Farming intensity is a concept often talked about, especially in relation to system change and environmental footprints. An objective measure of intensity is proposed for the sheep and beef industry to sit alongside the one that is already available to the dairy industry.
Terry Parminter
The opportunity to build their own business, work with livestock, and be in the outdoors, are major drivers for people to enter the New Zealand dairy industry. The industry wants their experiences to be positive and to lead onto satisfying careers. In 2015, a two-year project ‘People Lift’ was begun by DairyNZ working with a small group of certified People Management Consultants to build increased capability: in work place compliance, staff management processes and team leadership on-farms. One farmer participant said, ”We are doing the project because all about giving [people] a voice …”
As the pilot project is completed in 2017, the People Management Consultants are preparing to continue its results with new groups of farmers.
Terry Parminter, John Greer, and Lee Astridge
The key to having farmers motivated to developing and implementing farm management plans is to address their goals for their business and their future farming careers and link these to opportunities in their farm system and off farm impacts.
Understanding the link between farm management plans and farmer behaviour or action, means understanding the human psychology of behaviour.
Terry Parminter, KapAg Ltd
How dairy cows are being wintered in Southland, New Zealand, has become an issue generating community conflict. This paper describes how livestock industries in the Southern South Island responded to the issue providing technical guidelines and farmer support for the introduction of Good Management Practices for Wintering (GMPW). It includes some background information about practice change principles and the theoretical model used to link farmer learning, attitude change and human behaviour. The paper has results from focus groups held in February 2020 as an alternative to reiterating the same technical information that farmers had already been exposed to for some time. The groups provided a learning intervention using facilitated discussions with farmers based on scenarios for self-reflection and in-depth consideration. This was a very successful approach for achieving the attitude changes needed to underpin practice change. Average ratings on three attitude measures increased from neutral (2.5/5) to positive (3.8/5) (p < 0.001).
Terry Parminter & Justin Kitto
This project examined the potential for dairy production whilst farmers operate within the nitrogen-cap for individual farm losses to water that applies within the Manawatū Wanganui Region. Since 2014, various catchments within the Region have been required to obtain their intensive landuse consents in different years. The Upper Manawatu River catchment with over 126 farms is one of the last of these and it provided the focus for this study.
In the study, a nitrogen cap from Table 14.2 of the One Plan was applied to five representative farms selected from dairy farms in the catchment, and the results were used to estimate the possible consequences across all the rest of the farms in the catchment. Two versions of Table 14.2 were considered; the original version in the One Plan based on Overseer® version 5.2.6 (2007) and a second updated version using Overseer® 6.2.3 (2018). Overseer® 6.2.3 was used for the farm system modelling and nutrient budgeting. To fit within their respective nitrogen caps, the representative farms required farm system as well as operational changes to be made including changes in stocking rates. A spreadsheet analysis of the five farms provided the financial results.
It was estimated that if all the dairy farms in the catchment were required to operate within the current nitrogen cap described in Table 14.2 of the One Plan, nitrogen losses from farms would drop by 300 tonnes (60%) and milk production by over 5,000 tonnes (40%) over 20 years. However, over 65% of them would no longer be viable as dairy operations. If Table 14.2 was updated to the latest version of Overseer® then nitrogen losses would drop by over 200 tonnes (40%) and milk production by over 700 tonnes over 20 years (5%). With a revised Table 14.2, the majority of farms could meet the cap and continue to remain viable.
Terry Parminter, Scott Ridsdale, Stefan Bryant