Captions by Shelley Upchurch. Edited by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Hello, and welcome to Rural Delivery. Cross-organisational partnerships are increasingly being used to maximise available research and development budgets. This week, we find out about one such collaboration that's been set up through a PGP partnership to better utilise marginal hill country land in Hawke's Bay. And we meet Paul Olsen ` he's a potato grower and Kellogg and Nuffield scholar who's been making the most of opportunities available to him in the horticulture sector. Then we visit Mission Estate Winery to hear about their approach to good soil management and experiences of trialling organic wine production. The Hawke's Bay Regional Council has teamed up with Comvita, Massey University and others as part of a PGP programme called High-Performance Manuka Plantations. Around 2011, about 5ha of manuka was planted to assess the potential for erosion control while creating a source of high-value plants capable of enabling bees to produce high-grade medical honey. The trial was soon expanded to cover 140ha. Regional Council chairman Fenton Wilson explains. The manuka trial that we're doing here at Lake Tutira is groundbreaking for us on the basis that it's taking a nutrient issue we have with the hills around here which are affecting the lake and turning it into a productive solution. So the council's incredibly enthusiastic about the potential of this to help us manage nutrient issues going forward. Sediment nutrient issue that's affected the lake ` uh, it's now prone to algal bloom. Uh, nutrient levels are too high, and, uh, you know, there's a range of issues around that, but, um, main one is nutrient ingress, I suppose, so` It's a NZ problem, um, and if we can find ways to fix it and make money for a farmer, uh, it's gotta be good. It's a 40-year project to fix Lake Tutira. We're on year 20, I think, at the moment. We needed to find a way to get money out of the hills, so we approached Blue, actually ` the guy that leases the place ` to see if we could do it, and he's been very accommodating. The manuka trial here at Tutira, really, that was about saying in our hill country we've got large areas of erodible land, and some of that land's not getting a good return in terms of stocking return. And a tree crop ` if it's the right tree crop ` could make a difference. So the trial here was to say, 'Can we get this high-MGO manuka, 'have it establish in our rougher hill country 'in a way which actually adds value to the farming enterprise?' Really strong partners in this, particularly in terms of the manuka trial, uh, is Comvita ` really important partners ` um, so, Massey University. So we're tied in to the Primary Growth Partnership, which is part of this driving this high-MGO manuka across NZ. And in that there's a bunch of partners ` you know, Landcorp's in there, Te Tumu Paeroa, uh, some private investors. What we're talking about potentially here is probably quite ironic to a bunch of farmers. In fact, you talk to them about it ` they used to cut a lot of manuka down. But the reality is that this high-MGO manuka, there's significant markets, particularly in medical- and cosmetic-grade products. And those actually can drive quite a bit of value at the farm gate. It's pretty early days in terms of thinking for the future, particularly how the relationship works between the farmer and the beekeeper and investors as well. It's pretty early days, but it will be fair to say that a solution where the farmer's putting up the land and getting, obviously, part of the honey crop` And clearly, from the beekeeper's point of view, they want a vibrant beekeeping industry. And so there's a whole bunch of things that need to be managed around that. There's disease, there's hive placement, there's having strong hives throughout the course of the year. 150 to 250 bucks per hectare per annum would not be unrealistic. And when you compare that as a net return to some of the steep erodible country and what it does actually deliver in a farming sense, that's probably reasonably attractive. Other regional councils are definitely involved in looking at manuka. And so how we partner up in terms of our region` So we're looking now and talking about what those partnerships might be and what the funding models might be. Because, you know, in terms of scale, there's about 150,000ha, roughly, of country that could be in a better land use and drive better economic and environmental performance. Uh, and that's a big chunk of land. And so it actually requires a lot of partners to invest to drive the outcome. In the nectar we're looking for a component called dihydroxyacetone, or it's shortened to DHA. And so that is the precursor to methylglyoxal, which is the antibacterial component in the honey. And we also test the nectar sugar, so we can use that to look at how much honey we can produce from these cultivars. We know that genetics plays a role in their quality. So Comvita has set up a breeding programme. And there's four main cultivars planted here, but there's actually about 16 varieties planted here in total that have been bred by that breeding programme. And so they've been selected from stands and cultivars of manuka that are known to produce high levels of methylglyoxal in the honey. Once they're planted, we monitor their establishment using circular plots, and we look at their survival and their growth. And when they get to two to three years of age ` when they have significant flowering ` we test the nectar. And we also take honey samples to look at the apiary data that we get the beekeepers to help us with. A lot of this is planted in broadacre, so that is usually planted at about 1100 stems per hectare. But at Massey we are looking at different spacings and how effective those different densities are. There's a lot of pest issues during the establishment phase, so pest control's vital for establishment of them. The other main pest that we also look into is scale insect, which creates sooty mould on the trees. So we have a PhD student who's looking into the effects of scale insects and sooty mould on the growth and the quality of the honey. For the first few years they get nibbled by stock. But, um, in some situations, and especially here at Tutira, they have put sheep in once they've reached about three years. And the sheep generally don't browse them once they're above their eyesight. So they seem to be fine with light grazing from sheep. We have multiple field sites all across NZ that we monitor. They all have these cultivars planted at them. At those sites we assess the soil, the climate data. We are quite close to being able to recommend some cultivars for specific sites. We already have cultivars that we know do well in specific areas ` for example, drought areas or frost areas. We are only still in the establishment phase, really, so we have quite a lot of data on establishment and survival. Um, we're just starting to get really into the quality. So we have taken nectar samples from most of our sites now. And most years` most sites we've done two to three years of nectar sampling at. Um, so here at Tutira, we sampled, um, the cultivars that are planted in the plantation ` their nectar ` so that's producing significantly higher levels of DHA than the local manuka here. So that's quite promising. We'll be back soon to meet Paul Olsen, who's taking every opportunity available to him in the horticulture sector. 1 Welcome back. Paul Olsen's family has been growing potatoes and dairying in Manawatu for many years. When Paul and his brother Shaun took over the family farms, they doubled the business within a few years. Along the way, Paul has become involved with the Young Farmer organisation and has travelled overseas to study various farming systems with the help of Kellogg and Nuffield Scholarships. We're farming about 505ha. We're milking 750 main season cows and grow, sort of, 200 acres of potatoes. My uncle and father set the business up in about 1977, um, along with my mother. My father died, um, later, in '87, so, uh, my mother and uncle carried on the business, where my younger brother Shaun and myself are lucky enough to carry it on today. Very much dairy and potatoes all the way through. So no change to the business, but we have expanded the cow numbers. In 2004, when Shaun and I both returned home, we put a new dairy on. So 60-bar rotary there to make things a bit more user friendly, if you like. Half the farm here on the home farm is silt and half is peat. Silt's, you know, great summer-safe stuff, but can get a bit winter-wet, uh, where the peat is pretty much good all year round but, yeah, can dry out again in the summer. Get through all right, apart from probably the last` possibly the last couple of summers, but, yeah, normally, sort of, 1000mm, 1200mm a year, so we're pretty lucky. I found an appetite for Young Farmers when I was, sort of` returned home from uni. Um, you could say the social scene was pretty quiet around here, so I sort of` you know, took it with both hands and got into Young Farmers. Taking on certain leadership roles, especially at a local level, I suppose, gave me an appetite to expand and, um` and go to greater things, and then, obviously, on to president of Young Farmers for a couple of years, um, in 2011. Um, from there I've, sort of` Yeah, I suppose you just keep striving, and, um, and wanting a little bit more, and that sort of pushed me on to Kellogg and Nuffield. But I, um, very much` yeah, never planned it, and, yeah, time's always been quite tight. I guess I've tried to do these other things. It's still been pretty hands-on in the business, um, and run the day-to-day operations. I guess the value for Nuffield for me is it's given me a platform to not only build national and international networks, but also, sort of, being able to go hands-on into these people's operations around the world, especially the UK and that. Great potato operations. And actually, sort of, see how they do succeed. You know, what consequences they've had along the way and how they've overcome them. So very much learning off the best. You know, I'm a pretty firm believer success breeds success, and I think that's been the key for me. I think we do punch well above our weight in NZ. I guess, just overseas, because of the environmental regulation and all the` and that sort of local regulation that's coming in, we probably do have it still pretty easy. And that's, sort of, probably what I was really trying to follow, as well, is see where we're headed ` um, you know, what's around the corner for us as an industry. In the UK they've got a three-crop policy, where they've gotta have a rotation of at least the three crops. And I think that's possibly something where we're gonna have to head sooner or later. We just can't carry on cropping and doing the same old thing on our land. You know, we do need to be, you know, good ambassadors of, I suppose, of the soil and of the industry. Looking further ahead, I think we will face some barriers against chemical. Um, overseas I see a lot of, um, you know, taking slug baits, for example, off, you know` really toxic slug baits off the market. And I believe that's what will follow suit here, um, long-term, and other sort of insecticides, etc, as well. So, here we're just 7 K's from our home block, just at the foothills here. Sort of a little bit elevated here, but some quite good silt soils. I've been growing early spuds up here for three years. I was trying to spread the workload of growing potatoes but also just keep busy. Um, and also cash flow, obviously. So we've got more of a` sort of a 365-day, sort of, work and cash flow for the potato business. So the opportunity to grow the early-crop potatoes is it just gets some into those local markets, while others are, um` especially in the Opiki area, are only main-crop growers. So this allows a little window to get a few spuds locally, and also we will export a few as well. The variety here is Moonlight, but we have up here also Ilam Hardies and Agria, which will be a great local-market potato as well. These spuds are looking great. They're probably six or seven weeks away from harvest. So they'll make some good size, and they'll be great for a local market. Through my travels looking at potatoes, there's probably more of a shift to, sort of, be organic as possible. Um, obviously we do need to use insecticides and herbicides as a tool, but I think we just need to reach a threshold before we are just blanket spraying everything as we've probably previously done. The impact psyllid's had on` especially recent years, has been dramatic. When it first came in, we were pretty hard hit. Um, there was massive implications, I guess you could say. We've got a bit of data built up with it. We've been able to, you know, use insecticides once we've reached a certain threshold, and it's been a lot more effective. Post-psyllid, I guess the monitoring and the agronomy side of things, we're using Fruitfed Supplies, and they are monitoring the crop every week. So on a Monday morning they'll come and walk the crop, replace traps. And I guess it's just knowing that this is gonna be done consistently, you know? They've got a good eye for it. They're going around a lot of crops. We're actually using that as a tool to reach a threshold of psyllid or insects, and then blanket spray as a result. Can't see any psyllid yet. Oh, that's great. That's the last thing we want, really, at this time of year. Yeah. That temperature's probably been a bit cold. Bit early for it. Yeah. Historically, we've got the likes of, you know, your blight and your moths and that sort of thing, but we weren't so reliant on insecticides as such. Definitely now with the presence of psyllid, we've actually had to be a lot more aggressive and I guess, sort of, you know, finger on the pulse, if you like, as a result. FAR is now doing all the R & D work for Potatoes NZ, and in my opinion, doing a great job. It's a great fit. Um, so this year I'm actually looking at a sort of soilborne disease, um, trial. They come in and they sort of, um, GPS a plot. They'll take a soil sample away from that, um, look at, sort of, pathogens, soilborne diseases within that, um` that area. And then as a result come back and, sort of, look at any implications that's, you know, gonna be present. We'll return soon to visit a Hawke's Bay winery begun in 1851 by Marist missionaries from France. 1 Hello again. The first recorded commercial wine sale from the Mission Estate in Hawke's Bay was in 1870, and the foundations of the present hillside vineyard were put down in 1897. Today, Steve Wheeler and his team use soil testing and monitoring of vine health to target nutrient application. Steve and his team were recognised for their excellent management of the soil in the 2015 East Coast Ballance Farm Environment Awards. Steve has been interested in soil health for some time. The grapevines are a pretty tolerant kind of plant, really. So I'm careful. I'm pretty conservative about what I do to the soil in terms of supplying nutrients and all that kind of stuff so that the vines aren't out of balance ` they don't grow too much and, um, we get good quality. To me, the biggest focus is water management. Grapevines will respond very strongly to, you know, water. If there's too much water they'll grow vigorously. If there's too little they won't grow much at all. Nutrients have a lesser effect. We're a part of a national three-year project run by NZ Winegrowers. And that was where three vineyards were chosen in NZ ` one in Hawke's Bay, which was us, and one in Marlborough and one in Central Otago. And those vineyards were used to showcase conversion to organics. And I think the reasoning was to educate the industry, to provide industry with, you know, models to look at and, you know, try and understand what organics is all about. The thing about the organics for us is to help us kind of push the boundaries of, you know, relying less on chemical inputs. We're just learning a lot about that through` through organics. Um, we also have quite a, you know, strong desire to be good practitioners and` and look after the land. This is a` what they call a recovery sprayer. It's designed to recover sprays that would normally go through a canopy and maybe disappear into the atmosphere or fall on the ground. And the sprays go through the row, and what doesn't make contact with the vines ends up in this shroud here and is collected at the bottom, and then that's pumped back into the tank so we can, you know, use less sprays and have less drift. It's not just saving the spray, although that's a really good bonus of it, so we do save in the amount of spray we use. We also save in time, because we can have less fill-ups when we're doing our vineyards. So that saves time of the driver and of fuel going backwards and forwards. But also the other big bonus is that there's very few sprays falling into the atmosphere or falling into the soil. I got a Ballance Environmental Award for soil management. Uh, I think that was really good, cos it acknowledged Mission's, you know, longstanding advances in looking at organics, looking at biological approaches, lessening chemical inputs, looking after the land. Uh, I've been involved in soils for a long time. So I've lectured in soils and done lots of trial work with soils and grapevines, so that was a good acknowledgement for me too. The winery and vineyards were originally established in the 1850s, 1860s by the Society of Mary who came out to Hawke's Bay to set up a mission here. There were a few of the brothers amongst the fathers who established vines and started making wine in the 1850s. So they've continued to have ownership of Mission Estate ever since then. So now the fathers and brothers are largely absent; they're still the sole and only shareholder. I was trained by Brother John, now known as Stewart Cuttance. Brother Stewart Cuttance ` I was trained by him. He was the last of the brother winemakers, yes. So, yeah, I'm sort of standing on his shoulders, for sure. (CHUCKLES) This organic trial was initiated through NZ Winegrowers. Um, the guy who volunteered the Mission, if you like, the viticulturist at the time, Caine Thompson, he's very very passionate about sustainability. He was the one who really got on board, and I've sort of` over the last year or two starting to see the results of the organically grown fruit. So I'm thinking, 'Oh, well, there's something going on here.' Which is really interesting, because, you know, we` we just want to make the best possible wine we can, so that's really the driver, you know? We want to make` especially off low-yielding, you know, high-quality vineyards, we just want to make the best wine we can. In our organic blocks, weed management relies a lot on mechanical methods, because we can't use any herbicides, obviously. And if we let the weeds grow, they'll compete with the vines and the vines will be struggling to ripen a crop. So the method we're using is an under-vine cultivator. It's a Clemens blade that goes along and slices under the weeds, under the roots system, and moves in and out of the vines. So it's got a little sensor on it ` sensor arm that makes the blade move out when it comes up to a vine. So we have to do that operation probably at least four times in a season, at least. And if it's` we get a lot of rain, obviously we have to do it more, so we don't like too much rain through the season. (CHUCKLES) Sustainability, I think, is a great thing, TUI CALLS and most of the wine industry is covered by a sustainable certification system. So that has changed a lot of management approaches to growing grapes in NZ in a really good way ` less chemical reliance and things like that; safer chemicals, softer chemicals. People are getting more confident using those kinds of things. So I think from a soil point of view, uh, we're` sustainability looks at how much water you're using. So it looks at possibilities of leaching, it looks at your nutrition management. Are you following, you know, good practices for nutrition management? So it's all about good practices ` making sure things aren't abused and we're looking after things. For more information on these and other stories we've covered, as well as useful primary sector information, visit our website. Get there via tvnz.co.nz You can also watch this and previous episodes on TVNZ On Demand using the keywords 'Rural Delivery'. Next time we learn about a business that grew out of demand for dairy and increasingly sheep farmers for regular pasture cover information. We visit David and Sarah Marshall's farm on the banks of the Rangitikei River, who are managing the environmental impact of their operation under Horizon Council's One Plan, having recently converted to dairy farming. And we find out about the good-for-business approach to providing healthy meals for staff at Bostock Organic Kitchen. Thanks for joining us. We hope to see you again next week. Bye for now. Captions by Shelley Upchurch. Edited by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016