Saturday, March 30, 2024

Fewer stock gives minor profit drop

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Slashing nitrate leaching without inflicting similar blows to profitability may be possible based on trial results at Lincoln University’s Research Dairy Farm (LURDF) and the university’s Ashley Dene wintering unit.
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Pastoral 21 studies have compared two farm systems and a variety of wintering options. One farm system is a highly stocked (five cows/ha) efficient system using high rates of nitrogen fertiliser (about 325kg N/ha/year) and up to 800kg/cow of grain. The other is a lower stocked but efficient system (3.5 cows/ha) that used a maximum of 150kg N/ha/year, up to 100kg grain/cow and included diverse pastures containing chicory and plantain on 30% of the farmlet area.

Cows in the trial were either wintered on kale fed with green chop oats with the wintering area sown in a catch crop of oats immediately after wintering, or on fodder beet with grass silage.

Including the winter support area gave a more complete picture of losses and profitability for a whole system on a full-year basis rather than just the performance of the milking platform.

The results after two full years of study showed the lower stocked farm’s nitrate leaching on the milking platform alone could be cut by 25% compared with that of the higher stocked system. Importantly operating profit was only marginally affected with just a 4% gap between the two systems

Pasture and crop utilisation in the trials was extremely high so there were some questions over transferability of the absolute numbers to what’s achievable in real onfarm situations.

Macfarlane Rural Business consultant Jeremy Savage said the research held significant promise for farmers.

“It’s the scale of the reduction in nitrate leaching and the fact there’s little impact on profitability that gives a lot of hope,” he said.

Lowering the stocking rate brought about a drop in total milk production and while this may have implications for milk processing companies there could be an upside for farmers.

Savage pointed out return on capital could be improved as less milk would require fewer shares in the case of Fonterra farmers and lower stocking rates meant fewer cows and fewer replacements further reducing the amount of capital tied up.

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