Growing at Home

Although I didn’t grow up on a farm, I’ve always had a connection with agriculture. My maternal grandparents were sheep and beef farmers, and Dad was sharemilking when I was born. He changed careers and worked his way up from doing the night shift on the load-out gang to being the second-in-charge of New Zealand’s largest meat-processing company.

I grew up on a small block in Te Puke, before moving to Hamilton and later Auckland. Always the animal lover, I decided I wanted to be a vet. But when it came to exams at the end of the intermediate year for vet science, I experienced a bad case of nerves. While I passed everything, I didn’t get high enough grades to make it into vet school.

It was a difficult time for me because I’d always dreamt of being a vet. Given my affinity with agriculture, and the fact that I’d already done a number of papers I could cross-credit, I decided to study agricultural science. By the end of my second year, I’d mastered exam techniques and got good enough grades to consider going back into vet school. But I was really enjoying agronomy, crops, plants and soils, so I stuck with agriculture and graduated with an honours degree. After a shaky entry into the working world– I was made redundant after six weeks in the field for the Wool Board when the advent of synthetic fabrics caused the bottom to fall out of the wool industry– I began a career working with Genetic Technologies, who produce and distribute Pioneer maize seed.

When I first started working with dairy farms in the nineties, they were largely pasture-based, but over time we’ve migrated to systems that use more and more supplements – initially home-grown, and now a significant amount of imported feed. On top of that, a large amount of arable land has been converted to dairy farming with more stock increasing the demand for imported feed. New Zealand imports nearly twice as much internationally produced feed each year as we grow. The majority of imported feed is palm kernel from Malaysia and Indonesia for the dairy industry. Palm kernel is a by-product of the palm oil industry, and New Zealand is the top importer of palm-oil production residues in the world. I think it’s time for the dairy industry to stop and ask themselves, “Is this the best way forward for New Zealand?”

If there was conflict, disease or climate-change-induced disaster in the palm-oil-producing region – anything that held up shipping – it would affect feed supply and potentially have severe ramifications for dairy farmers. It’s highlighted the fact that New Zealand is in a relatively vulnerable position on the grain and livestock feed front. We see ourselves as being reasonably self-contained in terms of agricultural production, but we’re not. It is cheaper to get grain from Western Australia than it is to get it from the South Island to the North Island. Increasing grain yields, bringing more land into grain production and transitioning to dairy-farm systems that utilise more home-grown feed are all ways we could reduce our reliance on internationally produced feed.

Today, I live on a lifestyle block in the Waikato with a flock of laying chooks, a veggie patch and a developing dahlia addiction. That started when my second daughter got married last year. She was keen to have dahlias as part of her wedding flowers, so we grew enough for the venue decorations. What started as a good idea turned into a mini obsession very rapidly and I’ve now got a garden full of them. Working with farmers is really rewarding. Farmers tend not to receive the accolades they deserve, but I think agriculture is a really noble calling. It’s something that they have every right to be passionate about. The impact of their work helps feed people around the world, so it’s an exciting place to be.

Growing more grain locally, reducing dairy-farm stocking rates and growing supplementary feed requirements on-farm are practical and implementable solutions for New Zealand. Learn more at ourlandandwater.nz/imported-feed. This is the ninth piece in a series supported by the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge.