Intensive dairy farming at double the current average stocking rate does not damage soil ecosystems, concludes a five-year study in Taranaki, the first research of its kind done in NZ. The results fill a critical knowledge gap and may challenge popular beliefs that intensive pastoral grazing causes gradual ecological decline.

The work was funded by the Taranaki Regional Council and conducted by the council’s terrestrial ecologist, Shay Dean, between 2002 and 2007 at the DairyNZ research farm at Whareroa, near Hawera. Reporting the results at a meeting on Tuesday, the TRC’s environment quality director, Gary Bedford, said the soil “held up markedly well. The biodiversity was actually best in some of the most intensively stocked pastures.” Councillor Michael Joyce said it was “refreshing to see a good news story rather than the bad news stories usually associated with intensive dairying” reports The Taranaki Daily.

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The new season weaner calf market opened at Owaka last Thursday with prices similar to last year’s. PGG Wrightson Otago livestock manager Chris Swale said steers sold for between 230c and 240c a kg liveweight, and heifers from 190c to 200c a kg. Mr Swale said demand was consistent, especially for steers, and quality was up with that expected from the Owaka region reports The ODT.

The top price was $790 for a pen of 12 Charolais-cross steers sold by R. B. and Y. S. Murray, of Kaka Point. The same vendors topped the heifer offering, selling two pens of Charolais-cross heifers for $740 and $705.

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Spending more than $5 billion on large-scale Canterbury irrigation will create 17,000 new jobs and boost the region’s economy by 8 per cent a year, a report says. The first economic assessment of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy says building water storage in Tekapo, Lake Coleridge, Lees Valley and Hurunui will cost $5.2b and irrigate an extra 236,000 hectares reports The Timaru Herald. On-farm gross domestic product would be boosted by $400 million a year and $1.7b would be added to regional GDP annually, an 8 per cent increase. An estimated 17,000 extra jobs would be created throughout the region, including 3000 farm jobs, the report said.

Environmentalists warn the report is “superficial” and does not account for environmental mitigation. But irrigation proponents were encouraged by the analysis and said benefits like recreational opportunities could not be quantified in dollar terms. Cabinet is expected today to discuss the future of ECan, following the damning Creech report which recommended sacking the elected councillors, appointing commissioners and establishing a regional water authority. The Government is expected to decide within weeks if it will adopt the report’s recommendations.

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Dairy industry leaders have put farmers on notice to lift their game after a damning report showed many have substandard effluent management systems. Fonterra announced yesterday that from next season it will visit every supplier’s farm each year to inspect dairy-effluent systems. The company has demanded higher compliance with the regulations, with threatening fines and the refusal to collect milk from repeat offenders reports The ODT.

The latest Clean Streams Accord data, gathered by regional councils, shows the number of farmers around New Zealand adhering to council dairy-effluent discharge consents has slipped from 64% in 2007-08 to 60% in 2008-09. “That’s a level that whilst we do not like it, you have got to say it’s not a bad level. It’s one of the best in the country.”

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Women know more about the dynamics of dairy farm finances than most of them realise, says Rebecca Rowe, a former rural banking manager and ex-farm consultant. She was talking to about 30 women who were at Woodville’s Dairy Women’s Network day that aimed at empowering dairy women by giving them budgeting tools to take charge of their farm financial planning.

 It means they become empowered, rather than have financial incomings and outgoings just happening to them, Ms Rowe explained in the Manawatu Standard. About half of the women said they had done farm budgets, but many were uninitiated and she estimated less than half were doing farm budgets every year – let alone updating them every two months to keep them valid, as advised.

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Dairy farmers spilling cow effluent were seen by the public as more of a threat to society than drink-drivers or murderers, Southland dairy farmer Mike Horgan told a dairy industry conference in Invercargill yesterday. His daughter Bridget, 19, and two friends, Megan Hamilton, 22, of Winton, and Virginia Armstrong, 22, were killed by a drink-driver on Good Friday in 1995.

Mr Horgan told delegates at the NZ Large Herds conference at Stadium Southland about his shift from Taranaki to Southland in 1994, and the challenges he had faced, including criticism from sheep farmers. While he admitted the dairy industry could be let down by mediocrity, Mr Horgan criticised the public and the media’s willingness to condemn dairy farmers reports The Southland Times.

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Dairy farmers needed to make a greater effort to be aware of their neighbours and their concerns, delegates at the Large Herds Conference were told yesterday. Speaking at the opening of the annual conference in Invercargill, NZ Large Herds Association chairman Bryan Beeston said farmers had to make sure the tools and skills they used were up to the job to ensure environmental compliance reports The Southland Times.

“There have been many instances where machinery has failed, people not trained, the suppliers of the gear, the systems we run, are not up to the job.” But he was confident the conference would show the industry was complying with the standards and conditions placed on it by councils and the Government.

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Crossbred wool auction prices have stabilised after making a strong recovery from the lows of last year’s world recession reports Business Day. Prices for best-style clean fleece and second shear are up 20% to $3.50 a kilogram on prices in July and August; good lamb’s wool is up 15% to $4.30 and oddments are up 30% to $2.70.

Wool was last at these levels towards the end of 2008 when it was on its way down from a high of $4 a kilogram at the height of the world commodities boom. Wool exports earned NZ $576 million in the year to March last year and the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry estimated in July 2009 that this year’s export returns would fall to $458m.

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Commentators are continuing to express confidence in the future of the meat industry, more so than farmers. Rabobank’s Australian-based animal protein senior analyst, Wendy Voss, told farmers in Central Otago last week that demand for all meat was expected to grow 20% in the next decade, at a time supplies were forecast to continue falling reports The ODT.

That extra demand would come from developing nations and would outstrip supply, Ms Voss said. “The outlook for Australia and NZ sheep meat and beef is very positive,” she told 300 farmers at the SI High Country committee’s biennial field day in the Nevis Valley. Ms Voss said fluctuating prices had caused a global decline in the supply of sheep meat and beef.

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The Government may look at opening some conservation land to livestock grazing as a way for the Department of Conservation to generate income reports The ODT. Agri Minister David Carter told about 300 farmers in Central Otago last week that finding ways to generate income from a conservation estate that grew in size under the previous government was a looming issue, and allowing strictly controlled grazing to licensed farmers could be a solution.

“That, to me, makes perfect sense,” he said at the Fed Farmers high country committee two-yearly field day in the Nevis Valley last Wednesday. Don Clarke, of Carrick Station, told the field day that he had found grazing of the upright-growing invasive weed, Hieracium lepidulum, could control its spread. Mr Carter repeated his support for the greater use of conservation covenants administered through organisations such as the QEII Trust, saying it was “a sensible” way to achieve biodiversity protection and allow economic use of land.

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