NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

The cries of ‘bid’ keep coming from livestock agents, as the prices called out by the auctioneer continue to rise.

They carefully watch the crowd of farmers and onlookers for the subtle signs of someone wanting to buy, no matter the cost.

‘Sold’ comes the cry and with a clap of a clipboard, the deal is done and it’s onto the next pen of sheep for sale.

“Good ewes, good lambs, but boy, that’s big money,” Eric Linklater tells Country Life.

He’s given tours of the Feilding saleyards each Friday for more than 20 years, but he hasn’t seen prices like this in a long time.

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Located in the heart of the Manawatū town, the saleyards have a long history in the district.

They’re also the largest in the country, servicing farmers from all over – Linklater’s seen stock from Hokitika, cattle from D’Urville Island and the former farmer’s even bought sheep from Tokoroa.

“They cover a huge distance.”

It all started back in 1880, he explains, as the tour starts near the entrance to the yards.

“A pen of cattle were sold behind the Denbigh Hotel. Well, the Denbigh Hotel’s still here and still selling cattle.

“They were the second set of saleyards in Feilding and, by 1920 or so, there were 2829 sets of saleyards in the district. Of course, the drover and his dogs were the important method of transport between the yards.

“Nowadays, there are the trucks carrying over 1000 lambs and 400 ewes, we suddenly find that the yards have concentrated more on this area and all the minor yards in the smaller areas have gone.”

The yards have 350 sheep pens, 140 cattle pens and 45 deer pens, and more than 50,000 cattle and 450,000 sheep are sold here each year, through teams from PGG Wrightson and Carrfields.

Prime stock is sold at weekly sales on Mondays and store stock on Fridays, the day Country Life pays a visit.

Linklater says prices at the moment are “very strong”, with the yards turning over more than $2 million dollars each week.

“[PGG Wrightson], for example, used to shout their auctioneers every time they hit the three million mark at one sale, but they don’t do it now, because they hit it too often.”

Linklater started the tours 20 years ago to help foster connections between urban and rural New Zealand. These days. his clients are increasingly international.

Open to the public, the saleyards also attract plenty of local onlookers.

The tour kicks off at the sheep pens just after 11am. By now, most farmers have been through to have a look at what’s on offer.

It’s a social event as much as a business one, Linklater says, as he deftly weaves his way through the crowds of chatting farmers and visitors, wandering dogs and even a few runaway sheep.

“At this time of year, of course, you’re starting to see the tail-end of the sheep, because farmers are flat out lambing and most of the lambs have already been sold.

With so few lambs about, prices are higher – a classic tale of supply and demand, he says. The top lambs at today’s sale will fetch $226 a head.

“Broadly speaking, they’re paying something like $10 a kilo on the hooks and they’d be sort of 4550 kilo lambs, so you’re talking about $250 on the hooks.”

It’s a similar story in the cattle market where prices average about $1700 a head with a maximum price of $3590.

It makes for a tough time being a buyer like local Feilding farmer Alan McLeod who came to the yards looking for rising two-year-old steers and heifers to fatten and finish on his property.

“It’s frightening buying,” he tells Country Life.

“You just got to face the market. Yeah, everybody’s going to have grass. We’re quite dry, Manawatū is dry, and we’re right on the verge of the spring boost.”

The sales have also brought out-of-towners like Vic Caskey from Taranaki, also in the market for two-year-old steers and “something to grow”.

“There’s not much going on at Taranaki at the moment, so [we] have to go further afield.

“[It’s] very expensive, but if you get the right ones, the margins are still there, as long as you work out what you can sell them for, so you know your margins are safe or safe-ish is all you can do.”

Learn more:

• You can learn more about the tours here.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

It’s an early start for the musterers at Molesworth Station. The bulls are out with the cows for the mating season and the stockmen need to beat the heat. Country Life producer Sally Round spent a day with the musterers, the farmer and the cook, peeling back some of the mystique of New Zealand’s most famous farm.

Duncan, Connell, Josh and Liam are up before the birds.

Head torches on, they catch their horses before tucking into a pile of bacon and eggs in the kitchen at Tarndale.

The homestead there is one of Molesworth Station’s far-flung camps where the musterers can have a feed and bed down for the night while working on the furthest reaches of the 180,470-hectare property.

Molesworth, in the backcountry of Marlborough, has a mystique and mana which few other high country farms can match.

It brings out the best in people, according to farm manager Jim Ward.

“It’s land that we all have an empathy with,” he says.

“Since I’ve been here six sets of ashes of stockmen have been spread at Tarndale. It really gets inside your bones, I tell you.”

The engine of a dusty ex-army truck thrums in the dark as Duncan saddles up.

The horses, dogs and men have a lot of ground to cover so they use a Unimog for the hour-long drive to their start point on the western flank of the property.

Steep scree-laden ranges, stony river beds and a climate that can switch from achingly hot and dry to well below freezing in a matter of days mean the horses are purpose-bred on the property.

Duncan leads his horse, Roger, to the truck.

“He’s big, he’s a cruiser … nice, easy-going … yeh, he goes wherever I point him.”

A couple of dozen dogs, yelping with excitement hop in behind.

Duncan and his fellow musterers pile in the front.

A hint of pink in the eastern sky signals another hot dry day to come.

“When I came here, a fella said to me, there’re no other places in New Zealand you can saddle your horse every morning and let your dogs off to go to work,” Duncan says.

Take a look at the gallery of images below for more on the story.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The ebbs and flows of farming are expected to be exacerbated by future climate change effects, including more volatile weather and strained water resources, a new study has found.

Research consultancy firm Kōmanawa Solutions ran 295 million weather simulations with past weather data on a catchment in North Canterbury to understand how climate change will impact farmers’ bottom lines in the next decade.

It combined climate data, pasture growth models, farm economic models and stream health models to identify where farmers’ resilience was likely to be “overwhelmed” by climate and global volatility.

The purpose of the five-year project – supported by the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change Fund – was to help farmers, regional councils, government and banks plan ahead for adaptation support.

The report found farm production and profitability were already affected by climate change, and the risk of financial instability was set to increase over time.

Water resource scientist and Kōmanawa founder Zeb Etheridge, who wrote the report, said water resources will be under greater pressure in a warming climate.

“As our climate continues to become more volatile, we expect the effects to become much more negative, with bad years becoming worse and more frequent,” Etheridge said.

The report found irrigated dairy farms were particularly at risk because water supplies were expected to become less reliable in areas with high usage pressures.

Etheridge said regulators should not look back to historical climate and river flow data to understand climate risks, but forward to understand the changing climate.

“That’s really what we’ve been trying to do with this work is give people an idea of how different things could be and give them the information to make more informed decisions.”

North Canterbury is home to a large irrigation scheme off the Waimakariri River, which is restricted during times of low river flows.

However, a new water storage facility proposal north of the Hurunui River by firm Amuri Irrigation is being considered by the Canterbury Regional Council.

Etheridge said North Canterbury farmers could reduce their stocking rates to better manage climate variability in the next decade.

“Our research says that in a lot of instances, dropping your stock numbers is probably going to make you a bit more resilient and improve your financial performance long term.

“Farmers might not make quite so much money in those good years, but they’ll be much more cushioned from the effects of those bad years.”

He said storing water will provide some resilience to farmers, but was not a silver bullet.

“Putting a water storage system on your farm like a pond to give you some more irrigation reliability, that can cushion you from the effects of climate change, but it can also increase your vulnerability to the broader volatility that we see in commodity prices, interest rates and so on. So you can increase your exposure on a financial side.

“It’s a big investment and I think people should be very wary about making those decisions from looking at past records of hydrology and climate and assuming that things are going to be the same, because they’re going to be different. The question is just how different.”

The research will be presented at the international Adaptation Futures conference in Ōtautahi/Christchurch from October 13-16.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Rows of colourful vegetables line this plot of land just on the outskirts of Hamilton.

For more than 10 years David Ruan has been growing vegetables which he sells at the local farmers’ markets under the name, Suncakes Gardens, a nod to his Chinese heritage.

“In Chinese tradition, there is a Mooncake Festival, usually between late September and early October, that is Spring in New Zealand – a good time for a new growing season,” he told Country Life.

“The colourful fresh product in the garden are like cakes relying on solar energy, and Suncakes is a good analogy to Mooncakes.”

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Ruan came to New Zealand from China almost 20 years ago, where he studied horticulture at university and later worked helping growers – mostly with rice crops and fruit like oranges.

His university research focussed on different methods for plant protection, including biological controls.

“They introduce beneficial insects, fungi which control the bugs you don’t want.”

Up until last year he was growing certified organic vegetables but found this costly, switching instead to spray-free growing while still following organic principles including making his own compost.

Ruan acknowledged it wasn’t always suitable for larger scale growers but was keen to try it out on his own land when he moved to New Zealand.

He said larger growers tend to focus on just a few crops, but on a smaller plot of just 2.5-hectares, he grows a more diverse mix and rotates them regularly.

“My plan is to introduce more varieties.”

His wife helps with tending the garden, as does his daughter and one of his friends when it comes time to bring in the harvest.

Meanwhile his son helps with packing the vegetables to be sold at the farmers’ markets in Cambridge and Hamilton.

Ruan said he found growing very “peaceful and relaxing” but one of the other highlights was the many market customers who had become friends.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Friday is World Egg Day – and New Zealand has about 1.6 million commercial hens with some now laying larger eggs.

Supermarkets are working towards only stocking eggs that have come from cage free chickens following ongoing hen welfare concerns.

Woolworths said by the end of the year all its cartons of eggs would be cage-free, and Foodstuffs, which owns New World and PaknSave, said it would do the same by 2027.

The founder of eg. Free-Range Eggs, Nathan Williams, said he wanted everyone to be able to afford ethical eggs and as more egg farms transition to free range – eggs would become cheaper.

He currently had 90,000 free range Shaver hens on his farm near Bulls and they laid more than 80,000 eggs a day. He was expanding his colony and said by Christmas the number of hens he farms would be more than 100,000.

“When a chicken first comes into lay around 16 to 20 weeks they lay smaller eggs – popping out what we call piwis which is a size five, and then as they grow their eggs get bigger, the eggs will be sixes and sevens. And then size eight and nine are our jumbo sizes.”

Williams said when the birds went outside and ate bugs and grass, he had more jumbo-sized eggs, which were often double-yolkers.

That meant shoppers may start noticing more Jumbo eggs, and Williams said about fifteen percent of his eggs were potentially-double yolkers.

Williams said contrary to public opinion – chickens had their own personalities and knew where they liked to eat, lay their eggs and sleep.

He said he had been pecked and chased by several of his inquisitive birds from time to time.

The Egg Producers Federation said the welfare of hens was paramount – as the happier the hen, the better the egg.

Its chairman John McKay said eggs were as popular as they had ever been. Over the last year, New Zealanders had eaten on average 229 eggs each, and that was up from last year when people consumed about 216 eggs.

“We are really pleased with that trajectory and as we all know eggs are a highly versatile and nutritious product.”

McKay said bird flu was something the poultry industry took very seriously and the one outbreak of a highly pathogenic avian influenza was well managed late last year.

About 160,000 chickens were culled on a free range egg farm in North Otago after becoming infected with the H7N6 strain they contracted from wild waterfowl.

“That farm is now back in production and eggs are being produced off it. The most important thing is making sure there is strong biosecurity on farms across the country and keeping the egg and poultry supply as resiliant as we can.”

He said there were no safety concerns about eating eggs.

McKay said he would be having a couple of poached eggs on toast for breakfast on Friday morning to celebrate World Egg Day.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Bespoke legislation and more ocean space is needed for the farming of kai moana, says the fisheries minister, so that aquaculture can one day rival New Zealand’s beef sector.

Shane Jones opened the industry’s annual conference in Nelson today, and spoke of the need to create a new global-scale protein-based industry.

“We have an inordinate opportunity for our tamariki and grandchildren to convert the oceanic space into a platform for global-scale protein-based fish farming.”

Regulatory reform and increased capital investment were also needed to help the sector reach the government’s target of $3 billion in exports in the next decade.

Aquaculture products are projected to bring in $650 million in export revenue for the year to June, up 13 percent on last year.

Jones announced the government’s five year Aquaculture Development Plan, in March, which set out the steps to grow the industry to generate $3b a year and double the number of jobs.

He said Ministry for Primary Industry staff were working on further plans for growth in the sector, and change needed to be driven by central government.

“I just don’t think it’s tolerable that anything to do with fisheries that we surrender the authority to local government or regional government.

“As a nationalist-orientated politician, I don’t see another way of cracking this nut unless we take back a lot of the authority.”

Jones said aquaculture was a “risk-riddled industry” that was constantly confronting problems, ones it could solve with government support and without increased regulation.

Science communicator and content creator James Sibley, who is often called a “fishfluencer” due to his social media work, was in New Zealand to speak at the conference and said there were incredible opportunities for aquaculture growth in New Zealand.

“I got into aquaculture because of the potential it has to feed the world, to feed a growing population with potentially healthier proteins than a lot of the population eats today, without doing irreversible damage at the scales that we see with current farming practices around the world, is immense but it has to be stewarded correctly.”

He said New Zealand was at the forefront of change with NZ King Salmon’s open ocean salmon farm in the Cook Strait.

“What they are trying here with the Blue Endeavour project, going offshore with these much larger pens much higher current waters, cleaner waters, highly oxygenated it has really strong potential.”

But Sibley said it came with its own challenges.

“It’s a much more hostile environment out there, they need bigger boats, more people. It has the potential to be great for the economy and coastal communities there that work those farms, but how they can maintain that, and if this trial works, then what? Do we put out another one? Do we try something new? Where do we go from there?”

It has been a tough year for the country’s biggest salmon producer who posted half year net loss of $20.8 million.

NZ King Salmon chief executive Carl Carrington said its fish went through the equivalent of having the flu or a bad cold last summer and went off their feed, forcing the company to reduce harvest volumes for an extended period, which affected earnings.

“It’s not unusual [for fish] to go off feed over the summer period but what happened this time, it was for an extended period of time and it didn’t recover until much later than what we’d usually expect and as a result, we lost a lot of biomass growth.”

Carrington said despite that, the company had $60m in the bank and a balance sheet that was getting stronger and they were “increasingly confident” about the future.

“We’re increasingly confident because we know what we’ve got in the toolkit to deal with these challenges over summer… and we think the growth pathway in front of us is now just starting to look really positive.”

General manager of aquaculture Grant Lovell said changes to its farming model in recent years meant unlike in previous summers, there was not mass mortality, the fish had just stopped growing.

It had done feed trials and other mitigation work to improve feed consumption and growth rates in the past few years.

The company was also making good progress on Blue Endeavour – which it hoped would prove up the model for open ocean aquaculture in order to see major change in export growth.

Lovell said the two pens for the open ocean farm were assembled and launched in Shakespeare Bay in April, and then were towed without nets or fish to Waihinau Bay in the outer Marlborough Sounds.

Juvenile salmon, smolt, were then transferred to adjacent holding pens and would be transferred out to the Blue Endeavour site in November.

The mooring grid was currently being installed, seven kilometres north of Cape Lambert. It was due to have been complete by now but contractors had encountered issues with weather and sea conditions, but were back on track.

Lovell said the new farm’s service vessel Whekenui, which was built in Vietnam, was due to arrive in Port Nelson next week.

The company had also purchased a $8m site at the Cloudy Bay Business Park in Blenheim, with plans to eventually move processing operations there to support the company’s growth, while maintaining the factory in Nelson to produce smoked fish and ready to eat products.

A quayside feed storage warehouse was also under construction in partnership with Port Marlborough, enabling feed to arrive directly into Picton, eliminating the need for it to be trucked over the hill from Nelson.

Lovell said “public enemy number one” was the lack of room for aquaculture to grow.

“In a sea of opportunity, in what feels like oceans of space, finding a home is actually quite hard. We obviously have Blue Endeavour now, but this alone will not grow the industry to the levels required.”

He said long term regulatory improvements were required to ensure growth and expansion in the industry.

“Although we are incredibly grateful for the marine extension bill, all freshwater farmers did not get that same benefit for freshwater salmon farms, all those consents will still expire in the coming years and we need to create the business confidence and certainty for investment.”

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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 new study has found higher concentrations of nectar from native New Zealand plant species in the drier eastern parts of the motu.

Flowers produced high-sugar nectar which fed birds and insects, and was also collected and processed to make honey.

Over two years, researchers measured nectar from more than 4200 flowers off eight native trees in a number of regions nationwide.

The “Nectar traits of New Zealand trees vary across climatic zones” study was published in Frontiers in Plant Science last month.

The plant species studied included karo (Pittosporum crassifolium), kōhūhū (Pittosporum tenuifolium), tarata (Pittosporum eugenioides), kōtukutuku (Fuchsia excorticata), pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa), mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) and kōwhai (Sophora microphylla) and tī kōuka (cabbage tree).

The regions were Auckland, Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington in the North Island and Nelson/Tasman, Marlborough, Canterbury and Dunedin in the South.

Researchers found trees like kōwhai and pōhutakawa produced the highest concentrations of nectar in drier areas, while sunnier sites generally had lower nectar volumes though larger flowers.

Results from mānuka flowers showed substantial regional variation in nectar traits, driven by climate.

University of Waikato researcher Dr Johanna van Delden said the study could benefit conservationists and beekeepers, the latter to help them decide the most optimal locations and nearby trees for their beehives.

“The trees which produced the most sugar of all the species were either found in Dunedin, Canterbury or Hawke’s Bay, which are all on our East Coast,” she said.

“And the nectar volume, so how much nectar each flower produced, was also in 50 percent of the species coming from Dunedin or Hawke’s Bay. So I think that was the clearest and easiest result we could take out of our measurements.”

She said researchers were surprised by how the plants differed across climates.

“We found that every plant is really different. So we could see that some plant traits like nectar or the flower size was climate-linked, but it really varied from species to species between 20 and 80 percent, which is a massive variation.

“It was mostly associated with sunshine hours and rain amounts to really simplify the results.”

Van Delden said farmers could look at the species which performed well in their region to encourage greater biodiversity around farms.

“When they are flowering, attracting butterflies and birds, that could enhance your backyard biodiversity and could be used also on pastures for shelter.”

She said further research should explore how the native plants adapted to local climates across the country.

“If we go one step further, so the next researcher after me, could have a look if it’s actually not the location itself having the influence on the plant, but actually that it’s genetically driven.

“So that the plants over time have evolved in that way, that they are adapted to that local climate and therefore show those adaptations in regards to producing more sugar, for example, in the South Island and East Coast.”

Part of the research was funded by the government’s Endeavour research programme by the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment entitled, ‘Building Resilience and Provenance into an Authentic Māori Honey Industry’.

It was a joint project with the University of Waikato, Manaaki Whenua/Landcare Research and the Auckland University of Technology.

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