Where to for pastoral farming in this country?

Peter Burton, Functional Fertiliser

Or perhaps the question ought to be, is there a future for pastoral farming? For those of us growing up through the 60’s and 70’s it seems bizarre that a future could be contemplated where pastoral farming becomes a curiosity carried out in remote country enclaves visited mostly by tourists.

It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that pastoral farming was no longer considered ‘the backbone of the country’ and urban electorates suddenly determined the make-up of government.

New Zealand had urbanised with the views of the rural community secondary to those of city dwellers.  It was a seismic shift in the evolution of the country and its effect was largely lost in the turmoil of financial restructuring that took place at the time. It was accompanied by funding for Research Institutes being savagely chopped.  Much data and knowledge were lost and the ‘user pays’ mantra meant long-term research was replaced by short-term industry funded projects. It is a real credit to sheep and beef and dairy industries that pastoral farming has prospered as indeed they have for the last thirty plus years, although we can but wonder where we might now be had there been a clear vision and accompanying plan implemented by the various governments since.

One of the major concerns for the future is environmental considerations and how they might impact on the industry. The supply of clean fresh drinking water is increasingly under the microscope and although the planting of waterways and fencing of streams has had a positive impact it seems that the levels of nitrate-N in groundwater continues to steadily increase.

Dr Graham Sparling in his Norman Taylor Lecture in 2004 stated that New Zealand was in the top of the OECD in one respect – we were the country with greatest proportion of our GDP coming from primary industries. He went on to state, “Soil biology may be able to help us clean our wastes and protect our streams and rivers.  The soil biological process of denitrification is the only process whereby we can get reactive nitrogen from soil and water back into benign nitrogen gas…. but we seem to be headed in the opposite direction, adding ever more nitrogen and phosphorus to our soils” The argument is that when less synthetic nitrogen and soluble phosphorus is applied production declines.

The work over the last twenty-five years by Functional Fertiliser and supporters has proven that by creating the conditions that favour clover the dependence on synthetic nitrogen for continuous maximum pasture yield can be broken. A comparable farm trial undertaken by Dr Guna Mageson of Scion Rotorua recorded a 30% increase in pasture yield with a 70% reduction in nitrate-N lost to groundwater.   The change over process is not accompanied by an initial loss in performance.  The transition can be seamless with the immediate benefit of lower fertiliser and animal ill-health costs.

Longer term the added benefits of more total pasture with more even growth throughout the year are also enjoyed and appreciated.

For more information call Peter on 0800 843 809, or 0274950041.