Friday, March 29, 2024

Farming on a large scale

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Michael and Susie Woodward know how to play to their strengths, using their skill and experience in farming at scale to accelerate their business growth.
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But they also know how to recognise a weakness and then set about improving their skills in that area.

The couple are this year’s Canterbury-North Otago Share Farmers of the Year and 50:50 sharemilk 1000 cows for Purata Farming on Tapatoru – a 297ha dairy farm near Dunsandel.

For many in Canterbury dairying circles their name is synonymous with large-scale farming through their long connection with Robindale Dairies, one of Purata’s (formerly Synlait Farming) original properties that at one time milked 3000 cows through one farm dairy.

It was on Robindale the two met.

Michael (Woody) was employed in 2003 as a herd manager and Susie, originally from a dairy farm in up-state New York, was in New Zealand on a working holiday in 2005. She’d just completed a Bachelor of Science from Iowa State University.

It wasn’t long before the pair were combining their skills and over the ensuing 11 years have progressed significantly while moving between just two farms – Robindale and the 1000-cow Tapatoru.

They’ve managed and contract milked both as individual farms and in combination since 2007 using the scale of the operations and canny stock-trading to accelerate their progression.

By 2014 they were able to step up to sharemilk Tapatoru.  

“When we look back at how we’ve grown our equity we’ve always been prepared to think outside the box,” Michael says.

That included agreeing to continue contract milking Robindale last season to enable the corporate to transition in new management, while at the same time negotiating a milk price contract on the sharemilking job.

They’d also been able to lease 500 cows into the herd but had gone about that a bit differently too.

“We had a line of rising two-year-old heifers we leased to the company but instead of carrying on with them as three-year-olds, mixed-age cow prices at the time were too good. We sold them and then went to the North Island and bought cows off harder farms, brought them back to Canterbury and proved they could do more than 400kg milksolids (MS),” Michael says.

They then sold them and over time carried on buying and selling stock to make good gains.

Neither has a family farm to fall back on – Susie’s family farm is in the US and Michael’s family farming background was a goat farm south of Pukekohe.

“That’s what our ultimate goal is – to build our own farming business – and that was pretty much from scratch back when we started – so we can have our own family farm. A family farm for our children,” Susie says.

They’ve turned what little they had at the start into equity of $1 million.

The couple aren’t strangers to the awards. In 2011 they won the Canterbury-North Otago Farm Manager of the Year title and this is their fourth year in the competition.

“The first time we ever entered the judges’ feedback said we were good at the cows and grass but we needed to work on our financial skills. 

“That’s what we did and so we were stoked to win the financial award when we won the Farm Manager of the Year title,” Michael says.

They’ve continued to work on that area and Susie says they get a lot of benefit from benchmarking using DairyBase, and against other farms in the Purata business.

While their farming business model has changed almost every year, making it hard to benchmark from year to year, they’ve taken everything they can from breaking down the numbers and analysing each aspect.

The judges now say they have an in-depth understanding of the financials that drive their business and importantly their equity growth, and they have excellent reporting systems.

Each month they sit down together and look at their updated budgets and cashflow so they know how they’re tracking. They also share that information with their bank manager.

Their focus on the financials earned them the Westpac business performance award this year – one of four merit awards they won out of the eight on offer.

The DairyNZ human resources award and the Honda farm safety award were particularly special to Susie.

She says it’s important to put a lot of effort into the front end of human resources, spending time to make sure they recruit the right people for their team, but it’s also important to make sure people are treated like they’re part of the family when they join the team.

Over the years they’ve employed up to 19 staff so having good human resource systems has been essential.

Susie says they’ve put a lot of effort into frequent performance reviews, understanding people’s goals and helping them get there through training and added responsibilities.

Five-minute catch-ups are common-place so team members see Michael and Susie genuinely take an interest in them. 

They’ve been heavily involved in Purata’s InSynC programme – a management approach modelled on lean management which had its roots in the automotive industry. (Dairy Exporter, April 2016, p51)

As well as aiming for continuous improvement and efficiency in the workplace, InSynC has a strong health and safety focus, putting it number one in the day-to-day management of the farm.

They’re also Gold Plus-accredited with their processor, Synlait Milk, through the company’s Lead With Pride programme and have a pasture-fed contract with the milk processor that restricts them from using bought-in feed such as palm kernel or grain.

They earn a premium to their milk price for both.

Managing pastures to ensure cows are well-fed on high quality pasture is important to their success.

“We can’t just turn up the feeder at milking if there’s suddenly a deficit. We have to plan ahead and have silage on hand so we’re not going into the spot market when prices are high and we have to be monitoring pasture covers closely,” Michael says.

They use Pasture Coach software and can identify surpluses and deficits early so they can act on them early. 

Being proactive and making quick, accurate decisions is an important aspect of successful pasture management, Michael says.

Grazing residuals are set at 1500kg drymatter/ha and cows will be put back into the break after milking if they haven’t hit the target.

“We don’t want to be pulling out the mower – it’s better to get the job right in the first place.”

Michael and Susie also won the LIC recording and productivity award. Their cows are their major asset and having efficient converters of pasture to milk is the aim.

Runners-up in the competition were Dunsandel farmers Tony Coltman and Dana Carver, equity managers in a 1400-cow operation, while Fairlie 21% sharemilkers Matt and Vanessa Greenwood were third.

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