NZ hasn’t just lost its place as the world’s lowest cost dairy producer, our costs are now on a par with Ireland, a multi-national farmer with a foot in both camps told last week’s Large Herds Conference. Clinton has 1450ha and 2500 cows in Southland, plus dairy farm investments in the US and his home country, Ireland. Increased land values and a massive debt burden are key factors reports Rural News. NZ’s farmers need to recognise the problem and stop unnecessary spending, he says.

Some farmers have backed away from the day to day running “maybe a bit too much. There’s a case for a bit more personal involvement… The further you are away from milking the cows, the more it costs.”Banks should offer the lowest possible rate. Farmers are the best possible business they can get and they should be doing it as cheaply as possible. They may not get a huge margin but there are very few defaults.”

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Papawai Ltd directors Dallas Lucas and Peter Donnelly are using tiger worms to deal with their cow effluent, the first farm-based operation of its kind in New Zealand. Mr Lucas told visitors to his farm from the NZ Large Herds conference last week they had inherited an effluent system that was unsustainable in the long term. They had explored many options while researching a replacement effluent system but were unconvinced about holding ponds, he said.

They did not want to install a 3.6 million-litre pond to meet the requirements of having 90 days’ storage – a 2m-deep pond with a surface area of 1500m2 would have been needed – and wanted a simpler, more slimlined option, Mr Lucas said. They milk 550 cows on 213ha but are keen to expand to 750 reports The Southland Times.

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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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