I enjoy reading Jacqueline Rowarth’s opinion page but of late I have felt a little annoyed by the stance she portrays.
Lately there was another stab at the country’s race towards regenerative farming. While the name might be new and fresh it has been in the organic sector for decades thanks to the Rodale Institute so it’s not really a new fad.
According to Rowarth NZ agriculture has always been regenerative, strip grazing the pasture, returning carbon and nutrients to the soil. The author holds all the relevant qualifications to support her article and it is obvious no one will change that.
I have been dairy farming for 45 years and have had the privilege of working on properties in Taranaki, King Country, Waikato, South Auckland and Northland. Every farm was different and had to be treated as such.
I have witnessed NZ’s conventional, industrial methods, both good and bad, mostly the latter.
I have seen the girls suffer diarrhoea while I couldn’t wait to feed them meal to bung them up. I have had to send beautiful animals to the freezing works because antibiotics weren’t going to kill the mastitis. I would shut the cows into a paddock of ryegrass up to their knees and all they wanted was out of there. Then there were the paddocks that looked like the harrows had been through after grazing because the herd pulled every plant out of the ground when the roots were too shallow.
I found my way out of all that in 2006 and not a minute too soon.
My health and that of my family was suffering and milking the cows had become a chore and a bore. The fun had gone, it was getting harder and harder to get out of bed each morning.
In November 2006 I ditched all the mechanical toys, all the meal bags, truckloads of carrots, all the urea, synthetic fertilisers and chemical inputs to begin a completely new and exciting journey.
I have never looked back but I now look over the boundary fence and see other farmers suffering like I was.
Regenerative agriculture has been taken up by a young, very passionate group of farmers who want to enjoy their land, their animals and have time for their families.
They are out there looking for the solutions themselves, alternatives to the chemical regime our peers have instilled in us.
They also know there are already farmers worldwide who have discovered those alternatives and are very successful at using them. They are starting at the same place I did but they have been able to give it a name.
It has been nearly 15 years since I turned the corner. I don’t need a degree to share my new-found discoveries.
I haven’t used antibiotics for 15 years and don’t need them. Regenerative farming doesn’t mean feweer animals. They are our composters so we need more not fewer.
I whip cream off the milk billy at any stage during the season, not just after Christmas. The dogs love eating the cowpats. Weeds are succession plants and nature has asked them to grow for a reason so I don’t kill the messenger. The paddocks are covered with cowpats in perfect pavlova shapes all year round. Dung beetles have arrived in their thousands so we must be doing something right.
We shouldn’t be discouraging regenerative farmers, we should be learning from them and sharing knowledge.
We don’t have time to wait for scientific proof on a lot farm issues. For example, it will take 400 years to fully investigate the periodic table to see whether we need some of the elements in our fertiliser.
We have to discover the alternatives ourselves. The biocides farmers add to the environment every year are unsustainable. Consumers demand better and so should we.
The world needs younger workers in the agricultural sector. Regenerative agriculture just might be the way to get them there.
Who am I?
Janette Perrett is an organic dairy farmer north of Whangarei and author of You Have Been Given a Gift. She manages land and animals as a whole and by farming with nature has made some amazing discoveries.
