1 UPBEAT MUSIC Captions by Tom Pedlar. Edited by Pippa Jefferies. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Hello, and welcome to Rural Delivery. Around NZ, regional authorities are developing plans to improve freshwater quality in response to the national policy statement for freshwater management. This week we're in Hawke's Bay to look at research that's measuring nutrient loss from the root zone across a number of farming systems. We visit the Harwood family's farming operation in Golden Bay that's set up for maximum flexibility. And we meet a couple that's devoted over 30 years to their commercial almond business in Marlborough. We head now to Hawke's Bay to look at an industry initiative supported by MPI through the sustainable farming fund, regional councils and other industry members. Actual nutrient losses are being measured under acknowledged good management practices countrywide. Arable, vegetable and forage systems are being studied, as well as mixed cropping and grazing operations. This is probably the first real crack at looking at nutrient losses, multiple crops, multiple sites, multiple seasons, to build up a real measured loss, if you like, rather than a modelled loss. Really important that we do that to, I guess, validate our models, to validate our good management practices that farmers are using and just to get a better handle on how systems are performing. The really important issue for the industry, um, and regional councils at the moment, is how do we get a` the right balance between, um, economic prosperity from the land as well as, um, take care of the environmental aspects as well. So, yeah, really important and well timed for that to inform discussion. This is the second year of the project. We've got sites located in the Canterbury region, Manawatu region, Hawke's Bay and also up north in, uh, Waikato and Auckland. Each of the sites are going to be in the ground for at least three years and we're hoping that the network will, sort of, endure and the information that's coming will be of, uh, real benefit to growers and councils who are involved. We've, kind of, worked with the growers to identify something that's typical of their rotations. We've installed flux meters at depth and then we capture drainage water, measure that drainage water through time to pick up the nutrients that are in it. What we're seeing at the moment is that, um, in a number of situations, um, that the good management practices are really resulting in small losses. Um, and` and the next step is to really test that against models, um, and compare the outputs of, kind of, what we've measured against what the models predict. We're farming just over 2000ha. 800ha is really in cash cropping. So a mix between processed vegetables and cereals and seed. And then the rest of the property is in finishing beef and lambs. A lot of the work I've done off farm has been around nutrient management and things like that. So, I suppose, just following on and a lot of our research dollars on wool industries is going into how we manage within limits and do things, and so it was naturally interesting to see what it is. I think we have to be real and say that the current model, Overseer, was designed for` for one thing and a lot of work in developing it to` to be a decision support, sort of, um, model for` for fert recommendations in the pastoral, sort of, area was what is was designed for. Um, and, you know, that's done a good job at that. So` And now it's been moved into, you know, one, sort of more of a regulatory tool and across all types of farming and soil types. So obviously you're going to find some gaps. So, yeah, just great to look at your results. Um, obviously your site here, um, very low drainage through` through the summer and summer months. Does that kind of line up with what you're expecting? Yep. Yep. For the last 20 years, a lot of the stories here have been around, you know, reduced tillage or different ways of cultivating or establishing crops. So we've always been, sort of, looking at how do we maintain soil structure, soil quality? How do we get, you know, the best crops with the least amount of, sort of, cultivation? You know, we've got variable rate irrigation on most of the irrigators now to try and use the best technology to get a` a good result. And that's all, you could argue, best practice. So it's interesting here. If we can't make best practice work and actually keep under the limits, then either there's going to be a major change in how farming goes on or productivity from the land. And so, I suppose, in that respect, it's been quite interesting, seeing our sort of preliminary results out of this flux meter project, to see that we're actually staying well down on the numbers that we need to be. So one would argue that, yes, the best practice we're entertaining at the moment does work. I think we have to be careful. I mean, over this area here, this is a sandy-type soil and so hence we can do the crops like the carrots, which is probably the only crop we actually cultivate for. So it was interesting to do it in this area because it's the one area that we probably are doing some damage to the soil structure and so potentially, you know, losing carbon, allowing more drainage and` and less lock-up sites for the nutrients. So, you know, if we're going to have a risk area, this is probably going to be it. Um, so, it's been to see that we have stayed under in this area. The good practices that Hugh is obviously implementing, good emphasis on soil testing, matching demand with supply, good irrigation practices to really reduce the risk of leeching losses and also just, um, cover crops over the winter, to sort of lock up any nutrients that's sitting there so that he can use it again next year. So, what we've got here is a, uh, flux meter made of PVC pipe. Uh, they've been installed in the ground at about 1m depth. So we auger out the soil and, uh, slot this in, uh, repack the soil. Sits in there permanently. Uh, through the winter and summer months, any drainage is intercepted at the top of this and is stored in this here tank. Um, when we come out and sample, we connect up pipes, use a pump here and basically pull the solution back to the top where we can then analyse it for, um, different, uh, nutrients. It can stay there for an extended period. It can sit below the root zone of crops and below, uh, implements that run through the field. So there's no risk of it being cut up as Hugh works in his field. There's been a lot of science done on the processes. Where this project adds value is probably the length. So, uh, three years, multiple crops, um, you start to get a good look at a whole system rather than just one particular crop. We have a policy of running the soil test levels that are around, sort of, mid-20s to mid-30s on the Olsen test in terms of phosphorus level. And then we just try and grow the crops on a demand basis, so it's, sort of, what we remove we'll put back in so we try and keep them there. And I think having modest levels stored in the soil versus getting the right, you know, moisture going in at the top, is going to one, limit the loading on the soil to hold on to things and two, the chances of it getting washed through from excess water. So, again, it's just good, practical management steps that actually make us money, cos we're not putting a whole lot of money in the ground in terms of, you know, fertiliser that doesn't necessarily need to be there. And we're getting good results with the crops. Certainly there is concern, especially around the nature of the cropping, especially annual cropping, being a very short-term thing, that a model that is really a long-term average model doing short-term crops is quite hard to do. And so there is other projects in the wind looking at, you know, what is the best model necessary to monitor cropping practice or do you just go with some of the areas, as though in Canterbury, you know, with the matrix of good management and, sort of, just use numbers that people discern as being, sort of, a good outcome. I mean, there's all sorts of ways. But again, all of these are being validated at the moment. I mean, it's the, you know, it's` It hasn't been that long in the pipeline so I think a lot of research is getting around how the best way to handle it is and working it out. And I think to be fair to` to the funding group here, I mean, we've got the regional councils, we've got, um, Plant and Food, obviously, we've got Ravensdown and FAR and Hort NZ all supporting this, and I suppose it's, you know, they're showing a concern to get it right, and I think that's the big part. It's not really saying something wrong or something right, it's actually let's find out what's actually happening and then make sure that the models are getting it pretty close and if not, well, let's go have a look and see. And I don't think anybody, even the owners of Overseer, are against that sort of, you know, approach. When we return, we'll be in Golden Bay at the diverse operation of the Harwood family. 1 UPBEAT MUSIC Welcome back. The Harwood family farm business covers over 2000ha across upper Takaka and the West Coast. They run sheep, beef and deer, and as well as a pine plantation, a hydro scheme and a dairy operation. Johnny and Nigel's father, David, was largely responsible for the diversity of stock and profit centres on the farm. Johnny explains. I remember as kids, as young kids, standing right here watching the helicopters hunting the hinds, the deer on the hill. It was all very exciting times and, uh, he got going right at the start, but it's just the way things have, sort of, evolved. In a way it's our father's legacy. The pine trees, the wether flock, the ewes, the beef cows, and then later on the dairy. At the moment we're actually right in the middle of weaning the deer. We like to wean early here, on the 25th of February. So we've got two weeks of weaning, trying to wean a thousand little ones. It's all very interesting. The dairy actually fits in quite well. Especially, not much then, but we've obviously got area set aside for wintering cows and rearing replacements. But, um, my biggest advantage of it, if they get a surplus of feed, they come to see me looking to see if I've got extra stock which sort of always pleases me cos I've always got hungry mouths to feed. We're on the dairy farm at the moment. There's about 280ha. It's running seven centre pivots. The reason for so many pivots on such a small area is that we have some major power lines running through the farm which requires us to fit them in around that, which is a bit of a bugbear. We've been up to around 930 cows at the top end of our numbers, and we're probably going to be sitting around 885 as we go through the challenges that we're finding ourselves at the moment. And the reason for the drop-off in numbers is we're growing a lot more fodder beet, uh, on platform so that we can winter more cows at home and` and feed them cheaply in the autumn instead of having to buy supplements in. So it's been quite a change for us. About 2003, the guts dropped out of the deer industry in a phenomenal way. But that shock, I guess, 2003, really got us as a family looking at were we going to remain in deer or was there other options? So we ended up building the shed and moving into about 650 cows our first year, and we've built that up. NZ dairy farming's well positioned as far as one of the lowest cost producers in the world. So there will always be a future while that remains. Long term, all the commentary seems to be that it has a, you know, a viable, positive future. I think we've got all of 2016 to get through that's going to be really tough before we really a lot of the dynamics that's happening in Europe, Russia, China work their way through, and then we might see a change. I'm very keen to keep the crew that I've got, so cutting back their wages really wasn't an option for me. But we're basically milking cows and sending them home, but paying them the same. Just the savings of them not driving around, um, you know, on motorbikes, you know, full-time, um, doing the spraying and doing all that, uh` a lot of that stuff. They're doing the maintenance that they have to do, but then we want them home. And, um` And I can already see that actually, um, working in our` in our, um` in our cash flow. It's actually already causing the savings. And on the dry stock side of the farm, they're working four days a week, uh, cos we just don't want them at work for that other day. And, um` And, I mean, obviously things are not getting done with that, cos you don't have staff on unless you need them. Um, but, I mean, they're tough times and you've gotta, um, protect y` your company, and that's the thinking. Um, and just probably one last point to that, really, would be that, you know, it's just people have to think do they actually have to spend that dollar before they spend it? And we` Well, I'm that guy goes round and keeps saying it. I'm not Mr Popular at the moment. This is the intake for our company hydro scheme. It's a small hydro, about 42m ahead through a Francis turbine. This is the settling pond. The intake is right down the end where we're looking. And then the water's going out of the structure behind me and heading on down about 2.3km of 1000mm pipe to the generator. It was another opportunity to diversify our business and also we could keep it within the sides of the borders of our farm. A farm our size, with the amount of irrigation we're doing, does have quite an energy demand. But at the end of the day, this is a run-of-the-river scheme. So it makes its most money when it's got water and the power price is high, and that's basically winter. So over summer, the infrastructure that you can see here is pretty much, if you had to put a percentage on it, about three-quarters dedicated to supplying water to the irrigation and the generator will just tick along. Um, but in the winter, obviously, there's no irrigation and we'll be trying to wind the turbines up to full` full speed as often as we can. It's about a 1.8 mill investment. We're hoping it will pay for itself within 13 years. The scheme when it's fully operational will have three turbines. There's, um, two more being manufactured in China right now and they're both 160 kilowatt machines, and that'll take us up to a 460 max output. Growing up in Golden Bay with the mighty Takaka hill next door, you sort of get used to the travelling over it, so it's just a bit of a bump in the road for us. Um, Nelson Airport's an hour and a quarter in the mornings ` no traffic round on the Nelson side. So, no, I don't think we're really that isolated here. I think we've got it smack on at the moment. Um, we like to call it swaying. If dairy is up, we can sort of swing that way a bit, but we don't want to go too far. We'd rather make opportunity while the prices are high. So we call it swaying. Sway in and out of things as` Well, if you go in and out` If you're chasing the market, it never works out. So we just like` We stick to that. That's our plan. But as far as having the right amount of everything, we've got it about right. Yeah. We'll be back soon to find out about Gill Smith and Graeme Farnell's work at Riverina almonds. 1 Hello again. Gill Smith and Graham Farnell have developed a commercial almond orchard on the outskirts of Blenheim. The couple has devoted over 30 years to their almond business, with Graham taking advantage of an engineering background to create his own processing solutions. We bought the place a long time ago, back in about 1980. Had a look at the land and thought, you know, well, it's quite light land; we gotta find a crop that will suit it. And we'd seen almonds grow out the Awatere where it's very very dry. Similar circumstances and they grew well there. So` And my father's got a horticultural background, so we did a bit of research and thought, well, we'll give it a go and we'll try them on this property. As the first lot came on stream, there was a big gap until we realised, yes, well, OK, they are gonna work. Then we carried on. We've got four paddocks in almonds. We've got a little bit left. Gotta have a spot for the airstrip, little bit extra for the sheep, and it's as big as we wanna go now. Just under 2000 trees is enough we wanna handle. The base of our trees now is a tree that we found went really well in Blenheim. We've grown them from seed and we propagate. We grow them into a small tree, we propagate them. So we don't buy the trees either. The very good thing is that NZ almonds will sell themselves. Not many people are aware, even now, that we can grow almonds in NZ, because it is a difficult crop to grow. And so, therefore, when the news gets out there that we do grow ones, we can sell everything` well, we can more than sell what we produce. The farmers' market's really valuable to us. Mainly` Well, two aspects. We deal directly with the people, so there's no middle man with their big cut on our hard-earned, um, money or our hard-earned crop. And the interaction with the people is a huge thing. You have the challenge of questions and answers, and you verify your product out there. It's a pretty challenging crop to grow. One of the major problems early on in the season, of course, is frost. Over the years we've used various types of frost fighting gear. It was either wind machines, helicopters or` Both are pretty expensive. So I decided that I'd think a bit outside the square and develop ground-based helicopters that we move around in the orchard during the night. Find the coldest patches, work on the coldest patches, and it proves to be very very effective. It's a crop that takes a long time to mature, so, you know, for instance, we flower well before cherries and they pick three months before us. So to give you some idea of how long our season is. The management throughout the growing season is quite considerable. It's not like a quick-cash crop like a pip-fruit crop or a stone-fruit, even, are much quicker cos we've gotta take right through to the dry stage on the tree. So we take the whole growing process, basically done on the tree, and when they're dried and completely mature on the tree is when we start to harvest them, do our downstream work. When you start out you can do it sort of like a cottage industry where you do most of the work manually. But if you ramp the business up to a certain degree, then you have to mechanise most of it because it's a high-volume item, product. So there's a lot of hand work involved if you do it traditionally. So bit by bit over the years, as the production's come up, we've developed machinery and because it's not an industry that's operating in NZ, you either have to go overseas and buy your equipment or you do what I do ` build it ` because I have the skills. I'm an engineer by trade. In the field we harvest with a machine that I developed which basically grabs the tree and shakes it into an inverted umbrella with conveyors in there. It goes up into bolt bags on the back of the machine, then we take them off and empty them on to the portable racking system that we use to dry the product in the sun ` we sun-dry. Um, a very important part of the process, to get a cure. They'll last for years if you've got them properly cured. And then, uh, we bring them inside into the factory here and we can store them as long as` basically as long as we like, once they're in that condition. That allows us to, basically, not have to touch the product up till that point and, uh, convey it and mechanise the process up to that point. We have to be as gentle as possible because it's a field product that's come in ungraded and uncleaned, or whatever. We put it through the cracker, and in the initial stages of going through the cracker the jaws are set wide. So all it does is take the hull off the almond and exposes the shell so that the next time it comes through the process ` it just goes round in a loop ` the next time it comes through the process it'll actually crack the almond out, and then you just gradually reduce the size of the aperture for the almonds to go through and they'll eventually crack out at whatever size they are. So we've eliminated all that upstream grading process that potentially is another whole line of your operation. One of things that's come along market-wise in the last couple of years that's surprised us a little bit and caught us off guard is there's quite a demand for green almonds in the shell at, uh, various stages of the season. The interest is from top-end chefs at the lodges and restaurants. They're over the moon to find that they can source green almonds in shell at the stage they like them. Um, we weren't prepared for this and so we never thought of encouraging that` that` that demand, but it comes to us. It finds us. They start out wanting this part, being the kernel, at a jelly stage. And then they follow them through the maturing process to this stage here where the kernel has started to solidify, but it's still quite fry-able and the shell on the almond is just starting to set and they do various things with them. They slice the whole thing that you see there and saute it, and they pickle them whole. They pickle kernels. They pickle hulls. At the beginning when we had, uh, enquiries, we thought, 'No, we don't wanna do that because we're geared up for machinery, and this is all hand work again.' So we basically said to the guys` we explained to them that, you know, it's an expensive process for us that we're not geared up for and they said, 'Well, what do we gotta pay?' You know? They want the product, and, uh, they pay us well, you know? So it's a` it's a good situation that we're supplying something that they really want at a price that is, um, good for us and, uh, they seem very pleased with the product. For more information on these and other stories, visit our website via tvnz.co.nz If you've missed any previous episodes, you can see them on TVNZ OnDemand. Use the keyword Rural Delivery. Next week ` we look at the development of a compliance monitoring system for use in the fishing industry, We pay a visit to the Kumeu Agricultural and Horticultural Society's long-running district show. And find out how a popular craft beer business provided the way to achieve a winemaker's dream. Thanks for stopping by. We hope to see you again next time. Captions by Tom Pedlar. Edited by Pippa Jefferies. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016