Total exclusion of livestock from waterways, as required by Fonterra, looms over Richard and Bev Dampney, near Kaikohe in Northland, and threatens their future in dairying.
The confluence of four meandering rivers and about 12km of banks on two dairy farms makes the Dampneys’ Ngamaia Rua Lands location in the Hokianga Harbour flood plain a challenging environment. It became more challenging with the publication of the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord (SDWA) by most dairy companies earlier this year.
The accord binds the dairy companies and their supplying farms to the exclusion of stock from 90% of the length of waterways that are deeper than 30cm and wider than one metre by June next year and 100% by June 2017.
As they await a survey report from Fonterra’s sustainability team, the Dampneys want to know why they will probably have to go a long way beyond the fencing and stock exclusion requirements of the Northland Regional Council (NRC).
The dairying and forestry district 15km west of Kaikohe is criss-crossed with numerous waterways such as the Punakitere River, Otaua River and Mangatawa stream which drain into the Hokianga harbour. On the Dampney farms the waterways are fenced only where they are farm boundaries.
Banks move continuously, new fences would be washed away in the next flood and wider riparian margins would quickly fill with tobacco weed and willows, Richard says.
Cows don’t climb
The cows on both farms have water troughs in every paddock and do not risk climbing down into the waterways, where they would get stuck. In 10 years on the properties he says only one cow has been killed by falling in and drowning. Another three or four have needed extracting.
The dairy effluent systems have been upgraded to two and three-pond respectively with more than 100 days of storage, and follow-up land irrigation, and Richard and staff members work on a nil overflow policy from the first ponds.
“I realise that we have got to be seen making progress, but right now there is no definition of what is a waterway and if we are forced to adopt one of the more extreme ones we may as well shut up shop,” he says.
“I just can’t see the logic in fencing off all of these steep banks which are choked with trees and weeds when the regional council says it is happy and the farms comply.”
The Dampneys have mainly beef cattle farms and lifestyle blocks for neighbours that are not required to fence waterways or try to eradicate the profusion of woody weeds. They were visited by Federated Farmers Dairy Council’s tour of Northland earlier in the year.
“We get an average of six floods a year over 120ha of riparian pastures,” Richard says.
“I have estimated that it would cost $120,000 in materials and two years work for permanent fencers. Then we would have to spray the weeds regularly to have any chance of keeping on top of them and get the fencers back after each flood.”
Privet, tobacco weed and willows are the major woody weeds, all more than capable of re-establishing themselves from upstream. In effect, riparian strips become corridors of weeds which then slow up the flood waters and allow them to create more damage.
And on that note, Richard says the Punakitere River runs dirty after every fresh because of forestry logging operations higher in the catchment. He has to turn off the pumps and clean out the filters on the farm stock watering scheme.
“What I see developing is a huge double standard; dairy farmers required to do everything and other land owners or users can sit.”
Richard grew up near Kaitaia and as a shearer and shearing contractor was able to begin buying farms in the Mangamuka area from the time he was 23 in 1979. A decade later he began dairy farming in the same district and relocated to Canterbury in 1997 before returning to Northland in 2004.
From these farming experiences he is assured that “one size doesn’t fit all farms” around New Zealand when it comes to environmental matters. If the SDWA had been worded “the industry is striving towards total livestock exclusion” or included the goal of 99% by 2017, exceptional cases like theirs could be recognised, he believes.
“I am quite happy to work with the NRC and the dairy industry has to move forward environmentally.
“If Fonterra insists on 100% exclusion fencing then it would make dairy farming on these farms untenable, and I may have to turn the whole lot over to beef cattle.
“I believe Fonterra has backed itself into a corner and is left with no room to move.”
Working with the NRC, the Dampneys have upgraded the effluent systems and built effluent irrigation and silage bunker drainage.
An abatement notice was issued recently when a farm worker didn’t turn off the effluent irrigation during rainfall, even though the pond level was 3m down at that time and irrigation wasn’t necessary.
“The unpredictability of Northland as a farming region needs to be appreciated,” Richard says.
“This is a place where you don’t wait for it to happen, you have got to make it happen.”
There’s a big contrast between wet and dry seasons, clay soils, short-run rivers with broken banks and massive weed infestations, which tend to hold up water flows.
The Dampneys run a once a day milking mob of 250 of the in-calf and lighter conditioned cows on the bigger farm from September to the end of the season.
This is because they can face walks of 4.5km each way, with 100m climbs, and nutritional advice is that each cow would use the equivalent of 1kg milksolids (MS) of energy walking.
Even the 300 twice a day milkers in that herd, which include up to 200 autumn calvers, have as far as 10km a day to walk.
The larger farm milks through a 42-aside herringbone and the smaller farm through a 30-aside herringbone.
All cows get about 500kg each of supplements and summer crops during the year, including meal fed in the dairy.
Key points
Farm: Ngamaia Rua Lands, Otaua, Kaikohe, Northland
Owners: Richard and Bev Dampney
Area: 820ha total, two dairy farms plus two support blocks 5km away
Cows: Dairy 1, 260ha, 550 cows; Dairy 2, 130ha, 350 cows
Production: 2012-13 season, 860 cows on 363ha effective, 267,126kg milksolids (MS), 310kg MS/cow, 736kg MS/ha
Target: 2013-14 season, 185,000 and 135,000kg MS, total 320,000kg MS.
