Friday, March 29, 2024

PULPIT: Regenerative ag not our brand

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New Zealanders have a reputation of being pioneers.  We discovered NZ, climbed Mount Everest and made the America’s Cup NZ’s Cup in the words of sailing commentator Peter Montgomery. Many ethnicities and waves of immigration have created a can-do attitude and pioneering is our way of life. Observe, modify, improve, develop. 
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This is typified by number eight wire.

The wire wasn’t invented here but New Zealanders made it their own. 

Fencing, pasture management and animals benefitted and the wire found its way into drafting yards, barns, tractors, kitchens, clothing, boats. Even more than fixing things for least cost, number eight wire has led to thinking around problems and developing approaches ahead of the rest of the world. 

It led to electric fencing, allowing pasture to be managed optimally in the permanent number eight wire fences.

It led to a world-first in farming deer. Not for us the parks and class privilege of Europe. In the mid 1970s New Zealanders with attitude started deer farming – wild capture from the deer the Acclimatisation Society, now Fish and Game, had imported from parks in the northern hemisphere and released decades before. 

New Zealanders created a venison industry based on domesticated animals and with quality control under the brand Cervena that no other country can match. We are the largest exporter of farmed deer products in the world. 

The story of NZ agriculture is based on animals reared on pasture that can compete on price and environmental impact, despite transport, with those produced anywhere in the world. 

Farmers and researchers have worked together for decades to achieve this primacy. Observe, modify, improve, develop. 

Research has informed management strategies such as application of fertiliser and lime and optimisation of grazing regimes to enable high performance of animals, which, themselves, have been selected for performance in the NZ environment. Pasture production, animal performance and soil carbon in NZ have increased. 

It is a remarkable story of how pioneering people have worked together to create a first world economy based on primary production.

This history makes it difficult to understand why any farmer in NZ would want to take on an agricultural concept from another country and adopt somebody else’s brand.

Regenerative agriculture is an approach developed in the northern hemisphere and promoted in Australia for over-cropped (grain or forage), very low organic soils. 

It involves adaptive pasture management, which is what we call rotational grazing, but on a return of 30-60 days or 90 if pasture growth is slow. 

North American regenerative advocate Abe Brown suggests 365 days is right for his farm. The concept also involves diverse pastures and lax grazing to allow wasted forage material to return to the soil. It minimises use of synthetic fertilisers by using the dung and urine from the animals being grazed. 

Only a cynic would wonder where the nutrients in the dung and urine come from and how the nutrients being sold in products are being replaced.

We have been told by regenerative agriculture advocates the concept is holistic and has yet to mature but we have plenty of NZ research that indicates what maturity will bring. 

Increasing diversity of pasture increases competition. 

Some species will struggle, leaving an open sward that weeds exploit. They’re termed weeds because they are not as palatable or productive as the improved species. 

This means animals will tend to avoid eating them and the weeds will flourish at the expense of the improved species. 

Animal production will suffer. 

The result is increased greenhouse gases per unit of production from the animal. At the same time, nitrogen loss from the system will increase and, in some cases, soil carbon will be lost.

This research has been done. 

Decades of it. 

Rotational grazing has been advocated since the 1940s, interaction between optimally grazed pastures and soil carbon since the 1950s and fine-tuning with species, grazing, weed management and animal production in the NZ context has continued. Hundreds of papers on the Grassland Association website have been written by scientists with farmers and rural professionals as the audience and are freely available for download by anybody who wants to find out more.

Pasture and forage academics led by Professor Derrick Moot at Lincoln University are trying to explain where we can do even better with our existing systems while pointing out the problems with adopting what would be a backwards step to regenerative agriculture. 

Soil scientist Dr Doug Edmeades has been stating the issues for several years as has Professor Louis Schipper from Waikato University. 

In the past New Zealanders have taken a concept, improved it and rebranded with kiwi-ingenuity. The prime example is selling Chinese gooseberries to Asia as kiwifruit … yet we appear to be accepting the regenerative agriculture approach as it is.

Surely, NZ’s answer to regenerative agriculture is New-Gen. We have the history, we’ve developed the technology, we know the context. New-Gen is what we do.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth has and agricultural science degree from Massey University with honours in environmental agriculture and a doctorate in soil science. When the throttle cable on her Fiat Bambina broke halfway up Mt Messenger in 1980 she found a length of number eight wire beside a strainer post, reconnected the appropriate mechanics and drove to Palmerston North to start her doctorate. jsrowarth@gmail.com

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