rail Trail, and cyclists ride straight through the middle of the complex.

Most of their visitors are New Zealanders, with

the Rail Trail particularly popular with people in their 60s and 70s, and families during school holidays.

“We’re starting to get a few more overseas visitors,” says Lorraine Duncan. “At the moment we have backpacker tours coming through a couple of times a week.”

The complex, nestled under the Hawkdun Range, is a 200-metre walk from the Wedderburn Tavern: “People love it,” says Lorraine. “They can go down to the tavern for a meal and few drinks and don’t have to drive anywhere.”

The business has become multi-faceted. The Duncans also sell fresh coffee and ice creams, run farm and off-trail tours, arrange fishing guides, and have set up a nine-hole golf course by The Lodge.

The busy season is from October to the end of April. Visitors also come for farm stays and events.

“We’ve had a few 40th-birthday and engagement parties here, even the odd wedding.

A winter market we’ve picked up is hosting photography schools. They hire out the whole place, take photos of the surrounding landscapes and set up a classroom and darkroom.”

All four of the Duncan family work in the business, which also employs six local women during the peak season.

Lorraine Duncan says it’s business as usual on Penvose, the 2400-hectare, high-country farm which runs sizeable sheep, beef and deer operation.

“It’s a real juggling act and can be quite demanding. But we love what we do and get to meet lots of interesting and really nice people.”

PHOTOS Above: Stu Duncan on the road with sheep.

Left: Lorraine and Stu Duncan gave the idea of a lodge and cottages a lot of thought. Now they’re flat out coping with demand over summer.

Lower left: The Red Barn, Wedderburn’s information centre.

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42 |

RURAL SERVICES » Woodley Group

Business Rural

New Karen Phelps

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A sound understanding of the farming industry has been the foundation for Geraldine-based transport and contracting company Woodleys’ achievement of clocking up more than 30 years in the business.

Owners Alister and Nicola Woodley, who also own a number of dairy farms, say this has given them a hands-on appreciation of farmers’ requirements, allowing the company to offer a more targeted service.

Alister Woodley was brought up on a dairy farm and grew up milking cows. He started contractbaling in 1981 as a one-man business with a TM Bedford. This grew into Woodleys Contracting.

These transport business evolved when, as a favour, he helped a few friends shift stock in the offseason. These activities developed so much that In 1996, they became a separate business, Woodleys Transport.

Both companies are now owned by Woodley Group, which also includes Blake Downie Contracting.

The company moved to its present site in 2000 when Woodley Group bought McDowell Transport.

Woodley Group now works from three yards – two on High St, Geraldine and one on Tiplady Rd, just out of the town.

Alister Woodley says it’s the significant experience and knowledge within the company that sets it apart.

“Let me tell you that a lot of contractors come and go in 30 years. We have survived because we provide a very good service, but also because we understand the business side of the operation.”

As an example, he points to Woodleys’ 2013 gold award in the annual PPG Transport Imaging Awards for the branding strength on its fleet of trucks, which carry photo murals depicting some of

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RURAL SERVICES » Woodley Group

Business Rural

wheels wow Woodleys the company’s activities.

The company employs 50 staff, with Alister Woodley as general manager and Nicola Woodley in charge of staff recruitment and human resources.

Clients are a mix of sheep-and-beef and dairy farmers, with a pronounced shift towards dairy as many farms in the area have converted.

The company’s rural-transport and agriculturalcontracting services include the cartage of sheep, cattle and deer around the country, fertiliser spreading, and bulk cartage.

Having the right equipment to do the job is key, says Alister Woodley.

The firm’s fleet includes: modern, truck-andtrailer units and certified deer-industry and Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries-standard stock-crates; bulk truck-and-trailer units for grain, fertiliser, lime and general bulk products; shingle trucks for farmtrack maintenance.

The fully computerised trucks that handle fertiliser-spreading are equipped with GPS, selfunloading trailers, flotation tyres, and three sealed compartments, allowing three products to be applied at the same time.

The agricultural-contracting business works with clients across Mid and South Canterbury.

Its services include forage harvesting, round and square baling, sourcing and supplying winter-feed requirements, and contract staff hire.

Because the company has a large network of clients and farmers over a wide area, it can also help with sourcing, buying and storing grass hay, straw and silage, says Alister.

Blake Downie Contracting specialises in earthworks for farm conversions, dairy and irrigation maintenance, farm-track development and

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44 |

RURAL SERVICES » Woodley Group/Plains Irrigators

Business Rural

The need for a Central presence ‘became obvious’ Jo Bailey

Part of the Woodley Contracting’s fleet...a Fendt tractor with a Welger round baler in tow.

New wheels wow Woodleys • From page 47 maintenance, water-storage ponds, effluent ponds, tree-stump removal, and water wells and galleries.

The business is equipped with 20-tonne excavators, a grader, a roller, a bulldozer and tiptrucks.

Building relationships with clients is vital in the business, says Alister. And, while this is not complicated, it does take time.

“It’s about providing a good service that people have confidence in, and physically visiting them and talking to them,” he says.

“People need to have confidence and trust in us.”

He sees active involvement in the local community as part of this as well. He often

mentors young farmers, sharing his knowledge with those entering the industry. The company also supports local groups and charities, and is a long-time supporter and major sponsor of Geraldine Junior Advisory Board rugby.

“It’s the little things that make a difference in business,” he says.

“We believe in this philosophy in our sponsorship programme, making a conscientious effort to support the children of Geraldine.”

He says the Woodley family is happy with the present size of business.

“Our services have evolved through customer demand and, to be successful, I think you have to keep pace with the changing rural environment.

“Farming is a great industry to be in, and there are some really smart people farming out there.”

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Business generated by the high rate of dairy conversions and implementation of new water schemes in the South Island has spurred Ashburton-based Plains Irrigators to open a sales and service branch in Cromwell.

The Ashburton-based agent for the Zimmatic Centre pivot and lateral irrigation systems set up the branch last May. This followed its establishment of a Timaru division five years ago.

“We were approached by some land-owners in Cromwell a few years ago and, after building relationships in the region, it became obvious we should have a presence there too,” says Plains Irrigators director Liz Stephens.

She and Graeme Cooper own the 20-yearold company, which specialises in the design, installation and after-sales servicing of custom-built irrigation systems.

She says the Cromwell branch is already looking to expand staff numbers from its present 42. The Ashburton and Timaru operations also continue to grow, with regular additions to staff.

And it’s not just dairy conversions keeping the firm busy.

“We’ve always supplied irrigation systems to cropping farmers and we also have a solid business in the sheep and beef market,” says Stephens.

“At the moment we’re doing a lot of work on conversions of sheep and beef land for dairy run-off blocks, and numerous dry land conversions as new water schemes are commissioned.”

She says staff enjoy dealing with visionary food producers from different farming sectors, who are making plans focused on sustainability.

“Some of the developments are happening in quite isolated pockets of land where we are seeing some incredible growth in production.”

Instead of being forever in the paddock...farmers can concentrate on other things, knowing the pivot is doing what it has been programmed to do.

Some of these clients are in the Mackenzie Basin where there are “two schools of thought” about developing the land.

“Some people would rather see Central Otago staying gold, blue and familiar to the tourists, than lush and green, but ultimately irrigation is going to help preserve a lot of land, which may not have otherwise happened.”

In its Canterbury market the company is often involved in adding new technologies to Zimmatic systems – such as GPS corners, FieldNET (which gives farmers control and palm-of-the-hand monitoring with a smart phone) and variable rate Irrigation (in conjunction with soil e-mapping and moisture monitoring).

“These technologies are really exciting and help farmers streamline and run their operations far more economically, reducing the water usage over all,” says Stephens. “Instead of being forever in the paddock checking the pivot, farmers can be fed information automatically and change the parameters remotely. They can concentrate on other things, knowing the pivot is doing what it has been programmed to do.”

• To page 47

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RURAL PEOPLE » Ruru Dairy

Business Rural

| 45

Marginal land turns showcase Jo Bailey

With around 70 per cent heavy glacial soils, Landcorp’s Ruru Dairy on the West Coast has held on reasonably well through the dry summer, says manager Zac Haderbache.

“The heavy soils hold the moisture a little bit better than alluvial soil, which has been helpful during the dry spell, although it can be a disadvantage when we get a wet spring.”

Given the Coast’s high rainfall, he says the farm always gets enough rain in the end: “The big problem is that it doesn’t always fall when we want it to.”

Haderbache, originally from France, is in his fourth season as manager on the 455-hectare (437ha effective) farm near Lake Brunner, which milks close to 850 mainly crossbred cows, some wintered on farm.

Despite the combination of dry conditions, low payout and resultant belt tightening, Ruru Dairy has been tracking just 2.5% shy of its record production of 306,600 kilograms of milksolids in 2013-14.

“We’ve used our grass well and managed to keep a close eye on costs. Although we had to buy in some supplement, we didn’t use too much earlier in the season, which is probably why we’re in a good position and forecasting to be in the black at the end of the season.”

Ruru Dairy is part of Landcorp’s Weka Complex of five dairy farms (Kotuku, Bell Hill, Ruru, Souters and Blairs), three deer farms, and beef and dairy support blocks. Total area is 7043ha (around 5500ha effective).

Ruru, the fourth of the five dairy farms to be developed, is in its ninth season. The farms are adjacent, apart from Blairs, the latest to be developed and 5-6 kilometres closer to Greymouth.

We understand the importance of finding the right balance between work and life. Part of our job as managers is to ensure our people are getting enough time off.

Landcorp’s conversion of swathes of marginal swampland into some of the best set up dairy farms on the West Coast over the last decade or so is impressive, says Haderbache.

“It has been a massive development, with 30-tonne diggers used to turn the ground over and create a wave shape so that the water can drain away. Gravel was put on top and underneath to enable the land to handle the rainfall and carry heavy animals.”

All the Weka Complex farms have a fully automated 60-bail rotary cowshed fitted with MilkHub, which helps detect mastitis, measure milk flow, adjust feeding, and weigh and automatically draft the cows.

Data such as cow movements, fertilisers, effluent applications and cropping are entered into the property’s farm management system.

“We collect information on a daily basis, which helps us make good management decisions.”

A “massive” fully-concreted effluent pond has been built at Ruru, providing 45 days storage capacity:.

“The pond allows us to store effluent and delay applications on land during wet periods.”

He has spent 10 of the last 13 years working for Landcorp and enjoys the “culture of help” it provides. Staff are encouraged to progress and are provided with training to help them.

It can be difficult to attract staff to the relatively remote Weka Complex, but the five-days-on/twodays-off roster at Ruru is a good sweetener.

The operation has four permanent staff plus two calf rearers and other casual workers during spring.

PHOTOS – Left: A tree sprouts from a glacial moraine rock on the 455-hectare Landcorp Ruru dairy unit near Lake Brunner. Above: The wave pattern of hump and hollow shows the development of marginal swampland to productive pasture that can cope with heavy rainfall and heavy animals.

Below: A duck pond on Ruru.

“We understand the importance of finding the right balance between work and life. Part of our job as managers is to ensure our people are getting enough time off. Implementing this roster is a big step forward for the industry as it shows it can be done.”

Weka Complex managers work closely together to provide mutual support and advice.

“We meet every week to discuss each operation, share ideas and make plans about

the direction of each farm. The great people, camaraderie and supportive environment are some of the best things about Weka.”

He says management and staff take a lot of pride in the farms: “There is something special about these farms, which have been developed to a high standard. They look fantastic, and are part of the amazing West Coast landscape, which is something else to enjoy every day when you go to work.”

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Three branches give SI coverage • From page 46 The company’s three branches give the firm South Island coverage. Its services and products include pumps, mainline, stock water, effluent systems and electrical services. Although Zimmatic is the main brand, service staff have the knowledge to work with any irrigation system.

“Farmers can’t afford to have their irrigators out of operation, which is why our engineers and service technicians are available seven days a week,” says Stephens.

“When it comes to servicing, our priority is to get our clients’ systems operating again as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not we sold them to them.”

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46 |

Business Rural

RURAL PEOPLE » Adam McCall

Results flow from three-way cross Karen Phelps Georgie and Adam McCall have opted for a three-way, rotational, cross-breeding system on their farm at Kelso, West Otago, for the past eight years. The couple heard about the system through CRV Ambreed and, although it is unusual in New Zealand, they say it has resulted in higher reproductive performance.

“When we came to the farm, the herd was mainly friesian.,” says Adam McCall. “We cross the big friesians to jerseys to bring the size of the cows down. Jersey-sired calves are bred to an ayrshire or swedish red. The progeny are then mated back to a friesian. The aim is to keep the hybrid vigour in the cow rather than in the bull, and we are definitely beginning to see results.”

The cows have a liveweight of 485 kilograms and average 465 kilograms of milksolids a year. But the McCalls say the best results from the system are in fertility. They have used no reproductive intervention or inducing for seven years. in the first year of using the system, their six-week, in-calf rate was 56 per cent. Last season it was 77%.

“We are at the industry target now and, if we can maintain this we will be pretty happy,” says McCall.

He puts most of this down to the breeding system, but says other factors do come into play.

They use a short mating period and artificially inseminated for only three and a half weeks before putting the bulls out.

“We do a short AI period because we want only early-born heifers. All our heifer calves are born in a three-week clump. They are early-born calvers and, in theory, should get into calf earlier as yearlings, which gives them the best chance of re-breeding early in their first lactation.”

Picking which cows are in heat after three

Left: Three-way rotationally crossed cows on Adam and Georgie McCall’s West Otago farm. The McCalls cross big friesians to jerseys to bring the size of the cows down. Jersey-sired calves are bred to an ayrshire or swedish red, and the progeny are mated back to a friesian. The aim is to keep the hybrid vigour in the cow rather than in the bull, and they say they are definitely beginning to see results.

Right: Rising two-year-old, in-calf belted galloway heifers The McCalls’ belted galloway stud runs 45 mixed-age cows, 13 heifers, 14 rising two-year bulls, 15 two and three-year-olds, and 43 calves. or four weeks becomes a tiresome chore and is difficult to accurately detect: “If we put the bulls out, they will find them for us.”

Because of the lower payout, cost control is uppermost this season: “It’s about trying to be as efficient as possible with our resources, but still keeping on with the things that are essential.”

Last season the farm produced 286,000kg of milksolids from 615 cows; this season’s goal is 300,000kg fro 645 cows.

The farm, which totals 215 hectares effective (220ha total), plus a 105ha run-off next door, is supported by another 55ha run-off at Edievale, 18

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kilometres from away. The McCalls have leased 410ha at Roxburgh to winter mixed-age dairy cows and rising two-year-old heifers.

They run an all-grass system with 250 tonnes of palm kernel to fill in gaps. Two full-time staff and a relief milker are employed.

The McCalls also have a belted galloway stud on Paradise Flat farm. The bulls leave a belt, which makes the calves easily identifiable and they are easier calving, says McCall A heritage beef breed originating from Galloway in the west of Scotland, these cattle have adapted to living on poor upland pastures and

windswept land, and is prized for its marbled beef.

The stud runs 45 mixed-age cows, 13 heifers, 14 rising two-year bulls, 15 two and three-year-old bulls, and 43 calves. The McCalls breed bulls for their dairy herd and sell some.

The McCalls met while they were studying farming qualifications at Lincoln University. Georgie comes from a sheep and cropping farm.

In 2008 they bought a 15 per cent of a farm at Kelso. It is now owned in an equity partnership with Adam’s parents, Lloyd and Robyn: Adam and Georgie own half of the farm and both work fulltime there. Cows are milked through a 28-a-side,

Jo Bailey

has consulted on soil recommendations in more than 75 countries. His approach and that of the Kinsey-Albrecht programme is based on using soil chemistry and providing nutrients to correct the soil’s physical structure and balance all the soil elements to promote a flourishing biological life.

New Zealand scientist Peter Espie, from AgScience will present the results from a recent New Zealand trial comparing the Kinsey-Albrecht programme with commonly used fertiliser recommendations, specifically looking at effects on soil composition, base saturation levels and pasture production.

Other experts will cover topics such as effective soil testing, hair mineral analysis in animals, micronutrients, leading edge farming practices, trial data, working with natural processes, soil mapping and yields.

Delegates will also hear from four Canterbury mixed crop, sheep and beef, dairy and grain farmers; and one Australian farmer; who will share their own experiences and results from applying the Kinsey-Albrecht principles.

This is the first conference of its type in New Zealand. Hore says there are already plans to run a similar event in Australia next year, and possibly look at a bi-annual conference in each country.

Experts have their say on Around 200 farmers are expected to attend the upcoming World Wide Agriculture 2015 conference in Ashburton on 22 and 23 June.

Nine scientists and consultants from the United States, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand will speak at the conference, detailing how farmers can lift the capability of their operation’s production platform through optimising their soil fertility.

One of the ways this can be achieved is by applying conventional fertilisers in different ways to recommended applications, says Bruce Hore, from Agriganics, who is organising the conference in association with Full Circle Nutrition NZ. “Some farmers are finding their fertiliser spend is going up but their yields are going down.

“The experts at the conference will show how it is possible to reverse this trend. Some of the tools they present will challenge the norms of conventional farming, yet all are backed by science – and results.”

One of the experts is Neal Kinsey, from Kinsey Agricultural Services in the United States. He has been a soil fertility specialist since 1973 when he learned under William Albrecht, and

RURAL PEOPLE » David & Joanna Diprose

Business Rural

| 47

Dave southern crusader for water quality Kelly Deeks David Diprose and other Pourakino Valley, Southland farmers are leading the way in achieving good outcomes for their farms, their neighbours, the Riverton community, and the environment.

Diprose and his wife, Joanna, were highly commended in 2013 and 2014 with Environment Southland farming awards.

In 2013 David Diprose had noticed how badly his duck pond was silting up, and started thinking about the value of the nutrients being transported off his dairy farm in the silt.

He sought advice from farming and environmental experts, and transformed his duck pond into a silt trap, then built another alongside it with the intention of capturing the silt and returning the nutrients to his farm.

The Diproses impressed the awards judges with their new 1.7-hectare wetland development. The judges said the couple had certainly demonstrated their commitment to the environment.

Diprose is now taking the lead in tackling the water quality issues facing Southland. He has been the catalyst for the Pourakino catchment group, which is looking at sustainable farming methods to reduce sediment and contaminants entering the Pourakino arm of the Jacobs River estuary.

“It’s important to be run a profitable business,

but we’ve also got to be sustainable,” he says.

In December 2013, DairyNZ recognised Diprose as someone who was starting to make a mark on his own farm, and sent him to the Dairy Leaders Group meeting in Wellington.

He says the meeting opened his eyes a bit more to what was to come, to the pressure coming down from the Government and the need for farmers not to remain silent.

He returned home knowing farmers needed to be informed of the issues councils were actually facing.

“I saw the need for farmers to be informed, to gain knowledge so that they were aware of what their obligations were, but also so that they were part of a bigger picture for the wider community,” he says.

“We needed a unified voice, not just one person doing something up on the valley.”

Diprose says he loves trees, water, farming, and the environment, and also realises he is part of a community and what he does on his farms affects the rest of that community.

The Diproses own two farms, first buying a run-down 100ha farm at Pourakino Valley in 2000, redeveloping it, acquiring more land, and leasing some land so that the farm is now 297ha and milks 840 cows.

In 2005 the couple bought a second farm at

soil fertility at conference

Scientists and consultants from around the globe will tell farmers at the 2015 World Wide Agriculture conference how they can lift production through optimising soil fertility. Onion seed (left), ryegrass (below left) and stock health (below) will be part of the discussion, “We are getting a lot of interest in this year’s conference, with people registering early. We hope it will be attended by at least a couple of hundred New Zealand farmers, and are expecting a few Australian farmers to come over for it too.”

• The World Wide Agriculture 2015 conference will be followed by a farm bus tour on 24 June. For more information and to register for the event visit www.wwag.co.nz

Pourakino Vally farmer David Diprose is taking the lead in tackling water quality issues in Southland.

Wyndham, 53ha with 34ha leased in Wyndham as support land, and milking 240 cows.

“The reason we bought it was for staff progression,” David Diprose says. “We wanted to be able to allow our staff to get up to management level here, then put them into the managing job over there.”

Diprose is now starting to work on setting up a new catchment group for the Mataura area, and says the biggest challenge now is not creating apathy.

“I don’t want it to be meetings for the sake of meetings,” he says. “I want people to be aware of what’s happening in the catchment, and be aware

of their neighbour and what they’re doing.”

He says one thing that has stood out this year amongst the many things he has learned, is the need for sheep-and-beef farmers and dairy farmers to work together.

He attended the Beef + Lamb New Zealandfacilitated environment conference and workshop in Wellington in February, which he says was invaluable for networking with beef and lamb farmers across the country.

“With the networking with the dairy and now the sheep-and-beef farmers, it was encouraging to hear how the rural sectors are committed to the challenge of water quality,” he says.

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48 |

RURAL PEOPLE » Nicki den Baars/Braemar Station

Business Rural

Nicki rides the dairy roller-coaster Sue Russell Nicki den Baars has experienced a very individual dairying journey – partly planned and partly unexpected.

In May 2013 she bought a former Dairy Holdings farm near Balclutha, in South Otago in what she describes as a dry area and secondclass land. This followed her separation from her husband, who remained on the farm they sharemilked at Wharetoa, in Otago.

Her 164-hectare farm carries 460 cows, including 200 two-year-olds. She started the season with 580 cows, but sold some in-milk, then culled to reduce stock in anticipation of dry weather.

“I was lucky in that I was in the right place at the right time when this property became available.

Cow sales in this area can be slow, but I’m pleased with the herd size I have now attained,” she says.

In June 2012, almost a year before buying her farm, she had signed on for a three-year contract on a former Tasman Agriculture farm at Wharetoa.

But things didn’t go according to plan – her contract was terminated unexpectedly, something she puts down to a personality conflict.

“In November 2012 I was faced with the fact that I didn’t necessarily have the goal of farm ownership so close, and had 1100-odd cows, along with 430 rising two-year heifers and 60 carry-overs. So I actually had nearly 1600 stock. Wouldn’t you know, that year cow prices plummeted and I had committed quite a lot of capital.”

Other factors included her daughter doing well in year 11 at South Otago High School, so there really wasn’t an option of moving away from the area.

Her farm is in a dry area with “second-class land”, as she describes it. Her priority on the farm has been to build up the soil quality, and this has taken constant vigilance.

Nicki den Baars with one of her favourite cows (above) and amongst native plantings on the farm (below.)

“I individually soil-tested every paddock on the place. It cost me $3000, but saved me $6000 in fertiliser. I discovered that some paddocks needed little attention while others needed up to four tonne of lime.”

Her farm had been converted to dairy about 20 years ago and, since its sale by TasAg about 10 years ago, a “revolving door” of managers had come and gone, each with their own particular take on how best to work it.

Now settled for at least the moment, Nicki den Baars is doing all she can to develop the farm’s

capacity. Last season some heifers aborted in April but she started milking on the June 1, 2013 as soon as she had taken over the farm. She produced almost 145,000 kilograms of milksolids.

This season she is looking towards a production increase of about 20 per cent. She leases 270ha for wintering and young stock, and employs three full-time dairy staff and a tractor driver who also does odd jobs.

“The farm was in need of some serious TLC. A good friend does the wages and inside work.”

She has a 16-year-old daughter and a 20-year-

“I individually soil-tested every paddock on the place. It cost me $3000, but saved me $6000 in fertiliser. I discovered that some paddocks needed little attention while others needed up to four tonne of lime.”

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old son working for a contractor in Lawrence.

But whi;e she feels she bought well, she isn’t certain her long-term future is in dairying.

“My daughter, Melissa, is thinking about doing a gap-year soon, so I am considering whether its time I also spread my wings again and visited other parts of the world.”

RURAL PEOPLE » Braemar Station

Business Rural

| 49

While dairying is all the go in the farming world and Braemar’s accommodation business is booming, deer (above), beef cattle (below) and sheep are the still the staples of New Zealand’s high country tstaions, such as Braemar, in the shadow of Mt Cook on the shores of Lake Pukaki.

Accommodation side of Braemar ‘highly successful sideline’ Jo Bailey

it, we would be selling store lambs by now.”

The lambs are weaned in late January and everything is “off the place” by the end of May. Braemar Station has come through the hot, dry Hamish Mackenzie aims to kill them at around summer in relatively good shape, says Hamish 18kg.

Mackenzie, who, with wife Julia, owns the highBraemar also runs 1800 hogget replacements, country property to the east of Lake Pukaki.

When BusinessRuralSouth spoke to him at the which are wintered on kale, and 1350 two-tooths, end of January he still had feed ahead for his sheep, which are put into the flock as replacements.

He mates 320 angus and angus/hereford cows cattle and deer, saying they were “luckier than a lot with angus bulls each year (including 60 heifers, of others”.

“The country holds on a lot longer here because which calve as two-year-olds).

“The cattle have done quite well in these of the heavier soils and being right on the edge of conditions, getting a lot of seed head, and there is the nor-west rain belt.” more cattle than sheep tucker at the moment.”

A cold and wet spring also helped set up the The bulk of the calves are sold at weaning in the 4100-hectare station for the dry conditions to Mackenzie section of the Temuka sales each April. follow.

Also on the station are 700 red deer hinds, “We had a lot of rain and snow in spring, which wasn’t very good at the time but has helped carry a total of 50 stags in all age groups, and 100 two-year-old hinds that go into the system as us through. The ewes are looking really good, replacements. however the lambs aren’t quite as good as in the “I sell all the weaner stags at weaning, but fatten past. Although we had the feed, we didn’t have the all the weaner hinds through two winters. This year spring sunshine to get them going earlier in life.” we’ve got about 300 hind fawns, of which 100 will Lamb fattening is an important part of eventually go into the herd, with the balance sold.”

Braemar’s business, with around 4700 perendale The station lends itself to diversity, he says, ewes going to the ram each year. being “natural deer country” with good land to work “We fatten lambs on rape crops over summer, which in a year like this is going to save us. Without sheep and cattle together. He has two full-time staff.

Julia Mackenzie is kept busy with the station’s accommodation business, a highly successful sideline that now encompasses 32 beds over cottages.

“My parents, Duncan and Carol, started it in the early 1990s when they converted one of the farm cottages. Ju and I have done up the shearers’ quarters and single men’s quarters into quite smart accommodation as well. That we’ve been able to use facilities on the station has worked really well.”

Julia Mackenzie used to manage the accommodation side of the business herself, but with high occupancy, especially over summer, they’ve employed a part-timer to give her a hand.

“We get a lot of domestic visitors and tourists and are the first-night stopover of the Alps to Ocean cycle trip, so Ju is pretty busy.”

Duncan and Carol Mackenzie bought Braemar Station in 1969, shifting from the original homestead to the homestead now occupied by Hamish and Julia in 1977, when Lake Pukaki was raised. They retired to Timaru in 2007 when Hamish took over full management of the station.

At 630 metres above sea level, the climate is challenging with tough,120-day winters and hot, dry summers: “It can be a pretty harsh environment, but we choose to live here and love it,” says Hamish. “I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”

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50 |

ON FARM » Neil & Myra Molina

Business Rural

Big country, big herd, big challenge Karen Phelps When Neil and Myra Molina moved to New Zealand from the Philippines in 2003 it was tough getting used to the Kiwi dairy farming system.

But in just over a decade, the couple have made their way up the dairy ladder and are now in charge of a 2400-cow farm at Maniototo for owners Greg and Kelly Kirkwood.

Concept Farms has three dairy platforms and the lease of Eden Bank, a 450-hectare support block used to winter cows and rear 700 rising-oneyearR1 and 700 rising-two-year heifers. Concept milks 2450 friesian/jersey-cross cows at peak-milk flow on 740ha of irrigable land.

But the Molinas didn’t start their careers in the South Island – they spent a year in the Waikato when they arrived in New Zealand. Neil grew up on a farm and had managed a 300-cow farm before coming to New Zealand.

“It was tough adjusting to the climate and workload as New Zealand farms are a lot bigger with more machinery. But the opportunities in New Zealand are good as the dairy industry has good infrastructure whereas in the Philippines, the farming system is fragmented.”

The couple moved to the South Island working as herd managers for the Kirkwoods. They progressed to second-in-charge of a 1700-cow farm before the Kirkwoods bought the property at Maniototo and offered Neil the position of operations manager.

That was six years ago and he is now in charge of 17 staff including 12 Filipinos. He admits that is has been difficult for the farm to attract workers in New Zealand as the nearest town is around an hour away. This has led them to look at options overseas.

The result has been a hard working group, which has guided the herd to achieving 940,000 kilograms of milksolids last season and on target for produce 970,000kg this season. The goal is one million kilograms of milksolids.

The land is split into three farms: Roseneth, Rhyders and Vance. Each has a dairy shed –: two 40-a-side herringbones and a 40-bail internal rotary.

The cows are split into seven mobs. The mobs are calved together then, in spring, separated and placed under the jurisdiction of three farm managers who run them quite separately. Molina takes an overall view of activities and resources such as machinery and staff shared when need be.

Concept Farms is concentrating on keeping farm

Neil Molina (right), operations manager on a 2400 cow farm in the Maniototo and Vance Farm manager Randy Nabor inspect a fodder beet crop. operating expenses to a minimum with the lower payout this season, he says.

“During the past six years we’ve done the hard yards on the farm – re-grassing 80 per cent of the unit and investing in irrigation. Now these things should work to our advantage.” .

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20ha last year will be extended to 50ha on the dairy platform and 100ha of the run-off this season, replacing the traditional kale the animals have been fed on over winter.

“We found we put more condition on the cows with fodder beet than we have with other crop,” says Molina. “It’s also a very cheap feed compared with other feeds, costing 10-12 cents per kilogram

of dry matter compared with silage. which costs around three times that to buy in.”

He says the farm continues to be a work in progress with the goal of constant improvement.

“Adversity such as low payout and dry weather brings out the best in people; we have found. It makes us sharper. We keep looking at how we can do the best we can.”

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Business Rural

ON FARM » Andrew & Richard Grant

| 51

Photos: The Rangitata South irrigation scheme is now at full capacity and the Grant farm is now fully irrigated with 12 centre pivots, k-line and sprinklers.

Newbies thrive on crash course Kelly Deeks New to the dairy industry two years ago, farming brothers Andrew and Richard Grant have hit the ground running this season. Their 1750 cows are producing well and on track towards their target of 500 kilograms of milksolids per cow.

The Grant brothers are shareholders in their parents Frances and Peter’s South Canterbury dairy operation – a 480-hectare (435ha effective) dairy farm at Belfield, a 67ha run-off block just down the road, and a 580ha run-off block at Limestone Valley.

Andrew manages 880 cows on 225ha and Richard 870 cows on 210ha.

Sibling rivalry doesn’t enter into the arrangement, since all the profit goes into the same bank account.

“We work together, and we both want each other to do as well as possible,” says Andrew Grant.

“This season Richard has got all the heifers, so his production is going to be less than mine. But his irrigation is a bit more reliable than mine, so sometimes I’ll chuck a few of my cows over to his side.”

The Grants have farmed in the area for 40-odd years, running sheep and deer on 1200ha at one time before selling off all but Andrew’s 225ha about five years ago.

When a neighbouring property then came up for sale, the family decided to buy it as a run-off. But the advent of the Rangitata South irrigation scheme meant the Grants’ properties were more suitable for dairy farming and they converted.

Their first 60-bail rotary dairy shed was completed on Andrew’s side of the farm in November 2012, then 12 months later the second was completed on Richard’s side.

The Grants had never milked a cow before they converted the farm.

“Now we’re loving it,” Andrew says. “The biggest challenge first up was milking in one shed.

We had 1700 cows walking about four kilometres each way, twice a day, and we ended up putting some cows on once-a-day milking.

“Another challenge was that this time last year, we didn’t have a lot of water. There was a patch in the summer when we didn’t have any water at all for two or three weeks. We were producing 30kg or 40kg of dry matter when we should have been getting 80kg. We had to feed a lot of supplement,

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The irrigation scheme has now reached full capacity this season and the farm is 100% irrigated with 12 centre-pivots, k-line, and sprinklers.

The Grants achieved production of 449kg milksolids per cow last season, and this season are on target for 460kg per cow.

“We want to get to 500kg per cow without going too overboard with supplements,” Grant says.

“We’ll get there with breeding.”

The Grants have extended their artificialbreeding period this mating, using good breedingworth semen for the first five weeks, shortgestation semen for the next four weeks, and then putting the bulls out.

“Short-gestation semen gives you an extra 10.5 days in milk per cow, and will tighten up the calving spread,” Grant says.

“Our goal is to eliminate the bulls eventually and do just a nine-week mating.”

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52 |

Business Rural

ON FARM » Matt & Marcie Webb/Debbie & Nathan Erskine

Shift south step in ownership vision Sue Russell

Matt and Marcie Webb are determined their move to Southland will be a pathway to farm ownership.

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Matt and Marcie Webb have travelled the Waikato to the “Deep South” near Invercargill to in their quest farm ownership.

The move is a step in their strategic plan, which centres around their vision to own their own farm by the time they are 35.

And, so far, they are on course.

Matt Webb explains the rationale behind the shift south: “We were farming in the Waikato, but sold our sharemilking business there to come into an equity partnership with Southpro on this farm. Our focus now is to build it up to its best because there is a lot to be done to bring it to its most efficient.”

The 509-hectare (450ha effective) farm is now home to 1400 dairy cows – a “whole mixed bag” sourced from all over New Zealand”. This season’s calving started a month earlier than normal for Southland because many of the cows were from Waikato and Northland.

“We bought the herd from lots of locations, just buying two or three cows from many auctions,” says Webb.

But it hasn’t been the smoothest of times for the young couple who have their hearts set on a long and successful future in dairying.

A deadly illness, which subsequently caused the demise of hundreds of cows in Southland, did not overlook their farm. They lost 60 cows. It was a tough time coming to grips with that loss shortly after moving to Southland.

“The cows were poisoned and it has now been linked to an HT swede,” says Webb.

“The illness severely damaged the liver and kidneys. The worry is that there may be ongoing effects and it could affect whether a cow can get in calf and produce milk while trying to repair her liver.”

He says it was a real test for the fortitude not only for the Webbs, but also for their new staff.

“No one then could come up with an explanation and it was tough watching it happen.”

Since taking over the farm – which Matt Webb compares with having the “worst house but in the best street’”, he has worked hard at improving pasture quality and has done a lot of regrassing.

“Timing is such a critical thing in this industry.

We bought the farm on an 8.4 payout per kilogram of milksolids, and now it has dropped to 4.7/kg.

The Webb family: Matt, Marcie, and Aston holding Fletcher.

“It has meant we’ve got to be very prudent about where we spend and cut back on spending that isn’t absolutely essential at this time.”

Available cash is being directed toward the building of farm races, lanes and fencing.

So far this season, production is tracking around 20,000 kilograms below the target of 500,000 kilograms of milksolids.

But, as Matt says, the deficit is due mainly to the fact that everything and everyone on the farm is new, the condition score at calving, a wet winter and spring, and a reduced of cows because of the HT swede issue.

Benchmark keeps rising Karen Phelps Always seeking to improve and always setting the benchmark higher is how Debbie and Nathan Erskine have built their farming business.

The couple are in their second season of 50:50 sharemilking on a 265-hectare (effective) unit at East Chatton, just north of Gore, owned by John and Helen Kerse.

The herd of 800 friesian and friesian-cross cows is milked through a 50-bail rotary dairy shed with automatic cup removers and Protrack.

The farm also has a wintering barn capable of holding up to 380 cows. Just under half of the herd are wintered in this barn, with the other half going to an 80ha lease block where they are fed 14ha of fodder beet.

The farm is also supported by an 80ha block owned by the Kerses, where young stock are raised and silage is grown.

The Erskines say farming sustainably and efficiently is a key aim for for them. This encompasses all aspects of their farming business.

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The Webbs have staff of six full-timers, plus seven part-timers and relievers.

The couple have two sons – Aston, nearly three, and Fletcher, 10 months.

Matt’s advice to farmers starting out is simple: work hard and build mentors, Be a sponge to experienced farmers – they have seen it all before, read lots and follow market cycles, maximise downturns “We’ve taken pay-cuts to work with people who we could learn from. It’s all about the long-term goal. Don’t get hung up about what you get paid or what the roster is, it will pay off later.”

practices, talking to people and learning,” says Debbie Erskine. “We aim to achieve highly in all areas.”

They admit that farming can be a matter of having a lot of balls to juggle, but they say recognising personal strengths and delegating tasks is key.

“Dairy farms are big businesses,” says Debbie.

“We’ve chosen to get support in a couple of areas because we recognise that we can’t do it all.

“We know our strengths and weaknesses, and how they link and integrate into our business.”

The Erskines say that delegation of tasks gives them the time to focus on the bigger-picture issues of running their business and seeking improvement in all areas.

Both are Southlanders – Debbie off a dairy farm at Edendale; Nathan from an Otama Valley sheepand-beef farm, between Riversdale and Waikaka.

Debbie became a primary school-teacher while Nathan went into dairying when he left school. His dairy career has involved an exchange to a farm in Waterford, Ireland, where he says he learned good animal-husbandry practices.

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Business Rural

ON FARM » Paul Hardegger & Dani Haller

| 53

Cows enter the yard at Paul Hardegger’s Isla Bank, Southland farm. A 40ha expansion this year has upped the land area to 182ha milking a 550 cow herd.

Ex-Taranaki boy gets balance right Kelly Deeks Paul Hardegger’s Isla Bank, Southland dairy farm is now at a size he and his partner Dani enjoy farming, A 40-hectare expansion last year has brought the land area up to 182ha and they are milking 550 cows.

Hardegger bought the farm over the phone, sight unseen, in 2006, after selling his 93ha, 240-cow dairy farm in Taranaki, which he had developed over nine years.

“It was pretty confined up there, and I felt I’d done everything I could do as far as development and production,” he says.

In 2000, he and his two brothers had bought a farm in Southland, and had visited regularly.

“When I made the decision to sell in Taranaki, I told the agent if he saw anything at Isla Bank, I’d be in.” .

He says his style of farming has changed since his Taranaki days.

As they say, the Southland weather will get you down, but it won’t let you down.

“It is very cow friendly here in terms of production. In Taranaki it is quite confined.

Everything is dairy and they’re going right out into the foothills of the mountain, they push them into every nook and cranny.

“The expanse here is unreal. But the biggest thing is that you can sell a farm in Taranaki, then pay half the price down here, convert it, and still have money left over.”

The 107ha Isla Bank farm was a sheep-and-beef farm when Hardegger bought it in 2006.

He had never been involved in a conversion and was still milking cows in Taranaki while the conversion took place. Luckily, it was a very easy farm to convert – rectangular with the main hedges running north and south and the dividing fences east and west.

“The biggest decision was what size shed to put on and where to put it,” he says. “We put in a 56-bail rotary, and people said I was crazy. We were milking 300 cows in the beginning and doing 40-minute milkings,. The cows had to walk for only 10 or 12 minutes.”

By his third season Hardegger was up to 370 cows, then in 2012 he bought an adjacent 35ha block and upped cow numbers to 420.

After this year’s 40ha expansion, cow numbers have increased to 550.

He is now working on bringing the three blocks

in bid for improvement We’re passionate about progression and helping others in the industry. There are lots of different paths to take. People were very helpful to us, so we’re passionate about giving back.

“They’d treat every cow as if it was a part of the family. They just about invited them in for a cup of tea,” he jokes. “Every cow was precious and they fed the cows well.”

When he returned to New Zealand he worked his way up the system. Debbie joined him and they took a lower-order sharemilking position at Milton, in South Otago.

They milked 450 cows for five years there and bought and sold stock to build up capital before moving to their present role.

Last season they achieved 352,000 kilograms of milksolids, and. because of the summer-dry conditions, have a similar target this year.

They have two children – Brayton, seven, and Anya, four – and say achieving a good balance between their farming business and their family life is important to them.

The Erskines were the Otago Sharemilkers of the Year in 2010 and the competition conveners in 2012. Nathan is on the executive committee of the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards.

Their goal is farm ownership.

“We’re passionate about progression and helping others in the industry,” says Debbie. “There are lots of different paths to take. People were very helpful to us, so we’re passionate about giving back.”

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The workers: From left, Anthony Levett, Courtney Officer, Daniela Haller and Paul Hardegger. together after some initial problems with fertility and low phosphorus levels on the 35ha block. The 40ha block has been ploughed and sown in new grass (bar two paddocks in crop). Twenty per cent of the property has been newly grassed in the last three years.

Spring was extremely wet this season compared with last year, and Hardegger has had to put in a lot more supplement during October and November.

“Last November we had three days and only 32 millilitres of rain, while this November we had 181ml of rain and only about four days when it didn’t rain.

“The new grass has been our Achilles heel. It has been that wet we can’t get in and it has put the stocking rate up.”

He is hoping Southland will come through with the usual safe summer and reliable autumn.

“As they say, the Southland weather will get you down, but it won’t let you down.”

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54 |

ON FARM » Cheryl Gallagher/Brendon & Stacey Walker

Business Rural

Westport mum goes it alone Mum’s always known I could do it by myself but Dad was a bit hesitant.

But now, obviously, he has seen I can do it. Farming is in the blood.

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Karen Phelps Owning a dairy farm is not easy either logistically or financially, which is why the majority of farming businesses are typically undertaken by couples or families. So West Coast farmer Cheryl Gallagher could be seen as an inspiration to other farmers.

Gallagher, who owns an 84-hectare effective (94ha total) unit at Westport, is not only managing to run her farm while bringing up two children, but is also somehow finding the time to give back to the community when she has the chance.

She’s a chair of the board of trustees at Westport South School, which her children attend, and a life member of the Westport Kindergarten.

“It’s busy, but I enjoy it,” she says. “Time management is the key,” she says.

The farm she owns once belonged to her parents, David and Margaret Milne. Gallagher says they were both good farmers, but were uncertain about her decision to take over the business alone when she split from her husband several years ago.

“Mum’s always known I could do it by myself, but Dad was a bit hesitant. But now, obviously, he has seen I can do it. Farming is in the blood.”

Gallagher, who is also a qualified pharmacy dispensary technician and hotel receptionist, entered dairying by managing her parents’ farm.

She and her ex-husband bought the unit in 2010, then a year later Gallagher bought it outright and took over.

The herd of 236 jersey cows is peak-milked through a 24-a-side herringbone dairy shed. One of the biggest changes since Gallagher took over has been an increase in inputs, which has taken the farm from being a system 2 to a system 3 unit.

“I prefer to be proactive rather than reactive,” she says.

“The cows are well fed all the time, through

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Westport dairy farmer Cheryl Gallagher with her children, Jessie and Neal. palm kernel mainly. I start early on filling in the feed gaps because the cows produce more milk at the start of lactation.”

Gallagher also places great emphasis on pasture quality and isn’t afraid to top behind the cows.

“I find I get back the cost of topping in the vat,” she says.

The farm is in its sixth year as a Dairy New Zealand Westport monitor farm.

A large portion of the grazing area – up to a third – can remain under water when the Buller River is in flood. The farm is plate-metered on weekly and a feed wedge is produced.

Gallagher starts calving around July 31, which is about a week earlier than most farms in the region. This gives her more days in milk – 267 days last season – which she says is high for the West Coast.

Breeding is an interest for her, and she had 12 contract matings last season through CRV Ambreed and Livestock Improvement Corporation. Her herd’s breeding worth is 153/49 and its production worth is 149/71.

One of her cows was accepted into the LIC embryo-transfer programme, but she had to turn down the opportunity because of the high cost of transporting the cow from Westport to Hamilton.

She rears all her AI heifer calves and then sells

the lowest breeding-worth ones to get the best genetic gain from the AI in which she is investing.

She sold about 80 AI four-day-old bull calves this year.

Gallagher is big on figures and has no problem reeling off the farm numbers.

In the 2013-14 season, her farm produced 1214 kilograms of milksolids per hectare – or 437kg per cow (she is aiming for similar production this season).

Farm working expenses per kilogram of milksolids were $3.87, gross farm revenue $7.57, gross farm operating expenses $4.91, and operating profit $2.66. Operating expenses per hectare were $5979 and operating profit per hectare $3234.

She employs one full-time worker and a casual milker, and says the support of her staff has been vital for her taking over the farm alone.

She balances her responsibilities of looking after the farm with being a mum to Neal, 12, and Jessie, 10, by getting up early.

“This means I am back in time to get the kids ready for school and then I start the afternoon milking early so I am home again for them later. It can be quite isolating being a dairy farmer on your own, but it’s also quite empowering to know you can do it.”

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Pakihi soils found in many parts of the West Coast have defied pastoral farmers for years. Then, some bright spark developed the process called ‘flipping’.

This involves using a digger to pull the impervious pan up to the surface, and put the soggy, peaty topsoil down under amongst the sandy stuff.

The surface is then ‘hump and hollowed’, which creates drainage patterns .

The new surface initially looks pretty hopeless, but experience has shown that suitably fertilised and resown, it can produce pasture good enough to repay the expenses in a couple of years by increasing the stocking rate.

The pakihi areas near Lake Brunner have been flipped by owner Landcorp. It has a five-dairy-farm and one-drystock-farm complex (Weka) that has, over the last decade or so, become productive dairy country on what was once scrub-covered and pretty useless.

Brendon Walker manages one of the farms,

called Kotuku because that’s where it is. He moved to this farm recently after four years on the neighbouring Blair block, a new conversion when he took it over.

“We were doing 412 kilograms of milksolids per cow last year,” he says. “We had 830 cows on 425 hectares.”

This was clearly a pretty satisfactory result for a young man from Mataura who had been in the industry for seven years when he took the position with Landcorp.

Not one to let the grass grow under his feet, it seems that managing the Kotuku farm presented just the sort of challenge he and his wife, Stacey, were looking for.

“This farm is 11 years old. There are some records here that I want to beat. I could see its potential. I want to be doing 415kg of milksolids per cow next year.”

He has a bigger herd: 970 kiwicross cows on 430ha. Sixty hectares is taken out each year and put into kale. The following year, that land is regrassed and a different 60ha put into crop.

The farm has four staff. Weka Complex has

Business Rural

ON FARM » Graham Ball

| 55

Soil health, water quality foremost Jo Bailey The Golden Bay area is known as one of New Zealand’s greenest. Not for the colour of the grass, but for the residents’ commitment to environmental principles.

One of the region’s second-generation dairy farmers, Graham Ball, isn’t afraid to step outside the mainstream and adhere to similar practices on his 240-hectare (155ha effective) Pupu Valley farm, where he milks 350 cows.

“I like to treat the soil as a living thing and try not to do any harm. Because of the environmental issues we have with nitrogen leaching and run-off from stocking rates, I believe anything we can do to the soil to hold nitrogen from going through is worth looking at.”

Ball is a long-time user of RPR (reactive phosphate rock), which has been proven scientifically to reduce phosphate run-off compared to soluble phosphate.

He also uses a mix of humic, fulvic and ulmic acids which helps stabilize nitrogen and to “get the biology going in the soil”.

The only irrigation on the farm is effluent, which is applied from the 6000 cubic metre storage pond he put in around two years ago. “The pond gives us about four months of storage and means we don’t have to worry about disposing of effluent during spring calving, and wetter months,” he says.

“Even now, we’re on a new phase of levelling rougher paddocks and putting in permanent pasture with a bit of chicory, which has worked well for us over the dry summer.”

Although he doesn’t use water for irrigation, Ball is a big advocate of water storage: “When you consider that 95 to 98 per cent of the water in our waterways goes out to sea, if has to be good if we can capture more of it in a more sustainable way. I believe water is one of those tools we can manage a lot better longer term without impacting greatly on the environment. “ He has taken his interest in water quantity and quality a step further as a community representative on the Takaka Fresh Water and Land Advisory Group set up by Tasman District Council. He was also the Federated Farmers Golden Bay provincial president for around 10 years before retiring from the role in 2013.

PHOTOS Left: Graham Ball (right) and sonin-law Graeme Crawford work together on the Pupu Valley farm in Golden Bay. Lower left: The view across the 240-hectare property.

Golden Bay has a high annual rainfall – around three metres – but it doesn’t always come when it’s needed, or sometimes, in a huge deluge, he says.

“We had big floods two summers in a row and spent both Christmas holidays picking up rubbish and tidying up the paddocks. It was good to get through last December without a big dump.”

Graham’s father, Cecil (Pip) Ball, originally took over the family dairy farm in 1954, milking 60 cows from a “broken down” old cowshed. Graham started working on the farm as a 16-year-old in 1964, and took it over in the 1980s.

He says development of the farm, literally “cut out of scrub”, is ongoing 60 years later, and it still has nearly 90ha of native bush that he looks after.

“Even now, we’re on a new phase of levelling rougher paddocks and putting in permanent pasture with a bit of chicory, which has worked well for us over the dry summer.”

His 350 mainly-kiwicross cows are milked through a 44-bail rotary, the farm’s third cowshed, which was built in the early 2000s.

“The lighter kiwi cows suit the farm as it is long and there is quite a bit of walking for them.

In January we started three milkings every two days, and we will probably drop to once a day if the drought bites too hard or when we’re trying to dry them down later in the season.”

Nearly 20 years ago Graham Ball won an environmental award from the local council for his farming practices and the eco-friendly adobe and wood house he built on the property at the time.

“I always had a dream of building a house using eco-friendly materials that used the sun for passive heating,” he says.

“It was a few years in the planning and I still love the house all these years later.”

He and partner Michele, who, with her son, helps run the Brigand Café & Bar in Takaka, have a busy life both on and off the farm.

Graham has had a manager and sharemilker working for him for a few years, but he is delighted that his eldest daughter’s husband, and a grandson are now working alongside him on the dairy unit.

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This farm is 11 years old. There are some records here that I want to beat. I could see its potential. I want to be doing 415 kilograms of milksolids per cow next year.

He has 97o kiwicross cows on 430 hectares. started running a trainee programme which should be helpful in ensuring good staff availability.

“There are three trainees on the six farms.

You get one trainee a fortnight, and teach them everything you know. Then, if a job comes up, they can put their hand up and apply.

“You get good support from Landcorp. They provide plenty of training. They’re 100 per cent.”

At the end of January, much of the West Coast was experiencing the near drought conditions found over the other side of the alps.

The combination of those weather conditions and the reduced dairy payout requires some management adjustment.

“We’re not bringing in as much purchased food,” says Walker. “The cows are now fully fed on grass, which cuts the cost of production. It does make you wonder why you bring the purchased food in.”

The challenges of working his way up the ladder in dairying; the support available through the corporation; the fact that he has discovered that he loves ‘The Coast’ and its people; and being a member of the Grey Valley rugby team which won the West Coast senior championship for the first time since the competition started in 1901, suggest Walker intends to make his mark there for a while yet.

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56 |

ON FARM » Peter & William Dobbie/Darryl & Tammy Schwartz

Business Rural

Clinton farmers Peter and William Dobbie are working with Dairy New Zealand to measure the quality of water entering creeks on their farm (top left). The brothers have their own fleet of machinery, and make up to 1500 bales of balage and growing winter and summer feed.

Brothers embrace sustainability Karen Phelps Taking a proactive approach to nutrient run-off on their farm has seen brothers Peter and William Dobbie agree for their farm to become part of a Dairy New Zealand water-monitoring project.

The project, which was initiated a few months ago, will see DairyNZ representatives measuring the

quality of water entering creeks on the farm.

“It’s important to get things right, or else farmers will start being told how to farm by people who know little about farming,” says Peter Dobbie.

“We’re hoping to learn something and improve the environment. Farmers need to be sustainable.

We can’t keep our head in the sand about it. It has to be driven by farmers rather than other people telling us what to do.”

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The brothers run their 914-hectare (850ha effective) farm eight kilometres from Clinton as the Dobbie Farms Ltd partnership. They milk a herd of 1750 predominantly kiwicross cows through two sheds – a 50-bail rotary and a 60-bail rotary. Both have automatic cup removers, milk meters and automatic drafting.

The farm is run as one unit, with two herds going through each shed – heifers in one and the rest split into calving dates.

The brothers say they are aiming to maximise production on a grass-based system. They regrass 10-15 per cent of the farm each year. They achieved around 425 kilograms of milksolids per cow last season and are aiming for 435kg this season.

Summer dry is their biggest challenge.

“We aim to have enough supplement on hand to deal with this,” says Peter Dobbie. “This season we have bought in 400 tonnes of silage and 250 tonnes of wheat, plus molasses.

“We pre-mow to keep the round short (no more

than 20 days over the spring to early summer period) to keep the quality of the paddocks high. We have to keep chasing quality over quantity and add more quantity into the system if we need to.”

The brothers make 1000-1500 bales of balage a year out of surplus and also grow summer and winter crops for feed.

They are growing about 25ha of fodder beet for the first time this season for the winter as well as 35ha of swedes and kale and around 60ha of barkant turnips for summer.

They winter 800-900 cows on farm and the rest go out grazing.

The brothers are both hands-on and employ eight full-time staff plus three casuals. The goal is to develop the business to be sustainable and profitable.

“We are tweaking the farm all the time to improve its environmental sustainability,” says Peter. It’s always a moving target. Our aim is to get the best out of the farm as it hasn’t reached its full potential yet.”

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Lower-order sharemilker Darryl Schwartz is stepping up to 50:50 sharemilking next season on the 350-cow farm he has worked on for the past three seasons for owner Phil Cook on the West Coast.

Schwartz says he is going to take the opportunity to step up with both hands.

Schwartz has been dairy farming since 1999 – initially in his native South Africa, then in New Zealand in 2002 for a three-year stint, returning home, and coming back to New Zealand for good in 2008.

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He and his wife, Tammy, run the farm, with the assistance of one relief milker to cover the couple’s few days off.

Next season he intends to look at getting a fulltime staff member.

He also thinks that when he takes over the herd, he will start to add more minerals into the cows’ diet through winter and spring, and intensify the farm’s drenching programme.

“They are done going into the winter, but not in the spring,” he says.

“After drenching, you can almost notice an attitude change in the cows.”

He runs a low-input system on the farm at Kowhitirangi, pretty much the opposite to how he first learned to farm in South Africa.

“Low-input is a good system because when times are tough, there is still a bit of a margin in it,” he says.

“You can’t farm for the good years, but when the good years come around, you can make a bit of hay.”

This season Schwartz is focused on ensuring he has more feed for the winter.

“It has been tough over winter for the past couple of years, so this year I want to get myself set up a bit better,” he says.

“The cows are wintered on farm and for the past couple of years we haven’t had quite enough supplement.”

There has been five hectares of kale put in, and an intensive regrassing programme that has been undertaken over the past two seasons has seen those new pastures coming back into the round more quickly.

Last season’s crop paddocks have gone into oats and italian ryegrass, and Schwartz has had a good cut of silage off that with about 52 tonnes of dry matter.

He is also tackling porina caterpillars, which construct permanent burrows in the soil, then emerge from their burrows at night to feed, severing

Business Rural

ON FARM » Andrew & Phyllis Ford

| 57

Efficiency big challenge at Appleby Sue Russell Andrew Ford knows the Appleby district, just west of Richmond in the Tasman district, like the back of his hands.

At the start of the 2013 milking season he and wife, Phyllis, bought his parents’ farm outright.

Andrew had returned to the property he knows so well in 1990, originally to manage it.

“I came back as farm manager on the home farm, then took on 50:50 sharemilking until 2013,” he says.

The home farm is 55 hectares, but for a number of years, it has been complemented by leasing a number of blocks locally, bringing the milking area to 72 hectares.

“We were a town-supply dairy farm for 50 years, but this changed when Fonterra didn’t renew our winter-milking contract two years ago.”

The farm’s four-legged inhabitants amount to 210 straight friesian cows which last season produced 113,000 kilograms of milksolids – 550kg per cow.

This season production is tracking about 2300kg behind.

“We lost it all in August. We were a couple of days out with mating and instead of having 70 in milk by the end of July, we had only 30,” he says.

While describing the pre-Christmas weather as the driest he has known, he also says he’s not really worried as he knows it will rain some time and he has plenty of silage on hand.

“For the past 20 years we have used apple pumice from a local juice factory from March through to about September. In recent years we have also fed palm kernel which is only fed through the season after the apple has finished.

Moving away from winter-milking obligations has meant less reliance on additional feed and less silage needed to keep in store. Helping this, a lot

more grass has been grown through the last two winters, Ford says.

Another dairy farm neighbours the Ford farm, is but across the Waimea Plains, dairy farms are now few and far between.

“We might have half a dozen farms within a 20-minute drive from where we are. There used to be a lot – in the early town-milk days, there could have been 50-60 farms.”

Andrew Ford describes the milking shed, a 16-a-side herringbone, as pretty much a basic model, though it has been extended from 10-a-side.

He says the farm is probably near its potential in terms of per-hectare production from primarily a grass-based system.

step in right direction This season Darryl Schwartz is focused on ensuring he has more feed for the winter. He says it has been tough over winter for the past couple of years, so this year I want to get myself set up a bit better. The cows are wintered on farm and for the past couple of years we haven’t had quite enough supplement.

grass and clover leaves at the base of the plants.

At low densities, porina bugs are direct competitors with the cows for pastures. At higher densities, plants are destroyed which allows inferior plant species to establish.

“If I can get rid of that, my pastures won’t take such a hammering.”

Beginning at the end of April, he plans to get stuck into the porina by spraying pesticide in a

larger dose and over a bigger area than last year.

He says mating was looking good this season, following the farm’s highest-ever empty rate of eight per cent last season, a legacy of drought conditions the season before.

This season he is aiming for his herd to produce more than 400 kilograms of milksolids per cow – up a little on the 390kg milksolids per cow his herd achieved last season.

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“Our challenge is to be as efficient as we can, keeping the farm operating expenses in check because there isn’t a great deal more we can produce.

“We have invested in a centre pivot-irrigation system, which we hope will give us return in years to come and use limited water more efficiently.”

He and Phyllis employ a relief milker who has been milking for 25 years. Peter Crichton takes care of the afternoon milking while Andrew does the mornings. Another employee, Warren Thomas, helps with the day-to-day farm tasks.

The last two years have seen all the young and carry-over stock grazed on the milking area.

“We just started keeping some of the better carry over cows and the other thing we do is rear all our replacements,” says Andrew Ford.

“We’re using identified, high-breeding-worth friesian bulls after we have done six weeks of AB. “For the last two seasons we have reared 80 replacement calves, 30-plus of which are able to be sold either as export calves or on the local market.”

Andrew and Phyllis are parents to Abigail, nearly three. Phyllis, who comes from Lower Hutt, relishes the farm life-style and Andrew feels the balance the farm provides is just about spot on.

“We could intensify and milk quite a few more cows, but at the end of the day, you have to enjoy life and have enough time in your life to be involved with other people.”

Above left: Relief milker Peter Crichton and farm assistant Warren Thomas. Above: Andrew Ford with daughter Abigail and wife Phyllis.

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58 |

Business Rural

ON FARM » Merv McCabe

Big country: Little Ben Dairy, near Omarama, covers 470 hectares and will milk 1370 cows this season

Soil science drives development Karen Phelps Focusing on soil structure has seen a dairying development near Omarama lead the way with its environmental practices. The structure of the farm’s soil has now improved to the point that it has minimal to no run-off, says farm owner Merv McCabe, who runs Little Ben in a 50-per-cent partnership with brothers Richard and Matthew Gloag.

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“The better the soil structure the more it holds water and nutrients,” says McCabe. “By planting deep-rooting grass species – with roots of up to one metre – the water goes down further and the plant has more time to absorb nutrients. The roots themselves build structure in the soil, so simply by growing grass, we are building up and improving soil structure.

“In five years of dairying, we now have 5-6 inches of black soil structure that was sand before.”.

The 470-hectare farm was initially controversial as McCabe says the area had not previously had much dairy farming. It took a two-year legal battle to get the farm established when in 2010 the directors successfully appealed against Environment Canterbury’s decision to grant Little Ben a consent for 750 cows for 10 years as it was too restrictive, he says.

Little Ben Dairy now has effluent and land-use consents to farm up to 1400 cows for 25 years.

Improving soil structure by planting cultivars such as fescue and lucern combined with not using urea has helped to turn public opinion around, says McCabe.

Instead of urea the farm uses a Hatumaproduced dicalcic phosphate aglime blend of 700 kilograms per hectare. Sulphate of ammonia is added to each application at a rate of 50kg/ha.

A biomax liquid fertiliser is also applied through the farm’s irrigators at 6.2ka/ha on nitrogen per application. Dicalcic phosphate is used because of its non-soluble nature, which helps mitigate P leaching.

McCabe also uses pasture stimulant ProGibb mixed in with Biomax and applied through a boom sprayer during the shoulders of the dairy season. He has also seen worm castings in the

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Improving the soil structure has paid big dividends at Little Ben. soil indicating the presence of a growing worm population and improved soil fertility.

The farm is fully irrigated with four centre-pivots and 30ha of k-line. Effluent is dispersed through two of the pivots as the farm is being watered. Two storage ponds provide more than 30 days storage.

For the past four years they have been growing 50ha of fodder beet, which they start feeding to the herd in mid to late March which has enabled them to milk until June 15-20.

“We have been able to cut back on the balage as there is better food value in the fodder beet and it’s cheaper. We’ve been yielding 20-22 tonnes per hectare and we’ve been growing it on some of the worst parts of the farm. It’s costing about nine cents per kilogram of dry matter compared with 33 cents for silage this year.”

But McCabe remains realistic about the benefits.

“When you start on fodder beet the milk doesn’t start flowing over the top of the vat. But we are pushing later into the season. This autumn we found we are not producing more milk but we’re holding our levels as we’re going through autumn as well as putting condition on the cows.”

The cows are milked through a fully automated, 60-bail rotary shed. McCabe’s daughter, Susan, and husband Jared contract-milk on the farm. Last season the farm produced 650,000 kilograms of

milksolids from 1320 cows. This season’s target is 600,000kg from 1370 cows (they are running 40 per cent heifers this season.

“This is our fifth year milking, so we’d been leasing some cows. But now we own the whole herd and we’re fully self-contained,” says McCabe.

He and wife Jill also own a 130ha farm at Maheno where they grow grass, barley and fodder beet. as well as contract grazing 1000 cows through winter.

The pair also own a contracting business, North Otago Ditching and Baling, which Merv started in 1990. He helped introduce square balage into the area, The company also does tractor work, ploughing, drilling and earthworks as well as grass and hay bales. It employs 12 staff, and works in the area from Herbert and to Twizel.

Son David and his wife Jacqui now handle the day-to-day running of the baleage side of the business. leaving Merv free to look after the earthworks and operational side of the business.

The McCabes also own North Otago Ag Centre, which sells tractors, mowers, balers and silage wagons.

“My wife keeps telling me I’m doing too much and I need to do less,” says Merv. “But I continue to enjoy the challenges.”

Business Rural

PRODUCE » Pyper’s Produce

| 59

NI shortage good news for SI spuds Jo Bailey

Six-year-old Jake Eden, from Balfour, won the junior (eight and younger) herdsperson section with his south devon calf, Java Jade. at the Wanaka A & P Show.

Photo: Jodie Rainsford.

Northerner wins Glammies award at Wanaka Show A highlander/primera/texel cross entry from southern Hawke’s Bay has carried off the coveted “Glammies’ lamb award for 2015. Dannevirke farmer Hamish Buchanan’s lamb was named grand champion at the Wanaka A & P Show.

The Zoetis Beef + Lamb New Zealand Golden Lamb Awards aim to find the country’s tenderest and tastiest lamb. More than 150 entries were whittled down to 20 finalists by testing at Carne Technologies; the finalists were then tasted at Wanaka The judging panel, headed by chef Graham Hawkes, also included kayaker Lisa Carrington, former rower Georgina Earl (Evers-Swindell), mountain-biker Sarah Walker, food-writer Lauraine Jacobs, and B+L ambassador chef Reon Hobson.

The retail-champion title which went to Countdown Meat & Livestock with its suffolk/ southdown cross from Grafton Trust, Timaru.

Results: Grand champion: Hamish Buchanan (Dannevirke) – highlander/primera/texel, processed at Alliance Dannevirke.

Best of breed, traditional: Don & Brigette Morrison (Gore) – romney/growbulk processed at Alliance Lorneville 1; Annie & Graham Carmichael (Matiere) – romney, processed at Taylor Preston 2; Andrew & Tracy Paterson (Omakau) – polwarth, processed at Silver Fern Farms Fairton 3; Fraser & Sara Briant (Gisborne) – coopworth, processed at Silver Fern Farms Takapau.

Best of breed, crossbreed: Bruce & Gaye

Lamb (Tokanui) – romney/southdown/poll dorset), processed at Silver Fern Farms Waitane 1; Robbie & Bill Gibson (Cromwell) – merino/southdown), processed at Ashburton Meat Processors 2; Hamish & Miriam Mackay (Gore) – romney/texel, processed at Alliance Lorneville 3; Don & Brigette Morrison (Gore) – growbulk, processed at Alliance Lorneville, 4.

Best of breed terminal cross: Hamish Buchanan (Dannevirke) – highlander/primera/texel, processed at Alliance Dannevirke 1; Richard Morrison (Marton) – ezicare, processed at Taylor Preston 2; Don & Brigette Morrison (Gore) – growbulk/charollais), processed at Alliance Lorneville 3; Lynley & Matt Wyeth (Masterton) – highlander/primera, processed at Silver Fern Farms Takapau, 4.

Best of breed open: Toby & Amelia Williams (Gisborne) – romney/suffolk, processed at Progressive Meats Hastings 1; Boyd Manson (Invercargill) – highlander/blackface composite, processed at Silver Fern Farms Waitane 2; Tim & Laura Williams (Clinton) – growbulk, processed at Alliance Lorneville 3; James & Liane Crutchley (Palmerston) – romney/texel, processed at Lean Meats Oamaru 4.

Retail: Countdown Meat & Livestock – suffolk/ southdown, supplied by Grafton Trust, Timaru) 1; Countdown Meat & Livestock – suffolk/southdown), supplied by Grafton Trust, Timaru 2; Chef Ready Meats Hamilton – texel/romney, supplied by Rawlinson, Stratford 3; Nosh Food Market, Black Rock Butchery – romney/dorset, supplied by Laird Farm, Wanganui 4.

Large-scale Southland potato and carrot grower Pyper’s Produce is surviving the challenging summer season better than most.

“An unusually wet spring held us up at planting time, but the warm weather over summer caught things up again,” says Brendan Hamilton, who with business partner Brent Lamb, owns the company, With a nationwide potato shortage caused by poor crops in the North Island, it has been a good season to maintain regular production.

“The shortage has had the biggest impact on potato processors, and to a lesser extent, the fresh market in the North Island,” says Hamilton.

“We grow predominately for the fresh market in the South Island, but have been sending potatoes to the North Island since late November.”

Pypers Produce released its new season

carrots around Christmas time, and its new-season potatoes were out in stores by the end of January.

The firm is a category grower for Foodstuffs, filling its Fresh Express and Pam’s potato and carrot bags for New World, Pak ‘N Save and Four Square stores.

Pyper’s products are also sold under the grower’s own branding through supermarkets around the South Island.

And, says Hamilton, the company has a thriving export market for its fresh carrots.

“We export about 5000 tonnes of carrots each year, mainly to Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Japan through our agents, Harvest Fresh.”

He says they are “in the very early stages” of trialling fresh potato exports.

“Last year we sent a couple of tonnes to

Photos: Pyper’s potatoes and carrots are sold under the company’s own brand in the South Island.

Pypers also exports about 5000 tonnes of carrots to Malaysia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Alex McDonald and its contracted seed potato growers produce high health seed potatoes for the New Zealand fresh market, crisping and french-fry sectors.

Seed potatoes are also grown for markets in the South Pacific and Thailand.

Unit 3, 7 Sir Gil Simpson Drive, Burnside, Christchurch | P.O. Box 29184, Christchurch 8540, New Zealand Phone: +64 3 358 3390 | Fax: +64 3 358 3391 | Email: lloyd.hickman@clear.net.nz

www.almac-nz.com

Megan Claxton hands out tastings of the lamb topside that was judged in the Glammies finals.

• To page 64

60 |

Business Rural

PRODUCE » Pyper’s Produce

Target: Get the onions right • From page 63 Malaysia where there is some interest in washed potatoes, and we may look at pursuing this market a bit more this year.”

Pypers Produce is based at Branxholme, on the outskirts of Invercargill.

The firm produces around 11,000 tonnes of carrots each year from 220 hectares, and just over 7000 tonnes of potatoes from 130ha.

Around 80 per cent of its growing land is leased, mainly from Southland sheep farmers.

The use of GPS on cultivation tractors has improved efficiency and accuracy at planting time, says Hamilton.

“It has definitely sped up planting, which is useful during spring when the unpredictable weather can give us only small windows of opportunity to get in the paddock.”

He says staff are experimenting with growing early-season carrots and onions in Central Otago, an operation overseen by Nelson Pyper, who with his wife, Roseanne, founded Pyper’s Produce in the early 1970s.

Brendan Hamilton and Brent Lamb were longstanding employees of the company before they took ownership in 2007 on the Pypers’ retirement.

“Although no longer financially involved in the company, Nelson still has a strong passion and expertise for growing things and gets a lot of enjoyment out of looking after the Central Otago operation for us,” says Hamilton. “ The next challenge is to get the onions right, and with Nelson’s help, we’re pretty close.”

Both of the current owners started with the firm in 1999, Hamilton as a labourer, and Lamb as a mechanic.

“We progressed through the business and when it came time for Nelson and Roseanne to sell, they

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came to the conclusion we had the right attributes to take the business forward.”

Hamilton says they are “quite different guys” which is what makes the partnership work.

He manages the carrot growing and processing operation, with Lamb looking after the potato growing and processing.

They have around 65 staff, which can exceed 80 during the busy export season.

“We’ve increased staff numbers by around 20 since we took over and have some very good people around us, which is a key part of the

Brendan Hamilton (left) and Brett Lamb stared work with Pyper’s Produce in 1999, They are now business partners and own the business. They are “quite different guys, says Hamilton, adding that that’s what makes the partnership work business. Our focus is on driving the business forward and expanding it.”

Although growing large volumes of produce, quality remains critical for the firm, he says.

“We are always trying to improve and innovate.

It’s not just about volume. Quality is the most important ingredient because that is ultimately what sells.”.

PHIL COLLINSON

Phone 0274 480 270 PO Box 5205, Waikiwi Invercargill 9843 Email p.collinson@kinect.co.nz

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We are always trying to improve and innovate.

It’s not just about volume.

Quality is the most important ingredient because that is ultimately what sells.

PRODUCE » Thomas Bros Ltd

Business Rural

| 61

Motueka-based Thomas Bros Ltd (above right) has bought another four farms, including an additional cool store and packhouse (aboveleft). The family-run business now has seven cool stores and two packhouses, and plans to build another two cool stores this year.

Grower ramps up production Karen Phelps The kiwifruit industry will face challenges in the next two to three years as new kiwifruit varieties reach maturity, predicts Bill Thomas, from Motueka-based Thomas Bros Ltd. To address the issue, his company has just bought another four farms, taking the family enterprise from a total of 50 hectares of kiwifruit and 50ha of apples to 62ha of each fruit.

The purchase also involves an additional cool store and packhouse, which gives the company a total of seven cool stores and two packhouses, with plans to build an two more cool stores this year.

“New kiwifruit varieties such at gold 3 (G 3) will this year take our production from 9000 export trays per hectare to 16,000–17,000 trays,” says Thomas.

“The purchase of these farms will help us address this problem in terms of processing and packing capacity.

“G 3 matures earlier, which clashes with the last of the apple crop. We will process the apples in the main packhouse until early April, then move into kiwifruit production while the last of the apples are finished off in the new packhouse.

“We’ll be going day and night over that six to eight-week period to get the kiwifruit done.”

The purchase will also help the company spread its risk, he says, A bad hailstorm last season saw extensive damage to the company’s apple crop and investing

The fact that it’s a real family story is its great strength. more in kiwifruit helps reduce this risk, says Thomas.

Thomas Bros Ltd is a fifth-generation business.

The family bought the original block of 2023ha in 1856 to run a sheep-and-cattle operation. More land was added and, eventually, the Thomases moved into growing tobacco.

When a hailstorm wiped out the first crop, they decided to look into other crops.

Kiwifruit was first planted in 1978. Bill and his brother, Fred, bought the company a year later.

In 1984 their desire to remove the middleman from the process saw the brothers build their first packhouse. A hailstorm led them to move into apples to spread the risk and also get fuller use of their packhouse.

Thomas Bros Ltd grows mainly royal gala and braeburn apples as well as ENZA varieties jazz and envy.

Fifteen thousand trees of a new variety, koru, have also been planted.

“It’s an apple that was found by accident in someone’s backyard,” says Thomas. “A rotten fuji apple was thrown into a garden, and a pip from an apple can result in all sorts of interesting mutations.

“A tree grew and was given to a nursery to

propagate, and it’s a winner. We are getting around $50 per carton in the market, twice as much as we get for royal gala and braeburn.

“Tonnes per hectare are way up and the United States market loves them, so it looks very promising.”

Kiwifruit is exported through Zespri and G3; it is sold to the public under the brand name, SunGold, and will also have a higher retail value, he says.

As well as growing and packing its own crops, Thomas Bros offers a contract-pack-and-cool service to third parties for kiwifruit and apples. The company’s facilities can pack 3000 fruit per minute.

The business also grows 2.5ha of cherries, 1ha of asian pears and 1ha of european pears.

The cherries are sold direct to the public under the Thomas Bros brand and made into ice cream under the Real Fruit brand.

A number of Bill and Fred Thomas’s family worki in the business.

“The fact that it’s a real family story is its great strength,” says Bill.

“We want there to be room in the company for other family members to become shareholders if they wish, and that’s another reason why we just keeping expanding and buying properties.”

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62 |

PRODUCE » Webb Orchards

Business Rural

New generation at the helm of historic orchard Kelly Deeks For 100 years, the Webb stonefruit and pipfruit orchard has occupied the same sunny slopes on the outskirts of Cromwell, which is reputed its fruit growing reputation and often referred to as ‘the fruit bowl of the south’.

Webb’s Fruit celebrated 100 years in business on December 6 last year, with a grand opening of the company’s new roadside stall on the orchard frontage to State Highway 6, the main road between Queenstown and Wanaka.

Webb’s Fruit was established by J .R.Webb, who bought the then 10-hectare orchard in 1914.

His great grandson, Simon Webb, went into partnership in the orchard with his parents, John and Ainsley, and his wife, Trudi, in 2003; he and Trudi bought the business outright in 2012.

“I have been brought up on the orchard all my life,” Simon Webb says.

“When I finished school I gained a post-graduate diploma in applied science, then worked for a year in Canada at Dendy Orchards. This was a large cherry and apple orchard and packing facility, and I learnt different management techniques.

“I also spent a year with Empire World Trade, an apple importer in the United Kingdom, which gave me a different aspect of the fruit business. I got to understand the standards the supermarkets wanted, the need for fruit quality, the importance of good infrastructure, and the necessity for building relationships with buyers.”

On returning to the family business, he found it easy to get ahead of himself, getting big ideas while talking to industry stalwarts who would fill him with enthusiasm.

“Unfortunately, sometimes being financially prudent seems to get in the way of a good idea,” he says. “With a measured approach we took some of the ideas and been did a capital development

Webb’s fruit owner Simon Webb, great grandson of JR Webb, who first established the orchard in 1914. project every two to three years. In this way we were able to keep the bank and my father happy, while still progressing the business forward.

“This also allowed us to have the ability to take advantage of opportunities if the right ones arise, and to continue our planning.”

He says one of his biggest enjoyments is seeing things done properly. Since 2003 Webb’s Fruit has built a new packing shed, and has planted or replanted a couple of good sized blocks.

“We have a mixture of the tried and true which is going to put the fruit in the box, and something new with an element of risk and perhaps also a greater return.

“This involves putting time and effort into a project with all the hard work over the years until you get that product in a box and to the consumer.

The development of these goals, achieving and then refocusing on new aspirations for the target, keeps you going.”

John Webb opened the fruit stall in the 1970s.

Passers-by can now call in to a bigger and brighter version selling the same, purpose-picked fruit.

The new stall has a historic look with a large

• To page 71

A happy picker gives the thumbs up at Webb’s orchard in Cromwell.

With over 30 years experience our family owned & operated business specialises in earthworks.

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PRODUCE » Oregon Nurseries

Business Rural

| 63

Edible forest fungi viable alternative Kelly Deeks Oamaru-based Oregon Nurseries is one of four companies developing new ways of cultivating edible ectomycorrhizal mushrooms (EEMM) such as truffles and the saffron milk cap, and to provide pre- and post-planting management advice.

Edible Forest Fungi New Zealand, Chowbent, Truffles, Mushrooms Consulting Ltd (owned by New Zealand truffle industry pioneer Ian Hall) and Oregon Nurseries have developed the De Licio brand of truffle and mushroom mycorrhiza-infected seedlings to help change pasture or forests into a viable truffle or mushroom producing crop.

Oregon Nurseries manager Kevin Fearn says the group aims to provide plantation forestry owners and lifestyle farmers with the opportunity of producing an annual crop of truffles or edible mushrooms in plantations that otherwise would not produce significant income until the trees are felled.

“We anticipate that forests producing significant income are less likely to be felled early, and this may have positive implications for the accumulation of carbon credits.”

He says other reasons to become involved in New Zealand’s rapidly growing truffle and mushroom industry include pioneering.

“This is a relatively young industry in New Zealand and, so far, it has been through the efforts of several determined individuals and the possible rewards are being seen.”

“A successful EEMM crop will offset the cost of establishing the plantation and, under some circumstances, the harvested truffles or mushrooms may exceed the value of the timber.

“Even modest quantities of truffles and mushrooms may be sufficient for a grower to be able to delay felling a plantation until timber prices are optimal.”

While financial rewards can vary, and truffle yields tend to be lower per tree than the other edible mushrooms, truffle prices can be much higher and well in excess of $NZ3000 per kilogram Fearn says New Zealand’s first commercial saffron-milk cap plantations produced their first mushrooms 18 months after planting in 2001.

Production is now up to 6kg per tree, with the mushrooms selling for $NZ30/kg.

Many of the host trees for mycorrhizal mushrooms also produce quality timber or edible nuts, so there is also the opportunity for double cropping.

Outside of fungi, Oregon Nurseries’ work is centred mainly around growing forestry, shelter, and native trees and shrubs, plus amenity species.

The company runs a large complex set up for containerised forestry, and in recent years has expanded into native and ornamental trees.

“We supply a lot of trees to our region, from big forestry blocks, to shelter belts for farms, right through to a shrub for the garden,” Fearn says. “We cater for a wide range of needs...other nurseries, forestry, re-vegetation, home gardens.”

• Oregon Nurseries manager Kevin Fearn says forest plantations are capable of earning significant income from edible mushrooms and truffles.

New fruit varieties way forward • From page 70 verandah and all of the Webbs’ old fruit grading equipment on display inside.

The riper and sweeter pieces of fruit are picked for the roadside stall, then either cool-stored until needed or pre-ripened at ambient temperature for a day or two before being sold.

“It is great to see the customers’ reactions to having juice dripping down their chin, and the constant comment of ‘you don’t get fruit like this in the supermarket’,” Simon Webb says.

His great grandfather’s legacy continues at

Webb Orchards with some plum, pear, and apple trees on the property more than 100 years old.

“We’ve always been a mixed orchard, growing apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines, apples, and pears, and over the years the varieties have continually changed,” he says. “As a variety gets old, it starts to produce less fruit, so when we look at replacing those varieties we talk to the marketers, plant importers, and nurserymen and find the best thing that’s going to carry on into the future.”

He says the newest varieties handle better and store longer than older varieties, and look a lot nicer as well.

Congratulations Webbs Orchard Wishing Simon and the team many more fruitful years Cromwell 29 The Mall · 03 445 0616

Wanaka 38 Ardmore St · 03 443 8717

Truffle prices often exceed $3000 per kilogram.

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64 |

PRODUCE » Sarita Orchard

Business Rural

All the cherries in one basket Neil Grant

A Sarita staff worker helps with the cherry harvest.

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In the old gold sluicings near Cromwell there are fruit trees that have probably been there since the 1860s. What fruit they produce are rubbish, but their tenacity is testament to the Cromwell Basin’s suitability for orcharding.

When the Clyde Dam was built and water for irrigating became more readily available, the parched, scabby flats surrounding Cromwell were transformed. Family orchards in suitable pockets had been producing excellent fruit for years, but water from Lake Dunstan saw the establishment of syndicates with sufficient capital to plant large areas in stone fruit, apples and pears, and cherries.

Sarita Orchard is one of these orchards. In 1982, it had a mix of nectarines, peaches, apricots and cherries. Ten years ago, the company decided to concentrate on cherries. Competition in stone fruit from Australia was behind that change.

“We’re certainly putting all our eggs in one basket,” says Duncan Mathers, who has been orchard manager for 24 years. “But by growing early and late varieties as well, we are managing the risk.”

Originally they had grown dawson, bing, and stella varieties. The season ran from just before Christmas to the second week in January. As the stonefruit blocks were cut out, they planted new cherry varieties – there are now 19. Burlatt and gloheart are earlies, coming on stream around December 4. Others, such as kordia and staccato take picking right through to perhaps January 29.

The Cromwell Basin has all the right attributes for cherries: long hot dry summer days to ripen the fruit, generally cooler evenings so that the fruit are not damaged when being picked next day, cold winters ensuring healthy trees and good bud initiation.

The two-month picking season is pretty hectic.

Staff at this time can build to 130 pickers, graders packers and shop staff.

“A lot are backpackers,” Mathers says. “They have holiday work permits. We get Chinese, Germans, French, Malaysians, Taiwanese and people from Hong Kong. We have a website, and a lot apply on line. Social media helps us gain staff.

A lot of texting goes on.

“We employ Kiwis too: students, and older people who come in their motor homes. We have a wee camping ground with power points. Others stay in the chalets or in homestays.

“Most people have some level of English, so there’s not too much sign language. We have training systems showing staff how to pick, move

Proud to have supported Duncan and the team at Sarita Orchard since 1983

Photos: Staff from around the world help pick, grade and pack Sarita Orchard cherries. ladders, grade to a standard or sort at a rate that’s economical.”

The free-trade agreements the New Zealand government has signed with countries such as China and Korea have helped with staff recruitment, as well as opening up markets for the company.

Sarita tries for 80 per cent of its sales to go overseas: mainly to China, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Fruit is mostly air freighted, but occasionally goes in containers by ship.

The remaining 10 months of the year are not spent idly. Major pruning takes place in the summer,

minor pruning and thinning in the winter, and spraying at various times keep the eight permanent staff occupied.

Concentrating on one crop may seem to have its dangers, but a former bank agribusiness manager and now orchardist, Malcolm Little, is reported in the Otago Daily Times showing per-hectare returns of 10-15% on cherry orchards outstripping dairying at 8-9% and contract grape growing at 6-7%. \ “Low debt levels have a lot to do with survival,” Mathers says. “We can sell our product only as fresh fruit. Winemakers can keep their product for years.”

Servicing Queenstown, Wanaka, Cromwell and Alexandra McNulty Road, Cromwell Phone 03 445 0746 • Mobile 029 445 0746 • Fax 03 445 0747

Business Rural

PRODUCE » Oakley’s

| 65

Beetroot gets a makeover Jo Bailey As the owner of Oakley’s Fresh Premium Vegetables, one of New Zealand’s larger horticultural businesses, Robin Oakley doesn’t usually spend much time shifting irrigation on the 300 hectares of crops his firm grows each year.

But, given the tinder-dry summer conditions and critical supermarket contracts to meet, he was in the field with his staff every day for a month over December and January as they worked to keep the crops going.

“We were out at 7am each morning, and often not back at night until 7pm or 8pm. The only day we had off was Christmas Day. You do what you need to do to keep things going.”

Oakley’s grows potatoes, beetroot, broccoli and pumpkin, with the majority of its products sold through Foodstuff’s Pak ‘N Save, New World and Four Square supermarkets.

He says Oakley’s got through the peak of watering by late January, when the new-season potatoes were close to finishing.

“The main work was done with the spuds by then, and our beetroot stand was also looking good.

We had to keep water on the broccoli for a while after that though.”

The pumpkins were the only crop to be badly affected by the dry conditions, he says.

“Our pumpkin yields were a bit down. The crop missed a couple of weeks’ water and went into the ground two or three weeks late, so was a bit drier from the start.”

The firm used to grow parsnips, but stopped when they became unprofitable, he says.

“The energy and resource they took up versus the return and reliability wasn’t worth it, so we decided to focus more on beetroot and get better at growing that.”

Vegetables are processed and packed in the firm’s own packing and cool-storage facilities. Its produce is marketed under brands such as Fresh Express, Lucky, Purple Heart and Golden Gourmet, a gourmet potato launched to the market in 2012 after five years of intensive trialling.

“The Golden Gourmet is going very well.

Although it is a niche market sales are good and we get a lot of positive feedback from consumers.”

Oakley says the firm’s current focus is to improve the marketing of its pre-packaged beetroot.

“We’re in the process of changing our packaging from plain bags with a sticker to more upmarket printed bags.”

Other initiatives include the addition of its own truck and trailer to the fleet, which has enhanced

PHOTOS: Upper right: Workers grade potatoes at the Oakley’s packing facility. Below: A a tractor seat view of crops Oakley’s has introduced GPS technology to get the right widths and straight rows at cultivation time

delivery from the paddock to the shed and enabled Oakleys to provide refrigerated transport to some of its customers.

Most of the land farmed by Oakleys is leased.

However the firm has bought an additional 90 hectares in the past 12 months, and hopes to buy more land as finances allow.

It has also taken a long-term lease on a 60ha block at Amberley, in North Canterbury, which is working well despite the distance from home base at Southbridge.

“The climate at Amberley is slightly better for winter production,” says Oakley. “We’ll grow all our winter broccoli there, as well as a few early-season potatoes.”

The firm has the equivalent of 30 full-time staff, with the biggest change a growing reliance on holiday workers.

“We take on a lot of backpackers and travellers to do the picking work, and we have a few working the packhouse as well. They tend to be pretty motivated and want to earn money. We’d struggle to get the work done without them.”

Oakleys also grows around 100 hectares of arable crops such as barley, maize and Watties peas.

Robin Oakley says his focus is to continue to refine the operation to “do what we’re doing smarter”.

“We trying to get the highest possible recovery rates out of the crops and looking at ways we can use innovation or technology to gain a bit more efficiency.

“One of the ways we’re doing this is through the introduction of GPS to get the right widths and straight rows at cultivation time.”

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66 |

PRODUCE » Meadow Mushrooms

Business Rural

Fungi business Jo Bailey

Harvested Portabello mushrooms (top) and the smaller button mushrooms in the growing room at bottom.

The latest expansion at Meadow Mushrooms’ Christchurch facility has provided new jobs and significantly increased production.

An extra 37,000 kilograms of fresh white mushrooms each week have been produced since July 2014 at the company’s Hornby mushroom farm, following a $12 million extension.

Meadow Mushrooms has also added a further 60 jobs to what is one of New Zealand’s largest horticultural enterprises.

This project follows the $45m production-facility expansion undertaken by the company on site in 2011. This included the addition of new growing rooms with the latest technology, new packing facilities, a compost yard and new staff facilities.

Marketing manager Debby Chiplin says Meadow Mushrooms is constantly looking at innovations for its operations – the latest is a shed-lighting system called Safebright LED. “When we found the industry standard fluorescent lights (which are housed in a sealed glass tube) weren’t performing to our standards, our engineers came up with an alternative they dubbed Safebright.”

Problems with the company’s former fluorescent lights included high running costs, limited lifespan, and the fact they had to be imported from the Netherlands.

The lights were also prone to exploding if they came into contact with one of the motorised picking carts in the growing rooms, contaminating surrounding mushroom shelves and causing hours of down time and product loss.

Meadow Mushrooms’ engineering department developed the non-glass, LED prototypes over an 18-month period; they were fine-tuned by Talbot Technologies before moulds were developed for mass production.

The lights were designed to fit into the attachment clamps already in the sheds, and

required a special enclosure to enable them to withstand extreme temperatures and humidity.

A fibre-filled material was used for the end caps, and a special opaque light transmitting material was sourced from Germany by a local extruder, EPL Innovation.

“The development of Safebright is a real success story,” says Chiplin.

The company employs around 500 staff across its entire operations – Hornby, where its main growing farm and head office are based; its original Prebbleton base; Miranda Laboratories, where spawn is produced; Emma Foods, where mushrooms are processed for canning; and Giggs Farm, at Norwood, where the essential compost is produced.

Fresh white button mushrooms account for three-quarters of all sales, ahead of portabellos (large open brown mushrooms) and swiss browns (brown buttons – or immature portabellos).

All of the company’s fresh products are available domestically, and only a small percentage of its production exported.

Meadow Mushrooms also produces addedvalue products such as canned mushrooms in brine and sauces.

Growing mushrooms is a highly technical science, as they require very specific conditions, says Chiplin.

Decisions are constantly being made by the company’s production experts to ensure a good quality, high yielding crop.

A study carried out in conjunction with Plant and Food Research at Lincoln University last year revealed that mushrooms contain extremely high levels of vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin B and the all-important selenium.

A serving of brown portobello mushrooms delivers 102 per cent of the estimated safe and adequate daily dietary intake of biotin (vitamin B), while a serving of white button mushrooms provides 81% of the estimated safe and adequate daily dietary intake

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“Gypsum increases the flocculation of certain chemicals in the compost, and they adhere to straw or hay rather than filling the pores (Holes) between the straws. A side benefit of this phenomenon is that air can permeate the pile more readily, and air is essential to the composting process for mushrooms”. Mushroom grower.

Gypsum is particularly useful for treating heavy (clay) soils where it is used to improve texture, drainage and aeration. And being a naturally occurring mineral ensures that Gypsum complies with all current organic production regulations. Gypsum is one of those rare materials that performs in all categories of soil treatment: an amendment, conditioner and fertiliser.

It is useful in the transition period in dairy cows 2 – 4 weeks pre & post calving, and can be used as an anionic salt to counteract the effects that high potassium & sodium concentrations have on increasing hypocalcemia.

Gypsum - a readily available form of calcium, is 100 times more soluble than lime and is more suitable for the digestive system during this period. Gypsum also has applications in the remediation of soil that has been damaged through compaction (heavy stock, machinery), in the recovery of sub-soils exposed by earth movement (contouring, slippage) and in soils affected by salinity (estuarial berms, dairy effluent).

Business Rural

PRODUCE » Meadow Mushrooms/ViBeri

| 67

mushrooms The study also revealed that mushrooms are a good source of other B vitamins, potassium, copper, phosphorous and the antioxidant ergothioneine, as well as being low in calories, fat and sodium.

Even the by-product from mushroom growing has potential as a high-value soil enhancer for Canterbury cropping farmers.

Trials of spent mushroom compost, also carried out in conjunction with Plant and Food Research, showed encouraging results with forage crops – increased bio-mass and indications of improved yield for grain crops.

Meadow Mushrooms continues to promote its products to the New Zealand hospitality sector. One one of its more high-profile initiatives is the annual Grand Entrée event, which started in Christchurch in 2001 but moved to Wellington after the Canterbury earthquakes.

Restaurateurs and chefs are invited to create a mushroom dish to compete for a cash prize and a month’s supply of mushrooms. There is also a prize for the best front-of-house.

The 2015 calendar has been extended to include the Auckland Grand Entrée to be held in October as well as the Wellington event in April.

“We get a huge amount of interest in the competition,” says Chiplin.

The New Zealand public also needs little convincing when it comes to the choosing the nutritious and delicious mushroom, says Meadow Mushrooms chief executive officerJohn Barnes.

“New Zealanders consume an average of two kilograms of mushrooms per person each year, and demand continues to increase,” he says.

“The annual growth of sales has been consistent since the launch of Meadow Mushrooms in the early 1970s, and we expect this to continue.”

New packing facilities (top) and growing rooms (above) at Meadow Mushrooms’ Hornby facility. An extra 37,000kg of fresh white mushrooms each week have been produced since July 2014, following a $12 million extension.

NZ berry packs healthy punch • From page 68

Growing Products

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We own and manage our own peat resource situated in Southland, New Zealand. This enables the company to select the right grade of peat for the customer’s requirements.

Fax: +64 3 230 3084

We can custom manufacture potting and growing media mixes to the customer's specific requirements, these mixes are peat and bark based.

e: sales@tnzgrow.co.nz

antioxidants, anthocyanins, which are responsible for the berry’s rich, purple colour.

“It used to be blueberries, but now word is getting out that blackcurrants, and in particular those grown here in New Zealand, hold far more health benefits. They actually have more than twice the level of anthocyanins than blueberries.”

These small yet powerful berries are also known to assist with circulation, cardiovascular health, eye health and vision, kidney health, exercise recovery, healthy bacteria in the gut, and immune function.

With many New Zealand products made using berries sourced from overseas, the South Island speciality food company is also ensuring New Zealanders can source the best produce, grown right here at home.

“We’re the only large-scale, organic blackcurrant growers in New Zealand, and we have the only 100% New Zealand certified organic berries of any sort available in supermarkets nationwide,” Howey says. “Most ‘organic’ berries are imported from countries like Chile and China.”

ViBeri has four products available to suit a range of tastes and recipes.

• Snap-frozen organic blackcurrants come straight off the orchard to keep all the goodness packed inside.

• Freeze-dried or soft-dried organic blackcurrants are for cereals, smoothies, salads, and nut mix.

• Chocolate-covered organic blackcurrants are rolled in the highest grade, 70 per cent cacao organic Belgian chocolate, a superfood in its own right packed with healthy chemicals like flavonoids and theobromine.

• The ViBeri blackcurrant range is available nationwide in supermarkets and health-food stores.

It is 100% organic, gluten free, vegan, with no GMO, preservatives, or additives.

ViBeri takes the product from paddock to plate, with a new packing shed built on State Highway 8 in Pleasant Point just before Christmas 2014, in time for the harvest which began just after New Year’s Day. The Howeys have other business interests in South Canterbury, including vegetable and grain growing operation Alpine Fresh, and, more recently, the Meadowlinks farm estate subdivision at Pleasant Point, which is surrounded by the Pleasant Point Golf Club golf course.

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68 |

PRODUCE » ViBeri

Business Rural

Word gets out on blackcurrants Kelly Deeks South Canterbury blackcurrant company ViBeri has the largest commercial, certified-organic blackcurrant orchard in New Zealand.

Since 2011 husband and wife owners Tony and Afsaneh Howey have been producing the ViBeri range of 100 per cent organic, artisan super-foods, created from their freshly picked New Zealand blackcurrants.

The philosophy at ViBeri is about keeping things simple...growing and producing blackcurrant products made the traditional way.

“Blackcurrants have a lot of health-giving properties, with high concentrations of anthocyanins, polyphenolics, antioxidants, and other bioactives,” Tony Howey says.

With the industry driven towards becoming residue-free, the Howeys decided to go one step further and convert their orchard to organic production, with the aim of offering a premium health product.

Not only does that mean no herbicides or pesticides are used on the orchard, it also means no preservatives or additives are used in the ViBeri range.

Howes says New Zealand blackcurrants are a proved super-food, known for their extraordinarily high levels of Vitamin C, and contain an impressive amount of one of nature’s most powerful

• To page 67 PHOTOS: Above: The blackcurrant harvest in full swing at Tony and Afsaneh Howey’s certified organic farm near Pleasant Point. Left: ViBeri products include snap-frozen, organic blackcurrants straight off the orchard, and chocolate-covered blackcurrants, rolled in the highest grade, 70 per cent cacao organic Belgian chocolate.

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