Day 23 - Alliance at Invercargill

My day started with an early meeting in Invercargill at Alliance HQ with Murray Behrent.  Murray came to Overbury about 2 1/2 years ago for a farm visit with Randall Parker Foods and after the meeting we exchanged details and I mentioned that one day I would like to visit the operation in New Zealand.  Today was that day.  We chatted for a while about Hoofprint and what benefits there were to the UK farmer in using system like this.  We spoke about lamb sales and marketing around the world and how the global economy is changing the destination of many of New Zealands lamb products and about the rationalisation that has occurred in the meat processing industry since 1990 and how this will continue in the future.

I met up with Hayden again and we headed down to the Lorneville Processing site, locally referred to as 'The Works'.  I was very impressed with the overall scale of the operation being conducted in the plant.  Hayden and I started off recording some lamb tails from a Sainsbury's docking trial, trying to discover if live weight gain is effected by tail docking or not.  Too early for any conclusions but it was interesting to be on the other side of the world and still have a Sainsbury's connection.  Last year Hayden did trials on about 15,000 individual animals.  The processing plant was incredible, running 4 chains (or lines) of lambs.  All of the lambs are stunned and then slaughtered at a rate of 36 lambs/minute which; when all chains are double shifting and woking an extra hour can process 32,000 lambs/day. Lambs are delivered almost 24 hours/day and there is enough pen space in the  lairage to hold about 14,000 lambs.  Teams of shepherds, each with two dogs unload the animals and keep them moving up through the system.   There was a lot going on but it was well organised, calm and relatively stress free which is a good sign.  

Before the lambs go off to be cooled they are weighed and put through a VIAScan.  This very impressive piece of equipment scans the carcase and works out the percentages of saleable meat in  3 main areas and the farmer is paid accordingly.  Measurements are taken from the leg, loin and shoulder.  To me this makes perfect sense; with the farmer being rewarded for more saleable better quality meat that yields more to the processor and should be charged at a higher margin to the customer.  How far away are these in the UK I wonder?

After the lambs are processed they are moved into various chillers to bring the carcase temperature down to -0.5 degrees.  This is done in stages to slightly dry the carcase and slowly bring down the temperature over about 10 hours.  The following day the lamb is butchered in one of the 5 cutting rooms, by one of the 60 boners/butchers before being packed, identified and shipped.  It takes 6 weeks for the chilled produce to reach the UK where is is further processed before ending up on the shelves of Sainsbury's.

I finished the day back at HQ talking to the sales team who work with UK buyers.  We talked about the quality of the product, how it is packaged, processed and delivered and how it really should be a very premium product.  New Zealand and UK lamb should not be competing against each other in the market place but working together to manage the supply of lamb between us to ensure the price stays at a sustainable level.  On farm and processor, efficiencies need to occur to ensure lamb isn't priced out of the market but with efficient producers and a reasonable price, we should be able to return enough money to invest in the future.

Monday and Tuesday with AbacusBio

A slight deviation from my Nuffield studies took me to Dunedin (this is the first church of Dunedin) to talk to a company called AbacusBio about a type of Carbon assessment for sheep flocks called Hoofprint.  I met with Jude Sise who is a partner at AbacusBio and who is running the Hoofprint program in New Zealand.  Abacus Bio is the science partner to Alliance and who’s philosophy is all about using science to help business.  Hoofprint is web based, and is currently used on about 50 New Zealand lamb producers supplying Alliance; one of the main farmer owned cooperatives operating in New Zealand.

The program requires very limited farmer input with the bear minimum requirement taking up about an hour or two a year.  This is involves putting the closing stock numbers into the system and adding the fuel, fertiliser and electricity usage into the system.  The real beauty of this system is that the kill sheet data is automatically added to the program through a system in place at Alliance.

Depending on the ability of the operator the system can be much more accurate, with regular inputs of sheep deaths, sales outside of Alliance making the carbon impact much more accurate.

But where this system scores highly, in my opinion is about the results that are generated.  There is a lot of scientific algorithms running in the back ground to calculate many of the figures used to generate the reports.  At the end of the year animal growth rates, carcase weights, and growth rates are all available.  In addition it reports on scanning, docking and sales percentages which call also be compared to previous seasons.  We know from previous experience that lower carbon foot prints equate to more efficient and profitable sheep production.  Take growth rates for example, the shorter time lambs stay on the farm the lower its carbon emissions, the lower the cost and the more efficient that animal is.

This is a great tool to monitor the flocks performance and it can even be split up to manage and monitor different flock or mob numbers.

I spent Tuesday morning back at the office running Overbury’s data through the program, from memory, which showed some interesting comparisons with New Zealand emission and performance data.  It would be interesting to get hold of the program to run a full years worth of data for our sheep enterprise to look at it’s performance against the top producers in New Zealand.

After leaving Jude and the Abacus team, I headed to the Otago Peninsular to try and find the resident Penguins and Albatrosess.  I failed miserably on both counts which was shame, so I about faced and headed towards Invercargill via the Southern Scenic Route, which should have taken about 4 hours but in true 'Jake the travelling tourist' mode, took me almost 7 hours!  However the stops were certainly worth making.

The first place to stop was Nugget Point (above) protruding out into the South Pacific Ocean.  The rocks, beautiful white sand, turquoise sea; punctuated with seagull and seal calls was simply stunning.  Pressing on from Nugget point I made my way along the very scenic route to another incredible view this time from Florence Hill, overlooking Tautuku Bay, which I arrived at as the sun was starting to set.

A few miles along the coast I came across Curio Bay, where the remains of a petrified forest can be seen on the rocky beach.  The fossilized trees are clearly visible, and are incredibly rare.  This is because the silification, brought by the flood, covered the forest in a matter of weeks or months before the forest material could degrade, preserving them for millions of years.

I made my way onwards to Fortrose where I met up with Hayden Peters who farms with his father and also works full time for Alliance, who had very kindly offered to host me for the night.  After a quick tour of the farm, as it was getting late we headed back to his house.

Days 19 and 20 - Weekend in Athol

After a slightly delayed start to the day Steve and I headed out to have a look around the home farm in Athol.  We started off catching up with some fencing contractors putting deer fence in around one of the paddocks before setting off to have a look at a new pivot irrigator.  It was a remarkably simple to operate with the pump on a variable speed drive, automatically switching on and off depending on the load required.  The pivot was irrigating spring barley.  Soil moisture probes are used to assess the deficit in the soil before deciding when to irrigate and with how much water.  Theses are quite integrated systems with probes located between 100mm and 450mm and a second one between 450mm and 800mm. The barley looked a stunning crop with great yield potential.

The next part of the trip round Steve took me to see the Red Deer side of the business, which is quite diverse.  Deer are kept for a number of reasons, for breeding stags, for velvet and for venison; most of which ends up in Eastern Europe and Germany.  Here Steve has some deer velvet being stored in the freezer.  It is quite valuable but is slow to grow and difficult to harvest.  Only licensed operators are qualified to remove the velvet, after anaesthetic is administered to the deer.  I was fascinated to hear about the production systems and rounding the deer up form the hill using helicopters!

After lunch we headed down to Balfour to have a look at some arable crops, the first couple of fields being a direct comparison of direct drilling and traditionally ploughed and cultivated.  The direct drilling looked a lot thinner but better bigger ear numbers whereas the ploughed looked to have much more biomass in the bottom and smaller ears.  It will be interesting to see what the combine yield monitor says, in February!

We stopped at the main farm yard where Steve and family run another business, processing and selling grain to dairy farmers.  The barley and wheat are rolled, and if necessary minerals are added before being shipped out on one of the farms trucks.  This has turned the Southland area into a net importer of grain.  Before this plant was running wheat traded at a $50 discount to wheat in Canterbury because of the haulage.  Now all the wheat is being used locally, wheat is being pulled down from Canterbury, creating a shortfall in this area resulting in a price increase.

I headed East on Sunday morning after saying goodbye to Steve and Heather, but not before calling in to the Veg Shed to pick up some supplies for the journey, knowing how long it took me to get here!  A huge thanks to Steve and Heather for providing a base to take a breather, just what was needed!  I left Athol and retraced y steps back up towards Queenstown and Cromwell before turning south East towards Alexandra.  The scenery heading over the Knobby Range was stunning.  Large rocky outcrops with clear water lakes and sheep dotted on the escarpments.  Proper Lord of the Rings territory.

I stopped and detoured over a bridge across the river Clutha to show the crystal clear water carving it's way through the steep sided gorges. This was taken at Millers Flat and the colour of the water was almost luminous.

All along the river on the flat alluvial soils where water was available there were fruit farms, irrigating merrily in the hot afternoon sun.  This area of Central Otago is known for its top fruit of cherries, apricots, wines, peaches, pears, plums, nectarines and apples.  There were lovely little market garden stalls open along the roadside selling very local and very fresh produce.

I pushed on through Lawrence and Milton, where I stopped to take a picture of a classic tractor collection, totalling at least 12 vintage tractors, trucks and crawlers.  All were immaculately restored and maintained.  For any passing Ford fans it's definitely worth a visit.  I headed on into Mosgiel, on the outskirts of Dunedin to find a fellow Nuffield Scholar who has kindly offered to put me up for the night ahead of meetings tomorrow morning in Dunedin itself.

Day 18, Stunning Countryside - Which Slowed Me Up A Little!

Friday morning started with a impromptu farm visit with Peter Mitchell who farms near Weston North West of Oamaru.  Peter runs a very interesting business spread over about 1,400 Ha of owned and leased land, as well as a bird seed business called Topflite which started back in the early 1980's.  The farm grows wheat, barley, sunflowers, canary grass, amongst other crops to add to the bird seed business.  The birdseed has really taken off and the team pride themselves on locally grown products, good quality and great service.  The team certainly looked in fine spirits wrapping Christmas presents for their biggest customers.  It's not with out it's challenges though, being located in the south Island with many customers in the North, good logistics is important to get produce delivered on time.  he farm runs on heavy clay with about 600mm of annual rainfall (varies 400-1000mm) although some irrigation is being installed through a community scheme, from the Waitaki river, with abstraction rates equivalent to 3mm/day.  The top of the farm has some breathtaking views across to the Kakanui Mountains.

After leaving Peter I headed along highway 83 heading towards Athol to meet up with my Nuffield 13 buddy Steve Wilkins and family.  What should have been a 4 hour drive took me nearly 6 hours, by the time I had stopped to take numerous photographs!  The view were absolutely stunning.  The sun was shining, the water was crystal clear and the rock out crops created a fantastic back drop for the journey.  I was staggered though to see lots of dairy's being installed along the side of the lakes, using plenty of water which in itself is not too much of a problem, but the winters must be quite challenging up here and the soils are very thin.  This can use more water and add to the potential of nitrate leaching ingot he aquifers. 

I make no apologies for the next photographs, which do not do justice to the tranquillity and beauty of the areas that I looked at.  No wonder it took so long to complete the 350km journey.  This is a shot of lake Aviemore, basking in the warm sunshine.  A lovely place for a return visit with a fishing rod and a camper van!

I had to stop for lunch along the way so a very New Zealand dish of mince and cheese pie, which was lovely, washed down with a pint of milk.

Onwards along the banks of the Ahuriri river which had wild lupins out in full flower.  The  scent from the flowers, streaming in through the open windows of the go cart was sensational.

I headed over the Lindis pass and the down along the Lindis river, and then turned west at Cromwell before shooting along highway 6 towards Queenstown.  This is the Kawarau Gorge where gold was discovered back in the 1860's.   

The road around Gibbston also had some amazing terraces with vineyards perched precariously on the small banks.  There were windmills all along the gorge, to keep the air moving in the winter to avoid frosting of the fruit.  It really was a great sight.  I imagine the wine produced tasted lovely, although no time to stop, on this occasion.

Destination reached late in the afternoon, Steve and Heather Wilkins who run Athol Valley Meats and have a fantastic farm shop The Veg Shed just in time to drop the luggage and head to the village shop  stroke pub to listen in on the organising committee for a charity fund raiser for the village school.  A cross country motocross event!  It was great to meet a few of the local residents and share a couple of beers after the long photographic session!

New Zealand Day 17 - Wheat Crops Under the Microscope

The first meeting of the day was with Eric Watson who farms just to the East of Ashburton.  A huge thank you to Eric for taking the time to meet up, as I only made contact a couple of days ahead of the meeting.  Eric has a great farm of about 490 Ha which can be irrigated through various pumps and bore holes, with the bulk of the farm being on a ring main with variable speed drives for the pumps.  This means that irrigation equipment can be moved without needing to switch equipment off when moving rain runs and as irrigators stop and start the pump speed slows or accelerates to match the loading saving electricity.  All of the crops are irrigated on the farm with wheat crops receiving somewhere around 200mm.  IN addition to wheat Eric is growing seed crops of rye grass, fescue grasses, plantain, chicory, botchy (Chinese Cabbage) and spinach.

The crops that we looked at where incredibly clean with a robust fungicide strategy being used.  Every day the crop stays green during senescence a further 200Kk of grain is grown.  So keep it green for a week that's nearly 1.5t of extra yield!  Many crops have been under pressure from septoria  Eric's fungicide had wooded well and the crops where very clean top to bottom.  

Seed rate and variety choice took up a lot of our conversational time as large crops of wheat require a population that is not too thick in order to enable light to intercept the canopy and get to the second  and third leaves.  Shorter more upright flags will act as solar panels rather than big floppy leaves, something that I found hard to believe but logical after I gave it a little thought.  Seed varieties and numbers are not the whole story, nitrogen rates and timings are also key factors in growing large crops of wheat. I left Eric and headed south for a lunch meeting with fellow Nuffield Scholar Michael Tayler who farms further down the coast.  Michael grows wheat, potatoes, barley, peas and carrots.  These carrots are grown for juicing and are larger and sweeter than a normal carrot.  The juice is pressed and stored before being shipped and sold as a health food drink.  Michael did his Nuffield project on 'New Technologies and Arable Farming'. So we had a lot in common!

After lunch I drove still further south to Oamaru to meet Chris Dennison, who held the Guinness Book of Records Wheat yield at 15.015t/H in 2003.  Chris and Kay's farm is literally right on the coast, with a 50ft drop from the last field down onto the beach.  This climate, coupled with fairly heavy clay, with good structure means high yields are always a potential.  In addition to wheat Chris also grows rye grass for seed, oilseed rape and spring barley.  Rye grass is potentially the highest return but also has the highest risk.  There are opportunities to make 'balage' as a first cut, then seed and then dairy support or balage again from these fields. It demonstrates to me that way that opportunities are sought out over the whole cycle, not just focusing on the one crop in the field.   

Chris grows several varieties of wheat, from a couple of breeders including one from the UK in the highest yielding situations, including Oakley.  A planting date, equivalent to (UK) 1st week September and plant populations calculated.  The net result is a good plant population with somewhere about 600 ears depending of tiller numbers.  This is slightly in the lap of the gods depending on the kindness of the winter and how much tillering the crop does.  A fairly intense fungicide strategy is required to keep the leaves green, for the extra yield at the end of maturity.  The yield comes from a combination of ears per m2, numbers of grains per and weight of the individual grain sites.  Irrigation is also applied through the later part of the season to help with grain fill.  Chris is the Chairman of the local community irrigation board.  Water is taken from the Waitaki River and put through the irrigation scheme.  About 15% of the total annual river flow is used for agriculture, so there's plenty to spare.

It was a fabulous opportunity for me to spend time with Chris and his family.  I learnt so much about the crop canopy structure and what is needed to achieve it.  After the trip around the farm and a delicious roast lamb dinner, we headed out to the local pub with a neighbouring farmer, which was highly entertaining.  Thank you, once again to everyone for hosting me today it was great fun!