Dairy Exporter February 2020

Learn,grow, grow,excel excel Learn,

February 2021

CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE Moving to carbon zero $12

FEBRUARY 2021

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NEW FORAGE: miscanthus

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

AGRITECH uptake stalled?

Talking onfarm safety WITH CHILDREN

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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70 THE COST OF ONE COW

CONTENTS MILKING PLATFORM 11 Chloe Davidson is already planning the next holiday 12 Trish Rankin hopes townies continue to appreciate farmers 13 Shiralee Seerden pens an emotional goodbye 14 Bridie Virbickas’ unwelcome break

UPFRONT 26 SUCCESS FROM SIMPLE SYSTEMS

15 Agritech: Why aren’t farmers using more agritech onfarm?

22 Global Dairy: Comparing farm systems across Brazil 23 Letter from China: Wine and cheese parties sorted 25 Market View: Dairy prices continue to rise

BUSINESS 26 DBOY: Success from simple systems 31 M bovis at the Lincoln University research farm 33 The Bickers plan for their next 12 years farming.

SYSTEMS 36 Smaller footprint, lower costs 39 CO Diary: Using MaxT next season 54 LIGHTENING THE FARM FOOTPRINT

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41 Scientists call out regen ag

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SPECIAL REPORT

SPECIAL REPORT: Confronting climate change 47 Climate change action for 2021

CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE Moving to carbon zero 47 Climate change action for 2021

57 Simple goal - to farm better

51 Farmplans the way forward

60 Farmers used to living in a bathtub

54 Lightening the farm footprint

46

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

51 Farm Plans the way forward 54 Lightening the farm footprint 57 Simple goal - to farm better 60 Farmers living in a bathtub

ENVIRONMENT 62 Value from fencing and planting 63 Plan, fence, plant 66 Miscanthus could be a winner on West Coast farm

STOCK 68 Vikings proving their worth on dairy farms 70 Vet Voice: The cost of one cow 72 Passion helps to realise potential

YOUNG COUNTRY 76 Kiwi skills sought after in Ireland 80 Cohort of conservation cadets coming 72 PASSION HELPS TO REALISE POTENTIAL

WELLBEING 82 Keep your family safe on and off the farm

DAIRY 101 86 Using silage strategically

SOLUTIONS 88

Controlling pests with IPM precision

89 Nutrition key to onfarm efficiency

OUR STORY 76 KIWI SKILLS SOUGHT AFTER IN IRELAND

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

90 The Dairy Exporter in 1971

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DAIRY DIARY February 15 – Your Farm Business Future workshops continue with February 15 in Northland. The Dairy Women’s Network workshop in partnership with ASB and NZ CA Ltd focuses on succession planning and preparing the next generation into farming and farm ownership. The three-hour workshop runs from 9am to 1pm. Other dates/locations: February 16, Tararua; February 17, Bay of Plenty; February 18, East Waikato; February 24, North Otago. For more information visit https://www.dwn.co.nz/events/.

February 16 – Positive Planning for the Future is a Smaller Milk and Supply Herds (SMASH) workshop in Invercargill. From analysing finances to reproduction and succession, the free event runs from 10am to 1pm at 759 Seaward Downs Gorge Rd. For more information visit https://www.smallerherds. co.nz/smash-events/positive-planning-for-thefuture-invercargill-february-16th/.

February 17 – A body condition scoring workshop is being held on the Hauraki Plains.

To find out more and to register visit https:// www.dwn.co.nz/events/hauraki-plains-bodycondition-scoring/.

February 21 – Entries close for the Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year 2021 award. To make a nomination visit https://www.dwn.co.nz/ fonterra-dairy-woman-of-the-year/.

February 25 – Greater Wellington winners of the Ballance Farm Environment Awards, Kaiwaiwai Dairies, has a field day on the South Wairarapa property. For details about their business visit https://www.nzfeatrust.org.nz and for more details about the field day contact Georgie Cranswick on 021 023 56192.

March 4-6 – Northland Field Days are held near Dargaville. For details go to https:// northlandfielddays.co.nz.

March 8 – Make Time for your People workshops, beginning in Matamata, look at setting the scene around being a great employer and employee, with presenters who are experts in their field. Other dates/locations: March 17, Ashburton; March 18, Winton; March 23, Whangarei; March 30, Dannevirke; April 1, Stratford. For further information visit https:// www.dwn.co.nz/events/make-time-for-yourpeople-waikato/.

March 16-18 – The Next Level leadership and governance programme begins in Palmerston North. Other dates and locations to follow include March 23-25, Hamilton; April 13-15, Dunedin; May 4-6, Christchurch. These are the first modules of the six-month programme that is designed for change makers and aspiring leaders across the rural sector. Find out more at https://www.awdt.org.nz/programmes/nextlevel/.

March 18-20 – Central District Field Days at Manfeild, Feilding. For more details visit https://www.cdfielddays.co.nz.

March 20 – Nominations close for the Fonterra Responsible Dairying Award. The award recognises dairy farmers who are demonstrating leadership in their approach to responsible dairying, have proven results, and are respected by their farming peers and their community. To make a nomination visit https:// www.dairyindustryawards.co.nz/responsibledairying-award/.

March 23-24 – MobileTECH AG is being held at the Distinction Hotel in Rotorua. The annual event brings together technology leaders, innovative developers, early adopters, and the next generation of primary industry operators.

It showcases digital technologies transforming the agricultural, horticultural and forestry sectors. To find out more and to register visit https://mobiletech.events/.

March 24-26 – South Island Agricultural Field Days at Kirwee in Canterbury. For more details visit https://www.siafd.co.nz/.

DIA COVERAGE FOR 2021 Regional awards for the 2021 Dairy Industry Awards, with dinner: Central Plateau: March 2, Rotorua Bay of Plenty: March 4, Awakeri Waikato: March 6, Karapiro Northland: March 9, Whangarei Auckland/Hauraki: March 11, Karaka Canterbury/North Otago: March 16, Wigram West Coast/TOS: March 18, Greymouth Southland: March 20, Invercargill Manawatu: March 24, Palmerston North Wairarapa/Hawke’s Bay: March 25, Masterton Taranaki: March 27, Hawera For more information visit www. dairyindustryawards.co.nz/regions/ March 31 – Entries close for the 2021 Dairy Business of the Year. Entrants undertake a high-level analysis of the KPIs within their business that drive profitability, resilience and sustainability, while benchmarking themselves against their counterparts. To enter, visit https://www.dboy.co.nz.

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agimports.co.nz Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Editor’s note

Confronting climate change

C

limate change – what can we do?

We have managed to work together to keep Covid out of the country: it's taken a lot of work and cost lots of money, but we worked as a team and looked after each other.

So now we turn to climate change – can we do this too?

Can we afford to do nothing?

Last year, New Zealand continued to see warmer than average temperatures – the warmest winter on record and the seventh warmest year on record. Interestingly, of the eight warmest years on record, six have occurred since 2013.

According to NIWA’s Chris Brandolino, 88% of the world experienced above-average temperatures in 2020.

New Zealand also had its share of adverse weather events in 2020: flooding events, low snowfall on Aoraki Mt Cook, and the Motueka Boxing Day hailstorms, along with drought in the upper North Island, with Auckland experiencing 47 dry days in a row.

Expectation over the coming decades is for a warmer climate, a rise in sea level, and in addition to that, more extreme rainfall, he said.

As the earth’s climate becomes more extreme, there will be large parts of the earth that will become not just unpleasant but downright uninhabitable. The inequity of people losing their lives and homes and economies in poor countries will cause potentially massive power struggles and civil unrest.

While things probably won’t be that bad in a temperate country like New Zealand, will our discerning dairy consumers still want to consume our products without the environmental credentials that say we are at least trying to curb our carbon use?

2021 is the year to start the Net Zero Carbon journey, and we have 30 years to get there. Our special report (page 46) lays out how the dairy sector, through He Waka Eke Noa, is going to get there, and how a number of farmers have already started the journey: cutting cow numbers and

One of the great things about going onfarm in Taranaki – finding new relatives! With cousin Colin Foley, Donovan and Sophie Croot in their South Taranaki cowshed.

reducing carbon but retaining production and profitability from more efficient cows.

Donovan and Sophie Croot are actively breeding more efficient cows and planning to sell elite females as a side hustle. (pg72) Harriet Bremner talks about how to get children involved in conversations about safety onfarm, as they need to be taught how to be scouting unsafe practices when they are out there.

Every big job starts with the first step; let’s get walking New Zealand.

NZ Dairy Exporter @YoungDairyED @DairyExporterNZ @nzdairyexporter

Sneak peek MARCH 2021 ISSUE

• Special report: How to add to the milk cheque, by hitting quality assurance targets.

• Building a family business: The Verwey family are building a family dairy empire one farm at a time.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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Protect your farm and your family from Salmonella

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Salmonella is widespread on New Zealand dairy farms and cases are increasing nationwide1.

Striking without warning and spreading quickly, Salmonella can pass from your stock to the ones you care about most.

Vaccinate today to reduce the destructive impact of an outbreak.

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AVAILABLE ONLY UNDER VETERINARY AUTHORISATION. ACVM No: A7886. Schering-Plough Animal Health Ltd. Ph: 0800 800 543. www.msd-animal-health.co.nz NZ-SAL-201200001 ©2020 Intervet International B.V. All Rights Reserved. 1. Surveillance. Vols 41-47, No. 3, September 2014-2020

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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NEW ZEALAND

NZ Dairy Exporter is published

by NZ Farm Life Media PO Box 218, Feilding 4740, Toll free 0800 224 782, www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

NEW ZEALAND

Dairy Exporter Editor Jackie Harrigan P: 06 280 3165, M: 027 359 7781 jackie.harrigan@nzfarmlife.co.nz

ONLINE New Zealand Dairy Exporter’s online presence is an added dimension to your magazine. Through digital media, we share a selection of stories and photographs from the magazine. Here we share a selection of just some of what you can enjoy.

Read more at www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

Sub-editor: Faye Lougher, P: 06 280 3166 Reporters Anne Hardie, P: 027 540 3635 verbatim@xtra.co.nz Anne Lee, P: 021 413 346 anne.lee@nzfarmlife.co.nz Karen Trebilcock, P: 03 489 8083 ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz

DAIRY DIVERSIFICATION AT MT SOMERS STATION

FIELD-TESTING REGEN AG

Andrew Swallow, P: 021 745 183 andrew@falveyfarm.co.nz Chris Neill, P: 027 249 1186 waipuvian@gmail.com Phil Edmonds phil.edmonds@gmail.com

We visited David and Kate Acland at Mt Somers Station where diversification is embedded in their intergenerational business vision. Dairy, beef, deer, sheep and honey, lambswool blankets, two country stores and a winery exporting to 17 countries. The 850-cow dairy conversion has been a key factor in making it all happen adding value without risking the overall business and land.

We visited Rhys and Kiri Roberts at Align farms to see the farm-scale trials they are running on regen ag vs. conventional dairying. They are collecting data on financial, physical, social and animal health metrics to make informed decisions and share with other farmers on the regen farming system.

Check out the Align Farms video on YouTube ‘Dairy Exporter’ channel.

Series 2 Podcast 3 Determining the pregnancy status of your herd via milk can be done as part of your CRV herd test.

Listen to DairyNZ animal and feed developer, Sam Tennent, and CRV herd testing manager Mark Redgate to find out more. www.crv4all.co.nz/podcast/series2-episode3/ Series 2, Podcast 2 In this podcast, Okoroire farmer Floyd Smit joins CRV’s Jenna O’Sullivan and Rosanna Dickson to talk about breeding with Polled genetics. www.crv4all.co.nz/podcast/series2-episode2/ Series 2 podcast 1 Join Rosanna Dickson as she chats with Dr Ky Pohler from Texas A&M University about his findings and how New Zealand farmers can ensure they are mating their cows at the right time. www.crv4all.co.nz/series2-episode1/ 10

MILK PAYOUT TRACKER:

Average $7.24/kg MS

2020/2021 Fonterra forecast price 8 7

$/kg MS

PODCASTS: For all Dairy Banter Podcasts visit www.nzfarmlife.co.nz/tag/dairy-banter

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km-83gw3Al0

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7.50

7.00

7.50 7.00

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Anne-Marie Case-Miller P: 021 210 4778 annieproppy@gmail.com Design and Production: Jo Hannam jo.hannam@nzfarmlife.co.nz Emily Rees emily.rees@nzfarmlife.co.nz Social Media: Charlie Pearson, P: 06 280 3169 Partnerships Managers: Janine Aish Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty P: 027 890 0015 janine.aish@nzfarmlife.co.nz Tony Leggett Lower North Island P: 027 474 6093 tony.leggett@nzfarmlife.co.nz David Paterson South Island P: 027 289 2326 david.paterson@nzfarmlife.co.nz

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CONNECT WITH US ONLINE: www

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Elaine Fisher, P: 021 061 0847 elainefisher@xtra.co.nz

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

MILKING PLATFORM CANTERBURY

Left: The Davidson family enjoying a summer break and not a pair of gumboots in sight.

The importance of being present as a family The importance of being properly present when with your loved ones can’t be overstated. Chloe Davidson comes back from a break with her family already planning the next holiday.

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ife on the farm is always busy with days, sometimes weeks, going by before you realise that while you’ve all been in the same room together, you haven’t spent time together being present, enjoying each other’s company. Distractions such as social media, phones, laptops and the television always seem to encroach on family time unless you make a conscious effort to be present. Don’t get me wrong, there are always trips to be had on the tractor and in the farm ute with Dad, but he is always preoccupied with the job at hand or on a phone call, and well, I’m a stayat-home mum but most of the time I’m also tidying, folding washing, answering emails, working on Roan admin, or being the snack slave for my darling children.

You only have to look at our daily onscreen phone usage to realise where our time goes!

On the odd occasion we do get to leave the farm for an afternoon, there is generally a wash of anxiety on James’s face

as he thinks about what could possibly go wrong in the couple of hours we’re away. The issue with lack of control must be a farmer issue I think! And you just know there are going to be phone checks every 10 minutes for the duration of the afternoon to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. I’m just as bad though, until the door-to-door deliveries have been completed each morning, I check my emails continuously just in case I get an email from a customer saying that their milk hasn’t been delivered. I choose to believe it’s because we care so much, that we are so heavily invested in our business.

After a year of change and stress and keeping the above in mind, I decided that we needed to treat ourselves to a low-key holiday so that we could all be present in each other's company and try and reboot ourselves ready for a much more positive 2021. Now a bit of advice for fellow farm wives, as soon as you get even a slight inkling of commitment regarding a holiday from a farmer, book

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

it straight away because you never know what tomorrow might bring! It was three months out from D-Day so there were definitely a number of conversations about whether it was a good idea or not, but in the end we needed to do it for our family and more importantly, our two little ones.

Because there is such a high level of quality control in our business, we decided that with us being away for a week and unable to control the quality of the product going out to customers, that we would shut the business down for a week.

This took a lot of thought because the loss of earnings would definitely take a toll on our business, but we decided the benefit gained from spending a week together being present outweighed the negatives.

As always when you try and drag a farmer off the farm, the day you leave is never smooth sailing! You aim to leave about 9am but there’s suddenly a huge list of onfarm jobs that got left to the last minute and he is yet to pack his bag, and that leave time gets pushed out a few hours, the stress levels and frustration build, and the trip certainly isn’t beginning on a positive note. This has been the case every single time we have gone anywhere so I’m not sure why I haven’t just adjusted my expectations, but I still seem to think that we’ll be ready to go as soon as we wake up! The old last-minute packing trick didn’t go so well for James this trip though, because he had nothing more than one pair of shorts, two tees and one sweatshirt for a week-long trip haha … no jacket for the predicted weather change and no sneakers for the bike rides we’d planned. Once we were on the road though, nothing else seemed to distract us from the freedom we felt!

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that it was the first time in eight years of being together that James did not worry once about what was going on back at the ranch, he didn’t even make contact with our worker to see how everything was going. For the first time ever, he was 100% present with his family and it was so, so good! We can’t wait to do it all again. We are even going to go one up this year and have one week in winter together and one week in summer! Bring on 2021!

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MILKING PLATFORM TARANAKI

The cycling Rankin family tackled the Timber Trail over the Christmas holidays.

Optimism and possibilities During lockdown Trish Rankin found townies developed a better appreciation for what farmers do.

She asks what the rural sector can do to maintain that view and expand on it.

W

ith the grass still growing at great rates, regular rainfall and crops that have grown to potential, 2021 has started well on our sharemilking job in South Taranaki. November was a month to ignore, but as I write this we are having steady rain; liquid gold at this time of the year.

It is hard to believe that in mid-January last year, I was at Harvard University attending the International Agribusiness Seminar, only to come home and six weeks later be in lockdown. With the sacrifices we made during that lockdown and New Zealand’s positive attitude, we are privileged to be living in relatively normal circumstances.

There is a real optimism that the perceived rural/urban differences may have lessened over the past year as people realised that to survive they 12

need nutritious food. The challenge and possibilities now remain in how we maintain that momentum towards urban loving the rural sector again and vice versa.

Part of this will be in the farmers upskilling in understanding the upcoming legislative changes and possibilities around methane reduction plans, farm environment plans, fresh water and nitrogen plans, and winter grazing plans (and many others), but the challenge I believe we should all be including is the plan to involve, invite, educate, share, socialise… (you get the idea) with the urban population, who need to understand the challenges we face too. I also think a big step ahead for farmers will be in invigorating their networks to share this learning among many.

How is your rural hall going? In many regions, there are organisations that help support the importance of the rural halls.

How about doing an open farm where they are usually well subscribed and often are the only chance for the families of NZ to see what we do? Can you go along and join a townie-based organisation like Lions, Rotary, tennis clubs or craft circles so that if an urban person has a lack of knowledge about farming practices (because they see something on an antifarming promoted Facebook ad) you can help them understand?

Over the holidays we did the Timber Trail 84km bike ride with our kids (on MANUAL bikes, not cheating on e-bikes, hehe), and the conversation at the halfway lodge with townies and people who chose to come to NZ during the Covid pandemic was engaging and they wanted to talk about what we did. They couldn’t believe we could milk 450 cows with just two people or that effluent is a type of fertiliser and is a good thing to help grow grass so we can then reduce synthetic applications … the list could go on of what we discussed. On one hand, you go ‘how can they not know this?’ but on the other, it is a natural opportunity to educate.

What are your optimistic possibilities to spread the good farming word? Invite the townie cuzzies over for a BBQ with your own meat, eggs, milk, and veges and I guarantee they will be impressed and want to know more about what you do.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

MILKING PLATFORM HAWKE’S BAY

Farmers are readily thought of as stoic, but it’s a word I would never use for myself.

The Daggs, aka Seerden family. Photo: ASH Photography.

Uncertainty, stoicism and faith Shiralee Seerden’s cancer diagnosis changed her life in an instant. In her candid final article for the Dairy Exporter, she talks openly about the challenges she and her family now face.

A

t the same time articles were going to print regarding our running two dairy farms, doctors were giving us the news that I have an incurable cancer aggressively spreading, and a time limit was given. Rob’s heart was instantly turned back to myself and family; farming was insignificant. Rob’s ambition of running multiple farms with his family was gone.

Life was transposed fast: Rob’s focus switched from organising farms to fulltime carer for me. I had been sick for many months but life for our family altered forever on 5 December, with new dreams and goals.

We put up all our weaner calves for export, because Rob is unsure how his future is going to look. It may mean selling up and starting something new, so reducing debt is a priority. With export prices three times higher than what we

could possibly get for the weaners in New Zealand, it makes sense at this point.

Talking with both farm owners directly was foremost, with our lives changing dramatically and decisions being made rapidly to overcome the predicament of cancer. We needed them onboard working alongside us, and to our delight they have been fantastic. Unfortunately though this meant Rob could no longer contract milk the 550 cows up the road. With only six months under his belt it was not enough time to get a complete team together that could run the farm in his absence. It wasn’t fair to the staff or to the owner, who has plans for his farm that require somebody with their head fully in the game, so we reluctantly ended our contract a few weeks after my diagnosis in December.

Our eldest son, now held up from traveling overseas, took this opportunity to become 2IC on our sharemilking

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

block with Rob as overseer, relief milker, and homeschooling teacher to our three youngest.

On another positive note, I enjoyed being able to be Rob’s AI assistant as it allowed me to get to know the locals better, as well as having my own annual job for a second year with LIC as a delivery driver. Additionally, this season saw our district with a good non-return rate on an average six weeks of AI. Well above mating expectations from past years, especially considering the Hawke’s Bay drought last season making this spring tough for most.

Farmers are readily thought of as stoic, but it’s a word I would never use for myself.

Yet it’s the term most thrown about while I was in hospital having surgery and pain relief sorted. Now that I look at it, it is the word that best describes how I am coping with everything: ‘we’ll get through this’ and ‘it will be ok’, no matter what the situation. It probably also explains why I was in agony for six weeks while under medical care, because stoic personalities don’t scream their heads off: ‘she’ll be right’, because there’s always someone worse than myself. This mentality is where I think farmers just grin and bear it, when dealing with mental health. All of this is very ironic, because I was asked about stoic farmers and mental health recently in an interview. Of course my narrow mind never put myself as one, and maybe that’s the danger.

I love stories and when people talk about tales of remission I think they’re encouraging, however every time I see the oncologist the news is worse. I don’t have anything common about my cancer.

If I am cured it will be a miracle, and I do believe in these, due to my faith.

I am grateful for the way people both urban and rural have been nothing but generous: dinners and books dropped off, offers of baches and relief milking, balage picked up and stacked, driving me anywhere, and babysitting. Community coming together; empathy isn’t dead.

Thanks for reading our articles, this will be the last.

God bless, Shiralee and Rob. 13

MILKING PLATFORM BAY OF PLENTY

Cow cuddling therapy: a helluva season but good to see Bridie is still smiling.

Not the break I was looking for!

Bridie Virbickas normally has a break during winter but this year the pandemic meant she had to stay home.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a string of events ended up with her milking in a giant splint.

I

usually go overseas during winter to explore the world and have a proper break away from the farm. Obviously Covid put a stop to that, so it seemed like a good year to be stuck here milking all winter.

With the new feed pad and effluent system ready to roll, new staff and a change of staff structure over the two farms, I had high hopes for this season.

The late decision to autumn calve and winter milk put a bit of pressure on, especially during staff changeover. Three full-time staff down to just me for a week or two. But I cracked on and got things done.

When my first new employee started she wondered how the heck I was getting it all done by myself, but you have to achieve a lot when it is only you. Having my mum and dad arrive with food on a regular basis helped immensely!

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Starting off the season so busy was not part of the plan. I envisaged spending lots of time with my new staff and teaching them loads before calving kicked off. All that precious time seemed The ridiculous splint, which I did in to slip away far too fact fit into milking quickly and before we gloves and kept on knew it, we were in the milking! thick of calving.

One down – six weeks into calving my calf rearer handed in her resignation.

Niggly.

Two down – seven weeks into calving my wonderful relief milker who had been with me for four years could no longer milk for personal reasons. I cried.

Three down – eight weeks into calving my farm assistant told me his grandfather

in the UK was sick and he needed to return home. I cried a lot.

Two left standing. It’s mating. We can totally do this.

Four down – 2IC on ACC for three weeks. I cried even more.

One. Left. Standing. Plus a lot of tears.

Super-hero relief milker Kerry swoops in for the rescue. I put one shed on the afternoon AI run and the other on the morning run so I could draft in both sheds.

The end was in sight. Nothing else could possibly go wrong.

When I snapped a tendon in my hand, I didn’t realise it was so serious because it didn’t hurt, I just couldn’t bend my pinky finger. Other than getting hooked on cows’ legs occasionally while milking, it just made me look super posh! After a week and still no movement in my finger, I thought I better go to the physio and he promptly sent me off to A&E (unbeknown to him, not before I quickly shot home to do the afternoon milking!). I left the hospital with my pinky in a horrendously massive overexaggeration of a splint, thinking ‘how am I going to fit this into my milking gloves?’

Just in the nick of time before I had surgery, my new staff arrived, and I had more people than I knew what to do with!

It was a great feeling.

I know how relatable this story will be to a lot of you. This season has taught me how important it is to have a good support network around you and to make sure you have a proper break away from the farm.

There were times when I felt incredibly lonely and wanted to drive away from the farm and just keep on driving. I was exhausted and it seemed like everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

Luckily I have friends and family who knew I was struggling and were there for me.

I dragged mum out of retirement and had her milking every day and also keeping me going with countless big pots of mince.

Dad was out mowing for me every day and doing whatever I could not manage to get done. I cannot thank my mum and dad enough for the support they have given me over this season. Lifesavers.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

UPFRONT AGRITECH

INSIGHT

Why aren’t farmers using more agritech onfarm?

While internet connectivity may be viewed as a barrier to farmers adopting more agritech solutions, Phil Edmonds discovers there are many reasons for New Zealand’s low adoption rate, including technology not being developed with their needs in mind.

A

fresh look is under way into understanding why agritech adoption in New Zealand has not escalated to the same extent that our primary sector exports have. A cursory glance at the unflattering data on uptake suggests farmers are content using tried and tested methods despite the increasing availability of ‘go faster’ solutions. However, ‘tried and tested’ will inevitably start to hold the industry back. The initial thinking on where to get the ball rolling faster is for agritech developers to focus on time-

saving rather than insight solutions, and stop assuming farmers are inherent technophobes.

An analysis of the impact of agritech on the New Zealand economy published last year suggested that New Zealand is underperforming relative to its global peers. While food and fibre exports have grown substantially, the same can’t be said for agritech, which has netted a consistent (rather than accelerating) $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion over the past five years.

The concern over missing out on an opportunity that other countries are

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

capitalising on motivated the government to revitalise its approach.

It established Agritech New Zealand last year and launched an industry transformation plan with an aim to grow the sector by focusing on high value export opportunities to further diversify the New Zealand economy.

It all makes sense. With such a stake in agricultural production, why wouldn’t we want to be better placed to capitalise on a readymade environment where new innovations can emerge and thrive.

But like everything, we need to walk 15

Right: A cow with sensing technology on a collar.

before we can run. And until now that has been the pesky problem – the level of local adoption of agritech has been pretty low.

The analysis in the Aotearoa Agritech Unleashed document estimates that if a range of agritech solutions were fully applied across New Zealand, our primary sector output could be about 21% or $9.8 billion higher than it is. It cited improvements that agritech could make – optimising inputs through variable rate technologies and practices, more timely decision making through monitoring systems, more automation, accelerating genetic gains with objective data, and so on – all of which will be familiar to farmers.

So why is it that farmers have apparently been slow to adopt new solutions and unwillingly to focus on the prize?

Of the four key recommendations made in the report, two are dedicated to finding out the reasons and working on how best to stimulate uptake.

AgriTech NZ chief executive Brendan O’Connell admits we don’t have a great understanding of how widely agritech is being used in New Zealand, and in order to move forward, we need to. It will require some work because it’s a bigger question than simply how much agritech is sold – there’s plenty that has been sold. But some of it is used only seldomly, or it’s sitting at the back of the shed having been neglected.

First off, it’s not just New Zealand farmers who appear sceptical. Digital Pathway to Power, a Rabobank report published last year on unlocking technology in agriculture, referenced a survey of technology adoption in Australia and found that only a small number of farmers had turned data into profit. More specifically, it noted that in the two years to 2019 there had been no improvement in the total proportion of farmers collecting data with sensors. Clearly return on investment was not paying off.

In New Zealand, AgriTech NZ has identified broader barriers than just 16

‘The initial thinking on where to get the ball rolling faster is for agritech developers to focus on time-saving rather than insight solutions, and stop assuming farmers are inherent technophobes.’

profitability. It says adoption is hampered by the unavailability of useful data and analytical support tools, but also infrastructural deficits like connectivity.

There are also trust barriers to overcome.

In terms of the business case for investing in agritech, the influences on a farmer’s decision to proceed are not only about bottom lines – concerns also remain around the relative advantage of adopting new practices, how easily the practice can be learned, and the benefits of new practices compared with existing practices.

Taken as a whole, you can see why it is easy to be fatalistic about the prospects of lifting agritech use onfarm. But simply listing barriers does a disservice to those who are fighting the fight – which the majority of farmers are in at least some way.

O’Connell says he is actually buoyed by the attitude of a large number of farmers contemplating new solutions. “While farmers might be intensely pragmatic and fiercely independent, they’re not

scared of technology. There will always be technophobes, but farmers do seem to be willing to go through a lot of pain if they think they can get value out of it.”

Scott Townshend, chief executive of Trev, a farm reporting platform that captures farm operational data, is seeing plenty of interest in a solution he has partnered with Figured to enable wide access to onfarm data. He also says Covid-19 has made that interest deepen. “During the Covid-19 Scott Townshend.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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“While farmers might be intensely pragmatic and fiercely independent, they’re not scared of technology. There will always be technophobes, but farmers do seem to be willing to go through a lot of pain if they think they can get value out of it.”

lockdown we were lucky to be associated with essential businesses and during that time we started to recognise we were providing a solution for those with onfarm interests who could not travel – owners of sharemilked farms, farm consultants and so on.

“At the same time, we had operations managers who had a little more breathing room to consider new practices. Prior to Covid-19 we hadn’t detected any real lack of interest in adopting technology but last year provided a new desire or incentive to look at agritech solutions. Even just the advent of using Zoom sharpened people’s focus with technology.”

These reflections Andrew Hoggard. dampen the doubts about interest in agritech, but some roadblocks remain that farmers believe will stymie full uptake. At the Primary Industries Summit in November, Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard spoke on digitisation of the primary sector, noting that connectivity remains a clear challenge, with the potential to digitise information not achievable if you can’t connect. Others noted that while connectivity is a problem, greater adoption of agritech is not solely riding on better internet.

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Scott Townshend says it simply depends on what the product is. “If it is IOT (internet of things) technology, then yes, blackspots across the landscape are a barrier. But other farm reporting can be done when coverage permits and not necessarily when you’re out in the paddock. Ultimately we have never encountered a problem where connectivity is a barrier to our business model. For our particular situation it hasn’t been huge.”

Lack of interoperability among solutions is also cited as a drawback. Hoggard says it is huge and needs to be addressed, even if just to open up goodwill among those reluctant to engage. “I have to enter cow numbers into eight different programmes for different organisations. That’s just one piece of information. Surely I should be able to enter it just once.”

Townshend acknowledges that interoperability is relevant, particularly if the value proposition for entering data is not hugely compelling (where the benefits might be more often derived off rather than onfarm).

The issue is also frequently associated, as Hoggard implies, with digitising for compliance rather than digitising for farm management. He suggested that with better interoperability, there could be a more positive attitude towards compliance – if it meant data recorded could be used onfarm to enhance farmers’ own animal welfare and herd management.

Top left: Farmers with technology.

Above: Using iPhone apps to increase their efficiency in their dairy operation.

Compliance is a turn-off in anyone’s mind so any attempt to sell agritech solutions based on benefits that accrue for others is hardly an endearing communication strategy.

O’Connell acknowledges that effective communication on agritech benefits needs to be a priority if the right messages are to be heard. He says a current challenge is trying to make sense of so many people trying to promote so many different offerings.

It makes it difficult to make decisions and informed choices when it is unclear whether a solution will solve one problem and not another. Farmers can be forgiven

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Pasture & Forage News

February 2021

Which species?

Selecting the right pasture species for renewal depends on several factors, in particular how long you want the new pasture to last for.

For example, if the paddock in question is destined for spring crop later this year, you’ll need a six to seven month pasture option, in which case an Italian (Tabu+) or annual (Hogan) ryegrass is the best choice.

Take your time for a good renewal result The basics of pasture renewal never change. This one process is a chain made up of several links, each as important as the next. One weak or broken link will jeopardise the result, even if all the other links are strong.

By ‘jeopardise’, we mean lead to poor pasture establishment, and sometimes, having to do it all again.

So our most important advice for autumn is to allow enough time to make sure all the ‘links’ in the autumn pasture renewal chain are as good as they can be.

That’s the surest way to get the best return from the time, money and land invested in new pasture. To make things easier, we’ve created a check list that covers every step in the renewal process, from start to finish.

You’ll find all the details you need on our website www.barenbrug.co.nz (search ‘renewal checklist’) but for starters, here’s a summary of those critical steps.

Identify poor paddocks. Look for those that currently hold you back in terms of productivity, as well as deliver the best outcome from new pasture.

The best return from investing in pasture renewal is a significant yield and feed quality gain achieved at the lowest cost.

Rectify the reasons for poor performance. If you don’t fix these before renewing, you can end up back where you started. Typical causes include the wrong species, but underlying that might be the likes of poor soil fertility or soil compaction.

Soil test, and correct soil fertility as required. Choose the appropriate sowing date, and if you’re using a contractor to sow, book them in early.

Select the right renewal method for your farm and conditions.

Spray out paddocks prior to cultivation or direct drilling, using herbicides that cover all weeds present (seek advice on this if necessary). If you’re cultivating, prepare a good seed bed.

Pasture seeds are small, and need a well consolidated seed bed.

Choose the correct cultivar(s), and use treated seed to protect new pastures from insect and fungal damage.

Finally, choose the correct sowing rate and technique; don’t forget slug bait if required, and control broadleaf weeds in early establishment.

facebook.com/BarenbrugNZ barenbrug.co.nz 0800 449 955 Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

@BarenbrugNZ

If you’re renewing paddocks which you want to deliver great performance for the next two to three years, sow a hybrid ryegrass (Shogun).

For longer term pastures, the best choice is a perennial ryegrass, such as Maxsyn NEA4, Governor and Viscount NEA4. Check out our website for details on all these cultivars.

In all cases, remember the old adage – you get what you pay for. Cheap seed can be expensive feed! Always buy certified proprietary seed.

There is always a reason something sounds too good to be true, and with cheap seed it may be poor germination, high weed content, minimal endophyte, poor persistence or simply poor genetics.

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‘I do believe that greater adoption of digital tools by the ag sector in New Zealand will lead to a much more sustainable and productive industry.’ for just deciding to wait and avoid being locked into a particular system. O’Connell says it’s not that sellers are being misleading, but the sheer number of voices is definitely an issue.

Possibly one of the key obstacles to greater agritech adoption to date is that what has been created has not been done with farmers in mind. Farmers have not necessarily been consulted on what they actually want and what they’d be willing to invest in.

Hoggard is convinced that agritech solutions, first and foremost, need to be labour-saving. “Farmers are thinking how they can get more information, diagnose animal health issues early, without hiring more people to do mundane tasks.

Anything that will make farming more enjoyable and less of a grind.”

Townshend is acutely aware of this. The Trev reporting platform was developed over nearly six seasons, based on Scott’s experience as a commercial manager on a large central North Island dairy operation, and a determination to capture what farmers actually need.

“When we say the platform requires 10 minutes work a week, we really focus on that. When we have added information, we have to know that it will still take fewer than 10 minutes a week. We know this is central to the value farmers will see in the product.”

Mat Hocken, chair of The Rural Innovation Lab, a collaborative platform supporting farmers and growers to experiment with new technology, says uptake is definitely linked to how farmers can make better use of their time. “It might not be about reducing the number of people onfarm – there are plenty of farm operations still run by one or two people – but time saving is the big one.”

The research into what farmers actually want backs this up. “It’s tools that are labour saving, 20

rather than those that are delivering new knowledge, that are most widely used onfarm,” says O’Connell. “These tools don’t always line up with labour-saving claims (draughting systems, automatic cup removers and so on), but it is often the case that they enable the same number of people to do better work.”

There could be key lessons here for aspiring developers – less about insights, more about task removal. O’Connell acknowledges that “more and more tools are claiming to offer insights, but some might not be hitting the mark”.

Possibly a good example of this, and the focus on farmers’ interest, can be seen in a longitudinal study carried out by DairyNZ into the Mat Hocken. adoption of new technology in herringbone and rotary dairy sheds between 2008 and 2018.

The data shows clearly that automation technologies, including automated cup removers (up from 18% of all sheds in 2008 to 39% in 2018) and automatic drafting (up from 4% to 24%), have increasingly been adopted. However, uptake of information technology in dairy sheds has been much slower – for example electronic milk meters (up from 2% to 8%) and automatic heat detection (up from 0% to 3%).

In terms of stimulating demand, the Aotearoa Agritech Unleashed report suggests mandatory adoption of digital technology for processes that make sense should be contemplated.

Neither O’Connell nor Townshend is convinced compulsion is an adequate strategy to boost adoption in itself.

“The mandatory requirement for cattle to be registered to NAIT did little to encourage farmers to comply, which was

Ben McKerchar – applying just what’s needed when and where it’s needed.

evident following the M bovis outbreak.

Technology can’t be sold on the basis of compliance. The benefits of tools beyond that however, generates a much healthier conversation. Furthermore, knowing that farming is not homogenous, some farmers will run to a new solution, and others away from it. Finding one tool for a mandatory process is difficult,” O’Connell says.

Townshend says there has to be a happy medium between rigid rules and private enterprise working out the best fix for a problem. “It’s not impossible that a tool can be developed effectively that subscribes to frameworked definitions. But I’m sceptical of a compulsion to do it.”

Both, however, remain upbeat about more onfarm tech adoption of its own accord.

“I do believe that greater adoption of digital tools by the ag sector in New Zealand will lead to a much more sustainable and productive industry,” O’Connell says.

“It’s a very rewarding sector to be working in at the moment. It’s getting a lot of attention and we identify well with the growth of the primary industries.”

Townshend is convinced that farmerfocused solutions will become increasingly attractive. “We have tried to ensure the value to the business is there – [solutions] that can be used easily and regularly, and by all people working on the business.

[Farmers can expect] that onfarm data management tools will bring people working on and off-farm closer together, with a shared sense of purpose.

“But I’m sceptical of a compulsion to do it and what that means for innovation.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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GLOBAL DAIRY BRAZIL

Different cattle farming systems yield varying results Transpondo senior researcher and consultant Wagner Beskow compares the performance of five systems based on an ongoing benchmarking study conducted on 73 farms across Brazil.

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n ‘Dairy farming in a land of contrasts’ (August issue, p21), we explained how milk is produced in Brazil, pointed out the main inefficiencies detected, and mentioned the country’s potential. In this article we will compare the performance of five systems, based on an ongoing benchmarking study conducted on 73 farms across the country, run by proactive farmers.

Systems were fully housed cows in free stall (FS) and composting barns (CB); semi-confinements (SC) in the open, with minimal grass offered; intensive grazing with moderate supplementation (IGMS), and grazing with high supplementation (GHS), comparable to New Zealand systems 3 and 5, respectively. Less intensive grazing systems were not present in this group of properties. As shown in the table, housed systems yielded significantly higher per cow and per area performances and were also able to sustain more stock per hectare (all references to area include young stock and the whole land effectively used). Semiconfinements were intermediate between these and the two grass-based systems.

The reliance on high levels of supplementation in GHS tended to lead to deficient feed planning and insufficient control of pasture and grazing parameters

Brazil dairy cows grazing annual summer grass.

(undergrazing, overgrazing, and pugging were commonly found). Operating expenses were noticeably lower in IGMS ($3.94) in contrast with FS ($5.47/kg MS).

Return on capital (ROC) was significantly lower both in FS (3.9%) and GHS (3.2%). FS requires the highest investment of all the systems considered and its higher output was not enough to outperform the other models.

On average, CB and IGMS were the most profitable systems, with 9.4 and 8.4% ROC respectively. A few individual farms of CB, SC, and IGMS achieved 20-25% ROC during the referred period, whereas FS and GHS maximum observed was 5.2% and 15.2% respectively.

KPIs across different dairy farming systems in Brazil This denotes a good potential KPI Type of systems for improvement, even among leading Brazilian dairy FS CB SC IGMS GHS farmers.

PCP (kgMS/cow/year) 794 721 633 540 539 Milk price, input costs, PAP (kgMS/cow/year) 2047 1647 952 933 853 and labour (both cost and availability) were the three 2239 2253 SR (kgLW/ha) 1408 1482 1396 most common concerns 5.47 4.49 OE (NZ$/kgMS) 4.16 3.94 5.09 expressed by farmers, while 3.9 9.4 ROC (%) 7.2 8.4 3.2 consultants found feed planning, financial control, PCP = per cow production; PAP = per area production; SR = stocking rate; OE = operating expenses; ROC = return on capital. see text for systems acronyms. and management decisions 22

more critical than those. Amongst farmers’ main concerns, labour is the one that worries them most, because the current trend is for it to become scarcer and less qualified, though not yet as critical as it seems to be in New Zealand.

Brazil’s labour productivity is very low, ranging from 12-40 cows per labour unit (LU) on most farms (70 are the highest).

An average Kiwi LU does the work of 3.75 Brazilians. Each Brazilian milker costs the equivalent of $9.25/hour, so (times 3.75) one Kiwi LU equivalent costs $34.69/hour, with all legal requirements and workers rights met. Experienced workers are hard to find and keep. Average workers are untrained and it takes from one to two years for them to reach an unassisted working level, after hours of tutoring and costly errors. Luckily, better access to the internet is making the countryside more attractive to more people.

In this area, specialised dairy labour formation and training is possibly the main barrier to be overcome in Brazil.

• Wagner Beskow is a senior dairy researcher and farm consultant with Transpondo, Brazil.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

INSIGHT

UPFRONT LETTER FROM CHINA

One of the two cheese sections in the Jiuguang high end supermarket in Jing’An temple, downtown Shanghai.

Wine and cheese parties sorted Words by: Hunter McGregor

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s a New Zealander who has been based in China since 2007, just about everything in China has changed during this time. I remember in the early days of living in Dalian (northeast of China on the coast), there were plenty of challenges.

One major challenge was holding a wine and cheese party for my university classmates. We were unable to find any cheese that would go with ‘imported’ wine that was available in the local supermarkets. We ended up printing off some photos of cheese and sticking them onto the table.

‘Some places would have a better range and selection than in most New Zealand supermarkets. ‘ Luckily there was no shortage of wine or it would have been a complete disaster. A few of my European classmates saved the day with some cheese that they had handcarried into China. The cheese options in Dalian (and for most of China) at that time were limited to local brands of highly processed kids’ flavoured cheese, which is

the last thing you want to be eating with There is a price difference, and wine! These types of cheese are still around when I could buy Mainland cheese and are popular, mainly targeting kids in supermarkets the price for 250g in via smart packaging and branding. I have Shanghai was the same as 1kg in New made the mistake of buying some Paw Zealand.

Patrol-branded cheese once.

Unfortunately I have not seen any of My kids did not like the cheese but Mainland’s Tasty, Colby or Edam cheeses loved the packaging so we ended up in Shanghai for a while, and I have throwing out the cheese and they been looking! I have witnessed still play with the packaging. in the past few years that the During my time in Dalian cheese range continues to (2007 to 2008) I also had expand, now to a point where plenty of challenges around blue cheeses are on the shelf buying milk, because I would in many supermarkets. Things look to buy one litre of milk and change fast here, with things would often buy drinking yogurt. popping up that you would Hunter McGregor.

They look the same. not have seen even a couple of My reading of Chinese characters years ago. at that time was not great and my Nokia One of the advantages of living in phone had zero translation capabilities. downtown Shanghai is that I have a Unfortunately this happened more than number of options to order both wine once, and after a couple of times I decided and cheese to be delivered to my address to give up having fresh milk at home and within 30 minutes of placing an order. moved to using whole milk powder.

There are no extra fees for this service I now know the difference between fresh and there are even a couple of wine milk and drinking yogurt, but I still use apps that will deliver the wine chilled whole milk powder at home for drinking. if required. So I now have my wine and The cheese supply situation has cheese parties covered, with plenty of improved and now a lot of the high-end high-quality wine and cheese. supermarkets have a great selection of cheeses from all over the world. Some • Hunter McGregor is a New Zealander living places would have a better range and in Shanghai and importing New Zealand selection than in most New Zealand venison and other meat products for use in supermarkets. restaurants.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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UPFRONT MARKET VIEW

INSIGHT

Dairy prices continue to rise Words by: Amy Castleton

D

airy has continued to perform exceptionally well as we start the new year. Lower Oceania milk production and steady demand are keeping prices up for now, but as always in dairy, there are headwinds and one wonders how long the high prices will last.

Global Dairy Trade (GDT) results continue to blow prior expectations out of the water, with both January events seeing some exceptional results. Prices were up 4.8% at the January 19 GDT. Milk fats have tended to drive the rises, though prices have also lifted for milk powders. Pricing for some commodities is at its highest level in at least five years. This is great news for milk prices, particularly if the high commodity prices continue. It is looking fairly likely that there will be a milk price of at least $7/kg MS this season.

New Zealand milk production fell 2.7% year-on-year on a milksolids basis in November, largely driven by the dry conditions we saw in October and early November. NZX expects production to improve for the next few months because since then we have seen pasture growth improve.

There is plenty more grass around, though quality has tended to suffer.

The volume of grass should help to keep milk production up. The NZX milk production forecast is now 0.5% growth for the full New Zealand dairy season, with December and January milk production figures expected to be flat to slightly up on last season. At the time of writing we are starting to see some drought in the north of the country. These conditions – particularly if they become more widespread, and especially through Waikato, could affect milk production again this season.

Australian milk production has also been weaker than expected, with October down 0.3% year-on-year and November flat against November 2019. The weaker

Product mix value comparison

1.30 1.20 1.10 1.00 0.90 0.80 0.70 Dec 18 WMP/WMP

Jun 19

Dec 19 SMP+Butter/WMP

figures are a result of the dairy herd still rebuilding after the extensive culling that occurred through the recent drought and labour shortages caused by the pandemic.

Conditions and input prices remain much better than they have been in recent years.

Demand for dairy commodities has been fairly steady, though largely driven

by China, to a greater extent than usual.

The depreciation of the US dollar against most currencies has contributed, along with high prices for domestically produced Chinese product. The fact that NZ milk production has been low will also be helping, with many Chinese consumers preferring New Zealand product. These factors have pushed commodity prices higher through December and January.

However China is experiencing another surge in Covid cases, which has some commentators worried that Chinese demand will fall.

There are also the lockdowns in the US and Europe and economies continue to struggle with the impacts of the pandemic.

No further impact on demand for dairy has been observed yet, but there is the potential for demand for some dairy products to ease.

Another headwind for prices is Northern Hemisphere milk production.

US production has been growing exponentially for several months.

European production has also been growing, albeit at a slower rate than the US. We’re currently in a time of year

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Jun 20

Dec 20

SMP+AMF/WMP

where the market is more focused on the Southern Hemisphere, but the extra milk is likely to have more effect on the market as we head closer to the Northern Hemisphere’s peak.

When the extra milk will have an impact and whether dairy demand drops is the question, but until then we remain in a good sector, with high prices and the likelihood of another high milk price this season.

• Amy Castleton, senior dairy analyst at NZX Agri.

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BUSINESS DBOY

Success from simple systems Colombian-born farmer Javier Pardo-Diaz is enjoying the challenges of managing a dairy farm in Manawatu.

His hard work over the past nine years is paying off, with the Tokomaru farm reaching the finals of the Dairy Business of the Year contest in 2020. Jackie Harrigan reports. Photos by Brad Hanson.

J

avier Pardo-Diaz grew up milking a small number of cows by hand on his grandfather’s farm in Colombia; now he is managing a 960-cow farm for Hopkins Farming Group in the southern Manawatu. The farm was recently a finalist in the Dairy Business of the Year, with an operating profit margin of 39% and return on assets for the company of 5.8% in the 2018/19 season.

Javier has managed the farm for nine years, having come to New Zealand with an animal science degree to learn the language and make a life for himself and his family in the dairy industry. One day he hopes to move on from the cowshed and complete a masters degree at Massey University before moving into dairy consultancy, but in the meantime he is focused on incremental improvements to systems, team performance, and profitability.

CHALLENGES

Javier Pardo-Diaz is proud of the standards set on the Tokomaru farm, where the herd has been gradefree for the past four years. “To me checking the milk and the cows is the most important job,” he says.

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The 310ha Tokomaru farm is bisected by the Tokomaru River, running from the Tararua Range to the Manawatu River, with a 50ha area that floods regularly each winter.

“The Tokomaru River drains into the Manawatu, so if the Manawatu is high in winter, the Tokomaru farm doesn’t drain well.”

The Tokomaru silt loams are fertile but make it a farm of two extremes – tending to be winter wet and, without irrigation on the farm, prone to drying out in the summer.

Managing the farm for the past nine years, Javier, has overseen development of strategies to keep improving profitability despite these constraints, including split milking with 350 autumn calving and the remaining 650 calving in the spring, moving to smaller crossbred cows to minimise pugging damage when the soils are wet, and running a System 3 with maize and PKE bought into the farm and fed on a feed pad. They also grow 20ha of summer turnips to keep the herd milking in the summer and make at least 50ha and up to 100ha of grass silage each year.

Javier appreciates the split calving for its ability to juggle cow numbers if the winter is very wet or the summer gets dry.

“We can dry off the autumn calvers early in a wet spring, or if it’s very dry in the summer we can cut down on spring calvers.

“It’s a good way of keeping a base of replacements – if they don’t get in calf we can carry some empty cows over from the autumn to the spring herd and then rebreed them.”

As part of the Hopkins Farming Group 10-dairy-farm Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

group milking 8000 cows, the team was encouraged to benchmark the farm in the Dairy Business of the Year awards, to see how they performed within the group and also with the wider industry.

The group’s farms all work in together, with Tokomaru destocking replacements from 100kg through to their first calving.

Autumn replacements are sent to the group’s northern Manawatu Apiti drystock farm and spring replacements are sent to the group’s southern drystock farm from December to April and then to outside grazing from May 1 until calving. Most of the spring calving cows are wintered off the platform on the group’s warmer southern Rangitikei Tahuna sand country block.

Here all the dry cows are fed a feedlot mixed ration of PKE, grass and maize silage to recover condition quickly so that returning to the farms to calve they are always at BCS5, which Javier says makes a huge difference with milking, and rebreeding.

“They come into heat quickly, retained membranes are not an issue with a 74% 6-week-in-calf rate and 11% not-in-calf over the 10 weeks of mating with the spring herd.

The company runs annual awards and there is a healthy rivalry between the blocks for bragging rights over the most profitable unit and the best manager, 2IC, and farm assistant.

Javier and the Tokomaru farm were in the finals for the DBOY 2020, coming close in the Manawatu to HFG’s Waihora farm manager Shaun Southee (see Dairy Exporter October 2019).

In most indices and KPIs the Tokomaru farm sat well above the average for lower North Island farms and just below the figures for the top 10% of New Zealand, which Javier was pleased with.

“We are really working on lifting pasture production from 12t pasture grown, our farm consultant says we can get it up to 14 to 15t/ha.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Above: Jerry Tofilau is originally from Samoa, and transferred to HFG Tokomaru after working with Landcorp Motua group for six years. As 2IC he is working on all his Primary ITO courses and progressing through the industry. Below: Transitioning to lighter cows will be better for pasture and cow health on the Tokomaru silt loams.

27

Table 1: KPI Summary Table Profitability

18/19 Tokomaru

18/19 Lower NI average

18/19 NZ top 10%

Milk income $/kg MS

6.64

6.52

6.67

Gross farm income $/ha

8721

7608

11,095

Operating costs $/ha

5284

5532

7165

EBIT $/ha

3438

2075

3934

Return on total asset %

5.3

3.7

6.3

Return on equity %

5.6

2.6

8.1

Operating profit margin

39.4

26.2

36.3

Equity %

52.3

66.5

48.9

GFI %/kg MS

7.21

7.15

7.05

Operating cost $/kg MS

4.37

5.28

4.48

Finance cost (int + lease) /kg MS

1.29

0.97

1.03

Cost of production $/kg MS

4.36

5.38

4.52

COP + financing cost $/kg MS

5.65

6.35

5.55

Livestock management

18/19 Tokomaru

18/19 Lower NI average

18/19 NZ top 10%

Kg milksolids/cow

391

395

477

Milksolids as % of cow liveweight

80

81

95

Milksolids/milking ha

1209

1063

1579

Cows milked

960

683

807

Milking area ha

310

244

244

Annual stocking rate cows/ha

3.1

2.69

3.25

Homegrown grazed feed % of diet

67

63

63

Total feed fed t/cow

4.71

5.06

5.58

Grazed feed fed t/cow

3.75

3.55

3.60

Homegrown feed tDM/ha

12.3

10.1

12.4

Nitrogen applied kg/ha

195.0

162.7

166.7

Cows milked/labour unit

160

153

177

Resilience

Farm assistant Ishan Saraweera is from Sri Lanka and has been working and living in NZ for five seasons. Ishan has been separated from his wife and 9-year-old son for over a year since she returned to Sri Lanka to renew her visa for her caregivers role. Ishan was due to join her for a holiday when Sri Lanka and NZ both went into lockdown for Covid. He has had to learn to cook and care for himself by talking to his family over Viber and, with no end to the pandemic in sight, he is thinking of giving up his role and returning to Sri Lanka to be with his family.

“As a team we are concentrating on always grazing down to residuals of 1500-1600kg DM/ha and on grazing when the leaf stage is two-three because grazing at less than leaf stage two twice in a row really compromises the pasture persistence,” Javier says.

Fescue has been added into the pasture mix for the area that regularly floods, because it can last for five days under flood before it dies, longer than ryegrass.

Renewing pastures through sowing the sacrifice/winter standoff area into turnips and then into new grass has included a plantain, white clover and ryegrass mix, using newer varieties Legion AR37 and One50.

Lifting per cow production through breeding is another aim of the team because the herd is relatively low BW/PW. Javier has a five-year plan to lift PW by using Premier sires for five weeks, culling an extra 10% of the herd each season and mating all low PW cows with short gestation Hereford semen.

“We don’t keep any replacements from lower PW cows or from heifers – we tend to keep 25-30% replacements from the autumn herd and 25% from the spring herd.”

Lameness can be an issue with the herd in wet spring periods when the races are muddy and it can be hard work for the cows walking long distances, with two kilometres to the furthest paddocks. Javier 28

Table 2. Physical efficiency

Pasture and feed management

has at times put some of the autumn herd onto OAD for short periods in the spring and kept the lame cows close to the shed on TAD, on better feed.

“We have had a race assessment and it uncovered some sharp corners on the exit race which need to be cut down from a 90° angle to 135°, so that is on the list to get fixed this autumn while it is still dry.

“We were also saving money by doing the foot treatments ourselves to save on vet bills.”

It’s a bigger problem for the bigger cows, Javier says, another reason to transition to a smaller framed animal.

THE WINS Jaiver and his team are rightly very proud of being grade-free four years in a row – and are now moving in on a fifth season.

This success has come through a whole team concentrating on keeping an eye out for mastitis by feeling each udder before putting on the cups and making sure the cows are not pushed up in the shed, checking there is no manure on the udders, monitoring the plant wash, and checking for complete teat spraying.

“We really check the colostrum cows – to me checking the milk and the cows is the most important job,” Javier says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

29

ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE Strengths: • 98% of the waterways on the farm are fenced • Adequately sized effluent storage and spreading area • N leaching 24kgN/ha/year • 70% of N leaching from cow urine • No-till/direct drill used during cultivation

The Tokomaru team: Kim Sinclair, Ishan Saraweera, Javier Pardo-Diaz and Jerry Tofilau. Kim is new to the team, having transferred down from one of the HFG’s Apiti farms.

Due to the very low SCC the dryoff programme is treating any cows with SCC above 150,000 with dry cow therapy and treating any below 125,000 with teat sealant.

TEAM DYNAMICS Javier has had the same team on the Tokomaru farm for three years and they have worked hard on improving their efficiency by “having the team on the same page”.

An 8:2 roster and five team members means they always have four team members onsite, and regular team meetings (twice each month) help to sort out good systems and processes and

30

routines for everyone to follow as well as covering off health and safety aspects of the operation.

Javier compiles and files weekly farm reports for HFG, used to compare indices across the farms, and a closed Facebook page for all employees keeps everyone up with what is happening within the group. The family-owned group has been proactive with training, running a 2IC development group every two months in conjunction with the nearby Foxton Moutua group of Landcorp farms.

“The group invites speakers from the likes of DairyNZ and LIC and discusses issues that upskill them for a step up the career ladder.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT: • Develop a riparian planting programme • 72kg N/ha/year applied from effluent spreading – could reduce synthetic fertiliser to these areas • Develop a farm environment plan (identify and mitigate contaminant loss) • Introduce effluent warrant of fitness inspection ENVIRONMENTAL KPIS • Lined and sealed effluent pond • % of farm irrigated with effluent: 30% • N loading on effluent area: 73kg N/ha • Application rate: 5-12mm • Kg MS/kg N leached: 50 • Kg N leached/ha: 24 • N conversion efficiency: 26% • Soluble N use: 159 • Phosphorus loss/ha: 1 • Olsen P levels: above optimum and increasing • Total GHG (CO2 equivalents): 4186 • Methane (CO2 equivalents): 2774 • NO2 emissions (CO2 equivalents): 828 • CO2 emissions (CO2 equivalents): 584

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

BUSINESS M BOVIS

Pandemic lessons for M bovis response Words by: Anne Lee

D

isbelief, shock, sadness, stress, and then hope – it’s been a roller coaster of emotions for researchers and Lincoln University staff after the discovery of Mycoplasma bovis on two of the university research farms.

On September 9 last year Lincoln University’s Ashley Dene Research and Development Station received a positive bulk milk test result but the farm’s manager Jeff Curtis says none of the farm staff could really believe it at first.

Jeff says that while all of the appropriate actions swung into operation, they were still hoping it was a false positive but when the first and then second round of blood testing confirmed the infection, the reality finally hit home.

“That’s when I knew we were in trouble,” Jeff says.

As soon as the Mycoplasma bovis Progamme had reported the bulk milk testing results were above the threshold, the university set up a critical incident management team.

Ashley Dene was put on Notice of Direction by the Programme and as blood test results confirmed the disease present the farm became a Restricted Place and the dreaded yellow notice went up at the gate.

Lincoln University deputy vicechancellor and professor of dairy production Grant Edwards says as soon as they were alerted to the bulk tank milk screen result the university teams knew there was a chance its other dairy farms could be affected too.

Straight away each farm – the Lincoln University Research Dairy Farm (LURDF) and Lincoln University Demonstration Farm (LUDF) went into a lockdown type scenario which prevented cattle milk and certain high risk equipment from being moved off the farms.

“We took some of the learnings from

Grant Edwards – M bovis discovery on university farms stressful.

COVID PARALLELS

• Track and trace – keep good records not only for tracing animal movements but also for compensation.

• Don’t be complacent – the disease is still here so don’t think it can’t happen to you.

the Covid-19 level four lockdown and immediately put those measures into place,” Grant says.

Professor Keith Cameron says the university had developed a protocol during Covid lockdown to enable research to continue that involved isolating each farm.

People and vehicles were restricted to operating on one farm only and science teams within each farm stayed separated.

The pandemic meant there was still a strong mindset of dealing with an infectious disease.

Further blood sampling revealed LURDF was also infected with M bovis and that farm too became a restricted place.

Testing is ongoing on LUDF for M bovis.

One of the early actions was to contact

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

neighbours with Keith, Grant and M Bovis Programme staff also personally visiting neighbours.

Keith says neighbours appreciated the chance to talk directly and ask questions and it was clear from the questions Programme staff fielded in particular that there are still a lot of unknowns and misinformation about the disease and its spread.

One of the questions that is still being investigated is how the disease came onto the farms.

Just like Covid, tracking and tracing is a huge component of control and eradication and that job has been enormous, stressful and time consuming.

Although they’ve been able to provide records back to 2016, Grant says there are still no strong threads as to where it came from or when.

Tracing every animal movement over four years so far – from wintering, youngstock rearing and cows bought in – has meant delving into a mountain of records, and thorough NAIT records have helped.

“We’ve even been going back over our 31

animal health records and there’s nothing that looks like symptoms, nothing over past calvings or any time that would send you down the track of suspecting it was in any animal or the herd,” Jeff says.

To this day they’ve had no clinical symptoms in any animal.

Depopulation – culling cows and associated young stock on both farms has begun and will involve more than 1200 animals.

That’s been the toughest thing to face emotionally, Jeff says.

Grant says the university has called on the Rural Support Trust to make sure staff are supported and throughout the process ‘people’ and their welfare have been the number one agenda item at all meetings.

Grant says they’ve been able to complete some of the research that was under way at the time the positive test results came back such as milking frequency studies but all animals will go by the end of March.

It’s a huge loss from a genetics stance and with the loss of longer-term data on animal health and performance history that will go with the animals.

The Ashley Dene Research and Development Station – the farm dairy will stand idle from March until next season due to M bovis.

One of the few positives is that with no animals on the farm for 60 days while it’s disinfected, paddock preparation can be done for future research.

Hundreds of suction sample cups are being installed to allow nitrate concentrations to be recorded in paddocks that will be sown in diverse pastures

including plantain. The Mycoplasma bovis Programme’s handling of the eradication process has come a long way since the initial discovery of the disease in New Zealand and Keith says throughout process the Programme’s staff have been helpful and given scientifically based advice and the university has valued their support.

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32

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

BUSINESS FAMILY PLANNING

Planning for a flexible business

Managing to get time off the farm, on holiday at Mangawhai Heads.

The Bickers family has a plan for the next 12 years of their business. Chris Neill explores the non-negotiable items and solutions this plan will involve.

D

es and Alex Bickers farm at Tokatoka, southeast of Dargaville, with the goal of having a business that is flexible, relatively simple, and continuously improving. Recent changes in their farming system have been challenging and rewarding, revitalising their interest in dairy farming. They have a plan for the next 12 years, which they share with their five children. It includes getting Des out of the shed before he turns 60 and having an ownership structure that enables succession should one of the family be interested in farming.

The character of their farm is enhanced by an area of native bush and a significant pa site. They are relishing a cooperative effort with Naumai Marae to have an archaeologist map and develop a conservation plan for the pa site.

Des has been a mentor farmer in the Northland Extension 350 programme and is grateful for the contribution this has made to his business. “The benefits to my business are considerably more than the input I made to the target farm.

The discussions and challenges put to the target farmers made me think more closely about what I am doing and how I could do better”.

Understanding themselves and their

business has allowed Des and Alex to define their non-negotiables: • Operate a profitable business that fits with family needs and activities and provides options for the future.

• Provide for the wellbeing of their staff.

• Awareness of opportunities and options allows them to select options that work for them.

The farm spring-calves 320 cows for once a day milking (OAD) on 133ha, of which 127ha is effective. In their fourth season with OAD, production at 95,000kg MS is now close to their target of 100,000, which compares comfortably with their previous twice a day milking (TAD) production of 108,000kg MS. Their target of 70,000kg MS by Christmas is an important indicator of seasonal outcome.

With an 80% six-week in-calf rate and 95% in-calf rate the herd is performing well.

The business also owns a standalone runoff to raise young stock and beef cattle and provide space for getting the herd off-platform if required. Weighing and handling facilities contribute to achieving heifer growth rate targets, which results in better quality replacements for the herd, improved in-calf rate, tighter calving, and ultimately greater milk production.

The move to OAD addresses a string of issues Des and Alex were facing with TAD:

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

• The 20-bale rotary cowshed can continue, avoiding the significant cost of building a replacement shed.

• The cows are not compromised by the 2.3km walk to the back of the farm.

• Milking requires one person.

• Lower shed operating costs for milk harvesting.

• Calving one week earlier, which typically extends the season.

• Production to the end of September is ahead of TAD but misses the peak flow milk take in October/November.

• More time for management focus on the business rather than in the business, which includes using the information from satellite pasture measuring to increase pasture harvested and reduce the total cost of feed.

• Elimination of growing feed crops that were frequently unreliable.

The farm operates with one full-time staff member, Tony Fraser, who has been working with Des and Alex for 26 years.

Tony’s wife Jenna raises the calves, and casual labour is brought in as required for other farm jobs. Auto-drafting facilities at the shed encourage timely and accurate stock management with less stress on people and livestock. The plan for Des to not milk will increase labour costs and therefore require more income.

33

Des Bickers presenting at the E350 field day.

Solutions for this include: • Increasing milk production by further improving the six-week in-calf rate.

• Continuing to genetically improve the ability of the herd to produce with OAD. • Controlling cell count.

• Increasing farm and herd size, within the limits of the shed.

• Better management of heifers for higher conception and tighter calving.

With limestone soils, the farm is typically extremely wet in winter. Profits have been invested back into the farm to address this and improve pastures. Des is confident the rewards for this are showing in pasture production. The expected annual 10t pasture eaten per-hectare can be challenged by weather events – the 2019-20 drought reduced the season’s production by 7000kg MS. To manage extreme events, Des and Alex maintain short- and long-term strategies: • Use N to build cover and create quality silage reserves of sufficient quantity to cover potential demand.

• Contract PKE at a cost-effective price to provide feed cover over summer.

• Harvest 70% of annual milk production by the end of December.

• Look after people working on the farm by providing a rewarding work environment.

• Control expenditure and work to budget.

• Repay debt while interest rates are low to provide flexibility for more challenging times.

• Close off the season affected by an adverse event before it compromises next season.

Des and Alex believe climate change will bring opportunity and risk. It may increase the challenge of extreme weather and financial events, which have always been a part of farming. Good contingency planning goes a long way in minimising the effect of these major events, and will help to protect their family, livestock, profitability, and assets.

Northland Agricultural Research Farm (NARF) is geographically close, and their research work will contribute to finding management options that will work for Des and Alex.

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34

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

BUSINESS DAIRYNZ

Dear government, back our dairy farmers By: Tim Mackle, DairyNZ chief executive

P

rime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her government is for all New Zealanders – and DairyNZ is working to ensure that includes our dairy farming families.

Policy plays a big part in how we farm; farmers know better than most the impact policy changes can have on their businesses. We believe working constructively with policymakers puts us in a good position to positively influence the best solutions for everyone.

We are keen to see the government back our sector to deliver – both economically and on our environmental commitments.

By investing in science, our sector can unlock greater value. This requires a government strategy for science funding that provides resources for farmers to

reduce their environmental footprint while increasing profit.

Future-proofing dairy farming is also crucial and we need our government to back us to continue our role as worldleading dairy farmers.

Farmers need support to meet new environmental standards. The freshwater policy delivered last year isn’t perfect, but we continue to work with everyone on the regional rules. Our approach is always informed by science, and that science does influence the rules.

There’s more work to be done but we will continue voicing our concerns, liaising with working groups, and advocating with regional councils too.

Lastly, we will work with the government on climate policy proposals and reviewing the methane target in the Zero Carbon Act. It’s vital we have a fair methane target.

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Other needs that must be addressed include meeting our workforce needs, and adopting a national water storage strategy to protect farms from the impact of drought.

Reforming the RMA is vital to reduce compliance costs for farmers, to increase efficiency, and get better environmental outcomes.

Biosecurity remains one of our greatest risks and we will work closely with the government to advocate for a worldleading biosecurity system.

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35

SYSTEMS REDUCING INTENSIFICATION

Dairy cows feeding on supplement.

Smaller footprint, lower costs Words by: Elaine Fisher

T

he sky won’t fall if the dairy industry reduces its inputs and changes management practices to meet looming environmental regulations, nor will that spell the end of the New Zealand dairy industry. That’s the view of former DairyNZ scientist Dave Clark, who late last year outlined the opportunities and challenges of deintensification through reduced feed inputs and stocking rates at a SMASH field day at Pukehina in the Bay of Plenty. Throughout his long career, Dave has advocated for the dairy industry to take the environment into account as part of management practices. “However, a lot of people think we can expand production and at the same time decrease our environmental footprint, but unfortunately biology does not work like that.”

What does work is deintensification, and for many farmers, doing so would actually save money.

“Transition towards deintensification gives an opportunity to reduce unprofitable feed inputs because, as shown in the Neal & Roche (2019) report; ‘on average, for every $1 spent on imported feed, total costs increased by $1.66 for the Waikato’ (based on 12 year’s DairyBase data),” Dave says.

“An argument against transition is that there is less opportunity to take advantage of higher milk prices and/ or lower feed inputs costs. However, Neal & Roche (2019) found that from 2005-06 to 2016-17 there were only three years when the milk price was above $7.50 per kg MS and DairyBase farms were able to generate higher profit from using more imported feed.”

36

Table 1

Stocking rate

2.2

2.7

3.1

3.7

4.3

Expected annual pasture yield (t DM/ha)

18.0

18.0

18.0

18.0

18.0

Annual N fertiliser (kg N/ha)

200

200

200

200

200

Annual milksolids (kg/ha)

895

972

1047

1092

1141

Actual CSR (kg LW/t DM)

60

70

76

89

91

2732

3090

3311

3633

3993

$4.50/kg

1793

1947

2066

1933

1874

$6.00/kg

3135

3405

3636

3571

3585

$7.50/kg

4477

4863

5206

5209

5296

Physical results

Financial results Operating expenses ($/ha) Operating profit ($/ha) Milksolids

Table 1. Ruakura stocking rate trial – design, physical and financial results at different milksolids payouts. All treatments received 200 kg N per ha per year. Costs and prices relate to year 2000. (Macdonald et al. 2008; 2011).

High stocking rates and the use of nitrogen fertiliser to boost pasture production alongside supplements such as PKE, maize silage, fodder beet, and in the South Island, cereal crops, is a relatively new practice in New Zealand dairy farming, he says.

“When I began working at Ruakura (Dairying Research Corporation) in 1992, not many farmers were using nitrogen because it was more expensive than now, relative to the milk price. Up until the 1990s most milk produced was

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Table 2 Stocking rate

2.2

2.7

3.1

3.7

4.3

Expected annual pasture yield (t DM/ha)

16.0

17.0

18.0

18.8

19.2

0

0

200

300

400

895

972

1047

1295

1290

2335

2915

3311

3738

4203

$4.50/kg

2190

2122

2066

2030

1970

$6.00/kg

3532

3582

3636

3736

3783

$7.50/kg

4874

5038

5260

5441

5596

Annual N fertiliser (kg N/ha) Annual milksolids (kg/ha) Financial Operating expenses ($/ha) Operating profit ($/ha) Milksolids

Table 2. Revised Ruakura stocking rate trial – design, physical and financial results at different milksolids payouts. Treatments receive N fertiliser at rates appropriate for the different stocking rates (Macdonald et al. 2008; 2011).

from N- fixing white clover pastures, so it is only in the past 20 to 25 years that the industry has come to rely on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to grow pasture.”

Dave Clark.

It is possible to return to a low or no-nitrogen system and still be profitable, as demonstrated by a nine-year experiment at the DairyNZ Scott Farm, Newstead.

At milk prices below $5.10/kg MS the No-N farmlet option was more profitable than the Control, but above this figure use of N fertiliser became profitable. But at $6.00/kg MS, operating profit decreased by only $174 per ha.

In the experiment, two farmlets, one receiving 181kg N/ha nitrogen (Control) and the other receiving no nitrogen (No-N) per year, were established on 1 June 2001 and continued until May 2011 (see Table 3).

Annual rainfall varied from 915mm to 1387mm; annual pasture DM yield from No-N farmlet varied from 12t DM/ha to 20t DM/ha.

“The range of climate conditions means that the results are a robust indicator of what can be expected if nitrogen fertiliser is completely removed from the farm system.”

The stocking rate of milking cows was reduced by 21.5% (total stocking

‘Farming is no longer about economics alone. It is about both the economy and the environment, and from that viewpoint deintensification looks a lot more feasible.’

Table 3 rate was reduced by 16.3% if replacements on the No-N Control No-N farmlet are counted).

Stocking rate (cows/ha) 3.06 2.56 This led to a 17% decrease Expected CSR (kg LW/t DM) 85 85 in milksolids per ha and a 25% decrease in operating expenses Expected annual pasture yield (t DM/ha) 17.6 15.0 per ha for the No-N farmlet.

Annual N fertiliser (kg N/ha) 181 0 “But of course, there is no need to reduce stocking rates Physical results by more than 20% and stop N Annual milksolids (kg/cow) 371 392 fertiliser use altogether – there Annual milksolids (kg/ha 1135 942 are plenty of intermediate options that might fit your farm Actual annual pasture yield (t DM/ha) 18.7 15.8 much better,” says Dave.

Financial results The results from the DairyNZ farmlet stocking rate Operating expenses ($/ha) 4389 3308 experiment have been used Operating profit ($/ha) to justify the need for high stocking rates to optimise Milksolids $4.50/kg 1187 1297 operating profit per ha. $6.00/kg 2891 2717 Following that experiment $7.50/kg 4595 4120 another was conducted at Ruakura No. 2 Dairy from 1999Table 3. The design, physical and financial results averaged over 2001.

10 years for Control farmlet receiving 181 kg N per ha per and “This experiment concluded No-N farmlet receiving no nitrogen fertiliser for 10 years. Full details are in Glassey et al. (2013); operating profits per ha are that financial performance was slightly different because milk prices have been rounded. optimised at 3.3 cows per ha or a comparative stocking rate of about 77kg of live weight per t feed DM stocking rates?” asks Dave. available. This conclusion held at milk The experiment was ‘remodelled’ to prices from $4.30–$6.30/kg MS. Once answer the question – ‘What stocking rate milksolids price increased to $7.50/kg optimises financial performance when a MS, stocking rates above 3.3 cows per ha farmer is allowed to vary the input of the became more profitable (Table 1). cheapest feed source?’

“However, there’s a major issue – why Nitrogen fertiliser was varied from use the same N rate (200kg N/ha) at all zero at 2.2 cows per ha to 200kg N/ha at

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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3.1 cows per ha and 400kg N/ha at 4.3 cows per ha – based on the approximate amounts of pasture required at each stocking rate (see Table 2).

Then the expected changes in costs, milksolids yield and profit were calculated.

The revised analysis shows that at less than $5.32/kg MS the stocking rate could decrease from 3.3 to 2.7 cows per ha without any decrease in profit per ha.

Decreasing stocking rate by 13% from 3.1 to 2.7 cows per ha would lead to increasing profit by $56 per ha at $4.50 and decreasing profit by $54 and $168 per ha at milk prices of $6.00 and $7.50 respectively (Table 2). A 13% decrease in stocking rate (3.1-2.7) would not compromise profit greatly at $6.00/kg MS. Dave says while deintensification may not suit all farming systems or farmers, there would be economic and environmental benefits for many others, particularly those in the lower quartile of the DairyNZ economic survey.

“Those in the top quartile are probably using irrigation or are farming on good soil types and have, based on the 2018-2019 figures, profits of up to $3000 per ha. If they deintensified by 10% they would still make a very good profit.

“They are unlikely to do so as they probably see themselves as efficient, and they probably are, and there are currently no real regulations on greenhouse gas emissions to force them to change.

“The real opportunity is for farmers in the lower quartile, making between $800 and $900 a hectare operating profit because they are probably using as much nitrogen and supplementary feed as some of the more profitable farmers but are not getting the same production.”

Dropping out some inputs and relying more on pasture would be economically 38

more efficient but Dave says doing so requires higher pasture management skills to avoid problems with a surplus of feed.

“In recent times New Zealand has thought that the way to farm is to push stocking rates as hard as possible and fill the gaps with nitrogen fertiliser, PKE or maize silage. If we wind back stocking rates the fear is that we won’t be able to control pasture in spring. Making silage is expensive and if stocking rates are lower you need less silage anyway. Another factor is not being able to make use of high payouts when they come because of lower stocking rates and production.

Those are realistic fears which can’t be underestimated.

“The point is there are a lot of average or low payout years before you get a high one. You can make lots of money from a high input system during high payout seasons, but high input systems carry financial risk and in low payout years can lose a great deal of money.”

Advocating for deintensification is to a degree against the current thinking, Dave admits. “There is no argument that in the past 20 years, the industry has gone through serious intensification and expansion. We increased our area under dairy, particularly in the South Island, and increased intensification. A lot of farmers 20 years ago would have been pleased with 300/kg MS per cow. Now many produce well over 400/kg MS per cow as a result of the use of supplements and nitrogen fertiliser.”

That increase has not come from New Zealand’s ryegrass pastures alone, he says.

“Despite a lot of work to improve the production of ryegrass in the past 20 years, without the use of nitrogen, it does not deliver any more dry matter per hectare.”

Dave says New Zealand dairy farmers

have about 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases by 10% and nitrogen leaching, and initially deintensification will help meet those 2030 goals.

“I try to be optimistic but believe that after 2030 we will need a combination of deintensification and new technologies to make the progress required to be carbon neutral by 2050. That seems a long time away but to develop and introduce those measures into farming will take all of that time.”

Since the 1970s when he worked at the Grasslands Division of the then DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research), Dave says New Zealand scientists have been working to develop efficient genetically modified ryegrass plants.

“AgResearch has GM ryegrass plants in the USA but for technical and legislative reasons, no New Zealand dairy farmer is using GM ryegrass and I can’t see that happening within the next couple of decades.”

The same applies to vaccines to reduce the production of methane from cows. “It’s probably harder to develop an efficient methane vaccine than one for Covid-19, and miniscule amounts of money are being spent on its research.

“In the meantime, for every kilogram of pasture drymatter a cow consumes, it produces 20 grams of methane and we have nothing from technology at this stage that can drop that methane yield for grazing cows.”

Despite the challenges, Dave says dairy farming must focus on both its profitability and its environmental impacts.

“Farming is no longer about economics alone. It is about both the economy and the environment, and from that viewpoint deintensification looks a lot more feasible.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SYSTEMS MILKING TIMES

Milking by time with MaxT Words by: Kate Stewart, DairyNZ consulting officer, Southern Manawatu/Horowhenua.

shown this doesn’t affect milk production, SCC, or teat health, but it does speed up row or round times, getting people and cows out of the dairy earlier.

I

know that many farmers are looking at drying off soon, but it is also a good idea to begin thinking and trialling tips and tricks for the next milking season. One tip is to adopt MaxT because it shortens milking times by as much as 30%, with no adverse effects on milk quality, production, or cow health.

As a result of implementing MaxT, farmers have achieved more cows per hour through the dairy, which helps to get people home earlier and cows in the paddock for longer.

What are the basic principles? MaxT stands for ‘maximum milking time’. This is the maximum time cows should have cups on, when 80% of the cows are fully milked, and 20% of the slowest cows are still milking.

This is because MaxT defers milk to the

Kate Stewart, DairyNZ.

next milking where it can be harvested more efficiently. Contrary to common myths, using this approach and leaving milk behind in the udder until the next milking has no negative effects on milk quality, milk production, or somatic cell counts (SCC).

As a result of implementing MaxT, farmers have achieved more cows per hour through the dairy, which helps to get people home earlier and cows in the paddock for longer.

How does it work? MaxT reduces or limits the time required to milk slow milking cows, and efficiently defers milk.

MaxT time is calculated from the average milk yield (litres) being produced, with 80% of the cows being fully milked within this time.

New Zealand and Australian research has

Implementing MaxT on-farm 1. Download the ‘MilkSmart’ application from your app store to calculate current and potential performance.

2. Calculate MaxT time using the app.

3. Take cups off when the MaxT time has been reached (or, if using automatic cup removers, set the maximum milk out time to the MaxT time).

4. Regularly monitor to ensure 20% of cows are being shortened.

5. Get the whole team on board – the incentive is that they spend less time in the dairy.

Benefits for staff and cows: Adopting MaxT is beneficial for people and cows.

For staff, they spend less time in the farm dairy, it’s easy to determine the end of milking, and provides consistent milking end times. It also provides an easy way to know what speed the platform needs to be going at.

Cows benefit from a better and more consistent routine in the dairy, less time in and around the dairy, and in a rotary every cow learns to exit every rotation.

• Check out the MaxT concept video and find out more at dairynz.co.nz/maxt.

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Don’t settle for fly-by-night treatments. Insist on Ripcord.

Visit crop-solutions.basf.co.nz for more details or visit your local distributor.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW LABEL DIRECTIONS. © Copyright BASF 2020 ® Registered trademark of BASF. W250271 11.2020

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SYSTEMS REGEN AG

Scientists call out regen ag An emerging interest in regenerative agriculture (RA) is questioning the validity of NZ’s farming systems.

The claims have prompted some of NZ’s leading scientists to publish a report in the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science magazine AgScience. Jo Cuttance took a look at the report.

T

he report says New Zealand has world-leading ‘new generation’ pastoral production systems, backed by a dedicated team of scientists, agronomists and breeders.

The science behind the systems was not bound by belief or dogma. It evolved, and scientists are obligated to adopt ‘better’ practices whether they be organic, regenerative, conventional, gene editing or genetic engineering.

ORIGINS OF REGENERATIVE AG

Retired scientists Dr Warwick Scott and Dr Derek Wilson investigated the origins of RA to see how, or if, the factors that helped foster this system are applicable to NZ. RA originated in the United States in response to soils becoming damaged, in particular on land that was used for exhaustive cropping in unsuitable situations with little or no livestock farming. This flawed practice resulted in the creation of the dustbowl of the 1930s, when huge quantities of degraded soils

were lost by wind blow.

RA then spread to Australia where poor soils with low fertility were cropped exhaustively, resulting in degradation.

In contrast, NZ soils are not degenerated and claims they need rescuing are misplaced. It was accepted there had been some ill-advised cases of land use and intensification in NZ. Professor Leo Condron said the extent and degree of significant soil degradation in NZ was limited to small areas that had been subjected to long-term intensive production of crops such as potatoes, onions, and seasonal vegetables (market gardening).

Managed agroecosystems in NZ were mainly permanent stocking or rotational grazed pasture used for milk, meat and fibre production. This land use had been shown to maintain high quantities of soil organic matter. Equally, most arable crops in NZ were grown in rotation with grassland, which effectively maintained soil organic matter and soil health.

Many aspects of RA echoed best-

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

management practice. For example, the balanced management of nutrient inputs and outputs to minimise adverse environmental impacts, the use of direct drills to minimise tillage and place seeds and fertiliser precisely, the integration of animals in farm systems, rotational grazing and management of existing vegetation to optimise plant establishment and minimise the impacts of pests and diseases. Like with RA, these elements had the objective of looking after the soil and the environment.

The distinction from RA was the established practices were based on sound evidence and value propositions resulting from peer-reviewed research. In contrast, RA was without critical scrutiny of its relevance, evaluations of its likely benefits, or an understanding of the science that underpinned the systems to which it was being applied.

SOIL HEALTH AND ORGANIC MATTER RA focused on the improvement of ‘soil health’, and suggested importing organic matter in the form of compost or biochar

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as a way to increase soil organic matter and improve soil health. The practicality and impact of doing this at the required scale was unknown.

Professor Condron said understanding of the composition and extent of soil biodiversity and how it affected ecosystem function and productivity was still limited. Extensive field trials of various bio-stimulants designed to improve plant growth and sustainability by altering the composition and activity of soil microorganisms, had in most cases shown no significant impact on plant growth and soil biology under field conditions.

SOIL NUTRIENTS

If plants are harvested (by machine or animal) and removed, the fact is eventually soil nutrients would be depleted. At some point externally sourced nutrients would need to be applied to sustain the soil’s lifesupporting capacity.

RA supporters promote the base-cation saturation ratio (BCSR) approach to soil nutrient testing. This theory involved adjusting the ratio of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and potassium (K) to feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants. This theory suggested balance was important and balance determined soil quality, plant health, and plant growth. The competing theory held that ratios were irrelevant and plant growth was determined by the minimum quantity of the nutrient present, which determined plant growth. A review of the BCSR ratio in America concluded “continued promotion of the BCSR ratio would result in inefficient use of resources in agriculture and horticulture”.

RA supporters disliked synthetic fertiliser, 42

believing it to be both unnecessary and causing harm. Science proved soil contained many more essential nutrients than traditional soil tests taken to assess soil fertility show, however only about 10% of the total nutrients measured are plant ‘available’. In New Zealand scientists have calibrated soil tests for pH, P, K, S and Mg against plant response to indicate the amount of external nutrient input needed. Fertiliser application followed the 4R principles – right rate, right place, right time and right form.

Dr Doug Edmeades said over the years, various iterations of the New Zealand Government’s agriculture ministry had developed a soil-testing system suited to our soils and confirmed the ‘overcoming limitations’ approach for plant yield that formed the foundation of the MAF soil advisory service.

Dr Ants Roberts said soil biology played an important role in soil function but was bound by a First Law of Thermodynamicslike situation. For example, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can change form. This meant soil biology cannot create mineral nutrients, but can change the form of the nutrients, which affected plant availability. This indicated no matter how numerous, active and diverse species of plants were grown in harmony, this would not create new nutrients.

PASTURE SEED AND MANAGEMENT Associate Professor Kerry Harrington said it was difficult to determine whether RA farming in NZ would increase, maintain, or reduce the NZ weed problem.

Though given the multi-species use

recommendations it seemed likely weeds would increase. Glyphosate was commonly used to control weeds and RA allowed for some use, but had it mixed with other things such as fish and fulvic acid to reduce the rate. This was against all research recommendations, reduced effectiveness and might lead to a build-up of resistance to glyphosate, he said.

Multi-species pasture mixtures and grazing less tightly than in conventional agriculture was similar to herbal ley management in organic agriculture. But unless sowing rates were kept low, only the most aggressive species survived. This meant complexity was reduced and money wasted on failed species. If sowing rates were kept low enough to allow some of the more useful species to establish, weeds would also establish. There were many weeds animals did not eat, especially under low grazing pressure. In addition, most of the chosen pasture mixtures did not persist for as long as perennial ryegrass and white clover swards.

NZ agriculture was already embracing a move towards biodiversity by retiring land on steep slopes and in riparian zones, and by establishing native plants in these sensitive areas.

PASTURE SEED PRODUCTION

Regenerative agriculture in New Zealand offered farmers a straightforward approach to getting started. 1. Do not overthink, keep it simple. 2. Find a paddock that you wish to improve. 3. Get a seed mix for the paddock. 4. Plant the seed, watch it grow, and learn.

Though empowering for the individual, these rules ignored the rigour of testing and review, learned by science. The huge range of variables in farm systems (for example, topography, soil type, paddock history, between seasons in rainfall, temperature, stock type, previous diet, soil moisture and so on), meant that any effects observed could seldom be isolated and attributed to the seed mix. Dr Colin Eady and Courtney Inch said farmers, like many people, make anecdotal comments linking cause and effect of one variable, which could lead to erroneous conclusions.

Planting more than 40 species mixtures to increase diversity and improve soil structure raised four issues for the NZ seed industry. The first was sourcing, producing, and supplying complex seed mixtures in an inherently inefficient process that would probably result in a serious cost premium, with increased costs in infrastructure

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

requirement, inventory storage and seed mixing. Importing multiple species would increase the biosecurity risk, and growing such diverse species risked cross-pollination and contaminating premium export brassica vegetable seed.

Second, most of the species mixtures proposed were not native, so any diversity increase would not at least on one level be natural in NZ. Third, NZ pastures already supported large quantities of soil carbon and soil organisms.

Finally, research by Lincoln University scientists had shown optimal pasture production, feed quality and animal performance results were achieved with a well-grazed, simple but multi-species mix of grass, legume and herb.

Eady and Inch wrote farmers had a choice, a complex multi-species mix based on a ‘do not overthink, try it and see approach’, or a recommended mixture for their farming system based on robust data and the cumulative wisdom of more than 100 years of research and breeding, endorsed by independent industry bodies with known environmental, production and societal credentials.

FARM SYSTEMS

A farm system was an ecosystem that was managed to deliver food and fibre products to support humans. As with any entity, change in one element could lead to unexpected changes in others, and be felt over both the short and long term.

Some impacts were predictable, others unpredictable, some favourable, others not so. RA was described as ‘holistic’, which recognised the interconnectedness of the elements in a farm system. With RA being a recent concept, Dr Warren King said definitive studies of pastoral farms run according to regenerative principles were lacking so it was not yet possible to conduct a critical ‘holistic’ farm system assessment.

However, there was research available around specific practices promoted by RA, which considered the potential impact on the whole farm system. RA suggested using a long-grass grazing system; evidence from NZ trials showed this would reduce the average forage quality, change the tiller dynamics of the grass species in the sward, and change the pasture species composition.

It might reduce total pasture production, reduce animal productivity, increase soil organic matter, biological activity and soil moisture retention. The unpredictable included changing soil nutrient dynamics and how it would impact on animal health.

King said there was an urgent need for targeted research, focused both on specific metrics as well as whole-farm outcomes of the practice, before robust conclusions could be drawn.

ECONOMICS AND WELLBEING

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth said people achieving efficient food production should be held in high regard. She quoted from the Farmers Guardian, how agribusiness professionals and farmers from overseas have lauded New Zealand farmers. “Working smarter, not harder is the ethos of New Zealand farmers who treat food production as an expert profession, leaning on data to drive results.”

Yet despite this, New Zealand farmers are stressed and searching for improvement, she said.

The wellbeing promises of RA were attractive to farmers, but wellbeing was subjective. From a small amount of Australian research, it indicated RA graziers had greater wellbeing than ‘conventional’ graziers. The 14 RA graziers studied were not making more money, were under greater financial stress, and were not more financially resilient during drought than the average graziers in the same age group, but they felt better about their operations because they were being supported by consultants and educators. Rowarth said wellbeing associated with RA reflected support. She said it could be argued that support was what NZ farmers had been given through the Ministry of Agriculture Farm Advisory Service, and those farmers supported in this fashion set the foundation for NZ’s current world-leading position.

Professor Jon Hickford said there was no ‘one-size fits-all’ approach to NZ farming or a singular best-practice farming system.

There was probably a place for RA in NZ if interpreted at the level of trying to improve some aspects of our conventional systems.

But there needed to be clear evidence provided of benefit, be it in food quality, environmental impact or profitability.

“Wishing your system to be better is not enough, because it must be demonstrably and reliably better,” he said.

The full report, written by leading agricultural scientists, in the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science magazine AgScience, can be found at https://indd.adobe.com/ view/693a575a-5482-4df0-bc4df986d3bce648

• First published in Country-Wide February 2021.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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SPONSORED CONTENT

Support from their bank and MyMilk enabled Mike and Rachel to invest in a Southland equity partnership and milk 700 cows.

Farmers can build farm ownership with MyMilk

By Jackie Harrigan

W

hen Mike Henderson seized the opportunity to buy into a Southland dairy farm equity partnership, he didn't have to choose between investing in farm development and sharing up to supply Fonterra, Mike was able to support the Fonterra Co-op model through MyMilk.

“We were lucky the bank was willing to support us into a 29% share of a larger platform – it allowed us to go to a bigger scale and so we were able to buy this 700-cow Seaward Downs property – it’s a long-term prospect farm in my home district.”

Knowing the farm had potential for development and for a lift in the 290,000kg MS annual production, Mike and his partners were faced with the decision two years ago whether to buy shares to supply Fonterra or go with a competitor and invest in the farm’s development.

“While we really like the co-operative model, and supply Fonterra on our other jobs, buying shares would’ve meant we couldn't finance the development – but the MyMilk model has allowed us to do both.”

Now in their second season on the property, the team has installed a water scheme over two-thirds of the property and resubdivided 70% of the farm – getting rid of 14 paddocks in the process, said Mike.

“We have definitely increased production this season. The changes have improved grazing management and we are still getting a feel for the herd that we put together when we bought the property.”

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Mike had been contract milking for eight years when he and partner Rachel Tayles made the step up to equity partners and contract milkers on Ivesburn, a 276ha property south of Edendale in eastern Southland. They own the farm in partnership with Grant and Phillipa McKenzie, with whom the couple have two other contract milking partnerships and a great relationship.

Rachel takes care of the financial side of the couple’s business, having recently left full-time work for Rabobank. She also has a part-time role with Compass Agribusiness.

Having five years in the MyMilk programme to gradually build share ownership has had spin-off effects for the partnership, Mike said.

“We are planning to build our ownership stake from the current 29% over the next few years. Paying off the shares by retaining 5c/kg MS will allow the equity partnership to pay a dividend to the shareholders – it means we can buy more shares in the partnership.”

MyMilk does have strict eligibility criteria in order to enter MyMilk, which took some discussion, Mike said, but was a really good experience.

“We were a bit of a unique case because in one aspect we were buying into our first farm, and the wider entity are also Fonterra farmers growing their business through purchasing an additional Fonterra farm.”

MyMilk general manager April Pike said the growth pathway is a new one last year, allowing existing Fonterra shareholders looking to grow their business, the ability to buy an additional existing Fonterra farm and supply MyMilk.

MyMilk eligibility criteria also includes farmers looking to buy Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SPONSORED CONTENT

their first farm, or taking over the family farm, those currently supplying another processor, and farmers doing a conversion.

Ten Fonterra shareholders have already joined MyMilk on the growth pathway and they are seeing interest from other shareholders as well, April said, particularly since the company moved into the North Island a year ago.

“Over the past five years we have had a couple of pretty low payout years and it’s been tough for farmers. Now we’re starting to see some more positive signs in the market and more confidence in the industry. We’re also seeing more farmers looking at the options MyMilk would allow them, whether that’s retirement, growing their dairy business or taking an opportunity to buy their first farm.

“There has been a flurry of activity, with a couple of farms transacting before Christmas 2020 with immediate takeover,” she said.

“MyMilk’s purpose is to provide farmers with a pathway to the co-operative to enable them longer term to become the Fonterra shareholders of the future.”

“We’re expecting to see more farmers taking up the opportunity that MyMilk provides in the next 12 months.

“While there’s no requirement for MyMilk farmers to join the Fonterra Co-op at the end of the MyMilk term, hopefully the time they have been with MyMilk will have demonstrated the strength of being part of the co-operative and its value to their farming business.

“MyMilk farmers have access to all of Fonterra’s share up options. Share compliance is also supported through what MyMIlk farmers have been able to accumulate in the unit trust as a result of the 5c/kg MS contract fee deduction on milk price,” April said.

MyMilk does have the most flexible contract in the market, with one-year rolling contracts for up to five seasons.

“MyMilk’s purpose is to provide farmers with a pathway to the co-operative to enable them longer term to become the Fonterra shareholders of the future.

“We have already had 21 farmers leave MyMilk and transition ahead of their five-year term to become Fonterra shareholders and we have a further 140 farms supplying MyMilk in the 20/21 season across the country.”

A FAMILY FEEL Mike is full of praise for the service the local MyMilk business manager has provided on his farm in Southland.

“Debbie Smith has always been really supportive to me and to our farm team – she was the first to call when we got smashed in the February floods and she often calls in or texts the manager or team if she is passing, to say the shed is looking good or the lawns are really tidy. It gives the company a real family feel.

“The team love seeing their hard work recognised in the monthly newsletter and it's a high point when Debbie lets us know how many Fonterra units we have accumulated in the Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Top: The farm team: Mike Henderson and Rachel Tayles, manager Nick Henderson and Alicia Yates and Matt Bonifacio.

Above: A new water system and reconfigured fencing has been completed on two-thirds of Ivesburn farm, in the Seaward Downs district.

unit trust from our 5c/kg MS contract fee deduction.”

“It’s a great motivator to see the units growing,” he said.

While looked after day-to-day by the MyMilk team, MyMilk farmers also have access to expertise and knowledge from the wider co-operative. This could be support from the sustainability team, milk quality or onfarm assets team, April explained.

While Mike’s driver is for their business to produce high quality milk to export to the world, he said he was pleased they were able to supply through MyMilk as they want to progress to becoming shared up and supplying Fonterra.

“It should give Fonterra shareholders confidence that MyMilk suppliers are prepared to supply MyMilk and support the co-operative model as they work towards a shareholding in the company.

“It bodes well for the future of the co-operative model.”

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SPECIAL REPORT

CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE Moving to carbon zero 47 Climate change action for 2021

57 Simple goal – to farm better

51 Farm Plans the way forward

60 Farmers living in a bathtub

54 Lightening the farm footprint

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SPECIAL REPORT | HE WAKA EKE NOA

CLIMATE CHANGE

action for 2021

The time frame for reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be years away, but Anne Lee says farmers need to have a better understanding of their GHG emissions and start planning ways to mitigate them on their farms.

I

f last year was the year of fresh water policy, then 2021 is the year of climate change and emissions reduction.

It’s started with the fanfare of the Climate Change Commission’s report, which is now open for submissions, but in the background there’s already been a lot of work and progress made on what’s likely to be in store for farmers to bring the sector’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions down.

If you think it’s all years away, think again, because from this year on farmers will be expected to have a better understanding of what their GHG emissions are onfarm and to start including actions to mitigate those emissions in farm plans.

By the end of this year 25% of all farmers – sheep, beef and dairy – will be expected to know their number when it comes to GHG emissions.

By the same time a quarter of farmers must also have a farm environment plan that includes a climate change section on how they can manage their emissions.

All farmers must know their number by the end of next year and all must have a written plan to measure and manage emissions by December 2024.

The good news is, the dairy sector is already ahead of the game, with most dairy farmers already receiving an

indication of their GHG emissions from their milk processor.

Fonterra farmers receive a report to show their onfarm GHG emissions per hectare and per kilogram of milksolids (MS).

The methane component of their GHG emissions is estimated and broken down to its sources such as enteric methane (the methane belched from cows), dung and urine methane, and methane from effluent.

By far the biggest contribution to total emissions is from enteric methane.

‘There are actions we can and should do as a sector now that will reduce our emissions, but to reach longer term targets, we and the government have to keep investing in new technologies,’ It’s important to know that, because methane, being a short-lived gas, is being treated differently in New Zealand policy with a 10% reduction required by 2030 and a 22-47% reduction required by 2050 under current

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

He Waka Eke Noa programme director Kelly Forster.

recommendations. Unlike freshwater policies, the actions farmers are expected to take aren’t coming directly from government policymakers.

Back in 2019 the government agreed to work with the primary sector in a partnership to find ways to reduce agricultural emissions, giving farmers sector groups and Maori the opportunity to be involved.

That partnership is an organisation called He Waka Eke Noa – the Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership.

He Waka Eke Noa programme director Kelly Forster says the partnership was one of two options for agriculture.

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The other was to put a price on emissions and charge that at a processor level – essentially an emissions levy, with the next step to transition that down to a farmer level.

Effectively it would have resulted in a set carbon tax on agriculture.

While the collaborative process has taken that flat tax scenario off the table, it doesn’t mean the carbon cost aspect has gone away.

Kelly says that as well as coming up with practical ways farmers can reduce emissions – helping farmers know their emissions numbers and supporting them with advice on actions they could take – He Waka Eke Noa is also charged with developing a pricing mechanism that will incentivise farmers into taking those actions. Expect to hear more about the options for farm level pricing next month as the partnership starts discussions with farmers to get their input. In February next year, He Waka Eke Noa will put forward its recommendation to the government for the pricing mechanism, which will include recognition of onfarm sequestration.

Work on how onfarm sequestration will be recognised is currently under way.

The principles behind the pricing policy will be to ensure farmers can respond in a way that suits their farm,

Some internet reading for you…

Hewakaekenoa.nz

Agmatters.nz Climatechangecommission. govt.nz/get-involved/ our-advice-and-evidence

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DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle.

that it incentivises change but doesn’t ‘dent’ the primary sector’s international competitiveness, she says.

In December 2023 a pilot project, testing a system for farm level emissions accounting and reporting, is to be completed, and in 2025 all farms in New Zealand will be using a system for farm level accounting and reporting for their

2024 agricultural emissions.

Kelly says GHG emission reductions are better managed through a pricing mechanism rather than a Resource Management Act (RMA) style regulation used in water quality policy because it offers more flexibility for farmers with what actions they choose for their situation.

“I think we’d be fooling ourselves though if we thought by information alone we could drive enough change to see the emission reductions we need in order for New Zealand to play its part,” she says.

But she’s also very clear that price alone wouldn’t achieve the outcomes necessary either, and education and information will be a big part of the overall process.

That’s why one of the first milestones completed for He Waka Eke Noa late last year was to release a guide for how a GHG emissions section can be included in farm plans, how farmers can recognise where their GHG emissions are coming from, and options they can consider for reducing them, (p50).

Climate commission advice At current rates of change biogenic methane emissions (emissions from ruminant animal burps) will fall by 7% from 2017 levels by 2030 and 12% by 2050 so won’t meet the 10% (2030) or 24-47% (2050) targets.

The Climate Change Commission’s predicted methane reductions from following its advice would achieve 24% by 2050 and does not assume adoption of new technologies such as methane inhibitors or vaccines.

But it does call on further investment from government to develop and find technologies and will include them in future budgets if they become available.

The commission’s pathway includes: • Dairy, sheep and beef animal numbers are each reduced by 15% from 2018 levels by 2030.

• From 2025 it expects 2000ha/year of dairy land is converted to horticulture.

• By 2030 progress in breeding for lower emissions sheep will contribute a 1.5% emissions reduction by 2030 and 3% by 2035 but no assumption has been made for dairy cattle by 2035 as this technology is still new.

In its supporting evidence the commission outlines a range of farm management opportunities farmers can consider including adjusting stocking rate, using lower nitrogen feed, once-a-day milking, creating a diversified landscape, further integration of dairy and beef industry, practices to improve soil carbon and regenerative agriculture.

But it notes the complexity of farm systems and need for careful analysis of any change in farm system or management practice.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

The targets and timelines

Emission reduction targets • 10% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 • 24-47% reduction in methane emissions by 2050 • Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions net zero by 2050

Both Kelly and DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle say there’s an acute awareness over the risk of ‘emissions leakage’ – where policies here could cause a drop in milk production that’s then picked up by dairy sectors in other, less emissions efficient countries, thereby negating the ultimate goal of reducing emissions at a planet scale.

While farmers may be able to reduce emissions and maintain profitability by cutting cow numbers, maintaining per hectare production and therefore New Zealand export volumes will be tougher.

DairyNZ has made the carbon leakage argument to the government and that’s why it’s imperative the government’s budgets for reductions, due to be finalised later this year, are based on science and economics, Tim says.

He doesn’t believe all other countries will always ignore agricultural emissions either, and one of the risks for New Zealand is that new technologies, such

as methane-reducing feed additives, could soon knock this country off its number one ranking in terms of emissions efficiency.

“Doing nothing isn’t an option,” Kelly says.

New Zealand exports dairy to 140 countries and customers and consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about the carbon footprint of the food they consume, Tim says.

“New Zealand has made a commitment to reduce emissions and because agriculture is such a big part of our emissions profile, we are part of that,” he says.

But DairyNZ has farmers’ backs in carrying out and funding research to check and ensure targets are fair and realistic.

“We, along with Fonterra and other processors, accepted the 10% reduction in methane by 2030 but we did not and still don’t support the upper limit of a 47% reduction as being fair or rationally based,” he says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

“There are actions we can and should do as a sector now that will reduce our emissions, but to reach longer term targets, we and the government have to keep investing in new technologies,” he says.

With an emissions pricing mechanism likely to bring a new cost to farm businesses there’s also a need to lift returns for sustainably produced product.

“There’s two parts to that – customers are going to expect us to be sustainable so it’s about doing these things to just stay in the game, but we also need to be monetising our efforts, so extracting a premium.

“We need to make sure the world knows we are committed and keep moving forward.”

DairyNZ is analysing the workings and reports behind the Climate Change Commission’s latest advice and will be making a submission.

Farmers are also invited to make submissions.

49

SPECIAL REPORT | FARM PLANS

FARM PLANS the way forward

B

y the end of this year a quarter of all farmers – dairy, sheep and beef – will need to know what their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are and have a written plan for how they are going to manage them.

Within four years 100% of farmers will have a written plan according to the programme being developed by He Waka Eke Noa – the government/primary sector climate action partnership.

Dairy farmers were already expected to have a farm environment plan by 2025 to meet the requirements in the National Environmental Standards and Essential Freshwater Management rules, but now they’ll need to have a GHG module in the plan as well. The overall goal is to get New Zealand’s onfarm methane emissions down by 10% by 2025 and work towards a 24-47% cut by 2050. He Waka Eke Noa has just released its GHG farm planning guidance to the sector for review, with the next edition due out in March. DairyNZ farm business specialist Sarah Dirks works on the Step Change project – a project to help farmers reduce their environmental footprint while improving profitability.

“Reducing GHG emissions is an

50

Farm environment plans with an added GHG module will help farmers start to understand what drives emissions on their farm so actions can be taken to reduce the levels, Anne Lee says. important part of that along with other water quality factors such as managing nitrogen loss, and we know that in a farm system it is important to look at each carefully but also with the others in mind,” she says.

The good news is that in most instances taking action to reduce one will help the other, but there are some exceptions.

One of the first goals is to ensure farmers have an estimate of what their GHG emissions are and provide them with a benchmark so they can see how efficient they are compared with others.

OverseerFM provides an emissions number and many dairy companies are also providing farmers with a GHG emissions report.

Table 1 gives an indication of regional

Table 1. Regional variation in carbon footprint of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) and other key farm production and input parameters for the year 2017/18 Carbon footprint (kg CO2 e/kg FPCM)

Cows/ha

FPCM (kg /cow)

Fertiliser N (kg/ha)

Brought-in feed (Kg DMI/cow)

Northland

0.86

2.27

4188

99

669

Waikato

0.79

2.91

4624

118

853

Bay of Plenty

0.79

2.79

4598

111

779

Taranaki

0.82

2.8

4500

132

809

Lower North Island

0.76

2.74

4569

94

590

Marlborough + Canterbury

0.76

3.42

5267

207

660

Otago + Southland

0.72

2.65

5230

148

630

New Zealand average

0.78

2.94

4804

140

727

Region

Ledgard et al Journal of Dairy Science 103

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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65.97x297

GEA 1/3 Page Portrait 1 of 2

differences and is taken from a research study published in the Journal of Dairy Science in 2019.

Sarah says it’s important for farmers to take notice of the units used when comparing or assessing numbers – some may be tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 e) and some in kilograms, some may be for total emissions for the farm and some may be per hectare or per cow, per kilogram of milksolids (MS) or, as in table 1, per kg of fat and protein corrected milk. Fonterra’s report gives farmers a comparison with other farms in their region that are producing milk at a similar per hectare level.

The new GHG modules likely to be included in farm plans will have a slightly different focus compared with previous plans.

“They’ve tended to be quite task-focused – where farmers write down the actions they’re going to take over a set time period.

“Things like putting a bund on a bridge to stop sediment or effluent getting into a waterway, or increasing effluent storage.

“With GHG emissions it will include factors that are more systems-focused.”

There aren’t any silver bullet technologies available to farmers yet, although rumen modifiers and feed additives are being investigated.

‘Optimising’ the farm system is likely to be the most obvious course of action to match feed demand with homegrown supply more closely.

That’s not to say higher input farmers can’t continue that system, but a pricing mechanism could mean farmers who don’t reduce their emissions will face an extra cost.

“Methane is the biggest contributor to GHG emissions onfarm and we know it’s driven by the amount of feed eaten,” Sarah says.

That makes feed the biggest lever farmers have available to them.

“For many farmers there are likely to be improvements they can make in utilising pasture and altering supplement use that will give them efficiencies.

“With slightly fewer cows they could

Examples of GHG emission reduction opportunities onfarm Opportunity

Greenhouse gas

Improve the efficiency of pasture and crop production Minimise N-surplus through reduced N- fertiliser use

Nitrous oxide

Reduce N-surplus through reduced use of supplementary feed

Nitrous oxide

Use inhibitor coated N-fertilisers

Nitrous oxide

Improve crop husbandry

Nitrous oxide

Optimise soil pH levels

Nitrous oxide

Reduce total feed eaten Convert less productive land to indigenous or exotic trees

Methane and nitrous oxide

Cull less productive stock early

Methane and nitrous oxide

Adjust stocking policy

Methane and nitrous oxide

Reduce stock losses and optimise replacement rates

Methane and nitrous oxide

Increase animal performance through genetic selection

Methane and nitrous oxide

Match feed demand with pasture growth and utilisation Reduce bought-in supplementary feed Use lower protein forages Optimise pasture quality and production

Methane and nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide Methane

Improve the management of livestock and effluent Use captured effluent as fertiliser

Nitrous oxide

Capture and store carbon in vegetation Plant indigenous or exotic trees

Carbon dioxide

Minimise periods of bare land

Carbon dioxide

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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51

CASE STUDY: ADAPTION IN ACTION produce the same amount of milk with much less bought-in supplement, but they do have to look at it from a whole farm system point of view.”

Every farm will be different, as will each farmer’s situation, so the plans have to be written accordingly.

Reducing total feed eaten could mean utilising pasture better and cutting supplement and retaining cow numbers, or it could mean improving reproductive performance so fewer replacements need to be reared.

It could also be culling cows earlier in autumn to limit the need for autumn supplement.

Cutting fertiliser nitrogen inputs could help limit nitrous oxide losses and methane emissions if less feed is grown and consumed by cows.

“The important thing is to start understanding what drives emissions and more specifically what drives your farm’s emissions so you can tailor actions to that situation,” Sarah says.

It’s clear from the recently released Climate Change Commission report that the changes farmers have been making in an effort to improve water quality aren’t going to enable agricultural emissions targets to be met on their own. Nitrous oxide emissions make up a smaller percentage of farm emissions, but it is a much more potent GHG. It’s released into the atmosphere from dung and urine patches and nitrogen fertiliser.

Fertiliser companies now offer coated urea products that inhibit the release of nitrous oxide, and switching to these products could be a simple action farmers can take. Sarah says DairyNZ will continue working with the industry and regional councils to help them set up farm environment planning to align freshwater and GHG farm planning, and the new guidance will help in developing the GHG emissions sections in the plans.

To date most farmers have had rural professionals help prepare their farm plans with them and its likely that will also be the case for the GHG section, particularly as some farmers will choose to reassess their whole farm system.

That needs careful analysis to ensure profitability is maintained and a

52

change in system will actually achieve the reductions in GHG aimed for.

“A change in farm system certainly won’t be the right thing for everyone.

Some farmers are already highly efficient and have limited options.

“There will always be some area for improvement and that’s where we have to start.

“It is still not clear which farmers these targets will affect the most, but farmers do need to start thinking about what they’re doing with their GHG emissions in mind.”

As with farm plans aimed at improving water quality, farmers will need to keep good records to show what actions they’ve taken when it comes to audit time. In many cases the changes will be reflected in their OverseerFM and GHG emissions reports.

To calculate emissions the minimum information required is: • Livestock numbers by stock type and age group.

• Amount of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser applied annually.

Other information required to give a more detailed understanding of the farm’s emissions and reduction opportunities include: • Farm total and effective area • Farm topography • Livestock class, age, number and movements • Nitrogen fertiliser or lime applications including product type, rate and timing • Production data such as milksolids, liveweight, or crop yield • Woody vegetation planting records.

Work is under way within He Waka Eke Noa looking at carbon sequestration opportunities so that farm plantings in areas such as riparian strips may be able to be included in emissions calculations.

Sarah says a farm environment plan is a positive step for any farm business and shouldn’t just be seen as a matter of compliance.

They can be a powerful tool from a strategic business planning point of view and promote further business analysis that will benefit the operation in a financial and strategic way, she says.

Adaption in action

U

ruwhenua Farms is the Sowman’s family business in Takaka, Golden Bay. Two brothers, Corrigan and Sam, with their wives Ruth and Cara, manage the 500ha operation consisting of a partially irrigated 268ha dairy platform, dairy support, and a recently established dairy beef operation.

The family has always tried to have an environmental focus, but a series of events triggered a farm system review that has resulted in a lower cost structure and reduced environmental footprint (see table).

Historically it was a System 3-4 farm with imported supplement of PKE, grain, silage and winter grazing. Over the years this business model allowed them to invest in significant capital development and repairs, as well as providing regular rostered time off and away from the farm – while repaying debt.

However, when the milk price fell in 2014, the Sowmans felt it was time to create an even more financially resilient system. At the same time, there was increasing community interest in local farming because they are in a recharge area for an aquifer for the Te Waikoropupu Springs. These factors triggered the brothers to consider change as they wanted to reduce their business risk, both for the environment and their balance sheet.

They knew that adapting their system now would make their business more bankable in the future.

To start their onfarm change journey, they first considered their current farm situation and measured their performance through KPIs. After understanding these, they decided to focus on having a cash surplus business goal.

Now their target is to have $1/kg MS of free cash after capital reinvestment, while also focusing on protecting the environment and creating a simpler farm system. This included having a key goal to stop using PKE onfarm, which they have done.

Before they started assessing their situation, Corrigan suspected the farm

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

system was possibly inefficient with feed in relation to their cow numbers and N use. After realising that was the Corrigan and Sam Sowman. case, they dropped their N fertiliser use in half over the course of a year, and the positive results emphasised they had indeed been operating inefficiently.

The farm system changes they adopted were based on the results sifted from the Resource Efficient Dairy (RED) trial, the Lincoln University Dairy Farm system, and Pastoral 21 (P21).

Cow numbers have been reduced to 700 milking cows, down from 830 previously.

A total of 20 tonnes of grain is fed during spring as a mineral carrier, with grass and maize silage brought in from the runoffs.

After their shift in farm system, there were a few key changes they noticed onfarm: • Total production has dropped, although free cash has increased • Purchased N surplus has dropped by more than 100 units, and therefore

N2O emissions and N loss to water have decreased • Estimated enteric methane emissions between the two systems is down compared with previous years • Per cow production is similar in both systems, but less feed is required with the new system. Even as summer droughts have worsened, they have been able to maintain the amount of imported feed, excluding PKE. Corrigan believes that some farmers would say they have failed since their milk production has declined over the years.

However, it had essentially been propped up by their inputs and high stocking rate. His view is: “I am more interested in measuring our business on its ability to produce the protein the world wants, with the environmental footprint New Zealand needs.” As with any system there are still opportunities to evolve. Farm working expenses rose in the 2019-20 season, with $0.58/kg MS associated with setting up a new dairy beef block and calf rearing, another dry summer and additional labour support.

• Reproduced with permission from The Journal, official publication of the NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management Inc.

Uruwhenua’s farm system shift 2007-08

2012-13

2016-17

2019-20

Dairy platform (ha)

288

268

268

268

Dairy support block (ha)

124

130

130

130

Peak cows

990

827

815

695

Stocking rate

3.4

3.1

3.0

2.6

MS per hectare

1210

1374

1246

1075

MS per cow

352

445

410

445

Dry matter intake (DMI) tonnes per ha (DairyBase data)

16.2

17.4

15.2

14.6

Pasture and crop eaten as a %total DMI

82%

85%

85%

Tonnes imported supplement per ha

2.0

1.8

2.2

Nitrogen per hectare

300

206

76

Milk income per kg MS

$7.28

$6.52

$5.77

$6.94

Farm working expenses per kg MS

$4.16

$5.09

$3.84

$4.84

Operating profit ($/ha)

1566

1034

1396

1827 (est.)

172

52

9374

8208

7884

Estimated purchased N surplus (kg N/ha)

262

Estimated enteric methane (kg CO2e/ha)

8748

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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53

SPECIAL REPORT | WATER EFFICIENCY

LIGHTENING the farm footprint

T

here have been big changes on Ted and Sue Rollinson’s Dorie dairy farm over the past six years, with no shortage of investment or effort from the couple and their 50-50 sharemilkers Tom and Leanne Heneghan.

Improving productivity and lightening the farm’s footprint have been among the drivers for what has essentially been a reconversion of the 380ha, 1500-cow farm with reductions in nitrogen loss and more efficient water use the key environmental outcomes.

As it turns out that also helps create greater efficiencies in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Nitrogen (N) loss as measured by Overseer has dropped by a massive 83% on their baseline N loss figure and now sits at 31kg N/ha/year, (see table one).

The baseline figure in Canterbury is the average annual N loss over the 2009-

54

Ted and Sue Rollinson have improved productivity on their farm and it’s also lightened their environmental footprint.

Sharemilkers Tom and Leanne Heneghan share the couple’s passion for water and pasture management.

Anne Lee reports.

2013 period. Better irrigation efficiency also means better use is made of the precious river-based water resource that feeds the farm.

With climate change predicted to bring greater weather variability, making the best use of water and improving reliability has to be a priority.

Efforts at the farm have been recognised, with Ted and Sue named as the New Zealand region winners of the inaugural Zimmatic Sustainable Irrigation Awards.

Ted and Sue originally converted the farm in 1981, making it one of the earliest in a wave of conversions that continued over the next 20 years.

Irrigation back then was border-dyke, with water brought to the top end of paddocks via races and released through gates to flood down the slope of the paddock to the other end.

As the understanding of water use efficiencies grew, they made changes by

widening the distance between borders and laser levelling paddocks to improve infiltration rates.

They had used Rotorainers on support land and could see the benefits in pasture production from spray irrigation, so in 2014 embarked on a major redesign. It meant six new pivots and 10 sets of K-lines, with some tree lines removed, new lanes put in, and refencing of pretty much the whole farm.

Needless to say, it took several seasons of Tom doing all the fencing and Ted spending hundreds of hours on the tractor, grader and digger.

“It was a massive job – the only contractors we used were to build the irrigation pond and fence it and build the pivots – everything else has been done in-house,” Tom says.

Tom and Leanne have been with the Rollinsons for 12 seasons and to say they live and breathe water and pasture management, just as Ted has over the

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Left: Leanne and Tom Heneghan with Sue and Ted Rollinson.The Heneghan’s have learnt to live and breathe water and pasture management, just as Ted has over the years.

Above: Tom Heneghan is constantly monitoring the weather apps, variable rate irrigation and soil data – earning him back-to-back A grades on the irrigation management audits.

FARM FACTS Owners: Ted and Sue Rollinson 50/50 Sharemilkers: Tom and Leanne Heneghan Location: Dorie, east of Rakaia, Canterbury Area: 380ha Cows: 1500 crossbred Production: 1930kg MS/ha (2019/20) Supplements per cow: 250kg palm kernel, 50kg pasture silage (2019/20) Farm dairy: 70-bail rotary Runoff: Owned, cows calve there and are walked home.

Farm working expenses: $3.70/kg MS combine sharemilker-owner Irrigation: Six pivot irrigators and 10 sets of k-lines Estimated carbon emissions: 6783t carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents/year.

years, is an understatement.

“I have three weather apps on my phone and we use a weather station down the road to get ET (evapotranspiration) rates.

“We’ve got moisture probes too and – these things called eyes – they’re very important,” he says wryly.

“We know the spots on the farm that are first to show signs of moisture stress and likewise any signs of overwatering.

“What the moisture probes have shown us is that what we were doing – driving around the farm and observing, using a shovel to check what’s happening in the soil – those methods were correct.”

All Canterbury dairy farms have farm environment plans that must be audited by regional council approved independent auditors.

“To get an A grade we have to have probes and show we’re actively managing irrigation to do everything we can to stop the soil getting too full and creating drainage down through the soil profile.”

They’ve been audited twice since the rules were brought in and each time received an A grade.

The probes automatically telemeter soil moisture data that’s then available via both phone and computer and presented graphically so Tom can see at a glance where it’s sitting relative to stress point and capacity.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

The pivots can be turned on and off with the flick of a switch and variable rate irrigation (VRI) is fitted to three of the six pivots, allowing different areas within the same pass of the pivot to receive different rates of water.

“We’ve had the VRI in for three years and every year we’re tweaking the main plan,” says Tom. “We have it set to apply different rates according to soil type but I can change the rates on my phone as well as the computer, so it’s very easy to adjust rates when we see a specific area where there’s moisture stress or too much water going on.

“You can be a lot more precise and almost instantly react if you need to.”

They have different plans according to the time of year too, with spring and autumn rates typically about 10mm, lifting to 15 and even 20mm in the peak of summer.

While VRI is great technology it’s not without its hassles and the constant collapse and opening of the soft pipe between the valve and sprinkler head as the valve opens and closes has caused some pipes to split and leak.

“The irrigation company has a solution so hopefully we’re on top of that one now.”

Bucket tests are carried out regularly for compliance, but also as needed if Tom suspects there’s an issue.

The K-lines are shifted twice a day to improve efficiency and Tom says because they’re spread around the farm in areas where the corner arms don’t reach, there’s every opportunity to be using those all-important eyes to check pasture and the irrigators.

“You catch yourself doing it automatically – looking at the tyres, the fence deflectors, the nozzles – making sure there’s a nice even spray.”

The farm is part of a small irrigation scheme, the South Rakaia Irrigation Partnership, which Ted was instrumental in establishing. Tom and three neighbours, also on the scheme, intensively manage the water take from the Rakaia River.

The take is based on river flows with restrictions coming in as river levels drop – although they can also access stored water from Lake Coleridge

55

Tom Heneghan and Ted Rollinson checking the pasture: with the pressure on nitrogen use they have been working on lifting clover content, trialling broadcasting clover seed inoculated with rhizobia.

Table 1: Nitrogen data Baseline Overseer N loss kg N/ha/year Fertiliser nitrogen use kg N/ha/year

2009-2013

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

2019-20

183

127

78

78

31

270

270

250

235

through an arrangement with Trust Power.

“We’re not only watching the weather here, we’re also watching what’s happening in the headwaters because that has a direct impact on the river flows down here.

“I’m watching rainfall at Arthurs Pass and Carrington and flow rates in the river – all on my phone – because we know if there’s heavy rain up there, within 12 to 24 hours the river level will rise and we’ll have to go down and pull plates where it’s diverted out of the river to the scheme so we don’t get inundated along here.

“When we see water levels dropping and the forecast looks like that’s going to continue, we’re making sure our pond is full and that we’ve irrigated to get soil moisture levels closer to the upper limit.”

The improved water use efficiency, slightly increased effective area due to the removal of border-dyke headraces, and some tree lanes and pasture renewal as borders have been removed have all helped to noticeably increase annual pasture production. The intensity of Tom’s water management is equalled by his management of pastures, with farm walks carried out weekly, pregrazing covers and post-grazing residuals checked, and pasture allocations all meticulously monitored and measured.

“The best year we had under border-

56

2020-21

190

dyke irrigation we grew 19t drymatter (DM)/ha, and based on the plate meter readings the best year we’ve had under pivot was last season at 22tDM/ha.”

Regrassing has been carried out as borders have been removed and now that’s completed, Tom says pasture renewal will be based on regrassing the worst performers.

They’ve been using a mix of tetraploid and diploid ryegrasses with Trojan (diploid), Viscount (tetraploid), One50 (diploid), and most recently Base (tetraploid) and Platform (diploid) the preferred cultivars.

“We’ve been able to go into much higher covers and still achieve residuals with these new grasses.”

That’s enabled them to push round length out slightly. The ability to capitalise on the ability of the newer varieties to grow big tonnages could be limited by the recent cap on nitrogen.

“Normally at this time of year we’re starting to push a bit of feed ahead of us so we’re not reliant on supplement through autumn, but I’m not sure if it’s a seasonal thing or we’re already seeing an effect of lower nitrogen inputs because we’re struggling to get that wedge,” he says.

This season their fertiliser plan has them targeting 190kg N/ha with ammonium sulphate used in spring and autumn and coated urea used in between, which helps cut losses of the

potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide losses. They’re now starting applications later than normal in spring despite their planned start of calving being earlier than many at 23 July for cows and 15 July for heifers.

“The ammo rate has remained the same at 40kg N/ha but we’ve dropped the urea rates back to 25kg N and it’s put on as N-Protect.”

With the pressure on nitrogen use Ted has been working on lifting clover content. One of the first steps has been to ensure fertility is right for good clover establishment and growth.

Potassium and molybdenum levels are important. Clover needs light and is easily shaded out by high yielding ryegrasses, so after plenty of research Ted and Tom are trialling broadcasting clover seed inoculated with rhizobia.

They’ve chosen upright varieties they hope will be better able to compete.

“The idea is we’ll broadcast it about 10 days before the cows go into it, let it settle, irrigate it, and then the cows will trample it in.”

Tom says they feel they’re making good inroads with what they’ve done to minimise nitrogen loss but are feeling a little uncertain about what’s in store with cutting carbon and methane emissions.

They’re already low input in terms of bought-in feed, with 250kg/cow of palm kernel used last season along with just 50kg DM/cow of silage imported from the support block.

“When you look at the options they’re talking about we don’t have a lot of levers left to pull from here on unless there’s some scientific breakthrough,” he says.

But the key is to be prepared and not bury your head in the sand so you have time to understand and prepare, he says.

Ted works with Charlotte Glass from AgriMagic to identify and manage both water and nutrient issues and now has carbon emissions on the watchlist.

“Ted’s always looking at what’s coming over the horizon and it’s something we talk about.

“You’ve just got to keep informed, things have been changing rapidly and that doesn’t look like stopping any time soon.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SPECIAL REPORT | DROUGHT AND FLOOD

SIMPLE GOAL – to farm better

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Geoff and Jo Crawford realise that to have a good work/life balance, they need to look after themselves as well as their farm, and to plan for all eventualities. Chris Neill reports.

arming at Ngararatunua, northwest of Whangarei, Geoff and Jo Crawford own 1200ha on which they operate two dairy farms and a beef unit. The two dairy platforms total 475ha with 1500 cows milked by two contract milkers. One farm is on the Hikurangi swamp and approximately twothirds is prone to flooding. The other farm is on hill country above the swamp. Currently 50:50 spring and autumn calving, this is transitioning toward total autumn calving.

The balance of the farm is dairy support or beef farming based primarily on the 700-800 spring calves reared, plus 700-800 autumn calves reared. One person employed to rear calves and another as general farmhand to do most of the tractor work complete the onfarm team working with Geoff across all the properties. Contractors are engaged to do any large-scale work such as track building.

Jo’s role is to manage the administration and financial management of their dynamic business.

Geoff is a tireless enthusiast for business and life, for whom getting up early for another day of activity is key to making his own luck. Each day starts with looking forward to new activities and opportunities.

Having started his first business as a spray contractor at the age of 17 he progressed to owning his first farm at 20 and first 120ha dairy farm at 22. His subsequent spraying, forestry, and farming businesses have been demanding because he is unable to say no to

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Walking the cows out of flooded pastures in the Hikurangi swamp, July 2020.

Trucking the cows off a flooded farm, July 2020.

There was limited pasture selection during the 2019/20 drought.

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ADVERTORIAL

Teatseal helps sort spring stress

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heavy soil underlain with ironstone can make spring calving a muddy, tough task for Hayden Thurston and his family, and often the problems managing the mud and wet would only add to problems in the farm dairy.

“We found over those wet springs we were having horrendous issues with early season mastitis, and our penicillin use was going through the roof right from the start of lactation.”

The early calvers would often contract clinical mastitis at day four as they came out of the colostrum mob, and it was not unusual to have to hand-strip the entire herd every two days.

“The monitoring, time and expense we were investing was over the top and very stressful at a busy time of the year.”

Hayden had already been working closely with South Wairarapa Vets on the problem, including ramping up the potency of their dry cow therapy programme to try and nail somatic cell issues at the end of the season and avoid carrying them into the next.

“We had some success with this, but if you headed into a wet spring, three days later the same issue has appeared again.”

Teatseal had been on the market for a period, but Hayden admits he had been cautious about using the non-antibiotic

treatment that demands a good standard of hygiene at administration.

“But we have always been pretty strict on hygiene ourselves, given the issues we have had. We milk through a 40-a-side herringbone, and don’t dry off more than 80 cows on any one day, so we have the time and focus to do it properly.”

They decided to give Teatseal a go, using it along with their dry cow antibiotic on all cows at drying off.

“The change was remarkable. The clinical cases just disappeared. Our cell count, which sat about 300,000–395,000 dropped down to 110,000–160,000 for the entire season.”

Some fine-tuning after a few years’ use means today all cows with a cell count at drying off of more than 350,000 get a potent antibiotic only, those from 150,000 to 350,000 get a moderate antibiotic, and Teatseal in combination, and those below 150,000 receive Teatseal only.

The use of Teatseal has removed a significant level of stress for Hayden and his family over springtime, and there is nothing he would change now about the use of it in his dry cow programme.

“Teatseal has brought about the single biggest improvement to our herd of any product I have ever used.”

Hayden Thurston, Featherston.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

a challenge. Further land acquisition is on the horizon.

Clear, simple, challenging goals give Geoff focus on what needs to be done and when. Protecting his physical and mental wellbeing to allow him to operate at a high frequency comes with running in the winter and cycling in the summer.

In true Northland style, boating and diving with similarly motivated mates is part of being “always able to find time for the things I want to do”. This includes being a member of the NZ Spearfishing team and competing around the world, winning two Pacific and one national championship titles. Geoff and Jo’s farming goal is simple – “to farm better”. Better pasture, better stock, better production.

Geoff and Jo proactively managed their business through the 2019-20 drought.

Geoff views drought like a cancer, which progressively erodes all aspects of the business. There is time to plan and act, to make progressive decisions as the situation evolves. Critical elements of Geoff’s plan are:

Geoff and Jo Crawford.

The results of taking time offfarm.

• Ensure feed and water is available for stock.

• Monitor stock to know they are okay.

• Maintain cow condition, ready to pick up production after the dry period ends.

• When 70% of income is being consumed by feed costs, particularly in February/March: -- Transition to OAD. -- Dry off before cow condition is compromised.

-- Retain and feed only those animals needed for next season.

• Defend next season: -- Do not allow the effects of drought to cross seasons.

-- Protect cow condition.

• Organise access to cash to ensure the business is responsive.

• Allow ½ t of PKE per cow per season.

• Feed all calves on PKE when there is insufficient pasture to ensure they achieve growth targets.

As an optimist who operates ‘above the line’, Geoff kept expecting the rain to arrive. To complete the challenges of 2020, the Crawford’s farms were inundated by floodwater in July. One dairy farm and the dairy grazing unit required destocking. The disruption, including sending cows away, cost 10,000kg MS of production, along with the damage to property and impact on morale.

Geoff views floods like a heart attack, with a sudden impact. The response required is immediate, demanding intense thinking, and prompt decision making to avoid stalling the business with bad or lack of decisions.

Even before these recent drought and flood events, Geoff could see climate change and adverse weather events as a real challenge to their business. He is looking for options to be prepared and to protect their livestock, property, themselves, and their profitability against projected risks. His responses to date are:

CALVING DATE – TRANSITION TO AUTUMN CALVING • Summer pasture production is becoming less reliable.

• Warmer winters are giving better pasture growth.

• Easier calving.

• Happier staff.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

PASTURE SPECIES – TRANSITION FROM RYEGRASS TO HERBS, CLOVER, FESCUE AND COCKSFOOT

• Ryegrass performance is less reliable, with diminishing quantity and quality.

• Maintain half the farm in chicory and plantain – oversow with annual rye at the end of the second year before reseeding with chicory/plantain at half recommended seed rate to maintain a ‘permanent’ herb pasture.

• Maintain half the farm in cocksfoot/ fescue.

SUPPLEMENTARY FEED

• Direct drill or oversow as much as possible to minimise tillage.

• Grow 20% additional area of feed maize as a contingency for reduced crop yield or pasture production compromised by adverse weather.

• Mix PKE with grass and maize silage to extend the length of time it is used to its maximum.

FINANCE

• Have a relationship with a financier that ensures cash is available in challenging times.

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH GOOD PEOPLE.

• Establish and maintain good networks to help find and deliver good solutions.

LEADERSHIP

• Ensure the team maintains confidence that there is a plan and the issues arising are under control.

• Keep fit and healthy to maintain mental wellbeing.

• Delegate easily to others those tasks that generate income.

• Control expenditure personally.

• Protect your reputation as an employer; it is critical to having good staff.

• Have faith in people.

BUY LAND

• strategically to increase business resilience (240ha) Geoff and Jo continuously monitor and adjust their business to ensure it is as good as they can make it. Their extra activities require the business to be successful and the business success requires them to take time out for personal wellbeing.

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SPECIAL REPORT | CLIMATE CHANGE

Farmers living in a BATHTUB Dealing with regular flooding in Taieri is a matter of accepting the inevitable and being prepared for the worst case scenario. Karen Trebilcock reports.

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xtreme weather events such as flooding are predicted to increase with climate change, but Taieri dairy farmers are already used to paddocks under water every few years.

“It’s the problem of living in a bathtub,” sharemilker Matt Luke said.

He milks 170 cows on his own farm and another 350 for his parents-in-law Ian and Denise Bryant on both sides of the Taieri River flood bank by State Highway 1’s Flood Free.

The stretch of road was named after the 1980 flood that inundated Dunedin Airport for months.

Thousands of cows were swum to the road, one of the few dry points on the plain, to be trucked as far away as Canterbury and Southland.

This New Year’s flood was minor in comparison. Heavy rain both locally and upstream in Central Otago caused the Taieri River to break its lower banks and Otago Regional Council’s pumps failed to cope, with the land, some of which is below sea level, left waterlogged for weeks. It was nothing unusual for Matt and his family.

He and his wife Keryn are the fourth generation on the farm and know to take heavy rainfall warnings seriously.

“This time we knew about a day ahead that it wasn’t looking good,” Matt said.

They try to have as much of the grass that will go under eaten, but with summer surpluses this time it was close to impossible. Getting the young stock

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James Adam’s dairy farm by State Highway 1 starts to come out of water two weeks after the New Year’s flood. The Taieri River is in the trees, on the other side of the railway line.

off from the runoff between the river and the State Highway 1 Flood Free was the next priority.

“We can walk them under the road and the rail bridge back to the farm and usually it works okay.

“We’ve had the odd time we’ve had to move them through water and, especially at night, it’s not good. But we’ve never lost any.”

Two years ago, in the 2018 November flood, there were more than a thousand bales of balage just made by the Flood Free. “We had about 300 bales but the neighbours had more. We had about 20 tractors shifting it as the waters came up.

“It was a real community effort to get it off. I’m pretty proud of how everyone got together to do it.”

And with stock and balage safe, it’s then a matter of waiting for the water to go down again to see the damage left behind.

Taieri floods are not fast-moving so little debris is usually left behind.

However, water sitting for weeks drowns the grass, especially in summer when temperatures are warm.

“In the winter the grass comes out of the water a lot better but these floods when we’re milking are really damaging.”

This time, as well as using their smaller petrol pumps, they borrowed fellow Taieri dairy farmer Gerald Holmes’ new pump, which runs off a tractor’s PTO. “It was amazing. It’s the first time it’s been used and the amount of water it moved was impressive.”

They ran it for three days, only turning it off in darkness to give the tractor a break.

The pump, which cost Gerald $18,000 plus another $3000 for 20m of hoses, can run off a tractor with 100hp at the PTO and, with its 450mm diameter, it shifts 630 litres per second.

Gerald bought the pump after the 2018 flood when it took three weeks for water to drain from his farm.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Then water spilled from the Otago Regional Council’s flood protection scheme and surface water from the heavy rain slowly moved from the top end of the Taieri down.

“The council does have some pumps but it’s not enough to get the water off fast enough so we don’t have to regrass.

Back then we had to regrass 50ha of the 240ha farm,” Gerald said.

“We need the water off in less than a week to get through a flood financially.

This pump is insurance for us that when we flood we can now get the water off.”

In mid-January Matt was still waiting for water levels to go down from the land that couldn’t be pumped from.

“Hopefully not all of the grass will be dead but it looks pretty bad.

“We’ve bought our own drill and we use cheaper grass seed so it doesn’t cost too much because we know we’ll have to do it again.”

Matt says having the young stock on the milking platform is something he

Taieri sharemilker Matt Luke with a petrol pump draining flood water from the farm back into the Taieri River.

could do without.

“We’re having to feed out balage to get by. And I think the hay crop is gone. It was underwater for several days. I’ll still bale it to get it off, but it won’t be good for much.”

Besides buying pumps and making sure balage is not left sitting on paddocks known to go under, some farmers on the Taieri also have built feed pads large enough for all of their

cows next to dairies above the flood plain, with feed bunkers nearby.

“We’ve had floods every few years since I started farming 14 years ago,” Matt said. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better.

“At least with all the rain we’ve got plenty of grass on the rest of the farm.

The whole Taieri is looking a picture for this time of year.

“Even the hills are green.”

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Building Better Herds | 0800 220 232 | www.samen.co.nz Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

61

ENVIRONMENT WATERWAY PROTECTION

Left: Grant Wills (left) discusses some 17-year-old native riparian planting with landowner Stephan Heubeck.

Above: Grant Wills and Wayne Berry checking the growth of willows in a productive riparian buffer zone site on Wayne’s property.

Value from fencing and planting Words by: Elaine Fisher

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hen the Clean Streams Accord was introduced in 2003, Waikato dairy farmer Grant Wills saw real value in farmers fencing and planting waterways for farm management benefits and to help meet long-term international market requirements.

He began by fencing a steep section of river bank that had stock management issues on his 215ha (effective) 780-cow property near Walton.

The gently rolling land, which has been in Grant’s family for three generations, has five kilometres of streams running through it. Grant and his family have planted all these with more than 12,000 trees and are now targeting smaller tributaries and steep sidlings.

“There are a number of initiatives around the country looking at creating some sort of productive return out of the riparian areas. A valley on this farm has been recently planted in bee-loving species, including rewarewa, for potential honey production in the future,” says Grant.

Early on, Grant mapped his whole farm and the waterways were divided into bite-sized sections for planting. Fencing setbacks vary depending on the terrain 62

and where it would be beneficial for stock management. His attitude to setbacks has changed over time.

“We don’t really miss the grass and we are better off planting trees in less productive areas. We get aesthetic benefits and improved stock management. With a whole range of planting ages now growing on the farm, it’s interesting to see which species flourish and which don’t. Some of the earlier manuka plantings are nearing the end. Flaxes planted close to the fence have no regard for the hot wire.”

“Riparian planting is a long-term game, with long term rewards, both aesthetically, and for our environment’s sustainability.”

Both family and staff have taken pride in seeing ‘their’ riparian areas they planted and maintained develop into mature native tracts.

Plants need to be fairly close together, Grant says. “We plan a maximum of two metres between plants. At this distance

they can provide shelter for each other and prevent weeds from getting a good hold.

“Leaving a grass strip prevents the plants from short circuiting the fence. Fencing needs to reflect the stock classes that the plants are being protected from.

“Fencing and planting is fairly easy, however follow-up maintenance is demanding, but it’s essential. We plant in June/July and do maintenance later that year and the following year, which consists of trampling down grasses around the plants and spraying out any weeds like blackberry. You can’t just do this when you get a chance, it has to be done at specific times of the year for best results.”

Releasing new plantings used to be carried out once only, five to six months after planting. But prolific spring growth in the past couple of seasons has required two releases in the spring/summer period.

Grant’s advice is to be realistic – get staff, family or casual workers on board and make a plan to keep on top of it because it makes a big difference. Now there are also competent commercial businesses available to sell, plant and maintain the riparian areas.

“Riparian planting is a long-term game, with long term rewards, both aesthetically, and for our environment’s sustainability.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

ENVIRONMENT RIPARIAN PLANTING

Plan, fence, plant Riparian planting has many benefits on a farm, from reducing sediment entering waterways to making it easier to manage stock. Elaine Fisher reports.

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enced and planted riparian zones are a valuable asset for a dairy farm, and summer is a good time to start planning your next riparian or wetland planting project, says Jackson Efford, principal adviser land and water for the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.

DairyNZ’s step-by-step guide to successful riparian planting is a great starting point for those considering undertaking a planting project, and project advice and support may also be available from your local regional council.

“It’s important to not only think about fencing, but also how riparian areas will be maintained and enhanced once fencing is complete. In many cases, native planting is the preferred choice,” says Jackson.

Planted riparian areas have many benefits.

“Plants stabilise banks and can function like a sieve, helping to filter out sediment

and nutrients that leave farmland in runoff before entering waterways, and also provide valuable habitats for native animals.

“Less sediment means less cost for drain clearing and less risk of flooding. Riparian zones reduce nutrients getting into waterways, decrease weed growth, improve biodiversity and water quality, and provide a better environment for swimming and fishing.

“Well managed riparian zones will protect stock from getting stuck or drowning in waterways, provide more shade, reduce heat stress, and make it easier to manage stock. Riparian plants also stabilise banks with their roots, limiting the loss of land through erosion.”

Water quality is coming under increasing public and government scrutiny and the dairy industry’s response includes the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

developed in 2013, which was a five-year commitment to manage land in a way that contributes to achieving water quality desired by New Zealanders.

Some achievements through the accord include: • Fencing off dairy cattle from 24,249km (98.3%) of significant dairy accord waterways • Installing bridges and culverts on 100% of stock crossing points dairy cows use • Assessing 100% of accord farms for effluent management practices.

Riparian zones are strips of land beside drains, streams, rivers and lakes. They include areas on the farm where the soils are wettest, such as wetlands, springs or seeps, and gullies.

“Having a plan for riparian planting is the key to getting value for money and doing it right the first time,” says Jackson.

“Your riparian plan should cover the 63

“Having a plan for riparian planting is the key to getting value for money and doing it right the first time,” three steps of fencing, planting and maintaining your riparian zones. Use your farm knowledge to form your plan.”

To avoid losing plants in floods, determine how your waterway behaves in full flow. This will help decide where to place fences and what to plant.

Identify areas on your farm where runoff or erosion occur most frequently and that have the greatest effect on water quality.

This includes seeps, springs, gullies, eroding banks, boggy areas and wet soils, which should be part of the fenced area and prioritised for planting.

You should also decide what is manageable. Fencing can be completed reasonably quickly, whereas planting and follow-up maintenance takes longer.

During planning, set a realistic timeframe and budget for planting. For example, by planting 25% of the area per year, your riparian zones will be complete in four years.

“All waterway fencing needs to be permanent to guarantee stock exclusion.

That’s because livestock trample and graze plants. They also damage banks and defecate in water, adding sediment, nutrients and bacteria that reduce water quality.”

Mapping your waterways and creating a fencing plan is recommended. Work

64

out fence lines and crossing points and choose a suitable fencing setback distance.

The aim of the fencing setback distance is to slow runoff enough to ensure as much bacteria, nutrients and sediment as possible are filtered out before they enter a waterway. A setback distance for a healthy riparian zone should vary onfarm to reflect different soil types, slopes, and water flow, but must be a minimum of 3m for new fences to meet the new national Resource Management Act stock exclusion regulations.

“A wider setback is needed on steeper paddocks, longer paddocks and heavier soils, because these all generate fastflowing runoff. On flat to undulating land, relatively small zones of 3–5m are still capable of reducing nutrients, sediment and bacteria entering waterways.”

Jackson recommends keeping in mind what you want to achieve by planting the zones. “If you want to create shade for your stream to reduce weed growth and

keep streams cool, you may need wider zones to allow more space for the trees. If you want to filter nutrients, sediment and bacteria from runoff, then smaller zones (3–5m) with shrubs and grasses will still be effective.”

Consent for certain types of fencing or planting may be required. Check with the local council to see if the farm is within a flood control or land drainage scheme area before starting any work.

“The next step is to decide what to plant, where, and at what spacing. There can be up to three zones of plant types on a healthy riparian zone. Planting your upper and lower banks will improve water quality more than using grass strips alone.”

Maintaining access to drains is important, so only plant up one side near drains, preferably the north bank to provide the stream with shade in summer.

Avoid planting deep-rooted species (upper bank plants) over tile drains.

Keeping on top of weeds and pests is

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

crucial in the first five years for a healthy riparian zone to become established. Combining protective and active maintenance methods is recommended as the most effective maintenance option.

“Grass strips do a great job of filtering runoff.

Avoid the temptation to let livestock graze your margins, even if it is just rank grass. If you need to, brush-cut your grass filter strips – don’t spray them.”

Regional councils have rules about what can and cannot be done near or to waterways. For example, activities you may need consent for around riparian zones include: • Construction of bridges, culverts, fords, tracks and raceways • Activities that disturb the bed of a river or lake, including the removal or deposition of sediment • Clearing vegetation in, on, or under the bed of a river or lake. This may include removing vegetation, rocks, gravel, sediment or other obstructions from a waterway • Drainage of a wetland or the creation or deepening of drains close to a wetland • Introducing or planting pest plants.

For more information on riparian planting and suitable plants, visit dairynz.co.nz/riparian and use the riparian planter tool: riparian-planner.dairynz. co.nz or contact your regional council.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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ENVIRONMENT NEW FORAGE

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Matt and Sally Gallant see potential in the dense plant.

Miscanthus could be a winner on West Coast farm A grass that resembles sugar cane, with potential uses for shelter and as a biofuel crop, has been planted on Matt and Sally Gallant’s farm. The couple say it was easy to establish, low maintenance, and has many advantages. Anne Hardie reports.

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rial plots of miscanthus have encouraged Matt and Sally Gallant to plant the edges of their winter crops to stop sediment and nitrogen runoff.

The couple farm at Atarau in the West Coast’s Grey Valley, where they planted 2500 of the tall, bushy plants two years ago in two plots totalling 0.5ha. They had seen the plant and recognised its potential for shelter and possibly as a biofuel crop. With tougher winter grazing rules on the table, they are now planning to plant it along the edge of the crop where its mass of rhizomes in the soil can collect potential runoff.

The miscanthus is a C4 grass growing as high as 4m that closely resembles sugar cane. The hybrid grown on New Zealand farms is sterile, which means it can’t reproduce itself by seed and spreads slowly by creeping rhizomes. That spread can be contained by spraying though and Sally says those factors mean it will not become the pest that plants such as broom or gorse have become.

“We saw it growing in Canterbury and thought ‘what is that?’” Sally explains. “So we googled it and went back and visited the crop, which was a Lincoln University trial.”

It was at the time shelter belts were being removed on the Canterbury Plains to make way for pivot irrigators, and miscanthus was an alternative shelter belt for pivots to negotiate.

Those trials also found pasture on the sheltered side of the miscanthus had more growth because it was protected from the wind, and it created a habitat for insects beneficial to pasture.

The miscanthus can be harvested and used for bedding such as in the calf shed, as it has been overseas, but Sally says they are unlikely to use it for that because there’s the cost of getting it harvested. And though stock can munch away on the plant, it’s a low-grade feed. But as a hedge for shelter and reducing runoff, they think it has potential.

On their farm, they viewed the plant as potential shelter belts, riparian planting, and a possible crop for carbon credits, though that is looking unlikely at this stage. They planted one plot on their 138ha dairy farm and another plot up the road on their 50ha support block.

“It helps to stabilise your banks on streams and we found with our other riparian plants, you lose so many because they are choked out.

“It has the potential to take off and with New Zealand wanting to be clean and green, you think someone would be picking up on it.”

It has been an easy crop to establish, with no maintenance after the initial weed control in its first year. Being a rhizome, the plant is

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

The plant expands from rhizomes.

dormant through winter and Matt thought he had killed it with weed spray that first year, until it sprouted away again at the beginning of spring. They didn’t choose the best time for planting, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter.

“We planted it in a dry summer and it took off,” Matt says. “You grow them a metre apart and it becomes a solid hedge.”

For that reason, they are also considering planting miscanthus along the dairy farm’s boundary where it borders another dairy farm, to act as a biosecurity measure against potential disease passing between herds.

“There’s no way stock could pass anything over the fence if we planted it – it’s a solid barrier,” Matt says.

The expanding rhizome nature of the plant means they can now split up those initial plants to plant more around the farm, including the riparian strips along streams where those winter crops will be planted.

About half the 340-cow herd joins the young stock on the support block for winter, with a mix of swede and fodder beet grown on that block and the milking platform. They like the fodder beet because it grows such a good yield in a small area and as long as the crop is managed well, it works well.

“We break the herd up into four smaller

Miscanthus will be used against the edge of winter crops.

‘It has the potential to take off and with New Zealand wanting to be clean and green, you think someone would be picking up on it.’ mobs of cattle so it’s easier on the cows and the environment,” Sally says.

It’s more work, but less competition for the cows and less impact on the paddock. The miscanthus sits well with their philosophy of keeping it simple and taking pressure off the cows and land. The climate dictates how they run the business as well, and though their 2.3m rainfall is a fraction of what they experienced when they farmed further south on the Coast, it still requires a ‘sensible’ approach for applying fertiliser. Their nitrogen applications total about 190kg N/ha which already falls within the new environmental regulations, so on that point they are already compliant.

Other environmental work has got underway since Yili bought Westland Milk Products and delivered a higher payout that made some of that work possible.

A new, lined effluent pond can collect 1.5 million litres before picking the right time to irrigate it through K-line on the paddocks. Riparian planting has ramped up also.

“We’ve tried over the years to do riparian

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

planting, but it’s at the bottom of the list when times are tight,” Sally says. “But now we’re cranking into it.”

The Gallants have farmed at Atarau for the past 13 years after a journey that began with three years working on a cattle station in the Kimberleys at the northwestern reaches of Australia. The station, Kalyeeda, which is the name they have also given to their West Coast dairy farm, totalled 120,000ha and the owners ran two stations that added up to 400,000ha.

Back on New Zealand turf, they turned to dairy farming because Matt had grown up with stints on his uncles’ dairy farms. That led them to sharemilking at Harihari at the southern end of the West Coast, and then an equity partnership with Matt’s extended family on the Atarau farm.

“We bought the farm after a high payout year and our first season was when they clawed back some of the payout – a couple of days before Christmas,” Sally remembers. “There have been some hard years with Westland, but it’s getting back on track now. And our partners have been pretty awesome.”

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STOCK NEW GENETICS

Vikings proving their worth on dairy farms VikingReds from Scandinavia have been bred for resistance to mastitis and udder health for more than 40 years and are becoming popular on New Zealand organic dairy farms. Karen Trebilcock reports.

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ikings are invading New Zealand, with more than 50,000 straws of the Scandinavian breed used this last mating season on dairy farms.

Supplied by Samen NZ, VikingReds are from Finnish, Swedish, and Danish Reds.

Nine A2A2 VikingReds bulls have been chosen by Samen for their suitability for New Zealand conditions to use as crosses over Friesian, Jersey and crossbreds as replacement dairy stock.

Samen’s Southland breeding consultant Glenn Taylor said Vikings were known for their fertility and health traits.

“In Scandinavia they’ve had tougher restrictions on hormone and antibiotic use compared with us and Vikings are proving their worth.

“They’ve been bred for resistance to mastitis and for udder health now for more than 40 years.”

It’s these traits that have made Southland’s Aquila Sustainable Farming, the country’s largest organic milk producer, take notice.

The nine farms, milking 5500 Friesian Jersey cross cows, supply EU certified organic milk to Open Country Dairy.

Organic farming is a concept of managing land and livestock to optimum sustainable productivity without the ‘crutches’ of urea or hormones, Aquila’s interim general manager Jessica Fraser said.

“It could be described as a combination of old-school farming combined with modern science and technology.

“Our approach is to minimise or eliminate disease rather than to have to treat animals.

“Our own breeding programme with 68

VikingReds calves from the Aquila Friesian and Jersey crossbred herds in mid-December near Dipton in Southland.

stronger weighting of disease resistance, functional anatomy, and fertility traits is one way of supporting our aims of keeping our herds healthy.”

For the past two years all of their A2A2 cows, milked together on four of their farms, were inseminated for six weeks with frozen sexed VikingReds starting on November 1. The holding rate of about 55% has given them all of their replacements. Operations manager of the Glencairn Aquila farms, Strahan McCallum, has been impressed with the uniformity of the first crop of calves.

The three farms near Dipton, milking 2250 cows, have raised almost 600 replacements. By mid-December only about 25 of the late-born calves that had not met weaning weights of 100kg were

still to be sent away to organic graziers.

Fed organic milk, 18% protein calf pellets and as much lucerne hay as they wanted, Strahan said the calves were no problem to handle, learnt to feed quickly and were quiet. He’s looking forward to milking them in two years’ time, hoping the traits the breed is known for show through.

“It will be our first large number of VikingReds milked in New Zealand so we will be really interested to see how they go,” Glenn said.

“Aquila is very good at capturing data, so with them using the breed for all of their replacements we will be able to use that data to show what this breed can really do in New Zealand.”

Glenn said VikingReds dominated Danish milking herds due to their easy

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

‘You use Vikings if you want to improve your herd’s fertility and health.’ care and efficient milk solids production combined with moderate live weight.

For New Zealand herds, it was their fertility and health that was the big tick.

“You use Vikings if you want to improve your herd’s fertility and health,” Glenn said.

“It’s what you turn to after crossing Friesian over Jersey for many years to keep up that hybrid vigour.”

A 2019 study by Dairy Australia of 900,000 cows, comparing different crossbreds and purebred herds on a pasture-based system showed there was no significant difference in milk volume between Friesian and Jersey crossbred cows and those that were also crossed with VikingReds. However, the three-way cross outperformed in protein and fat percentages, survivability, and the sixweek in-calf rate. Outside of Scandinavia, Australia has the largest numbers of the breed.

Glenn said the three-way cross continued hybrid vigour, which was being lost in New Zealand’s Friesian Jersey crossbred herds.

“Samen NZ is bringing semen into the country to reintroduce hybrid vigour with all of the benefits of udder health, fertility, as well as good legs and feet, which we also need.

“That’s one of the first things people notice about them – they have a big drop in lameness issues.”

He said VikingReds were also known for a flatter milking curve and maintaining their body condition better after calving.

Other farmers were using VikingReds as an alternative to Jersey to cross over Friesians, while some were choosing the ProCROSS which used Friesian, VikingReds and French breed Coopex Montbéliarde.

After six weeks of inseminating with Vikings, Aquila switched to another Samen NZ product – Red Wagyu. Supported by Southern Stations Wagyu, Red Wagyu

Above: Samen Southland and Otago breeding consultants Glenn Taylor and Kerri Hellyer with Aquila Glencairn farms operations manager Strahan McCallum and interim general manager Jessica Fraser.

Right: Samen Southland breeding consultant Glenn Taylor with a bank of frozen sexed VikingReds straws at one of the Aquila farms.

matured quicker than the black and brown alternatives at two and a half to three years and were easier to rear, Glenn said.

Red Wagyu is a cross between Swiss Simmental and Korean Hanwoo breeds and meet Japan’s marbling criteria for Wagyu.

Strahan is a big fan of them, saying they were easy to rear and, with their strong, muscular necks, getting them off the calf feeders was the hardest problem.

“We can have 200 calves hitting the calf rearing sheds a day so it’s really important for us that calves feed well at the start,” he said.

Also part of Aqulia’s programme was Samen’s short gestation Belgium Blue.

After nine weeks of AI is finished, a mix of Angus and Hereford bulls were used.

Empty rates were between 7 and 10%.

“We’re trying to eliminate bobbies and instead work towards supplying organic dairy beef to rearers,” Jessica said.

“Sustainability is something our investors are very keen on.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Owned by a Hamburg-based investment fund, the farms took two years to become certified organic.

“It was the investors who wanted these farms to be organic, which means sustainability in all its aspects is our focus.

“This includes managing and breeding for optimum animal health, longevity and fertility, based on science and data.

“And we’ve shown it works.”

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VETS VOICE MASTITIS CONTROL

The cost of one cow Words by: Lisa Whitfield

T

his month has been a testing time for us on the farm at Massey No 1 Dairy. I have been privileged to be working on the farm as a primary relief staff member over the course of the year and have benefited greatly from the experience of being at the coalface of a farm.

Here we are used to operating at a cell count of about 100,000 or fewer. A clinical case will usually cause the cell count to go up by 10,00 to 20,000. In that situation we strip the herd and are usually able to find the culprit. However, since just after Christmas we have

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experienced spikes of up to 200,000. spray application was good, and the cows Despite a redoubled effort in preventative were going into good quality pasture, with mastitis management and a lot of headno crops or feed pad use. scratching, to have the cell count sitting Every case gets cultured onfarm. There between 130,000 and 160,000 for were three different bacteria at two weeks has been stressful and play – mostly Strep uberis cases, has caused a lot of thought about but also two Staph aureus what has been going on. We cases, and one acute E. coli had 10 cases of clinical mastitis case. Cases were mostly in in 10 days from a herd of 262. the left quarters, particularly The financial cost to the the back left. farm has been substantial, with During two different milkings treatments, dumped milk, and an we noticed milk clots on the floor Lisa Whitfield additional staff member required at of the parlour, however we could milking to allow for stripping the herd. never find where they came from, nor why We had the pulsators checked (all working they were in the middle of the parlour well) and then a dynamic machine test floor. was performed that identified some One lucky day, we discovered what we overmilking and a slightly high vacuum. think was going on: one cow, in her second Blood samples were assessed to doublelactation, who had a small, additional check trace element status – which mammary gland on the back of her udder, came back as normal. We could not and a short, fused teat exiting partway grasp what had changed to cause down the back left teat. The additional the outbreak, and what the source of gland had acquired mastitis and had infection was. periodically been discharging infected milk Every other day we stripped the herd, when the cups were on. Most likely she only to find a new clinical case at the next had been infecting other cows with the milking. Staffing hadn’t changed, teat thick, sticky secretions, as well as adding Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Photo: The teat that cost the farm thousands of dollars.

The teat that cost the farm thousands of dollars.

a lot of cells to the silo. We breathed a big sigh of relief to have found out what was likely to have been going on.

The cow was made into a 3-titter immediately, as the position of the extra teat canal made a permanent cure not very feasible.

The cell count dropped by 50,000 the next day. She had a pure culture of Strep uberis from the gland. Did you know that Strep uberis can be spread from cow to cow in the right circumstances?

I feel that this story illustrates well the effect that a single cow can have on the bulk tank somatic cell count. A single cow, with an unchecked infection, caused an outbreak that pushed the cell count to double our normal level.

With the problem controlled, the cell count has headed back to a level where we are comfortable.

In the second half of the season, there is plenty to think about with regards to udder infections. Sources of infection tend to become more common – cattle grazing summer crops, plenty of dust, abundant flies, faecal contamination of dry paddocks, and cow-to-cow spread as the number of days in lactation increase.

It is more important than ever at this time of the year to continue to focus on excellent teat spray application, maintaining teat health, minimising

overmilking as production wanes, and minimising faecal contamination of teats.

Planning your drying off strategy should be on the agenda now. Plan early to be prepared regardless of when the season draws to a close for your herd. Herd tests from now on can be used to identify cows that may need dry cow therapy – use data from within the last 90 days of lactation.

Treat cows as individuals. Adding in the use of the rapid mastitis test well before their production drops, and targeted milk cultures, is useful to identify high cell count cows that will benefit from dry cow therapy versus those that will not.

Think about the effect a single cow can have on your cell count – if you are strategic in how you choose cows to dry off, you can have a large impact on mastitis with a relatively small number of cows.

Antibiotic dry cow therapy does not fix mastitis problems – proactive management, planning, time, and effort does.

• Lisa Whitfield is a Manawatu-based production animal veterinari

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STOCK MORE EFFICIENT COWS

A long way from Auckland: Donovan, Sophie and Thomas Croot (along with Estelle and Penelope at school and kindy) love feeling at home dairy farming in Taranaki. Eventually they would like to take on another sharemilking job, invest in more cows, and balance their business with family time.

Passion helps to realise potential A young couple who say they have their dream job are looking to improve the herd and introduce innovation to the farm they work on. Jackie Harrigan reports.

D

onovan and Sophie Croot have moved on from the cheap ‘mixer-upperer’ herd they put together for their first sharemilking job and now have a whole new focus on their cows and their breeding.

“We realised pretty early on, owning our own animals we had a whole new sense of responsibility and passion for them – that 72

comes with ownership,” Donovan said.

They also realised the potential of wellbred highly productive animals and what they could add to their bottom line.

“If you are feeding the herd pretty much the same, why not farm the cows that are the most productive?”

During their first sharemilking job, the young couple (now 34 and 30) were fortunate to connect with a neighbour, Jim

Webster, who over many years had worked up to breeding the top BW/PW herd in New Zealand in the 2018/19 season in his small 100-cow herd. He became the Croots’ friend and breeding mentor.

When the opportunity arose to purchase some of Jim’s herd because he was leaving farming, they sold the bottom of their existing herd to the South Island for M. bovis replacements and were able to pick

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

out 80 of Jim’s top-producing cows.

“We were really fortunate to be offered the opportunity to buy such great cows and to learn so much from Jim,” Sophie said. “Now we can move forward with our own Clovalley herd; it’s really exciting to see what we can do.”

Moving to their second 50/50 job at Manutahi in South Taranaki, the young couple say they have found their dream job working for the Walkers on their 7th-generation family farm. They have really appreciated the trust of the owners, the nurturing of their ideas, and the opportunity to be innovative.

The farm had been with a longterm manager so there was heaps of potential for innovation – upgrading pastures, introducing summer cropping, installing in-shed feeding, and upgrading infrastructure like the effluent system.

Arriving with 225 cows, the first season was a struggle, with old pastures and then a dry summer, Donovan said.

“We went OAD from January to May and

by March were installing in-shed feeding to make sure the cows were fed – the whole season was a struggle.

“We still managed to lift the farm production, getting to 83,000kg MS, up from the 56,000kg MS the year before we arrived, and we are targeting just over 100,000kg MS for the 20/21 season and are on track to reach it.

“It’s what we love doing – cranking up production on a farm – but we like to be smart about it.

“We cut cow numbers at the end of last season. The whole industry has been intensifying, with kg MS/cow dropping, but we think that too many cows leads to too many emissions and too much leaching. By fully feeding our cows and each achieving their genetic potential, some of our cows are capable of producing 800-900kg MS; they are super-efficient.”

The Croots have also organised insurance against another dry season: contracting feed, making twice as much silage as last year, and planting a 4ha turnip crop for summer feed, which will then be sown down in new pasture species.

“The turnip crop could be one third of the diet for two months with pit silage and a small top-up of feed in the shed in case of nil grass growth through the late summer.”

Above: New grazing strategy: The Croot’s new Grazing 120 system allocates 24 hours of grazing after the afternoon milking, with the theory that cows eat the most overnight (two-thirds of daily intake) and the young cows and stragglers get a really good feed. Left: A new effluent system from the Clean Green Effluent company has a twin weeping wall with green water irrigated through pods onto 16ha from two x 30,000l tanks and one tank for greenwash of the yard recycling the water.

BALANCING THE BREEDING

With a full season under their belt, the Croots are now turning their focus on the business of breeding great cows.

Their herd is predominantly Friesian cross, and with BW 163 and PW 213 they are already in the top 5-10% for BW/PW. Sophie and Donovan nominate all of the semen for the herd for six weeks – using a mixture of LIC and CRV as genetics providers.

Sophie is a trained vet nurse and AB technician, so she does all of the AB on the farm, as well as taking up a run for LIC. “I actually love it. I grew up in a townie family in Auckland so they are kind of

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

horrified, but I love working with the cows and it’s a great way to meet the neighbours.

“Donovan takes full advantage of me though,” she laughs, “sometimes we have 10 totally different straws for 10 different cows.”

Tailing with SGL semen for the cows and synchronising and AB on the yearlings on the support block is followed by putting bulls with them.

Having used Belgian Blue semen in the past for tailing off, the couple both agreed that their cows were too valuable to risk any calving difficulties, and that the added value of calves would not compensate for loss of cows or milk production.

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FARM FACTS:

• 50/50 sharemilkers: Sophie and Donovan Croot • Farm Owners: Neil and Helen Walker, Taumaha Trust • Dairy platform: 63ha • Support block: 30ha, 1km away • Cows: 190 cows (20/21) Friesian X, (225cows in 2019/20) • Dairy shed: ACRs installed at own cost to allow milking by one person = more family time.

• Supplement: In-shed feeding, 1t/ cow mix including maize, tapioca, DDG, soy meal/hull and some canola. Doubled silage made plus 4ha turnips for summer feed.

• System: 3-4 • Production: 56,000kg MS farm production (2018/2019), 83,000kg MS (2019/20), target for just over 100,000kg MS (2020/2021), aiming for 520kg MS/cow and hope to push it out to 570kg MS/cow as efficient cows genetics come through into the herd.

Their formula for picking sires is confirmation, pedigree, cow breed makeup, and BW, and they have started using an AAA analyst to highlight ways they could correctively mate any cows with conformation imbalances for longevity and soundness.

“Being from a vet background, that really interested me,” Sophie said. “It helps us plan how we can improve the herd from a conformation viewpoint.”

After all AI for the past five years, the not-in-calf (NIC) rate of 14% is pretty good for an all-AI farm, Donovan says.

Five-year-old cow #44, Taramount JD Tyree, in October peaked at 4.08kg MS/day and has produced 410kg MS in 122 days of lactation by late December. With a bodyweight of 500kg Donovan says she is on track to produce 700kg MS in the lactation. He aims to breed a whole herd of cows like her!

“It's a trade-off between the bull risk to biosecurity and staff safety and the NIC rate.”

He credits the in-shed feeding of some transition feed with the lift in six-week submission rate to 90% this season and is eagerly awaiting the pregnancy testing results.

While they use the ‘tried and true’ tail paint method of picking cycling cows, the couple say they would love to invest in new collar or ear tag technology.

“That might be our next investment,” they say laughing, “no more cows – we are

both addicted to cows.”

Sixty replacement heifers are currently reared and retained (30%) by Sophie and Donovan and the goal is to be able to sell elite heifers both naturally conceived and by embryo transfer (ET) each year from their Clovalley stud, along with providing a tailored breeding advice service for dairy farmers.

The couple have a good number of contracted cows with breeding companies for ET, which is a great way to get elite heifers.

“We want daughters and they want sons

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

and if we can get 10 embryos from one cow at a cost of $4000 and get to keep five calves, then they are pretty reasonable sums for elite females,” Donovan said.

“We have about a 1-in-10 strike rate for elite males and this year have three sons the breeding companies are interested in. We can either sell the contracted bulls outright for $4000 to $5000 each or hold off for royalties from the bull if he succeeds.”

INVESTMENT IN STAFF

With a young family and after 10 years balancing cows, milking, business, and children, Donovan and Sophie have taken the step of employing staff this season.

“Most small herd owners do all the work themselves but we decided to invest in staff now, while our children are young so that we can have more time with our family. It will also make our business more resilient.”

Sophie and Donovan have Estelle, 6, Penelope, 3, and Thomas, 18 months, and this summer are taking a camping holiday – their first as a family.

Brazilian Tomas Comunello is in New Zealand on a three-year working visa working for the couple, and is efficient and kind and gentle with the cows, say the Croots.

His partner, Cristine, is also wonderful at helping out and with the children.

With more time to call his own Donovan hopes to get out and about and regain his earlier fitness, and Sophie is keen on horses and is appreciative of being able to keep her horse and a pony for the girls on the farm. “It’s wonderful to be

able to have a hobby that doesn’t involve driving somewhere.”

DRILLING INTO DETAIL

Taking the step up into a more intensive system in conjunction with milk management consultants MilkMap for the first time in the 2020/2021 season has been a huge learning curve for the Croots. Rensinus Schipper is the MilkMap consultant helping the Croots with a structured approach to planning, management, and monitoring of their business. Planning involves an annual profit plan; monitoring comprises weekly reporting of grass covers and cow feeding levels with data entered weekly into spreadsheets and uploaded through Dropbox. The reporting takes an hour each week, including rumination counts, says Sophie, and a report comes back with detail about the feeding levels and blend formula. The blend changes with the season and cow nutritional requirements and is ordered from the feed company in 13t consignments.

While the consultancy service is not cheap, Donovan says the lift in production has improved profitability and they have learned a lot about how to balance the cow’s diet.

“We thought that if we are going to buy in expensive feed we really need to know the hows and whys.

“The consultancy has also improved our resilience to drought and general business resilience.”

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Top: Thomas loves getting out on the farm with mum and dad. Above: Family ties: Aucklander Donovan Croot fell for dairy farming while working in the school holidays on his uncle Colin Foley’s dairy farm in Taranaki – now Colin advises and helps out the young couple in his retirement.

income using Fonterra’s Fixed Milk Price for half of their production in the middle of the lockdown.

“It turned out to be not the right decision this year but we need to be happy with it. At least it's guaranteed now.

“It's all a learning experience.”

: you r nea ys # 041 9 a ld D ricts # 41 e i ee st tF s a al Di Kirw u r , See Cent sland I th Sou 75

Kiwi skills sought after in Ireland A Kiwi couple who moved to Ireland to further their dairying and science careers may have had the brakes put on their travel due to Covid, but it’s not stopping them from learning on the job. Jacob Sievwright and Katie Starsmore hope the knowledge they’re gaining will have a direct benefit to New Zealand. Anne Lee reports.

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A

s the song says, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’, but for a young Kiwi couple the move to Ireland has been an ideal way to build on their dairying and science careers and get to see a whole new chunk of the world – Covid-19 aside.

Jacob Sievwright and Katie Starsmore have been in Ireland since June 2019, and although the global pandemic has put the handbrake on their wider travels over the past year and they’ve been in the strictest lockdown level over recent weeks, their jobs mean they’re both classed as essential workers.

Katie works at Teagasc Moorepark on research that could arguably be deemed essential not only to Ireland but also to the planet – investigating ways to reduce methane emissions from cows and help limit the effects of climate change.

Jacob’s work in helping feed people as a farm manager on a 300-cow intergenerational dairy farm is also deemed essential, just as it is here.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Far left: Katie Starsmore and Jacob Sievwright are going hard on dairy careers in Ireland, while they wait for the world to open up to overseas travel.

Left: Cutting and weighing pasture to validate pasture assessment, Jacob Sievwright is adding value in pasture management, lifting pasture utilisation to levels seldom seen in Ireland.

His New Zealand-learned skills in managing a pasture-based system are highly sought after in Ireland, with the dairy farming sector putting in big efforts to improve profitability and efficiencies by getting cows out of sheds and onto pasture.

Originally a Palmerston North city boy, Katie’s parents gave him an opportunity to see how he liked dairying over calving on their 550-cow farm in Taranaki.

“I ended up really enjoying it and stayed on there for a year.”

When he and Katie went to Ireland he quickly got a job working on the farm he’s on now, initially as a herd manager. Jacob is employed by Tom and Ruth Downey in South Tipperary.

There’s been plenty to learn about Irish

farming but he’s also been able to really add value in terms of pasture management.

This winter the cows have been indoors since November 26 and went back out on February 1.

“We were outside for 300 days last season – which is a long time for over here, but the farm doesn’t get as wet as a lot of farms so we can utilise the grass a lot more heavily,” he says.

He monitors pasture closely, walking the farm every four to seven days and taking pasture cuts on a proportion of paddocks to ensure kg drymatter (DM) per hectare cover estimations are accurate.

Last season they grew 15.4t DM/ha/year and Jacob says utilisation was high.

For comparison, Teagasc data presented

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

at the Pasture Summit in New Zealand in 2018 reported average pasture utilisation was 7.3t DM/ha and the top 10% of farmers achieved 9.6t DM/ha. At an 80% utilisation rate that figure would be about 12.32t DM/ha for Jacob.

He uses both a spring and autumn rotation planner, paying close attention to achieving dry-off covers that will give him the right average cover for February.

Cows are fed silage while dry and about 650kg/cow of meal through the farm dairy during milking to produce 486kg milksolids (MS)/cow or 1458kg MS/ha.

It’s a top performance compared with benchmarks and considering that, on average, cows are on their third lactation in his herd. The Pasture Summit data reported average concentrate fed per cow at 933kg/ cow and average production at 680kg MS/ ha in Ireland.

Jacob says they breed for crossbred cows and have a high economic breeding index (EBI) of 169. EBI is a similar index to New Zealand’s breeding worth (BW).

“There’s a big range in farmers showing interest in taking up the so-called ‘new ways’ using grazing – some dabble in it and others follow everything to the letter,

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Right: Katie Starsmore stands on the Greenfeed machine at Teagasc Moorepark that she uses to measure carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen from cows while they are feeding on additional concentrate.

and then you get some who just aren’t interested.

“There are definitely a lot of opportunities for Kiwis to come over here.

Their grazing skills are really sought after,” Jacob says.

A lot of effort is going into helping farmers establish and build white clover populations to help reduce the reliance on synthetic nitrogen.

“The use of white clover here is something quite new so there’s a lot of research and work going on to demonstrate how to establish it and how to manage it.

“The big concern from farmers here seems to be how to manage bloat,” he says.

For Katie, the move is building on her science background and research career.

She completed a Bachelor of Science majoring in agriculture and minoring in animal science at Massey University in 2018. Her interest in research and travel had been piqued earlier that year when she went on a student exchange to Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands.

“That was an amazing experience and really opened my eyes to research into sustainability issues.

“When I got back to Massey, I talked to people there about it and that’s where I picked up contacts in Ireland,” she says.

She’s been working on methane research since she arrived at Teagasc and is now carrying out a masters degree through Teagasc and Massey.

Her studies are focusing on understanding methane production and nitrogen efficiency from grass only and grass-white clover swards.

She is also carrying out testing on various feed supplements for their effects on reducing methane gas emissions from cows.

Most products that have shown good results elsewhere in the world have been fed to cows within their total mixed ration (TMR) diet so the active ingredient is constantly in the rumen throughout the day.

The problem for grazing systems is that the opportunity to administer the active 78

‘There are definitely a lot of opportunities for Kiwis to come over here. Their grazing skills are really sought after’ ingredients via a supplement is likely going to be during milking – typically once in the morning and once in the afternoon after cows have grazed, so the active ingredient is only passing through the rumen twice a day. Katie says her research uses GreenFeed machines that measure carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen while the cows are feeding on additional concentrate. The machine is on a trailer parked in the race next to the paddock and cows have free access to it while out grazing.

The incentive for the cows to use the machine is the additional sweet concentrate. Their electronic identification (EID) tag is read when they put their head into the feed bin area so all the gases emitted by that specific cow are measured during the time they are in the unit.

Each cow can enter the unit up to five times a day.

“We’re looking at different blends of various products to work out the right levels of inclusion in the concentrate.

“We have some interesting results and there are a few promising signs, but I can’t say too much about it yet,” she says.

It’s great to be working on research that could have a direct benefit to New Zealand as well, Katie says.

“There are a lot of opportunities over

NOTED Some of the differences and prominent issues they’ve noted in the Irish dairy scene include: • All silage pits must be built on concrete pads with drainage for leachate and runoff to a contained area or tank.

• Calves must be reared on a concrete base (with suitable bedding on top), and have drainage for dung and urine.

• Like New Zealand there is a move away from bobby calves, with the industry setting up a dairy beef EBI (breeding index) so farmers can select a sire that will give them shorter gestation length, ease of calving and good beef traits.

here and it’s such a great place to base yourself for work and travel – you can be in Europe in not much more than an hour from leaving home,” Katie says.

“It’s probably a bit underrated as a destination, so yeah, it’s definitely worth looking at.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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Environment Minister David Parker with the first intake of Tauria Mahi cadets from back left, Nathan Wakley, Rueben Aikman, Shane Gregory, Levi Pouwhare, front: Monique Nee Nee, Anna Wentsch, Liberty Jones, Misty Peni, Hayley Reber.

COHORT OF CONSERVATION CADETS COMING Words by: Elaine Fisher

T

auira Mahi, a training programme that is part of the Jobs for Nature programme, has been launched in the Bay of Plenty with the first intake of 10 cadets.

The aim of the training is to open up new, nature-based employment opportunities and to promote sustainable land use practices and the implementation of new regulations, like the Essential Freshwater package.

Facilitated by Bay Conservation Alliance, the programme is supported by a grant of $3.5 million, and is part of the Government’s Jobs for Nature scheme launched in the 2020 Budget to boost employment, and protect and enhance the environment while accelerating the recovery from the impact of Covid-19.

“We are very excited to finally welcome our first 10 cadets with a special launch event,” said Michelle Elborn, CEO, Bay Conservation Alliance.

“A real highlight was the heartfelt welcome from Reon Tuanau from Ngai Te Rangi and his reminder to us all that when the land is well, the people are well – ki te pai te whenua, he pai te iwi.”

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Environment Minister David Parker, together with staff from the Ministry for the Environment and Bay Conservation partners including iwi, DOC and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, attended the launch in mid-January.

“We want to grow a cohort of people across New Zealand who have environmental management skills: from pest control, freshwater restoration, environmental monitoring and planting, to conservation work and more,” said Parker.

“We are also focused on improving New Zealand’s natural environment by creating enduring benefits for our freshwater and biodiversity, mitigating the impact of climate change, and protecting cultural values, like gathering kai.

“When we were putting the Jobs for Nature package together, we believed it was crucial to also focus on providing training and skills, so that our people learn skills they can carry with them for the rest of their lives,” Parker said.

Much of the cadets’ learning and work will take place at community conservation sites and alongside partners, providing additional resourcing for these projects.

The cadetship will run three times a year for the next four and a half years, and at the end of the 12-week programme the cadets will have an insight into a range of career options that support environmental outcomes, from data collection and GIS, through to water management, pest control, biodiversity monitoring, restoration planting and more.

Tauira Mahi aims to grow the skill capability in the Bay of Plenty region, achieved through a hands-on experiential learning work programme.

“It also marks an opportunity for new nature-based employment in our region,” says Elborn.

“A diverse range of job opportunities that cadets may consider on completion of the cadetship will be highlighted and they will be armed with practical skills and NZQA certifications to increase employability and personal success.

“It aims to deliver environmental outcomes across our community conservation member group sites and various landowner sites through the work the cadets will undertake.”

For more information or to apply for a future intake, visit www.bayconservation.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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81

WELLBEING FARM SAFETY

Keep your family safe

on and off the farm

Having conversations with your children is important because the fact is… people are dying on our farms, Harriet Bremner says.

Harriet Bremner and Poppy.

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S

ummer holidays are coming to an end and the summer has been full of farming, family and hopefully some time off-farm for some fun!

In this column I want to cover how we talk to our children about how to stay safe when they are out and about on the farm, whether they are cruising around on their own little motorbike or helping mum and dad out.

I am going to share with you a mother’s story about her son and give you some tips on how to start the conversations with your children so they can make good decisions. These are the ones we don’t even think about having with them just simply because traditionally they have not been talked about or we haven’t thought of

it as being at the top of the priority list.

I have heard many an adult say to their child something like this – ‘don’t stand there’. While well-intended and you know the reason for not wanting your precious child to stand in the blind spot of a tractor in the yard, it leaves the child wondering ‘why?’

For example, the blind spot behind a tractor … do your children really know what this is or what could happen to them if they stood in it? This blind spot picture out of my ‘Be safe, Be Seen’ book has been carefully illustrated to demonstrate to even young children what it is and also prompts the conversation that can be hard to start. Use the picture (below) and story to help you have these conversations.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

MY TOP TIPS ON HOW TO HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS WITH CHILDREN: Always explain the ‘why’ when you have a conversation with your children – don’t leave them wondering, because they are inquisitive creatures.

1

Do not assume that other children coming over to play or visitors to the farm have the same understanding as you do about the risks.

Get your children to explain the dangers they face – this is both fabulous learning for the visitors and your children will love taking charge! I am not talking clipboards and policies, I am talking real-life practical things we deal with every day.

2

3

Find those teachable moments when you are on the farm e.g. stop and ask the child: ‘What could go wrong here? What do we need to do to make sure this does not happen?’

Expecting your child to think and answer the question helps them to adopt a behaviour change over time if you do this regularly. They will then develop into an adult who is automatically able to assess a situation by stopping and thinking before they do anything. This can save a life.

Keep your conversations literal and practical. If you are talking about blind spots you can take some time to mark this out behind a real tractor. Put a bucket in this space and sit the child in the driver’s seat to show them that the driver simply cannot see them if they stand there. Then get an adult to reverse over the bucket to show them what could happen if you stood in that spot.

This applies to all vehicles.

4

5

YOU ARE THE EXAMPLE! If you expect your child to wear their helmet when riding their motorbike then you need to be wearing yours. If you don’t, you are sending them the message that adults are immune to harm and this is confusing when you want to keep them and yourself safe long term.

Same thing goes for seatbelts – buckle them up and buckle yourself up – a twosecond click can and does save lives so save yours and your children’s by wearing them on the farm as well. No one is bulletproof and we need to make sure children are aware that their decisions can be good ones or deadly ones.

6

Teach your children to use their ‘Think Safe Brain’. Cheesy as it sounds, it can be applied to any situation you find yourself in. We simply cannot teach every single situation our children will be faced with on the farm in their lives but we can teach them to switch on that ‘Think Safe Brain’. This gives them the ability to stop and think about something before doing it. You can then use it in any situation and you will find your children will pick it up quickly and enjoy using it.

This concept needs to be T A H W taught – the child D COUL must have a true G GO WRON understanding of what it means to use HERE their ‘Think Safe Brain’.

You need to spend time teaching this through conversations.

Check out: ‘Be Safe, Be Seen’. You can get your copy from www.gurtandpops.com.

Once taught, it can be applied and used in any situation you are in on the farm.

I hope that you are feeling rather inspired to go out and start some interesting conversations with your children on the farm. This is also a great way to remind yourself of the dangers of the job you do on a daily basis as we sometimes forget how risky what we do really is.

I urge you to lead by example, be the parent who wants to keep their family as a whole unit together living the farming dream. I know myself, there was no better childhood to be had than being in the yards, mustering on horses or helping cut up a mutton, so always make the right decision to keep you and your family safe.

Please get in touch at harriet. bremner@saferfarms.org.nz if you have a story to share you believe others can learn from in the future and save a life.

BE SAFE BE SEEN POSTER Download the poster to hang on your children’s wall and talk about it regularly.

BE SAFE BE SEEN WORKSHEET Download this empty poster worksheet for your children to fill in themselves with all the hazards they can think of on the farm.

Download from nzfarmlife.co.nz/keepyour-family-safe-on-farm/

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Think about it… when your child becomes a teenager and young adult, would you want them getting into a car with another driver and not knowing how to assess the situation? For example, no one else in the car is wearing their seatbelt and there is peer pressure to do the same but … you have taught your child to be able to make the right decision no matter where they are or what they are doing. Again, another lifesaver.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

83

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

WELLBEING FARM SAFETY

‘We die on our farms.

A simple tragic fact’

B

BOOKS

oard member of Safer Farms, vice-president of Federated Farmers NZ, and a mother, Karen Williams has her very own story that she shares below to help spread the message about the importance of wearing seatbelts in vehicles on farms.

Read her story and ‘make it click’ whenever you are driving or the passenger in a vehicle to keep yourself and your loved ones alive so they make it home at the end of the day to the dinner table.

“We die on our farms. A simple tragic fact. We can make excuses about why that happens, we can blame variables beyond our control, and we can wrongly assume it won’t happen to us or anyone we know.

The statistics tell us otherwise.

“Some time ago on the eve of Christmas my son was a passenger in a side-by-side that was driven into a bull hole hidden by long grass. He was not wearing a seatbelt and the sudden halt of the vehicle resulted in his face and throat smashing into the dashboard, and a concussion and serious windpipe injury resulted. He was not doing anything inappropriate in the vehicle, but it was quite clear that his injury would have been prevented if he had been wearing his seatbelt.

“In New Zealand, we seem hellbent on embracing the ‘she’ll be right’ approach to risk management. Even as I write this, I sense the eye-rolling by my

teenage boys that Mum is taking the fun out of everything. But this inability to take seriously our responsibility to keep ourselves and those in our care safe will result in stronger controls by government, heftier prosecutions, and more families suffering unimaginable loss.

“So here we are at the beginning of a new year. And we have a choice to make.

We can choose to adopt a culture of ‘farming safe’ and making some proactive decisions to support this – or we continue with the status quo and suffer the consequences.

“Make a good choice everyone.” – Karen Williams.

We have a range of books for sale on our website:

Go to: www.nzfarmlife.co.nz/shop

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

85

DAIRY 101 SILAGE USE

Using silage strategically

High protein silage or balage can increase production when summer grass is lacking.

Story and photos by: Karen Trebilcock

U

nfortunately, the same amount of grass doesn’t grow in your paddocks every day of the year.

It would make farming a breeze

if it did.

Some days you will grow grass, some days you will lose grass due to frost, flood or drought. And some days it won’t grow at all because it’s too cold, too dry or the sun hasn’t shone for weeks.

If you think you’re farming cows, think again. You’re really farming grass.

If you’ve got it in your paddock it’s your cheapest feed. If you’ve got too much of it, it is your cheapest supplement when you make it into silage, balage or hay.

But feeding it out as a supplement is not the same as feeding grass.

For starters, it will always be lower in energy than the grass it was made from as there are energy losses in the ensiling process making it into silage or balage, or the drying process making it into hay.

While spring grass can be about 12MJME/kg DM and 18% to 35% crude 86

protein, the best grass silage and balage is 10MJME/kg DM with 16% crude protein.

Hay is usually about 9MJME/kg DM with 15% crude protein or less.

They also differ from grass by being higher in roughage, known as neutral detergent fibre (NDF).

the lower energy, lower protein, high fibre feed instead.

It’s because silage, balage and hay are all higher in starch than fresh grass. Silage and balage is about double and hay can have 10 times the amount. Your cows all have a sweet tooth.

If you think you’re farming cows, think again.

You’re really farming grass.

The NDF of spring grass is about 40% of drymatter while silage and balage is about 50% and hay about 60%.

This roughage takes up more space in the rumen and takes a longer time for the cow to digest – it has to ruminate for longer.

You really want your cows to eat it last, when they have eaten all of the grass available and ruminated that.

But they don’t. If you feed cows silage, balage or hay when you shift them onto a fresh break of grass, they will always go for

They’re eating pudding before their meat and potatoes.

But that sugary starch doesn’t make milk. For that your cows need energy and protein, so when you feed silage, balage and hay, don’t be surprised if milk production drops.

Make sure you use it strategically – feed cows the grass you have so they eat it all and then give out the sweet stuff, maybe on a pad.

If they are eating the silage, balage or hay and leaving the grass, it’s not good.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Production will drop, paddocks will grow rank, and worst of all, it costs more for you to make that lower quality feed than to grow the grass your cows are leaving behind.

Feed out silage, balage and hay only when the amount of pasture eaten needs to be restricted, such as early spring when you are on a slow round before grass growth picks up, or in autumn when you are trying to push the round out longer and maintain production and condition.

It will keep your cows full and happy and not walking around wet pastures on soft ground searching for feed.

And when you are in the midst of a summer drought, the protein content of well-made silage and balage from spring pasture will be above the protein content of your dried out grasses.

You can also feed as much of it as you want. It is just preserved grass so it’s a safe and natural feed for cows, unlike grain and other concentrates.

But silage, balage and hay don’t just have to be made from grass.

Lucerne, which is a legume, can cause cows to bloat when fed fresh, but made into hay or balage/silage, it becomes a high protein feed that is easily digested.

It grows fast too in the right conditions, so multiple cuts can be made.

Fed in summer, when the protein in grass is lower, it can keep milk production up where you want it with its 11 MJME/ kg DM and 23% protein.

However, maize silage is only 10.5 MJME/kg DM and 7% protein, so it is more of a filler when there is not enough grass in your paddocks.

It’s a low energy, low protein, high fibre supplement, so feed it only when pasture is limiting, especially in early spring when pastures are high in protein but your cows still need fibre.

Maize silage can vary in quality depending on the amount of air introduced and the poorer the chop. It’s wise to get it tested before you buy.

Whole crop silage (WCS), also known as small grain cereals, is made from cereals such as barley, oats, wheat and triticale and is harvested when the grain has reached full size but is still soft (38% DM).

It is usually planted in the spring, but autumn-sown cereal crops are also made into WCS in New Zealand.

It is the grain component that is the most important contributor to the feed quality, especially the digestibility and the energy.

But not only do the different crops give different feed values, the time of harvest can also make WCS vary greatly.

Made too late and it is a combination of straw and pips – with hard pips that are poorly digested and often pass through the cow altogether.

At about 9-10 MJME/kg DM and 10% protein, it is a great pasture replacer and filler when pasture is in short supply, but not a production booster if pasture is available.

And then there is straw. Usually the remains of a cereal crop after the mature grain and chaff have been removed, straw has a ME about half that of grass.

Maybe best used for bedding.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

Top: Cattle will usually always eat silage, balage or hay offered before the grass in the paddock. Above: When you are trying to extend rounds in early spring or late autumn, silage is a good choice.

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87

SOLUTIONS What’s NEW? PEST MANAGEMENT

Controlling pests with IPM precision

I

nsect pests can cause significant damage to forage brassica crops by reducing drymatter yields by more than 30% and making them less palatable to stock.

Until recently, most growers would have reached for a broad-spectrum organophosphate insecticide if they saw caterpillars chewing or aphids sucking on their valuable forage crop – killing everything, including beneficial insects, in the process.

But now growers and agronomic advisors are increasingly aware of the value of maintaining beneficial insect populations in a crop, to help control insect pests naturally. At the same time, chemical manufacturers are developing softer chemistry that is more selective. This means growers can now kill the bad guys (caterpillars, aphids and leafminer) without harming the good guys (hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds).

Minecto Star is one of the latest products that is compatible with integrated pest management (IPM) by being soft on beneficial insects, while controlling the key insect pests of forage brassica crops including caterpillars, leafminer and aphids.

Minecto Star does this by combining two IPM compatible insecticides (cyantraniliprole and pymetrozine) in one convenient formulation, which is applied at the low application rate of just 150g/ha. The cyantraniliprole component is a Group 28 insecticide that is extremely effective against caterpillars and leafminer, with Nigel Goodwin inspects a forage brassica crop to suppression of aphids. check for pests and beneficial insects.

Pymetrozine is a

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88

Group 9 insecticide that is highly effective on aphids, with systemic activity inside that plant to control aphids for up to three weeks after application, including new growth.

The combination of these two active ingredients makes Minecto Star one of the most effective options if both aphids and caterpillars are present, which is likely over summer months Aphid numbers can multiply rapidly in when pest numbers summer months. can increase rapidly.

It also reduces the risk of aphids becoming resistant to Group 28 insecticides by having a Group 9 insecticide in the mix with a different mode of action.

According to Syngenta, one of the most common questions they get asked, especially in summer months, is whether you need to add Pirimor to Minecto Star for additional aphid control. Pirimor is a fast-acting aphicide with contact, translaminar and fumigant activity, which also has the benefit of being IPM-compatible. The strong fumigant activity is a unique feature of Pirimor that is particularly useful to help reach aphids within the canopy that are not directly contacted by spray droplets.

Syngenta’s technical sales manager for South Canterbury and Southland, Nigel Goodwin, says the best advice he can give on whether Pirimor is required would be: “if the crop can be sprayed before aphid numbers exceed six aphids per plant and the crop is relatively open so the spray can reach the target, then Minecto Star can be applied alone”.

“If you can see more than six to 10 aphids per plant, and aphid numbers are increasing, and the crop is tall or dense, then you need to add Pirimor to Minecto Star – and apply it as soon as possible. Aphid numbers can explode from six to more than 100 aphids per plant in just a few days over summer, so spray timing is very important,” Goodwin says.

“Good spray coverage is also key for good results, especially on mature forage brassica crops, so robust water rates are required and you always need to add a wetting agent to improve leaf coverage on hard-to-wet brassica leaves. Aphids can also produce a waxy coating when present in high numbers, so the wetting agent can make a big difference to the result.”

Minecto Star and Pirimor are available from PGG Wrightson, Farmlands and other rural merchants. For more information contact your local merchant or phone Nigel Goodwin on 021 984 079.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

SOLUTIONS What’s NEW? TECHNOLOGY

Nutrition the key to on-farm efficiency

E

than Foster and Jaime Abbott have been involved in the agriculture industry from a young age: Jaime growing up on her parents’ lease bull farm and Ethan relief milking at highschool. Both knew from a young age that their future was in the New Zealand dairy industry. While neither came from a dairy farm, their passion for the dairy industry has been driven by a love of genetics and nutrition that has seen them transition over the past 13 years from workers to 50/50 sharemilkers, and finally to their own System 5 farm, Woodford Holsteins in Karapiro, Waikato.

‘People note that when they come to our farm there is a sense of calmness and we put that down to our effective feed management.’

The couple note that increasing their onfarm efficiency every year has become an exciting journey. Currently achieving 620+ avg MS, each season they evaluate what did and didn’t work in the previous season, and planning to improve has become the fundamental driver of profitability onfarm. With nutrition being a key focus, they decided to work with DPS and completed their nutrition course.

After years of feeding, the couple enjoy the farming system they have created.

“We have had staff come to work on our farm and say ‘wow, this is the easiest calving season we have ever experienced’.

Provided we get nutrition right, we don’t have down cows, lame cows, or sick cows.

People note that when they come to our farm there is a sense of calmness and we put that down to our effective feed management,” says Ethan.

With onfarm efficiency the key to

Top: Jaime Abbott and Ethan Foster.

Above: Ethan Foster uses CowManager’s ear sensor system to monitor his herd.

success at Woodford Holsteins, Ethan and Jaime began researching cow monitoring systems as a means to bring data-based decision making into their farming operation. Ethan explains that CowManager’s ear sensor system was the pick of the lot and he has the sensors on his milking herd as well as his young stock.

The ear tag is discreet, it supplies accurate

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

data 24/7, and has enabled Ethan to confidently utilise more expensive genetics in his herd due to the accuracy of the fertility module.

“We are excited to begin bringing CowManager’s nutrition capabilities into our feed systems as we can accurately monitor how the cows are performing as we feed out.”

89

OUR STORY 50 YEARS AGO IN NZ DAIRY EXPORTER

50 years ago in the Dairy Exporter February As NZ Dairy Exporter counts down to its centenary in 2025, we look back at the issues of earlier decades. 50 Years Ago – February 1971.

SCIENTISTS KEEP NZ AB COSTS DOWN

At $2 a cow in calf, the New Zealand Dairy Board’s artificial breeding service is the cheapest in the world.

This has been achieved despite sizable handicaps. Nearly all overseas AB centres operate evenly throughout the year and few have to service more than 200,000 cows. The board’s centres at Newstead and Awahuri have a season of only three months and have to service 600,000 and 300,000 cows respectively.

The board also runs the world’s biggest sire proving scheme.

The Dairy Board’s bulls are averaging about 1700 inseminations a service and 45,000 to 50,000 inseminations over the three-month season, compared with the English Milk Marketing Board’s 15,000 inseminations a bull over 12 months.

WHO BUYS OUR BUTTER?

When the chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Board, Mr F.L. Onion, speaks of the dairy industry selling on world markets he means exactly that. Although the United Kingdom buys the bulk of our export butter, the 1969-70 annual report of the board shows that in the 1969-70 season, the board sold butter to the following countries: Kenya, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, MuscatOman, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, New Guinea, the Philippines, Thailand, American Samoa, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Tonga, Western Samoa, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, 90

Guyana, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Netherlands, Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Peru, the USA, Germany, and the Netherlands.

As well as butter, most of these countries, plus Mozambique, Ceylon, and Mexico, bought our milkfat in the form of anhydrous milkfat and ghee.

HERD AVERAGES 600LB OF FAT

Cover photo: Soil fertility must be maintained for successful farming. Cutting back on topdressing is a shortsighted economy. Autumn is a period of peak activity in the topdressing industry, and our cover this month features an aerial topdressing aircraft at work on farmland at Rotorua.

When credited by the South Island Herd Improvement Association with an average for the 1969-70 season of 15,009lb milk, 4.02 per cent test and 603lb fat in 290 days, the 80 pedigree Friesian cows milked by N.J. Sherriff and his sons in their Deloraine stud at Milford, Temuka, brought to these well-known studmasters, the honour of having milked and tested the first dairy herd in New Zealand of more than 70 cows to average more than 600lb fat.

The Deloraine herd was the highest dairy unit comprising between 70 and 119 cows tested anywhere in New Zealand last season. Its performance is its thirteenth consecutive average of more than 500lb fat and exceeded its present record for herds of its size of 592lb fat established in the 1967-8 season.

A total of 42 of its members produced more than 600lb fat, with 10 of them exceeding the 700lb mark.

MEAT SUBSTITUTES POSE NEW THREAT

We are acutely aware of the far-reaching consequences in the wool and dairy industries from competition from

synthetics or substitutes and it is perhaps timely to consider what is happening in the field of meat substitutes.

Some of the substitute or imitation meats that are already in commercial production are: 1. Textured vegetable protein (TVP) Pork flavoured (German) served with sweet and sour sauce. This product is dehydrated and must be reconstituted with water.

2. TVP Beef Flavour (German) must be reconstituted with water.

3. Savitu (German) dehydrated protein, hamburger style 4. Soyameat (American) fried chicken style 5. Soyameat (American) beef slices with gravy 6. Frysteaks (American) 7. Saucettes (American) sausage style 8. Ham style vegetarian entrée (American), Has the appearance and texture of ham.

In addition, in the U.K., Japan, France, and the U.S.A., plants are under construction to produce protein from yeast with feed stocks of oil origin.

These proteins initially are intended for stock food, but development for human consumption is planned, probably in soups and sausages.

• Thanks to the Hocken Library, Dunedin.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

DairyNZ consulting officers

February Events

North Island – Head: Rob Brazendale 021 683 139 Northland Regional Leader

Leo Pekar

027 211 1389

Far North

Amy Weston

027 807 9686

Lower Northland

Hamish Matthews

021 242 5719

Whangarei West

Ryan Baxter

021 809 569

Regional Leader

Wilma Foster

021 246 2147

South Auckland

Mike Bramley

027 486 4344

Hauraki Plains/Coromandel

Michael Booth

021 245 8055

Te Aroha/Waihi

Euan Lock

027 293 4401

Cambridge

Lizzy Moore

021 242 2127

Hamilton

Ashley Smith

027 807 3049

Huntly/Tatuanui

Brigitte Ravera

027 288 1244

Sign up for the weekly update on risk of heat stress in your region

Matamata/Kereone

Frank Portegys

027 807 9685

and tips for managing it. Visit dairynz.co.nz/heatstress

Pirongia

Steve Canton

027 475 0918

Otorohanga/King Country

Phil Irvine

027 483 9820

Waipa South

Kirsty Dickens

027 483 2205

Regional Leader

Andrew Reid

027 292 3682

Central Plateau

Colin Grainger-Allen

021 225 8345

South Waikato/Rotorua South

Angela Clarke

027 276 2675

Eastern Bay of Plenty

Ross Bishop

027 563 1785

Central Bay of Plenty

Kevin McKinley

027 288 8238

Regional Leader

Mark Laurence

027 704 5562

South Taranaki

Ashely Primrose

027 304 9823

Central Taranaki

Mark Laurence

027 704 5562

Coastal Taranaki

Mark Laurence

027 704 5562

North Taranaki

Ian Burmeister

027 593 4122

Horowhenua/Coastal and Southern Manawatu

Kate Stewart

027 702 3760

Wairarapa/Tararua

Abby Scott

021 244 3428

Eketahuna

Rob Brazendale

021 683 139

Hawke's Bay

Gray Beagley

021 286 4346

Northern Manawatu/Woodville

Janine Swansson

027 381 2025

Central Manawatu/Rangitikei/Whanganui

Rob Brazendale

021 683 139

Waikato

Get it while it’s hot

Heat stress

Bay of Plenty

Dec-Mar Summary

Taranaki

Lower North Island

South Island – Head: Tony Finch 027 706 6183

Mark and Measure 2021

Top of South Island/West Coast

Get the skills and confidence you need to achieve

Nelson/Marlborough

Mark Shadwick

021 287 7057

West Coast

Angela Leslie

021 277 2894

your unique version of personal and business success.

Canterbury/North Otago

Registrations are open for DairyNZ’s Mark and Measure business

Regional Leader

Rachael Russell

027 261 3250

course for contract milkers, farm owners, and sharemilkers. Taupo

North Canterbury

Amy Chamberlain

027 243 0943

18-20 May, West Coast 29 June to 1 July, and Queenstown 15-17

Central Canterbury

Alice Reilly

027 3798 069

Mid Canterbury

Hugh Jackson

027 513 7200

South Canterbury

Rachael Russell

027 261 3250

North Otago

Alana Hall

027 290 5988

June 2021. Visit dairynz.co.nz/markandmeasure

Southland/South Otago

Discussion Groups

Regional Leader

Ollie Knowles

027 226 4420

West Otago/Gore

Keely Sullivan

027 524 5890

Interested in farm systems, reproduction, progression, pasture

South Otago

Guy Michaels

021 302 034

Northern/Central Southland

Nicole E Hammond

021 240 8529

Eastern Southland

Nathan Nelson

021 225 6931

Western Southland

Ollie Knowles

027 226 4420

management, budgeting, people management, or milking smarter?

We hold a range of different discussion groups on specialist areas of interest as well as other topical field days and road shows around the country. Find out what’s on near you at dairynz.co.nz/events or phone your local consulting officer.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021

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0800 4 DairyNZ (0800 4 324 7969) I dairynz.co.nz WITH DAIR

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It’s taken generations to build New Zealand’s genetic wealth.

Your share is right here.

Farming and science are an inseparable partnership. You put in the hard yards on the farm, we continue to make discoveries in the lab.

Since 1994, LIC has invested over $78 million in genomic science to improve genetic gain and productivity. Together, we’ve built a bank of incredible genetic wealth which you as dairy farmers share. Confidence in the science is growing and the use of Genomic Sires is expected to exceed 1.4 million inseminations. Our drive to achieve better never stops and our latest breakthrough with Single Step Animal Model has improved genomic prediction accuracy by 8% - enabling you to make faster improvements to your herd’s breeding worth and profitability. Use LIC’s Genomic Sires to take your share of the genetic wealth built by shareholders for over 30 years.

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Talk to your Agri Manager about utilising your share, right now.

There's always room for improvement 92

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | February 2021