Category: Rural

Source: Radio New Zealand

Cornwall Park farm is something of a hidden gem in the heart of Auckland city.

Taking up 73 of the 172 hectares of the total park, the farm’s Simmental cattle and Perendale sheep are a much-loved feature for the millions of people that visit Cornwall Park every year.

But being a farm in the city comes with specific challenges.

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The first challenge relates to the history of the park and Auckland’s unique growing conditions.

“Auckland’s the weediest city in the world. Everything grows, so there’s every sort of weed you can think of,” Peter Maxwell, farm manager, told Country Life.

“We spray out an area and crop it and spray it out again.

“We get one crack every few years of trying to drop down the rats tail and the Kikuyu and anything else, Onehunga weed.”

But the historic nature of the park means there are archaeological areas that are not grazed.

“And so that’s a bit of an issue with some of the weeds and the worms,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell has been managing Cornwall Park farm since 2007 and had a long history of farming before that. He said managing a small city farm is different, but it’s interesting and busy in other ways.

“There’s no neighbours to send stuff off to graze, so it’s all in-house. We buy silage in, but [the stock] have to stay here,” he said.

“So we do a bit of a lamb crop every year – 12 hectares of that – and that goes into new grass in the autumn.”

The lack of farming neighbours is another challenge particular to Cornwall Park farm, which Peter has gotten around by joining the Kaipara Farms Discussion Group and going to industry events.

And then there is the huge number of non-farming neighbours.

“You can tell people have just bought a new house.

“They chuck rubbish over the fence or they have a loose dog, so that takes a bit of training.

“They all like the farm outlook, but we tell them not to stick their rhododendrons and other crap over the fence.”

Cornwall Park is self-funded, leasing out land in the surrounding area, and is overseen by a trust board.

While the farm doesn’t have to make a profit to survive, there are other expectations, such as every ewe needing to have a lamb and every cow a calf.

“Other people may laugh about that, but that’s why we’re working on these ewes to have more twins,” he said.

“They don’t want it to be a petting zoo. They really do want it to be a little bit, a commercial look, commercial feel.”

Maxwell talks in terms of restraining the loss.

“We get as much money for the lambs as we can and as much money for the bulls as we can.

“We spend a little bit more than some other people, perhaps on animal health,” he said.

“We’ve just got to the stage where we’re self-sufficient with our cropping.

“We’ve got old gear, but it’s gear that we’ve been able to put together so we can do all our spraying, cultivating, rolling and seeding. So we have a little pride in that.”

Cornwall Park farm’s biggest difference from other farms is the huge number of people that come through.

The park is open every day and millions of people visit every year, so there’s a lot of focus on keeping everything looking “reasonable” Maxwell said. “Not perfect, reasonable.”

“We worry a lot about animal welfare. We explain to people that there will be a few lame sheep with a bit of foot rot on this property.

“You might have seen those sheep running out through the trough. Every time they come past these yards, they go through the trough.”

The cattle here are bred with the particular needs of the park in mind too.

“They’re all polled, no horns. They’re very quiet because where we are, they have to be quiet.”

“Simmental’s have trouble calving, but we’ve done a bit of work on that and so this is our first year that we haven’t pulled a calf out of a heifer or a cow, and no dead calves, so we’re actually a little bit thrilled about that.”

The farm has volunteers and cadets coming through too, some of whom have gone on to bigger farming jobs.

“Taking people from the city and going out to other farms, that’s probably one of our KPIs.”

Maxwell sees his role as a “three-pronged attack”; apart from restraining the loss, the farm’s role is also about education and interpretation of the realities of farm life and helping keep the huge swathes of grass in the park under control.

“People come and expect to see sheep and the cattle and the cherry blossoms and the pheasants now.

“You’ll see older people that say they were here when they were kids and now they’ve brought their grandchildren along.”

Learn more:

• Find out more about Cornwall Park here

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A low-emissions future for farming will likely mean fewer cows – but farmers will struggle to diversify without financial and infrastructure support, government-funded research has found.

The research, done for the government-funded Agricultural Emissions Centre, said a lack of confidence in mitigation technology, threats to profitability, and mixed messages on science and policy were all hindering farmers’ willingness to cut emissions.

Some farmers concluded they would have to lower stock numbers to make big dents in their emissions, but the research found that diversifying to other food crops could be difficult and costly without significant support.

“This research suggests that the primary sector’s transition to lower emissions will involve fewer ruminants, new or expanded supply chains, and a need for significant capital investment,” the paper said.

The research, done by agricultural consultancies AgFirst and Perrin Ag, included funding and supporting five groups of farmers around the country to act as collectives to reduce emissions.

They had access to scientists and officials, but were left to decide for themselves how, and by how much, they would reduce on-farm emissions.

Over three to five years, the groups managed to reduce their methane emissions by two to 16 percent.

Many of them are carrying on with the work.

Methane – which is a short-lived gas but has a huge warming effect while it exists in the atmosphere – makes up roughly half of New Zealand’s emissions. Most of it comes from farms, especially the burps and breaths of ruminant animals like cows and sheep.

Earlier this year, the government ruled out an earlier policy to price agricultural emissions by 2030.

It is also set to pass legislation this week to weaken the country’s 2050 methane target, from a 24 to 47 percent reduction from 2017 levels, to a 14 to 24 percent reduction. The lower end of the range is not in line with limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5C.

Changes without tech likely not enough

The government has pointed to a ‘pipeline’ of agricultural methane-inhibiting technology as crucial to achieving both the methane target and New Zealand’s international pledge to halve the country’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Some, like a small metal ‘bolus’ that is administered directly to cows and sheep, or a vaccine, could reduce the amount of methane an animal produces by as much as 30 percent.

Perrin Ag consultant Lee Matheson said the research considered what the alternatives would be in the absence of that technology.

“If we get a bolus or a [vaccine], that’s all great – but what if we don’t?

“What if we actually have to grunt through and… do that through land-use change and other stuff? That was the genesis for the work.”

The research focused on what farmers could do through farm management changes, land-use diversification, and collaboration.

Matheson said they were able to make some change within the existing system, “but there’s a point where it starts to get really crunchy”.

“It reinforced that there is likely to be a limit to which we can achieve significant emission reduction without technology helping us.”

The research investigated hemp, tōtara, blueberries and milling wheat as alternatives that were already being cultivated in New Zealand.

There was potential to scale that up, but financial and infrastructure constraints were holding farmers back at the moment, Matheson said.

“New Zealand has proven itself to be good at land-use change from time to time but it’s not as simple as saying we’re going to stop milking cows and start growing wheat,” he said.

“If it was that simple, we’d probably already be doing that.”

Many farmers viewed the switch as too risky to do alone at the moment, the research concluded.

Access to labour, improved transport and supply chains, and research and development would all be needed to support any large-scale diversification.

Matheson said he was not advocating subsidies, “but the government has a big role to play in de-risking change”.

“If significant land-use was required, which might well mean significant changes to our supply chains and value chains, then I think there is a role for government.”

Climate confusion still rife

The research also identified what it called “anti-mitigation” messages in rural media and other information farmers were accessing.

Farming lobby group Groundswell, which has been consulted by the government on changes to climate policies, is currently hosting a tour of climate change sceptic Will Happer.

Through the research programme, the farming groups were able to talk directly to climate scientists and officials to get a better understanding of the problem and the potential solutions.

They found that far more valuable than “being directed to a website or reading some collateral that appears in your letterbox”, Matheson said.

The question now was how to scale that, he said.

“It’s probably going to be pretty hard to wheel out a leading scientist to every farmer’s lounge across New Zealand.”

AgFirst consultant and co-author Erica van Reenan, who lives on a sheep and beef station in Rangitīkei and used to work as a climate policy analyst, said she and others were still “respectfully” answering the same questions they had been asked for 20 or 30 years.

“We just have to keep responding, because it’s much easier for the climate change denialists to fill the space.”

Voluntary action ‘isn’t going to cut it’

Over the course of the programme, farmers’ commitment to reducing emissions waned without external pressure to change from a pricing scheme or similar.

The paper found there was agreement across all the groups “that farmers need to do ‘something’ to respond to climate change”.

But it was clear that “voluntary action on its own probably isn’t going to cut it”, van Reenan said.

“There has to be a stick or a carrot in some shape or form.”

There were some “soft” signals from the market and banks, but they were often “quite opaque”, she said.

Even if methane-inhibiting technology proved successful, there was one big question looming.

“Who’s going to pay for this? How am I going to afford to take up this technology and implement it on my farm and do that in a cost-effective way that’s worth my while, for not necessarily any productivity gain, but purely from an emissions reduction gain?”

She stopped short of advocating for a pricing system, but said limits on emissions, similar to nitrogen leaching limits, could help to drive change.

The first sector-wide opposition to a ‘fart tax’ was in 2002, she said.

“That’s over 20 years of dedicated commitment to not having to be regulated in any way, shape or form, when the rest of society is.

“Producing food alone doesn’t give us the right to not contribute in a meaningful way. How we go about that is when it gets really complicated.”

She pressed the need for coordinated, large-scale and government-supported change.

“It can be very easy from an outside perspective to blame farmers for not doing enough but they’re trying to run businesses, look after the land, look after the water, be good to their staff, look after their animals.”

She and her husband had run the numbers for their own farm and concluded that while they had the capability to diversify into horticulture, there were “significant challenges” with access to labour and markets.

“All of the things that are beyond the farm gate that impact our decision are what make us not even go there.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The government is looking to cut red tape for small meat processors and is also exploring how homekill meat could be made suitable for sale.

From next year, small-scale meat processors will be subject to reduced meat sampling and testing requirements – compared to their larger, export-focused counterparts.

Around six to 12 of New Zealand’s small operators who process between 200-2000 farmed animals each year will be affected by the new rules announced this week.

They currently have to test 60 carcasses for things like salmonella or E. coli. That will be reduced to 30 in the first season and 12 in subsequent seasons, from April next year.

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said micro-abattoirs told officials the testing rules were unnecessarily restrictive and costly.

“Not reducing the safety at all, but certainly reducing the costs quite massively for [operators], which has been a barrier for a number of them either getting started or trying new operations,” he said.

“By reducing it down to a much more proportionate number reduces a lot of costs, enables them to do a bit more and hopefully we can see a few more micro-abattoirs emerging around the country and a few more better deals for consumers.”

Hoggard said the government was also looking into how they could enable commercial homekill in the future, which was made difficult by poison-free declarations.

It is illegal to sell homekill meat in New Zealand, despite the trade growing in popularity amid cost of living pressures.

“We’ve got challenges with poison declarations, etcetera, for being able to turn more hunting meat, hunted deer, especially venison, into sellable products. And we are working on that one as well,” he said.

There were some challenges regarding the science around withholding dates and poison residues.

“So hopefully we’ll be having solutions on the administrative side of that within the next few months, which should enable less time in front of the computer for those people engaged in that business.

“It’ll be a bit of a slower burn on how we deal with those restrictions around withhold times and withhold areas because we do need to do a bit of science around that one to prove safety before we allow that.”

The new meat testing rules for micro-abattoirs will come into force in April.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Hobbyist beekeepers are being asked to stay alert for invasive yellow-legged hornets loitering around their hives.

Biosecurity New Zealand has more than doubled its Auckland surveillance zone from 5 to 11 kilometres.

Auckland Beekeepers Club president Ken Brown said that decision was made because worker hornets were beginning to travel further to hunt.

“Because of the upcoming change in activity, they will be attracted to beehives, so that is part of why it’s so important the hobbyists are involved at this stage to observe the hives to see the worker hornets,” he said.

“Workers will start to then be foraging and predating on other insects and also beehives, the hornets will be what we call ‘hawking’ so instead of going into the hive and getting the bees they will be outside and capturing them.”

He said hobbyist beekeepers would act as the eyes and ears for Biosecurity, alerting authorities when they saw a hornet.

“It is critically important that we eradicate in this year or the next. If they become established it will be devastating. All the beekeepers in Auckland will be sent a trap to put out and they will be asked to monitor the traps and regularly monitor their hives,” Brown said.

“It is a notifiable pest now, so you can’t move them yourself. Ideally get a photo of them and report them to MPI [Ministry of Primary Industries] so the professionals can go out there and find the nest and destroy them. They are quite dangerous, they have a much longer sting than bees and also they can spray venom into your eyes.”

Brown said it seemed there was only one queen in Auckland, but that number could balloon if the threat wasn’t dealt with quickly.

“The genetics seem to be likely that it could be just one queen, and she can lay a couple of hundred queens so that would be developing now so they are finding these before they develop,” he said.

He said there was only one region in the world, Majorca, which had eradicated them.

“… they’re an island as well, and it’s ongoing surveillance so it’s likely we will get rid of all of them or almost all of them… And then monitor and keep monitoring to make sure they’re eradicated.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Strong beef prices are helping raise record funds as part of a fundraising scheme that’s been going for more than 40 years.

IHC has been around for 70 years supporting those with intellectual disabilities, particularly in rural communities.

For more than half that time, the IHC Calf and Rural Scheme has helped raised funds for the charity with farmers donating a weaned calf which is then sold and the proceeds donated.

National fundraising manager Greg Millar said some farmers donated multiple calves and had been doing so for generations.

“When they come to sale, [the calves] are often of amazing quality as well.”

Millar said the scheme was badly impacted by Mycoplasma bovis and Covid-19.

“We had to change everything about the way we ran the calf and rural scheme and tighten up a lot of our processes. At one stage we thought it could be the end of the scheme just because it was high risk.”

However, with farmers urging they persevered, it returned to full strength last year and raised $1.2 million.

He said this year is looking likely to be a record fundraiser.

“The sale prices have been great. The numbers we’ve been getting have been great.”

Millar said at the recent Temuka sale, which had more calves than the year before, the average price was about $100 per calf which meant the sale earned an extra $50,000.

He said he was always impressed by farmers generosity, which allowed them to help families of children with intellectual disabilities.

“I’m always astounded by how amazing and supportive the farming community is around New Zealand.”

With one more sale in January, he expects to know the final total in the new year.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The government is looking to cut red tape for small meat processors and is also exploring how homekill meat could be made suitable for sale.

From next year, small-scale meat processors will be subject to reduced meat sampling and testing requirements – compared to their larger, export-focused counterparts.

Around six to 12 of New Zealand’s small operators who process between 200-2000 farmed animals each year will be affected by the new rules announced this week.

They currently have to test 60 carcasses for things like salmonella or E. coli. That will be reduced to 30 in the first season and 12 in subsequent seasons, from April next year.

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said micro-abattoirs told officials the testing rules were unnecessarily restrictive and costly.

“Not reducing the safety at all, but certainly reducing the costs quite massively for [operators], which has been a barrier for a number of them either getting started or trying new operations,” he said.

“By reducing it down to a much more proportionate number reduces a lot of costs, enables them to do a bit more and hopefully we can see a few more micro-abattoirs emerging around the country and a few more better deals for consumers.”

It is illegal to sell homekill meat in New Zealand, despite the trade growing in popularity amid cost of living pressures.

Hoggard said the government was also looking into enabling commercial homekill, which was made difficult by poison-free declarations.

“We’ve got challenges with poison declarations, etcetera, for being able to turn more hunting meat, hunted deer, especially venison, into sellable products. And we are working on that one as well,” he said.

There were some challenges regarding the science around withholding dates and poison residues.

“So hopefully we’ll be having solutions on the administrative side of that within the next few months, which should enable less time in front of the computer for those people engaged in that business.

“It’ll be a bit of a slower burn on how we deal with those restrictions around withhold times and withhold areas because we do need to do a bit of science around that one to prove safety before we allow that.”

The new meat testing rules for micro-abattoirs will come into force in April.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

It is spelt “Wayleggo” but pronounced “Wal-a-go” and in dog trialling and shepherding it is an age-old New Zealand call for a sheep dog to leave the sheep and come back to its master.

“Wayleggo” originated in New Zealand and is short for “come away and let go”, the phrase used by shepherds and musterers to call their dogs back from working stock, according to the NZ Sheep Dog Trial Association.

The Wayleggo Cup is the dog trialling equivalent of the Bledisloe in rugby.

It’s been competed for since 1985 and just like the All Blacks, the New Zealand dog trials team has dominated the competition, winning 21 of 37 competitions over the past 40 years. Last year, however, the Aussies won on home soil, so this year it was their turn to cross the Tasman and try and retain the cup on Kiwi soil.

In October the event was part of the  Ashburton A&P show with four handlers and dogs from each country and two days of competition.

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The love for the sport can be seen in the efforts competitors go to just to compete. Queenslander Barry Knight drove from Toowoomba to Perth to compete and be selected for the Australian test team, a journey not for the faint-hearted.  

“We travelled to Western Australia,” Knight said.

“The round trip was about 10,000km, driving the ute all the way with a trailer and driving all the way back – five days each way and three days there.”  

So, with a potential commitment of two weeks for one event, young shepherds don’t often compete because they can’t afford the time off.

Barry and his 26-year-old son Bailey are the first father and son to compete for the Australian test team.

Barry has a small farm and Bailey is a plumber which highlights the fact that most competitors in dog trialling across the Tasman are not farmers.   

The Knight family has a love of characterful names for their dogs. Barry’s heading dog is six-year-old Mavis and Bailey’s is eight-year-old is Duncan, named after the Slim Dusty song ‘I Love To Have A Beer with Duncan’.

Another first for the Australian team is the presence of Jessica Kimpton who is the only woman in this year’s competition. 

She is one quarter of the Aussie team, matching the proportion of women on the Australian dog trialling circuit.

Kimpton said she seldom had any pushback from the male competitors

“They’re good, and even if they weren’t, they’d just have to suck it up,” she laughed.

“We actually see a lot more women in Australia being out there on the trial course. While it’s still male dominated, about 25 percent of triallists now would be women.”

She is an animal trainer for movies and while training her dogs she discovered dog trialling as a sport and loves it.  

She said the bond between handler and dog is vital to be a top competitor.

“Some dogs just have ‘it’,” she said. 

“We don’t know how to describe what ‘it’ is, but some dogs are just so talented, and you get this relationship with them where it’s almost like you’re reading each other’s minds and when you are out in the trial field, the rest of the world, just melts away, and it’s just you and your dog, and every now and then you’ll glance at each other and you just know what the other one needs.”

Commentator Tony Jackson farms 101,000ha in Queensland. 

He musters his 23,000 sheep and 3000 cattle using helicopters covering more than 30,000ha a day. He said the land is not as productive as that which New Zealand farmers enjoy and the pests are next level, kangaroos and dingoes.

“Every town has roo shooters who make a living out of harvesting kangaroos for the pet food market and for human consumption.

“They go out shooting and are shooting 50 kangaroos per night. That’s a Toyota load. And you’re looking at around about $25 a roo and if  you shoot 50 of them, you make a good living.”

It is the tenth year in the New Zealand team for team captain Mark Copeland and he is excited about the future of dog trialling.

“There is a lot of good young talent and particularly good talented women coming through.

“They’re putting the men to the sword, as it were, running very, very good well-trained dogs.”

“We’ve been trialling since what, 1860 or something, and you’re trying to get better and develop a better dog and it doesn’t always happen, so you go again and you go again and again.

“There’s no other sport that I can think of that involves three mammals. Some you can teach… others you can’t.”  

As for the result of the test? After leading the first day by just 10 points, the Australians made no match of it, retaining the Wayleggo Cup by 60 points and taking the cup back with them to Australia.   

So next year will be a big one for the Kiwi test team as they try and stop the Australians from winning a three-peat on their own turf.  

Learn more:

• Find out more about the Trans Tasman Test here and here

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Dairy prices are at near two-year low after the eighth consecutive fall in the global auction overnight.

The average price at the auction fell 4.3 percent to US$3507 a tonne, following the 3 percent drop in the previous auction two weeks ago.

The price of whole milk powder, which strongly influences the payout to farmers, fell 2.4 percent to US$3364 a tonne.

The Global Dairy Trade Price Index fell to its lowest level since January 2024.

NZX dairy analyst Rosalind Crickett said the latest auction saw weak bidding amid oversupply in the market.

“Regional buying again was dominated by North Asia which accounted for 50 percent of total product sold,” she said.

Crickett said the decline in milk powders (both whole milk and skim milk) came in above expectations.

She said global milk production was showing no sign of slowing down, with Chinese milk collections also rebounding.

“All in all, this is expected to keep downward pressure on milk powder prices globally, until a supply correction occurs,” Crickett said.

Butter prices fell more than 12 percent, while cheddar prices rose more than 7 percent.

Softening dairy prices have prompted dairy companies to lower the midpoint of its milk price forecast to $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand