So we basically hit the ground running our second day in New Zealand. At this point we were all feeling a bit jet-lagged, but by some miracle we all drug ourselves out of bed and made it to AgResearch in Hamilton to get the rundown on New Zealand's agriculture industry.
We met with Dave Clark, who is technically retired after 40+ years in extension, but is now a student at Waikato University working on another degree. Dave grew up in the Waikato region, which is the primary area for New Zealand's dairy industry because of it's low and rolling hills, but he also spent 20+ years working with farmers in the hill country/highlands who raised a lot of sheep, goats and deer.
Since I'm a history buff, I'm going to insert a little about New Zealand's history. New Zealand was settled in 1200 AD by the Maori, who were a warfaring tribe. They are thought to have originated from one of the surrounding Polynesian islands. The Maoris call New Zealand, Aotearoa, which means "the land of the long, white cloud". It is said that when their ancestors were rowing their wakas (a Maori canoe) looking for a place to land, all they kept rowing towards a long, white cloud on the horizon and eventually ended up on the shores of what is now New Zealand.
Anyway, fast forward to the 21st Century and New Zealand now has a population of about 4.5 million people. (Iowa's current population is just over 3 million.) As a country, New Zealand mainly focuses on exportation. As one of the least populated countries in the world, most of New Zealand's land is used for agricultural purposes. Therefore, they produce much more food than the Kiwis could ever eat so they send the surplus elsewhere; mainly to Asia, but also to the U.S. and Europe.
New Zealand's agriculture is all about low input, low infrastructure. Most of their animals spend their lives on pasture and many will never see a barn. This has allowed their farmers the ability to switch sectors fairly easily when one market is better than the others.
However, there is an intense pressure for farmers to intensify production, which has begun to affect the environment. We quickly learned that New Zealanders pride themselves on their "Clean and Green" image. As of right now, waterways must be fenced off in pastures so that livestock cannot urinate in them, creating an excess amount of Nitrogen which feeds the algae.
New Zealand is kind of on the precipice right now. They are trying to find a compromise so that their farmers can continue to make a profit and expand production, without negatively affecting New Zealand's environment. Every. single. farmer that we visited mentioned their environmental concerns. It quickly became clear that their problems are very similar to ours here in the U.S.
We then spent part of the afternoon with Sheryl Brown, who is a reporter with the New Zealand Dairy Exporter, who gave us an overview of her family's dairy operation and what her role at NZ Dairy Exporter entails.
Sheryl's house. Apparently it is very common to keep livestock in your front yard. Everywhere we went. front yards had paddocks that contained anywhere from a pig to a full sized draft horse. You name it, we saw it in someone's front yard, just hanging out.
Our last stop of the day was to visit with Jess Spatz-Shelgren with Vet Focus in Te Awamatu. Jess was from Massachusetts, studied at Cornell and had her own veterinary practice in New York before she moved to New Zealand in 2004. She was able to give us an idea of how different the health and care practices, are from our typical methods, mainly because of the differences in production practices, which I will continue to discuss in future blog posts.
We ran across the street and had dinner at the Redoubt Bar and Eatery. There is no normal pizza in New Zealand that I could find. It was all artisan pizza with crazy names and even crazier toppings. My favorite of the trip was definitely the Redoubt's "Don't Go Bacon My Heart". I know, typical American.
Needless to say we stuffed our faces. At first, I think our waitress thought we were a bunch of idiots, but she eventually warmed up to us. Pretty soon, they were playing Party in the U.S.A and Proud to be an American on their jukebox. I think she really just wanted to get a reaction out of us, and she eventually did. When the Star-Spangled Banner came on, all 22 of us stood and sang our national anthem. I'm sure that the other patrons at the bar weren't very impressed, but it is what it is.
Don't worry there's plenty more to come!! This was only the 2nd day!
Night y'all!
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