Friday, March 29, 2024

Innovation spans spectrum at Mystery Creek

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With mixed fortunes in the primary sector this season, winners among Mystery Creek exhibitors were those delivering lowered operating costs or helping lift product quality within the farmgate.
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While rural connectivity was an exhibition buzzword, technology available spanned the simplest to almost science fiction for growers and farmers keen to seek out a suite of tools for improving both business and, in some cases, personal health.

At the simplest end of that spectrum Tokoroa-based Blue Pacific Minerals had used Mystery Creek to launch a feed input offering the possibility of not only reducing a farm’s nitrogen footprint, but also improving animal health.

A locally mined zeolite clay product milled to fine micron levels was offering a simple solution to helping deal to gut infections in young calves, thanks to the compound’s natural ability to absorb toxic gut bacteria that can cause scour infections.

But the company also had one eye on the product’s potential to reduce a farm’s nitrogen footprint, through binding with rumen ammonium, reducing the amount of nitrate excreted on to pasture.

“We are just signing off on a Pastoral 21-funded project to study more closely how much urinary nitrogen losses can be reduced, now it has passed its proof of concept stage,” Blue Pacific product manager Kelvin Johannson said.

The company was anticipating the simple earth compound could deliver a double benefit by reducing N losses on farm and help improve rumen health in dairy cows by absorbing excess ammonia generated from New Zealand’s high-protein pasture.

With more dairy farmers eyeing simple low-cost solutions in tight times, he was also optimistic they would seize on the potential environmental benefits as council regulations inevitably tighten on nutrient losses.

“It also offers a Bio Gro organically certified option for organic dairy farmers seeking a drug-free option for managing health in calves.”

It was also organic farmers who seized on a piece of equipment at the more complex end of innovation at Mystery Creek.

DeLaval’s solution manager for automatic milking systems Graham Hardy said the company had sold the first of its in-dairy milk laboratories to south Auckland organic farmer Brian Yates.

Milking 170 cows through a fully automated robotic dairy, Yates was seeking improved diagnostics to monitor the quality of his herd’s high-value milk.

The Herd Navigator system incorporated technology to monitor hormones and enzymes in individual cows’ milk flow, diagnosing reproductive status, metabolic health and impending mastitis infections.

“Of course, for organic farmers antibiotic treatments are not an option, so it is either homeopathic treatments, or the cow is separated from the organic herd for antibiotic treatment,” Hardy said.

The ability of the new equipment to diagnose the milk as an “in-shed” laboratory meant elevated enzymes associated with early mastitis infection were identified, enabling the farmer to deal with the impending infection before it became an issue, without the use of antibiotics.

The same laboratory was also capable of analysing cow metabolic condition and pregnancy or heat status.

“There is real appeal here for organic farmers, but we also have interest from NZ’s largest automated farmer who wants to maximise per cow performance.

“With an ageing population and a hollowing out of services in rural areas while funding remains static, this provides an efficient way for the health board to ensure patients continue to get the care they need.”

Darrin Hackett

Waikato Hospital

“European experience has indicated it can lift per cow performance to the value of €150-€200 a year per cow. Here it may be even more because we don’t even know what the start point is.”

The $2/kg MS boost to organic farmers’ payment from Fonterra had provided the catalyst to take the operation to the next level with the diagnostic system, Hardy said.

He suspected greater focus on per cow performance would fall out of the current tight dairy climate, with farmers seeking equipment that would identify the “exception” cows requiring greater attention.

For farmers seeking solutions with internet servers and communications, the glue to such advances was rural connectivity, which also took a leap forward during Mystery Creek Fieldays.

Internet provider Farmside used the event to announce it has tapped into a new satellite provider with a venture using Australian satellite company Optus.

General manager Stuart Cooper said the venture would provide significantly improved broadband internet access to 25,000 remote rural households.

“Rural people are wanting to do more and more with broadband. Linking with Optus means they will have the opportunity to do away with their landlines, using voice-over-internet telephone and this is a cheaper access means than installing new copper on many farms.”

Better rural connectivity was rated as one of the top four priorities for rural businesses in NZ in a recent KPMG survey.

The service aims to give access to 10Mbps download speeds and 2Mbps upload.

The impact of improved connectivity was also feeding through to rural communities for reasons other than just farm data transfer.

Waikato District Health Board launched its “virtual district health board” app and service at Mystery Creek as a means for rural outpatients to avoid long, time-consuming visits to Waikato hospital.

Virtual health project manager Darrin Hackett said Waikato hospital had 60% of its catchment classed as rural, the greatest of any in NZ.

Using a downloaded app “Health Tap” gave outpatients the ability to access a range of hospital specialists, make bookings, have diagnoses and follow-up visits completed via video, rather than travelling.

“With an ageing population and a hollowing out of services in rural areas while funding remains static, this provides an efficient way for the health board to ensure patients continue to get the care they need, while reducing the physical demand on them and on the facilities within the hospital.”

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