RURAL PEOPLE: Robert & Marjorie Smith
Business Rural / Spring 2013
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Pivotal decision made - delayed ‘long enough’ Kelly Deeks After delaying the decision for “long enough”, Robert and Marjorie Smith are replacing their old border-dyke irrigation with centre-pivots on their South Canterbury dairy farms. A good season for grass growth has also seen them increase cow numbers this season. They are running 2000 cows on their two dairy farms (550 hectares in total) at Glenavy. The farms are managed by contract milkers Johnny Apafi and Lucia Cassarino. The couple have been with the Smiths for the three years, working their way up from managers to contract milkers. Production has risen every year under their stewardship. The Smiths bought the original 256ha block in 1994, moving from a dairy farm in Northland for the benefits of irrigation. “We’ve got a much more stable growing season here,” Robert Smith says. “We’ve still got some variation, but nothing like we had in Northland.” In 2002 they bought the sheep farm on their dairy farm’s southern boundary, converted it, built a 54-bail rotary dairy shed,, and put the whole of the property into wide borders, apart from one 50ha area of k-line irrigation. Now it’s time to replace the irrigation on the original block. The borders here were developed in the early 1970s. “The choice was to reborder with wide borders,
or change to pivots, and I’ve delayed long enough,” Smith says. “We’ve got two pivots we put in last winter, and three more to go. We’ve got a fair bit of ground development to do to take out the old borders, so we’ll try and get 60ha of that done this season, after doing 40ha last season. We’ll put in two pivots in late autumn, and we hope to get the third one next year.” His decision to install centre-pivots has been driven by compliance. He believes it’s going to become extremely difficult to comply with nutrient regulations using border-dyke irrigation. Because the Smiths invested heavily in rebordering the newer farm in 2002, they will retain that border-dyke irrigation. But 110ha of border dyke has been already been replaced by pivots on the 87ha run-off block at Hakataramea, where the Smiths live, 8km from the dairy farms.
Geoff Phillips, who has been working for the Smiths for 10 years, manages the support block, as well as driving the tractor and helping feed out silage on the dairy farms. The Smiths’ son, Marshall, who has been working on the run-off, has recently become a director of the Smiths’ company, Papamoa Enterprises Ltd, with his parents. Robert Smith says that, with the extra cows and improved irrigation, the farms will produce 10%
more than last season, when production totalled 830,000 kilograms of milksolids. They expect the new grass planted under the new pivots to produce more and better-quality feed. They have used a mix of Trojan and Shogun, from Agriseeds. “That’s what we did last year in December/ January, and we were grazing it in six weeks,” says Robert. “That’s the beauty of irrigation – you can plant stuff at that time of year, and get it to germinate and grow like hell.”
It’s going to become extremely difficult to comply with nutrient regulations using borderdyke irrigation.
PHOTOS: Top, Son and father, Marshall (left) and Robert Smith at the family’s run-off at Hakataramea. Marshall has recently become a director of the company. Above: A new centre-pivot irrigator in action on the Hakataramea property.
Only multiples make breeding grade • From page 54 situated. Lloyd’s father, Harry, then took over the business in 1978 and continued to develop the stud. The Brenssells’ breeding policy has been rigid – only multiple-born-and-reared rams are used within the stud and offered for sale. Only multipleborn-and-reared ewe hoggets are retained back into the stud. SIL and sire referencing are used to identify top-performing sires and dams. All ram hoggets are scour-scored, and culled if they do not meet
Fernvalle standards. All ewe hoggets are put to the ram. Fernvale is the original family farm, an 820-hectare block in Moa Flat. The Brenssell family business also includes a 4408ha property (Whitecomb) 14 kilometres away from the home farm. Bought by the Brenssells in 1990, it is a large commercial operation, which says Lloyd, is useful for measuring the performance of sires in a real-life farm environment. The family also owns a 151ha run-off at Ettrick, which is used for wintering young stock. All up, the Brenssells winter 27,000 stock units.
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