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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New Zealand’s traditional pasture-based farming system faces a conundrum, a leading scientist has warned. Pastoral Genomics scientist Michael Dunbier said we were no longer the world’s lowest-cost food producer, our pastoral system was a major contributor of greenhouse gases, and customers demanded proof that slogans such as clean and green had some validity reports The ODT.

The reality was the our farming systems were contributing methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and nitrate pollution of the soil and waterways. “They are not satisfied with slogans such as free-range or pasture-fed. We need to look carefully at our systems overall,” he said. In addition, resources such as phosphate were being depleted and questions were being asked about the efficiency and sustainability of fertiliser use in general.

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AgResearch will soon seek regulatory approval for field trials of new transgenic grasses it claims could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. AgResearch’s applied biotechnologies manager, Jimmy Suttie, said the transgenic grasses had both environmental and productivity advantages reports The ODT. The grasses were high in energy, which meant fewer animals were needed to get the same production, reducing the amount of methane released.

The science behind the forage meant digestion of the plant was more efficient, cutting the amount of methane produced by animals and increasing energy that went into tissue and productivity. But Dr Suttie said the technology also had implications for further research to cut methane emissions and reduce the volume of water required by the plants.

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Fecpak is well on the way to developing a new faecal egg counting kit for deer reports the ODT. Meanwhile,  PGG Wrightson has had a huge endorsement from the European Union, where its technology was part of a $NZ7.25 million parasite management trial and which resulted in a major reduction in drench use. Fecpak, together with AgResearch and Deer Industry NZ , was trialling testing processes on the Invermay deer farm, and Fecpak International manager Greg Mirams said he hoped to know the results of those tests by the end of the year.

Drench-resistant worms in deer was a growing problem, and Mr Mirams said deer farmers have relied on products to control internal parasites containing moxidectin, of which there were very few. Fecpak worm testing kits could not be used across animal species without modification, he said.  Intestine size differed, as did the moisture content of faecal matter, and digestion and stomach functions in browsing animals like deer and goats also differed to grazing animals. So far Fecpak has systems for sheep, goats, cattle, horses and alpacas.

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Dairy genetics company Ambreed celebrated 40 years of business in NZ last week by signing a collaborative agreement with AgResearch and launching a new name now CRV AmBreed reports The Waikato Times. The agreement promises co-operation between CRV Holding, parent company of NZ’s CRV AmBreed, and AgResearch on new science projects that will benefit NZ farmers.

In one of the first joint projects, AgResearch scientists will be involved in the genomic selection of future dairy sires marketed by CRV AmBreed and will play a part in DNA typing. A number of further projects are under review with AgResearch. CRV Holding CEO Roald Van Noort praised the agreement. “CRV is a global company and wants to work with the very best research groups around the world. NZ is a leading dairy country with excellent scientific capabilities and we want to be involved in that.”

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AgResearch scientist Tom Fraser is only too aware of the issue of fertiliser use in the hill country and is seeking funding to support work in this area. He will be looking at this whole fertiliser issue with a view to providing cost savings for farmers as well as looking at the environmental story; the benefits to the environment of using phosphate more strategically reports Country-Wide. “This area of research is critical to the financial sustainability of hill country farmers,” he says.

Part of this research would include identifying whether hill country actually needs phosphate-based fertiliser, as well as looking at using modern technology to spread phosphate to where it is required, rather than the blanket coverage that has been standard practice.  If, for example, farmers are only putting it over 20ha rather than the whole block, phosphate becomes viable again, he says.

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The pasture pest known as clover root weevil has spread into Otago. An AgResearch entomologist based at the Institute’s Invermay Campus, Colin Ferguson, a week ago, discovered a low density population on a sheep farm near Clinton in South Otago. This is the furthest south it has been found since it was first detected in Waikato in 1996.

He says although it was just a matter of time for the weevil to spread further down south, it’s nevertheless disappointing to see it has finally arrived in Otago. Mr Ferguson says although the newly discovered population is low density, it is bound to be more widespread than just one farm with possible larger populations elsewhere in the area. “The discovery was made on a sheep farm, but there are many dairy farms in the area and dairy farms tend to better support CRW populations,” he says.

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A simple computer programme to help schedule irrigation on dairy farms could soon be available and judging by the findings of an AgResearch survey, it is badly needed, Rural News reports The Irrigation Calculator has been developed with Dairy Insight and Dairy NZ funding by scientists at Crop & Food and AgResearch.It is designed to help farmers decide when to irrigate, how much water to apply, and the consequences of wrong irrigation timings or amounts, says Dick Martin. Responses to an AgResearch survey* from over 200 dairy farms in Canterbury found only 21% measuring soil moisture, 12% using a scheduling service, and 6% doing water budgets. Monitoring of 10 irrigated dairy farms found only three or four producing close to the maximum potential drymatter, while the remainder had ‘about half as much grass as the best producing farms.’In his experience, Martin says poor pasture management is unlikely to be the major cause of that production loss, but under-irrigation could well be, and where farms are over-irrigating they are wasting energy, water, and possibly leaching nutrients. (more…)