New Zealand Pt. 6: Cattle & Deer & Food, Oh My!

Friday, November 21, 2014

On Friday, we took off for the hills to see Mike and Sharon Barton.  Mike and Sharon are former educators from Auckland, who left the city for a simpler life in Taupo.  They chose their farm because of Mike’s love of hunting and fishing and the amazing views of Lake Taupo. This was definitely one of the most beautiful farms that I had ever seen.  However, they bought their farm in the middle of the Nitrogen controversy in 2004.  

            The urine of livestock contains high levels of nitrogen, which causes hot spots, or concentrated levels of nitrogen in one small area, when they urinate.  In the Taupo area, they have pumice soils that are free draining, which means that within the next 80 years the nitrogen from an animal that urinates today will eventually leach through the soil into the lake.  Lake Taupo is the biggest lake in the Southern Hemisphere and the fourth cleanest lake in the world, so it is very nitrogen sensitive.  High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus cause algae growth which clouds up the lake.  

            Therefore to prevent a problem, in 2005, the Waikato Regional Council initiated constraints on the amount of nitrogen that can be applied to the ground within the catchment.  A catchment is the entire area of land that eventually drains into the lake, known as a watershed here in Iowa.  The Lake Taupo catchment is about 80% native vegetation with only about 20% of it used for agricultural purposes.   

           One of the solutions was to cap the stocking levels for livestock farmers, which means to put a limit on the number of livestock they can own.  Each farmer is not allowed to own more animals than what they owned when the cap was put in place.  This means that it is impossible for livestock farmers to ever grow or expand, so the Barton’s figured out a way to add value to their beef, by branding their product.  

            They created Taupo Beef, which they market to higher-end restaurants in the Taupo area, as grass-fed, antibiotic free meat.  This allows them to charge a premium for their beef (about $20/kg for prime cuts) and has allowed them to make more money within the same stocking rate.  They also switched to using market heifers that can reach market weight in about 18-22 months, much quicker than the 24 months it takes a grassfed steer to make weight.  They also market their cattle at about 800 pounds, so they can finish them quicker, and give their clients, the gourmet chefs, the smaller cuts that they prefer.

             Mike commented that in Taupo, they were not really in farming to feed the starving million, which I thought was interesting.  They can’t really compete with larger markets, mainly because they will never produce much more beef than they are producing now.  They have to be able to make more money with the resources they currently have.  

The Bartons' farm is located in the hills just above Lake Taupo

             There were also comments made about antibiotics in U.S. agriculture and grass-fed beef versus conventionally raised, that once again made me wonder where these perceptions originated.  I do not necessarily have a problem with someone’s preferences as far as organic or grass-fed, because the way I see it, we all have essentially the same goal, we just have different methods of reaching it. What I have an issue with is the misinformation and the fear mongering that is happening.  The Barton’s believed that grass-fed beef tastes better than grain fed, probably because they are used to it and it is what available to them.  I prefer grain fed, but that is what I was raised on and what is currently in my freezer.  I’m not really sure if one way is healthier than the other, since currently there are no conclusive studies on the issue. It is all a matter of opinion really, and using your resources in the best possible way. 

            Next, we stopped at the Maori-owned Rangiatea Station where they raise deer, milk sheep and harvest their forests on about 1600 hectares, with 1700 more hectares in native brush for conservation purposes.  They are completely family owned with over 900 shareholders that span about 3-4 generations of the family.  They are also in the Taupo catchment so they have to adhere to the capped stocking rates.  Maori actually happen to own about 75% of the Lake Taupo catchment.  

Deer happen to take up less stocking units than beef cattle, however they are also flighty and still not very domesticated so they can be more difficult to wrangle.  They take many safety precautions when handling the deer, because of their tendency to spook easily.  The way their barn is set up, to the methods that they described, it is obvious that every situation has been thought of and prepared for.  Also, because of they are still being domesticated, they selectively breed mostly based on temperament and growth. Most of their venison products, about 50%, are shipped to Europe around Christmas, when venison consumption is on the rise.  

            A trust council made up of 6 members of the family is responsible for most of the decisions made about the land.  They usually have a 3 year rotation, but if the family elders feel as if they are effective at their job, they may be asked to stay on longer.  The way things were set up is very interesting.  Obviously, here in Iowa we have family-owned farms, but I don’t know of any that have 900 family members.  It sounds very complicated to me and I’m not entirely sure how they keep everything straight, especially with how much involvement the government has, since they were legally required to develop this side of the lake, after the government returned the land to their family.  Maoris have a different view of the land, than the average Kiwi, because Kiwis see the land as a stepping stone.  They do not get very attached and will sell if a they have a chance at a better opportunity.  The Maori will never sell the land they own.  I think it stems from their desire to conquer. They want to feel as though they belong somewhere, and the land will always provide an income for their family.
          I am a very opinionated person.  I like to think I have an open mind, but at the same time I'm pretty stubborn so it's usually pretty hard to change my mind.  So I took off for New Zealand, expecting to learn all about their methods, but I went with the mindset that my way was still the best way.  An amazing thing happened though.  I realized that my way might be the best way for my family, but it would not work for New Zealand's farmers, just like raising our cattle entirely on grass would never work for my family.  No one was right, no one was wrong.  Everybody was just doing the best they could for their livestock, and really, what more could you ask from a farmer? 
    

New Zealand Pt. 3: Blueberry Ice Cream is Where it's at

   

 On our 3rd day, we traveled to Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) bright and early to watch them collect semen.  Yep, you read that right.  We watched someone collect semen while in Hamilton and I loved every second of it.  

New Zealand is, currently, the only country that sells fresh, sexed semen, mainly because they are such a small country and LIC has a corner on that market.  LIC is a co-op (you have to own shares in the company to buy their products), owned by over 12,000 of New Zealand's dairy farmers and was established over 50 years ago.

There are 3 main differences between LIC and the genetics side of U.S. agriculture:

 1) Obviously, the marketing of fresh semen is one of them, since most of the U.S. uses frozen semen.  

2) When a farmer buys semen from LIC, they are buying a specific "team" of bulls.  LIC's teams consist of 10 "proven" bulls, meaning these bulls have gone through extensive genetic testing and have sired around 80-100 daughters to show that his progeny can produce the desired amount of milk solids.  You can actually visit LIC's webpage here and check out their stats on their bull teams for this spring.

3) LIC handles everything about the semen from the testicle to the uterus.  Meaning they collect the semen, they process it, they ship it, and they have qualified techs that inseminate the cow with that semen.  This approach is definitely necessary to prevent inbreeding since you purchase a team, rather a specific bull's semen.  The AI techs use a Datamate, which they punch in the information of the cow they are about to inseminate and the information of the semen they are using, to ensure that a cow is not inseminated with her own sire's semen. 

Dave, our tour guide for the morning.

The bull sniffing out the teaser bull.  They use pheromones to encourage the bulls to mount the teaser bull, then they collect the semen.

We spent the rest of our day visiting 2 distinctly different dairy farms.

In New Zealand they use a number system to classify their dairy farms, System 1 being a low input system where the cows are all fed on the farmer's own pasture and System 5 being a high input system where almost half of the feedstuffs are imported year round. 

First, we stopped at Pete Morgan and Ann Bouma's farm which is classified as a System 1 farm.  Pete grew up in South Auckland with no farming background at all.  In New Zealand, no one really inherits a farm.  It is a progression where you start milking for a farmer, then work your way up to sharemilking (just like sharecropping), to eventually buying the farm.  It took Pete and Ann about 8 years to buy Morlands Dairy Farm from her parents.  Now they milk 530 cows once a day, all season long.  

Pete and Ann prefer low input because as Pete put it, they "work to live, not live to work".  It works for them because they want to be able to milk in the morning, then take the rest of the day to spend with their family and do other things that they love like hiking or going to the beach. 

The mentality is very different, because many of us live to farm.  We give up a lot of things to put our farm and livestock first, because it requires most of our time and attention.  I don't know if I could honestly tell you which mentality is the healthier one.  I've seen several men work themselves to death on their farm, but they wouldn't have it any other way, because that is their heart and soul.  While their farm is definitely a priority, Pete and Ann just have other priorities that they put ahead of their farm.  This definitely made me think a little about the mindset that I grew up with and question how my own priorities and goals compared to the lifestyle that I want to live in the future. 

This is the view that Pete and Ann have from their back deck.  I definitely would not complain waking up to this every morning.

Pete and Ann's house and yes, that is a pool.  We found that it was actually pretty common for a Kiwi farmer to have a pool or tennis court in their backyard.

We, then, spent our afternoon with Dave Swney, whose farm is classified as a System 5 dairy farmer.  Dave contract milks with his parents, meaning he milks the cows and does most of the labor for a certain rate per kilograms of milk solids.  New Zealand dairy farmers, unlike American dairy farmers, are not paid based on the amount of milk they produce.  Most of New Zealand's milk is dried into milk powder before it is exported to Asia, which means they get paid on how many milk solids per kilograms they produce.  Milk solids are the protein and fat in the milk.  

Next, we stopped at Monavale Blueberries, an organic blueberry farm outside of Cambridge.  This is where we met Richard, who I am convinced is one of the happiest men alive right now, but if I had his job I think I'd be pretty happy about life too.  Monavale is a family business, that Richard's father-in-law began after immigrating from Holland back in the 1970's.  Monavale grows 22 varieties of blueberries on 100 acres and during harvest they produce over 5 tonnes per day.  Fun Fact: They produce more blueberries a day, than all of New Zealand can eat in a week, so they export a lot of their produce to Australia.

Richard just loving life at Monavale.

By far some of the best blueberries I have ever had.

Had to get some of Monavale's homemade blueberry ice cream on the way out and it was by far one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

We ended the night with drinks and pizza at Digger's, then ran across the street to have a few more drinks at Honky-Tonk Bar, which was basically New Zealand's version of an American country bar.  Needless to say, our big group of farm kids from America had a pretty good time, some more than others.

                            

   

Still got about 10 more days to go!

Night y'all!