Friday, March 29, 2024

Focused on the future

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Rob and Mel van den Brand are passionate about career progression in the dairy industry, herd genetic improvement and sensible borrowing, and are now the 2015 Taranaki Sharemilker-Equity Farmers of the Year.
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After entering the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards for the second time, they went home with the coveted Taranaki title and four merit awards: the Federated Farmers Leadership Award, the Ravensdown Pasture Performance Award, the LIC Recording and Productivity Award and the Westpac Financial Performance Award.

The couple are in their fifth season sharemilking for the J D Bashford Trust near Manaia. The trust falls under the umbrella of the Bishops Action Foundation which owns two farms and provides scholarships for people to study agriculture-related courses, giving priority to those from South Taranaki.

“Bashford Trust has instructed us to run the farm as though it’s our own. They don’t dictate the system or the inputs that we must use. If we think things need to be done we provide costs and benefits and they’ll decide on our information,” Rob says.

Given the van den Brands have extended their sharemilking agreement for a further three years, this is a formula that is working well for all parties.

“There are still things we want to do on this farm,” Rob says.

“We think we’re almost there with the milking platform, but there is still work to do at the runoff. We want to bring the whole farm to where we know it is capable.”

“We can put in various scenarios to get a short- and long-term picture of what might happen to the feed situation,” Rob says.

“The main thing is to maintain the amount of feed we have without hurting the quality.”

Rob is planning to push the number of cows up next year.

“The farm is probably hitting about 85-90% of its efficiency at the moment. A few more cows will tidy that up without putting us under too much grazing pressure.”

The farm support block, 2.5 km from the main block, is fully incorporated into feed decisions on the main platform.

“We need to make sure the demand for supplement from the runoff is balanced with our need to rear young stock,” Rob says.

Their investment strategy, now they have unloaded their debt, is simple – keep it as liquid as possible so when the right opportunity comes, they can grab it. They believe a larger herd-owning sharemilking position or an equity partnership may be the remaining step between themselves and farm ownership.

“Whatever the next step is, the people are the most important,” Mel says. With their children Sophie, 5, and Riley, 2, consideration for the long-term is certainly most evident in how Rob and Mel approach their progression.

“Sharemilking has been a great vehicle for us to achieve our goals. We as an industry need to support sharemilking and the benefits it can have for young farmers.”

Second place in the Taranaki Sharemilker-Equity Farmer competition went to Urenui 25% sharemilkers Tim and Melissa Parsons and third place to Alastair and Nicola Wicksteed, 50:50 sharemilkers from Stratford.

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