Northland College’s farm has been re-invigorated before becoming the centrepiece of an agricultural training facility.
It has been a team effort by a Government-appointed commissioner Chris Saunders, college principal Jim Luders and his staff, a committee of local farmers and alumni, new farm manager Loretta Smyth, a willing group of sponsors, and a secondary-tertiary educational alliance with Lincoln University.
As the decile one college regains its mana for primary industry skills training, it will be a big boost to the disappointingly depressed Kaikohe. Local youth, 90% of whom are Maori, will again aspire to work on the land, engage in vocational training and gain tertiary qualifications, the college community believes.
In the 1960s and 1970s up to 800 students attended, many of them from overseas. They lived at the hostel and were fully engaged in practical training on the college farm and at properties nearby. It was the centre of agricultural education in the province, also benefiting from its proximity to DSIR Kaikohe Grasslands Research Station, which closed in the early 1990s.
Kaikohe is the home of Te Runanga a Iwi o Ngapuhi, which will own a large part of more than 100,000ha in Northland when Treaty of Waitangi settlements in Te Tai Tokerau are finalised. Ngapuhi chairman Sonny Tau said the iwi wanted Northland College to provide the qualified and motivated young people to be employed on the tribal lands.
Omapere Rangihamama Trust has already developed and recently opened a dairy farm on 278ha nearby, with the help of the Ministry for Primary Industries. Unfortunately the Northland College farm fell on hard times during the early 2000s and its facilities, herd and pastures deteriorated.
Owner: Northland College, Ministry of Education
Dairy platform: 143ha, 50ha support
Cows: 275 Friesian and crossbred, Breeding Worth (BW) 63, Production Worth (PW) 75; 46 rising one-year-old heifers BW 131, 54 rising two-year-old heifers BW 77
Production: 2011-12 91,523kg milksolids (MS), 350 cows); 2012-13 50,449kg MS, 285 cows; 2013-14 88,675kg MS, 255cows, 2014-15 season 285 cows planned
Farm working expenses: 2011-12 $8.36/kg MS, 2012-13 $11.04; 2013-14 $4.47 (until May 20).
In recent years the college has dipped into farm funds whenever a pressing need arose, but a new farm committee and planned trust board structure, with a detailed memorandum of understanding, will prevent that happening in future.
Confidence returned with Lincoln’s involvement and sponsors Cervus Equipment, Agricom, LIC, RD1, Greenlea Premier Meats and Agriseeds, along with the local charity funder Hine Rangi Trust. Half the net farm profits now must go to the school and the Ministry of Education has removed the option of borrowing, so development must be done from cash flow.
This was because the college was in the red when it spent $450,000 to buy Fonterra shares without Ministry of Education approval, before Saunders was appointed to replace the board of trustees in April 2012. Good preliminary farming results are already on the board since kick-off last September when the new committee took over and Smyth began.
From the 143ha dairy platform and 275 cows milksolids production rose 70% in the season just ended and onfarm costs were halved. The number of students enrolled in agriculture has soared six-fold to 37 this year, half of them students who have returned to the college from other schools.
Truancy has halved and two boys from the agricultural academy represented Northland in the TeenAg section of the Young Farmer Contest Grand Final in Christchurch.
The dairy unit and college are located on nearly 500ha of land east of Kaikohe, towards Ngawha Springs, gifted to the college in the 1940s. The original college buildings were left behind by the US Army after the war. Their replacements are now themselves dilapidated and the Ministry of Education has plans for rebuilding next year.
When the dairy farm is humming and college students regularly work alongside farm staff and teachers, attention will turn to the 264ha pine forest for forestry training.
The first phase of agricultural training is talk and chalk with hands-on experience, but the next phase will be electronic and interactive, using EID and remote monitoring to connect with students elsewhere.
Lincoln and its Telford division will use the Network for Learning (N4L) to integrate the farm platform so it can be seen live in the classroom and used to study a range of subjects.
Lincoln has been delivering NCEA Level 2 and 3 programmes to Northland College students for some time by distance learning through Telford, which is in Balclutha, South Otago. Twelve Northland students are residential at Telford this year, four of them from the college.
Lincoln and Northland College recent signed a five-year strategic plan to formalise the strategy for optimising the farming and educational opportunities from the farm.
They want to open up career pathways to Northland children by providing real skills and opportunities in shearing, wool handling, forestry, silviculture, apiary, dairy farming, livestock agency, aquaculture, sheep, beef and deer.
The intention is to have an agricultural academy offering studies towards a certificate in agriculture, making use of the college and out-of-hours use of facilities, Telford director Charley Lamb said.
Telford already has staff members based in Northland, working closely with the college’s agriculture teacher Jenni Edwards.
The beginning of the Northland College pathway is Year 9 classes in agriculture and horticulture, and the science of water quality. Year 10 continues with timetabled classes in agriculture and horticulture, environmental sustainability and the science of rocks and soils. Year 11 is aimed at NCEA level 2 unit standards in farm safety, fencing, milking and livestock. Year 12 options are full time trade school or classes in agribusiness, land uses, bees and biology while Year 13 continues with trade school or University Entrance Agriculture, to be offered in 2015.
After graduation from the college, Telford residential courses, Lincoln University study or primary sector employment will be the options.
The entire Northland College farm programme is expected to cater for 140 agriculture students and another 75 studying relevant sciences.
At a field day in late May to introduce the new farm management and education alliance, Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce said 20% of Northland’s young people between 15 and 24 were not in employment , education or training
Big ambitions
Northland College dairy farm intends to be among the 10% for Northland DairyBase performance for its land class in five years.
As a teaching farm right in the heart of Ngapuhi it needs to provide inspiration and goals for young Maori, farm committee chairman Murray Jamieson said.
Cow numbers will increase from 255 when the committee took over to 325-350 in five years. Production should increase to 125-150,000kg milksolids (MS) and the herd reproductive performance go from the bottom quartile to the top quartile.
Improving the genetics will be a major focus of the farm committee and manager, he said.
The farm had been badly run down before Jamieson and his committee began work.
Last September the farm had an average pasture cover of 1900kg/ha drymatter and cows at condition score 3.9. Two hundred cows had been wintered off for six weeks at a cost of $12/cow/week.
No nitrogen fertiliser had been applied, despite the farm staff being given instructions to do so.
An estimated 85% of the farm had been pugged and power was working on only 30% of the fences.
Calving had been in progress for six weeks but 72 out of 252 remained to calve. They couldn’t be induced because records of their mating times and pregnancy tests had not been kept.
The committee thought a production target of 75,000kg MS for that season would be reasonable but 88,000kg was achieved.
The grazing target was 12kg/cow/day right through the season, supplemented with 3kg of palm kernel all season, 2kg of meal concentrate in October and November, and varying rates of turnips and brassicas from January to May.
In total 221 tonnes of palm kernel was fed, 50t of meal and 16ha of turnips and brassicas at 8t/ha, for 128t in total.
Pasture covers improved a little during spring and early summer to be more than 2000kg/ha DM but fell down to 1700-1900 from February to April. In May they were back up to 2230kg and since early June Smyth has done a weekly farm walk every Wednesday with students, committee members and interested Northland stakeholders and farmers.
Participation is for encouragement and training in technique and calibration of rising platemeters.
The vetted in-calf rate for six weeks of mating was 78% when tested in February and calving begins a little later this year on July 20. LIC Premier sires were used as AB for 30 days and then Poll Hereford bulls to tail off.
CIDRs were used on 35 cows. Fourteen of them got in calf to AB and a further nine to the Hereford bulls. The empty rate was 12% or 28 cows. The farm committee decided that no inductions would be performed and no CIDRs next mating onwards, with a nine to 10-week mating period.
Jamieson, a well-known Northland dairy farmer who was until recently equity manager of the huge, award-winning Okaihau Pastoral Group, said some very encouraging milestones had been reached in just nine months:
- A 75% increase in milk production.
- Strong financial control and greatly reduced costs.
- Farm staff members now results driven.
- A 60% increase in herd Breeding Worth.
- Farm appearances improving.
- A passionate and engaged farm committee.
- Ten cows sponsored by purchasing for $1500.
