Friday, March 29, 2024

Farming in the land of Oz

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A farming family from the Netherlands took the plunge and moved to Australia where they are firmly established in the dairy industry. Samantha Tennent reports.
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Uprooting your life and moving to the other side of the world is not for the fainthearted nor is it an easy process when there are red tape and strict requirements but a Victoria, Australia, farmer who did just that has no regrets.

Since migrating from the Netherlands in 2012 Erwin Reesink has progressed through the dairy sector, establishing a successful farm business with wife Stacey and their young family.

The differences between farming in the Netherlands and Australia and New Zealand are a world apart but the one thing they have in common is there is always work to be done.

The average herd size in the Netherlands is 85 cows whereas in Australia it is 280 cows. Farms in the Netherlands operate a year-round system and the cows are housed and rarely graze on pasture. In any one day they would be checking springing cows, calving cows, mating cows and managing calves.  

“Back in Holland it was always busy. There were always young calves to feed but at least they were all indoors so it’s a bit easier to oversee it all,” Reesink says.

“You do things like heat detect cows as you’re scraping out the bedding.

“Here it’s full on. We don’t sit still but it’s hot and cold. It gets extremely busy when we calve and we synchronise the cows at mating so it’s even busier. Then it is silage and haymaking season. It does quieten down here but in Holland it is non-stop.” 

Having experienced working in both systems he enjoys them both but finds the different pace of seasonal farming allows him time to cruise and relax, which is great when the weather is good and things have settled on the farm.

Reesink grew up on the family farm in Holland where he spent all his spare time helping out and working for a local contractor. Farming was in his blood and he knew it was all he ever wanted to do.

He knew his Dad Johan had considered moving to Australia to farm because they had family there so when he finished school he encouraged him to investigate.

“Dad said if I wanted to go we’ll make it happen and then he put the farm on the market,” he says.

They visited for three weeks to check some farms and get a feel for the area. 

They had to go through an extensive visa process with help from an agent before they could emigrate. They put a business plan together, gathered relevant evidence and had to complete an English language test to get their visas.

“We understood the basics of English but the test was quite high level so our score wasn’t very good as we rarely spoke English back home but it was good enough and that’s all that mattered,” he says.

Packing their lives into a container Erwin, his dad Johan, step mum Anneke and two younger siblings emigrated in November 2012. Once they arrived they bought a farm and took it over the following May but in the meantime floated around different living arrangements with helpful cousins.

Erwin Reesink grew up on the family farm in the Netherlands and always knew he wanted to go farming.

The herd was high-risk because it had not been exposed before. 

Vets suspect transmission is linked to ticks on wombats and the new farm had a decent population of wombat pests. A few cows died and others affected were culled. The rest of the herd has recovered well and has some natural immunity now.

They have kept the herd size at 360 but they had to buy 15 cows because of the outbreak.  Last season they produced 530kg MS a cow for a total of 190,000kg MS and are 5% ahead this season. They are targeting 550kgMS a cow.  

The herd is fed 6kg of grain in the shed made up of wheat, canola and minerals. They make silage off the platform and feed bales in the fringes. They aim to close the stack by mid April but if they do not get enough rain might use it into June. The area gets about 1000mm of annual rain so is not as dry as other parts of the country.

The season has been exceptional this year and they managed to close the stack by mid March, leaving about 250-300 tonnes of silage ready for next season.

They plant 5ha of turnips and 6ha of a mixed crop of rape and millet on the platform to start feeding in January. The herd is break-fed on the crop for up to an hour and a half each day over a week. They target two to three complete grazings before replanting the paddock into permanent pasture.  

They are split calving with two-thirds of the herd calving in spring starting August 1 and the rest in autumn starting March 10. 

Both matings are six to seven weeks of do-it-yourself AI followed by three weeks with the bull. Most of the herd is Friesian but there are also some Friesian-Jersey, Aussie Reds and a few Montbeliardes. Recording is manual because most Australian farmers do not use recording programmes like those NZ. 

They herd test several times throughout the season and the results go into a database along with their breeding information. In their previous role they were contracted to test monthly but now they just use the service when they feel they need to, for example if the somatic cell count goes up.  

Their milk company, Saputo, has a target of keeping SCC under an average of 250,000cells/ml over periods of 30 days. Their previous company had a threshold of 200,000cells/ml.

Saputo is a private Candadian company that has recently moved into Australia. Even though the Australian dairy sector exports only small amounts of its annual production compared to NZ it is still susceptible to the volatility of the global market because if prices are not competitive it could import more rather than using domestic product.

When they first started sharemilking the payout was good but it started dropping the following season. On the Dumbalk farm they took over an existing contract that secured them A$5.50/kg MS, which they felt was low at the time but there were other farmers getting less. It stayed similar the following season and has begun to climb since. This season they hope to get $7.

The couple have worked hard to get where they are but their latest opportunity is letting them create a great lifestyle and they feel more invested and are enjoying the trust and support from their farm owner.

They say they have been fortunate with their path and feel they always progressed in the right direction and are thankful they kept their faith. 

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