Friday, March 29, 2024

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The new DairyNZ Climate Change Ambassador chair says New Zealand as a whole needs to work together to achieve climate goals.
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Getting the dairy industry to achieve tough new climate goals is like running an ultramarathon, recently appointed DairyNZ Climate Change Ambassador chair Fraser McGougan says.

Both require small steps to get to the finish line and both are huge undertakings.

McGougan has already accomplished one of these milestones, having completed an ultramarathon in February.

It has made him believe the task the industry has in front of it is doable.

“It’s a challenge to run 102km, but that’s what we have got as farmers – it’s a challenge, but not impossible,” he says.

The enormity of the industry’s challenge was laid bare after the Climate Change Commission (CCC) recently released its draft recommendations on how NZ could reduce its emissions.

The Whakatane dairy farmer says this is another step in the industry’s journey to lower its carbon footprint.

“The whole of NZ is going to be part of this journey. We’re all being asked to do our bit and agriculture in NZ has already started well along the journey of doing things,” he says.

The recommendations are not a finger pointing exercise because everyone has to play their part. It will mean a shift to electric vehicles, which could be a significant cost for many.

The commission’s targets will not be achieved if just one sector commits. It needed a collaborative approach across the entire farming sector and society as a whole, he says.

“We’re not a huge emitter in a world sense, but we still have an obligation to do better,” he said.

He says it, along with the freshwater legislation, was setting the dairy industry on the road to further improving its environmental sustainability.

McGougan thinks the industry could make good progress on the commission’s targets once it was broken down into manageable aims.

He says NZ’s efficiency at producing milk in relation to its carbon footprint showed the good work the sector was doing.

“We are converting pasture to a product that the world needs and while we’re doing it in an efficient way, we can do it in an even more efficient way,” he says.

“In the past we have focused on production and developing land. Now our focus is on sustainability and working out how we are going to keep going forward.”

For farmers, the first step was to get a farm environmental plan (FEP) if they did not already have one.

“If we start on that journey, we’ll start getting the results. It is kaitiaki – looking after the land. We’re only here for a short time and we want to make sure it’s here for the next generation,” he says.

McGougan was a climate change ambassador for three years before becoming chair of the group. He sees the role as providing that link between government and the industry by ensuring both groups remain informed.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this and small incremental changes on individual farms add up to big changes nationally,” he says.

This is in part being done already in respect to He Waka Eke Noa, the primary sector’s action plan to deal with climate change.

“Farmers are also now having to live and work through the effects of climate change,” he says.

“I’ve been farming for 25 years and my family has been farming for 120 years and in that time, we have seen so much change.”

The most noticeable of these changes are the inconsistencies of seasonal weather patterns within his district.

“When you look at our farm, it’s come from a kahikatea swamp 120 years ago and we have developed it, but we developed it for our families and our communities and now that we have more information, maybe we need to do things slightly differently and more efficiently,” he says.

That has seen him be more strategic with fertiliser usage by using GPS-guided farm machinery and individually testing the soil from each of his paddocks on his 143ha farm.

He has also reduced his stocking rate to try to match pasture growth rates to demand. It all amounted to small steps that accumulated into larger changes.

“They’re not big and they’re not scary, especially for the younger generation. It’s about small changes on the farm and trying to learn,” he says.

It is not an exhaustive list because he felt he was always still learning ways to be more efficient.

McGougan decided on a career in farming while he was doing an OE after completing a degree in applied science at Massey University.

The primary sector allowed him to be his own boss and control his destiny.

He came back to NZ to Willowvale Farm, his parents’ 143ha property, making him the fourth generation of his family to work there.

This coincided with his parent’s decision to step back from the industry.

He and wife Katherine took a controlling stake in the farm and leased a neighbouring property.

“We had a lot of debt and we chased production and then profitability for a long time, like a lot of young people,” he says.

He bought the remaining shares in the farm in 2011, as well as the neighbouring lease farm.

Then starting in 2016, came three consecutive wet, miserable springs. Their cattle were causing widespread pugging damage and he realised they could not keep farming the way they had in the past.

“The environment is changing and I was seeing it out in the paddock and I was thinking ‘what are we going to do?’”

Once he started looking into the wider data on climate change and seeing the trends, McGougan realised he wanted to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

That set him along the environmental journey which led to the climate change ambassador role.

As he has grown the farm size, he has upgraded its effluent system, fenced off all of the waterways and started the process of regenerating some of the original kahikatea stands.

“It’s a journey in that we are doing a bit each year as we can afford it,” he says.

That journey was far from over and he was excited at the prospect of new technology allowing the industry to be even more efficient.

He no longer chases the high production targets that he used to and the slightly lower production output has also lowered his costs. It has also made the farm more robust to climatic conditions.

“We have become more sustainable financially and more resilient,” he says.

He also entered in the Bay of Plenty Farm Environment Awards in 2019, winning the Supreme award.

He and Katherine have three children  – Emily, Isaac and Liam – and developing people was also a key focus for him, because the next generation will be the ones who have to deal with the brunt of climate change’s impact.

“They need to be part of this conversation,” he says.

He describes the farm system as “pretty standard”. It is predominantly pasture-based, sitting at around System 2-3. Production on the farm is around 155,000kg MS.

Maize is grown as a summer feed crop and as a way of recycling effluent back into the paddock. He has also reduced the amount of imported feed, relying instead on the maize to supplement the cow’s diet.

Over the winter about 120 cows are sent to a nearby runoff block, which the McGougans lease, while the rest of the 430-cow herd remain on the farm to control the pasture surplus.

The farm is self-contained with the heifers and the calves also grazed either on the farm or at the runoff.

The Climate Change Ambassadors group was created in 2018 under the Dairy Action for Climate Change. New members have been appointed this year to maintain the diversity of the group, with a mix of locations, farm systems and experience.

The other new ambassadors are Waikato farmers Graeme Barr and Melissa Slattery (Dairy Environment Leaders chair), Southland farmer Steve Smith and Canterbury farmers Ash-leigh Campbell and Phill Everest.

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