Veterinarian and agri-ecology consultant Dr Alison Dewes gave delegates at a recent seminar sponsored by Sollus NZ an insight to the challenges the industry faced.
Drawing upon her experience as a farmer, veterinarian and consultant acting as an expert witness for regional councils, Dr Dewes said the dairy industry had to ask itself how much more it could intensify.
She pointed to predictions schemes including the Central Plains Water irrigation scheme in Canterbury would result in a 29% increase in nitrogen in waterways. Thirty percent of the region’s shallow wells had already experienced an increase in nitrogen and pathogen levels within 10-15 years of irrigation on shallow, lighter soils.
“And out of 99 sites monitored in Canterbury, 42% show the presence of faecal material and are classed as risky for swimming.”
However, she cautioned there were risks things would get worse before they got better.
She pointed to a proposed government review of water quality standards that could see the “bottom line” level of coliform in water increase 400%.
There was also growing conflict between established long-term farmers in the Waikato who may have to reduce their nitrogen losses by 30% where thousands of hectares of new pine to dairy conversions continued to occur.
This was to counter the additional 30,000ha of converted land that had come on stream in the last few years, and that was in addition to the 29,000ha that was converted between 2003-12.
Dewes said farmers were getting mixed messages from Government and councils on how to manage nitrogen reductions. As the subject of NZ’s first nutrient mitigation scheme, Lake Taupo had used “grand-parenting” of rights to nitrogen losses. But this was a very defined catchment.
“And such an approach tends to reward polluters and penalise innovators.
“It is not a fair way to allocate polluter rights and regional councils are weak at enforcing them.”
She urged farmers to push harder for greater investment in Overseer, the only tool available at present capable of calculating nutrient losses.
“Given our national reliance upon it, the reality is it needs significant investment and increased transparency as to how it works, now.”
She pointed to some regions showing promising signs in developing realistic means of managing nutrient losses. This included Hawke’s Bay region, using land use classification for determining acceptable nutrient losses within a farm’s boundaries.
Given how hard much of lowland NZ’s pastoral systems were already working, Dewes challenged Fonterra’s CEO who maintained the country had the potential to continue expanding over the next decade.
Theo Speirings stated in October 2014 60% of expansion was based on conversions and more cows, 40% was on more productivity. He disagreed with the Environment Commissioner’s comments that more dairying meant a drop in water quality and believed NZ dairying could grow for the next 10 years by 2-3% a year.
She anticipated future efficiency measurements were likely to see farm production measured in kg of milk solids a hectare versus kg of nitrogen leached.
She had worked with farmers achieving a 6-8% return on investment who were only losing 20-25kg nitrogen a hectare, against the Waikato average of 40kg a hectare.
“We have a lot of farm systems running 20% or more cows than optimal.”
This meant the average 350-cow dairy farm could lose 80-100 cows immediately.
“But this will be unique for each farm, so needs considered marginal analysis that balances resources, capability and cows.
“We are starting to see two herds develop on farms, a marginal herd – where costs to run those cows costs more than they return, and a profitable herd that is sustained by the natural capability of the system.”
Changes to make NZ dairying the first stop for higher-value boutique consumers would revolve around a lower intensity system.
“It is likely we will see more varied forages, including assorted herbs and grass alternatives to rye enhancing more productive/profitable cows in an optimal state of wellbeing to ensure more milk from less.
“We could also have more calves reared for alternative revenue, less support land required, unproductive land retired, coupled with closed-loop nutrient cycles, coupled with pathogen(bug) loads intercepted before they reach waterways.”
