The Cambridge joint venture announced on June 10 is to replicate the university’s 530-cow demonstration farm at Lincoln, near Christchurch, developed over the past 13 years by the university with six commercial, education and research partners.
“The demonstration farm will target being in the top 3% of profitability and top 3% of environmental performance, yet while doing so will test whole new farming systems from which people can learn,” Lincoln University vice-chancellor, Dr Andy West, said.
“Farmers are going to love this.”
Sponsors will be sought for the development of the St Peter’s demonstration farm. Along with Lincoln’s dairy farm, the goal is to increase dairy productivity without increasing the farm’s environmental footprint.
‘To have more demonstration farms is already part of Lincoln’s strategy so the offer from St Peter’s was considered fantastic and it’s a credit to the school for its initiative.’
The gains for Lincoln at St Peter’s will be working with the farming community “which keeps our feet on the ground”, having more students enrol for a tertiary education at Lincoln, and giving Lincoln a higher profile in the upper North Island’s bigger population base.
“In return we will be helping the dairy industry perform better.”
West, who has a son attending St Peter’s, said school board members had approached him with the idea of establishing a link.
“To have more demonstration farms is already part of Lincoln’s strategy, so the offer from St Peter’s was considered fantastic and it’s a credit to the school for its initiative.”
He said Lincoln had two more farms “in the pipeline” at locations yet to be announced, both to become Lincoln’s first sheep and beef demonstration farms and one of them being run by a Maori incorporation.
Less than a year ago the university signed a memorandum of understanding with Ngati Koroki Kahukura and Ngati Haua, of southern Waikato, to develop a training centre at the former Maungatautari School site.
“We are a national university but small and specialised (in agriculture) but yes, we have a national responsibility and see ourselves providing advice to farmers around the country because they pay taxes that ultimately fund our research and some of the education so we think we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to Canterbury or Southland farmers but to help farmers elsewhere.”
St Peter’s School principal, Steve Robb, said he was impressed by the link between the university and its farm when visiting Lincoln and envisaged St Peter’s having the same access to science data and analysis to back decisions about best practice options for the school farm.
“It offers an opportunity to link with our farming community and offer high-quality advice, guidance and support.”
Another possibility was for St Peter’s 450-bed boarding houses to accommodate people at agribusiness courses and conferences during the school holidays.
Robb said St Peter’s would build on its agriculture and horticulture programmes for year 10 to 13 students and would link to the school’s business and entrepreneurial centre, started this year, agribusiness courses that ran to a tertiary level.
“We are very excited by the Lincoln joint venture and have received an enormous response from interested parties, potential sponsors and parents who are very encouraging because it makes sense in a farming community.”
The joint venture will be governed by a forum of six people drawn from Lincoln and the school, which has prominent farmers among its trustees, and the farm will be governed by a management team appointed by the joint-venture forum.
“With Lincoln, I think this will grow opportunities for our students.”
Robb said the school’s future investment in the farm would depend on a strategy to be determined by the farm management group yet to be set up.
St Peter’s School farm manager Frank Keoghan, in cap, instructs Sarah Moore and other Year 12 agriculture students, from left, Connor Meikle, Hamish Morris and Georgia Holloway on ATV safety with teacher Mike Kilgour.
“It will depend on what is required but they are working on seeking sponsors for that and St Peter’s is prepared to consider investment if and where required.”
The school is the site of the well-sponsored $28.5m Avantidrome national cycling centre.
The farm covers 211ha (160ha owned by St Peter’s, 51ha leased) of wetter soil types on the northern side of the school skirted by State Highway 1, and sandy soils along the 4km southern boundary with the Waikato River. There are several small pine plantations and the gully sidings and streams are fenced and being planted with native trees and shrubs.
Production for the 2013-14 season totalled 158,207kg milksolids (MS) from 446 Kiwicross cows equating to 354kg MS/cow, which was slightly ahead of the Waipa average, but on an educational farm that’s lightly stocked the production a hectare was well below average.
West said the focus would be on farm performance “and the associated integrity of dairy products arising there-from” to inspire more young people to consider land-based careers, which this country urgently needed.
He said Lincoln was keen to have partnerships with schools around the country but while the trainee farms, such as at Northland College, were independently run farms that helped students to learn farm skills, the demonstration farms also involved scientific monitoring within a commercial farm environment.
The initial debate at St Peter’s will be over its herd nutrition system.
“Whatever is decided on what’s best for us to target, that’s what we will do. We won’t go in there and say ‘You must be doing this’.”
West saw no conflict with Waikato University, just 17km from St Peter’s School, as its specialty was agribusiness and “agritechnology”, such as applied to food processing, while Lincoln enabled biologists and farm managers to look at plants and animals, their interactions, and how best to manage them.
“The beauty of a demonstration farm is that you have got to make those hard commercial decisions in the end, like any farmer would, and you’ve got to run it very well, because if you don’t then why would any other farmer turn up to look at it.
“This is putting the pressure on us and that’s good.”
