UPBEAT MUSIC Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Hello, and welcome to Rural Delivery. There's widespread acknowledgement that improving the health of NZ's waterways is critical for the whole country and that it will require the concerted and ongoing efforts of many people. This week we find out about a crowdfunding project aiming to inspire businesses and the public to help plan a million metres of streams around NZ. We spend time at Kaitaringa Farms, producing grass-fed Wagyu beef for domestic and export markets. And we visit Southern Paprika, the largest single-site glasshouse grower of capsicums in the country. Sheep and beef farmers John and Geraldine Taylor have joined the Million Metres Streams Project to help attract funding for 1.2km of riparian planting on their property in the Hoteo River catchment. The idea for the project came through the Sustainable Business Network, to encourage investment from many sources to improve the health of our waterways and not just rely on landowners alone to shoulder the effort and the cost. The Million Metres Streams Project is basically a crowdfunding platform. We set that up so that any project wanting to plant streams around NZ can list a project with us and then raise the funds that they need to achieve their goals. The Million Metres Streams Project was developed by the Sustainable Business Network, uh, in collaboration Enspiral Collective. Uh, Enspiral basically developed the web platform, and Sustainable Business Network is a network of, uh, businesses around NZ, uh, engaged in improving their sustainable practice. A few years ago, the Sustainable Business Network looked at what sort of impact we could have to improve water quality in NZ. We wanted to work in the water space and make a contribution towards looking after our waters. And what we saw was that there are a lot of organisations around the country doing great work, a lot of individuals doing great work, but not everybody gets funding from the traditional pool. So what we're hoping to do is extend and offer an alternative method to get the funding that you need to achieve your goals. If you're getting funding to do riparian planting from your local council or from, for example, a WWF fund, uh, it doesn't mean that you can't come on board with Million Metres and do crowdfunding as well. It's not mutually exclusive in any way. It's really open. But what we do ask projects that are interested in enlisting with us to do is to work with one of our Field Partners. Field Partners are usually a regional council or an organisation with strong technical expertise in riparian planting. OK, guys, so you can see here that your total project goal is on the right there ` 21,000 ` and we've had 6800 invested so far, or donated by generous supporters. 'At the moment, we're in our early stages. We've been going just over one year. 'And the way that we link up with farmers at the moment is usually through our Field Partners. 'And that means that someone like Auckland Council, who signed up as a Field Partner late last year, 'will know of a project or a community group that's seeking funding, 'maybe hasn't been successful with a funding application, 'or has got part of the funding that they need, but they're not all the way there. 'So to achieve their project goals, they need some extra support, 'so they might be appropriate to come and fund 3 million metres.' That's how, uh, John and Geraldine were pointed towards us ` through an Auckland Council Field Partner contact. Here we're gonna have an impact on the Hoteo River and ultimately the Kaipara Harbour and the snapper nursery that, uh, thrives ` but not so much now ` at the mouth of the river. The home farm is 139ha. On that, we run sheep and dairy support. It is mainly the dairy support. We also lease another 39ha that we run the breeding ewes on that's across the road. Back in 2003, when we took on this lease across the road, part of the agreement of that lease was to allow the owners to fence off any area that they considered they wanted to plant. They have fenced off and planted about 18 acres out of the 100 acres over there. With the fencing off, you've got to look for the positives of doing it, not talk about the negatives. If you get too wound up with the negatives ` that I'm going to lose a bit of good grass that grows well in the summer ` you'll get nowhere. Look at the positives, ease of controlling stock, cut your losses. About every four years, we were spending 5000 or 6000 on excavators reshaping the waterways. We don't have to do that now. We've put them back into a natural state, and we can leave them alone. On this lease block, once it started to grow, it was magnificent to go over there, see the birds, hear the wind blowing in the trees, and it just seemed a far nicer place to work. And I didn't have to go down into steep gullies ` a lot steeper than we've looked at on this side of the road ` to attend to stock. We can look over the Pacific Ocean on the east coast from here, yet we start the Hoteo River, and the Hoteo River runs, of course, right back, under State Highway 1, and out into the Southern Kaipara. That's probably where my initial interest came in this ` is NIWA did quite a few evening functions at Kaipara Flats over the snapper hatchery, because if we lose that, you won't be catching snapper in the North Island. And from there, Gill and Kevin Adshead, who have reintroduced Kiwi on to their block down State Highway 16, formed what we call The Forest Bridge Trust, which is a farmer-initiated trust that is encouraging and helping farmers to do riparian planting or fencing off existing native bush. It is mainly a sediment issue, and the Auckland Council have funded a chap from the Cawthron Institute of America to do a study on the Hoteo. And he has reported back that probably 50% of the sediment going out into the lower Kaipara is coming from undercutting of stream banks. But planting down these stream banks and encouraging, with the right type of plant, to stop these stream bank erosion will assist as well. We were approached to join up with Million Metres of Streams mainly because we had areas already fenced but unplanted. If we tried to plant those and fund them ourselves, we would get such a small amount done every year that we may never ever see the end of it. We saw working with Million Metres of Streams that if funding was more available, we would possibly end up with being able to do a lot larger area in a year, pay professional planters to do it ` it was in and out. In this project, we have put $10,000 of our own money up, which enabled us to source 10,000 from the Council, and then hopefully Million Metres of Streams can come up with the balance. When we return, we visit a Northland farm producing grass-fed Wagyu beef for Firstlight Foods. 1 Welcome back. Northland sheep and beef farmers Marshall Walton and Angela Zyzalo are members of the Firstlight Wagyu Producers Group, finishing grass-fed Wagyu beef for domestic and export markets. They breed and buy in Wagyu-Angus cross and Wagyu-dairy-cross steers and heifers under a supply agreement to Firstlight Foods. The farm's based on six blocks, with a total 513ha, and effective is 490. We farm both ewes and breed and finish Wagyu cattle. Six years ago, I was looking for something that was a prime product that had a sort of market value chain focus. We were looking around for different things. There was a group of Northland farmers that were looking at different things, and, uh, we got an opportunity to go down and see some cattle down in the Hawke's Bay with Firstlight. And from then, I just` I bought some, and then over the years, as we've expanded, we've put` you know, put more and more on. Now we're exclusively either breeding or finishing Wagyu in our cattle business. The thing that probably attracts both Angela and I is the fact that it's a top-end product and we have a connection to the market. So the whole idea of the Producer Group is that we get as close to the market as we can. We've both been overseas to see the market, demo'd product over there. We just like the fact that, you know, we can see that whole process going through, from what we do, out the gate. There is also the premiums that you can get from doing that. The point of difference is that it's a grass-fed product that competes at a very high level internationally. We can compete with the best of what comes out of the States. NZers are really used to grass-fed, because that's where most our beef comes from. But overseas, that's not necessarily the norm. Especially in some of the high-end markets, you know, feedlot cattle fed on a corn-based diet is the norm, and that's where the high-end cuts come from, and we're producing that from a grass-fed system, using, sorta, Wagyu genetics to get there. The growth within this business is, um` has been fairly steady over the last three or four years. Um, we're sort of establishing systems and getting used to farming the cattle, getting better quality cattle. Now we're starting to really ramp up. We've got some funding from the Government through the Primary Growth Partnership. We're taking dairy-cross cattle and making them into a prime product ` so a by-product of the dairy industry, especially from the Friesian-Jersey cross ` the Kiwi cow ` and making it into a top-end product that competes internationally. What we're doing as far as dairy industry is we either use semen or bulls, as tail-up bulls, to cross over dairy herds. We, um` We` Either` Either those dairy farmers rear those through to 90kg to 100kg, or we take them at four days old and put them in the hands of rearers, and that is a source for us as finishers to take them on and finish them as prime beef cattle. We're on our home block here, and we've got a line of R2 cattle, so they're a mix of the dairy-Wagyu cross and the Angus-Jersey cross. They're part of a trial where we're looking at dam breeds out of the beef cows, so they're all out of my own cows, and they're a mix of Angus-Jersey, Angus-Friesian or pure Angus cows. The other half are dairy cross. So I run them as one line. The reason why we're running the trial is to see what's the best breeding cow. Some of our previous trial work shows that having a Jersey component somewhere in the mix improves marbling score. It also fits with my farming system, because my breeding farm's a very wet farm, and having the small-stature cow is more efficient for me. The Wagyu component of the stock does slow down growth rate, but as we get better at farming them, that is improving. Compared to the exotic breeds, we are down on that. But the more traditional breeds, we're sort of matching. With Wagyu, it seems to be in the peak, in spring and early summer, they do really well, and they're very comparable to any beef cattle. They seem to` When things get a little bit hard, they do slow down quite dramatically. So it's just trying to get that constant feed level through their lifetime to get that consistent growth. That's actually good for marbling and good for quality of the actual meat produced. Our toughest period for growth rates is autumn, uh, with these cattle I've been farming for quite a few years now, and, um, autumn, you know, can be a very challenging time. Um, we're not quite sure whether that's actually purely feed quality, uh, and we're doing some measurements, looking at growth rates compared to feed quality. So, um` Or it's some sort of, um, fungal toxin that's actually` they're very sensitive to. So we're not quite sure, so we actually, um` that's part of our research programme ` is to find out if, you know` what` what do we have to feed them to get them to grow consistently through their lifetime? The Producer Group model is` you know, it's quite novel, in that the farmers actually own the product right through to market. So the Producer Group's half-owned by a group of farmers. At present time, there's 35. And the other half's owned by Firstlight Foods, which do the management of the value chain. We own all stock. But they're actually under a supply agreement back to the Firstlight Producer Group. So we can't sell them outside the Producer Group without permission. We actually sorta own the product right through to market, so we're on a delay when we get paid because of that. We've gotta wait until the actual market reimburses us. The benefits of the Producer Group is we've got a fixed schedule. Uh, it's, um, brought out in March for the coming financial year, which is from April through to the end of March. Um, that's faxed. We know exactly what the schedule will be on a particular kill, um, and that gives us security of` of cash flow, especially cash flow. It's a lot easier to manage cash flow when you actually know. And then it's back in our court to get the production, get the marbling score, get the weight gains. Um, so that` that's a huge, huge benefit. And knowing that at the end of the year, when there's a pool payment, that's based on how the whole of the group has done, so we can` if we've done really well as far as the group, as far as supplying on time, um, a quality product, then we're gonna get a return for that. We'll be back soon to look at production by the largest glasshouse grower of capsicums in the country. 1 Hello again. Southern Paprika is the largest single-site glasshouse grower of capsicums in NZ. The business is a joint venture between Alexander Cropping and a Dutch company, Levarht. We're called Southern Paprika, and the reason we've got that name is our Dutch partners are obviously from Holland, and up in the northern hemisphere, capsicum is known as paprika. Well, the partnership with Levahrt came around because they wanted to supply capsicums in the northern hemisphere winter to Japan. The Japanese business for us is a very important piece of our market, and we continue to look for more growth there as well. Sales are going exceptionally well. It's a fruit, so it has a flush cycle, and it's very hard to forecast what's coming on and what's not, but we do our best, and our sales guy does a fantastic job in getting rid of the fruit pretty much two days after it's been picked and packed. We're about an hour and a bit out of Auckland, so the fruit that's picked this morning gets packed this afternoon, and tonight it's on the truck down to Auckland. If it's going to Tokyo, it'll get the 9am flight to Tokyo, and within about 24 to 36 hours, it'll be on the consumer's plate in Japan. We collect all the rainwater off our roof, and it goes into our wells, and we have a bore on site as well. So we try and recycle as much as we can. We're looking after 23ha of glass. We're also built here on this location because we're right on the gas line, so nice and easy access to the gas. And the advantage of that is we can, um, condense the flue, so the exhaust gas we condense and take the carbon dioxide off, which is pumped into the glasshouse. So we're trying to enrich the air with carbon dioxide, trying to get up to 750 parts per million. Most of our technology is from Holland, with a few Kiwi adaptations. Everything is grown in bags of either rock wool or coco peat. This helps keep the system nice and clean, and we have a perfect chance to control our nutrients. We've got a Priva Climate Control computer. That controls carbon dioxide, humidity, heat, the ventilation. It's aware of what direction the wind's blowing, so it protects itself. If it gets too strong, it says, 'I'm forgetting about the crop inside,' and it just looks after itself. And it might just crack the lee side so that we don't get any glass panes getting blown in or blown out. This is standard float glass. So the same as windows in your house. The latest glasshouse we've built's been built with diffuse glass, so it has a mottled effect so that instead of getting the direct light coming in, what it does is it scatters the light. The thought is that instead of getting light only at the tops of the crops, you can get light right down to all of the leaves down below, and so the plants are able to do a lot more photosynthesis. Some of our big challenges are disease and insects. A few years ago, we had a new insect into NZ, the potato/tomato psyllid, and that's been devastating for solanaceous plants, so capsicums and tomatoes, and potatoes to a lesser extent, where these things come in, and they are spreading a disease. So if they are able to feed on your plants for 20 minutes, they pass on a disease through to the crop, which ultimately kills the plants. We have a number of insects available to us for purchase to put into glasshouses that we work with to try and help control some of these insects. And we would love more. It's simply tricky to get into the country. But we are actively trying to get in new insects as we speak. It's a key part of our industry. The whole world is moving away from the use of solid insecticides into more limited sprays. So the old days of calendar spraying are certainly well and truly gone, and they're certainly gone here, where we would try and spray as little as possible to try and keep our beneficial insects alive. We purchase the seeds from local seed companies. We have our own germination facility. We make seedlings, and they get planted on the slabs, and then with any sort of luck and conditions go well, within three months, we're starting to harvest ripe fruit. The glasshouse has a significant labour force. We have a number of people from the Kiribati who come across on the RSE scheme, as well as a fairly large full-time Kiribati staff that don't mind the heat here. Obviously, close to the equator for them, so well and truly used to the high temperatures that we expect in here. Over our three complexes, we vary our planting a month apart, so the time we are picking our greens off complex one, we're pulling our complex three plants out. So there's a three-month difference there. So that enables us to supply greens year round to the likes of Subway, who take around 7 ton a week. This is our packhouse. We work around about nine to 10 hours a day, depending on the time of the season. We have around 30-odd staff in here at the moment, which varies depending on the crop at the time. This week, we're looking to pack around 170 tons, um, and we can get up to 230 tons a week at the peak of our season. There could be a lot more automation done, and that is something we might look at in the future, but at the moment, we're very happy with what we've got. Around 50% of our crop is sold domestically, and the balance goes overseas, predominantly to Japan. The last two years, we've seen our domestic consumption go up around 40%, which is fantastic. So, um, we're looking to consolidate that growth and keep growing it. We also export to Australia and Canada, depending on how much fruit we've got and if the price is right. It's predominantly reds that we sell ` around 60% ` and then yellow and then orange and a bit of the green. Um, we've got some new technology now which is enabling us to do kilo and 750g value bags, so we can mix up the colour ratio, depending on how our crops flush and how much percentage of fruit we've got. Sweet points ` we've had those for a couple of years now. Again, we've got our new bagger, so we're looking to increase the presence of those in the supermarkets and grow the brand of that. They're around 10% sweeter than the normal capsicums, so we see that as a real growth area for us, in that we know that kids love them and, uh, you can eat them raw. We're doing around about 6500 tons per annum, uh, now that we've got our 23ha, so, uh, that's a lot of capsicums. And, you know, that's just under a million plants, so, um, we're pretty happy with that. For more information on this and other stories we've shown, you can visit our website. Get there via tvnz.co.nz If you've missed an episode, you can watch it again through TVNZ ondemand, using the keyword Rural Delivery. Next week ` we find out about how AgriSea is harvesting seaweed to support soil health on farm. We meet Dennis O'Callaghan, who runs an intensive beef operation, and along with his wife, Rachelle, was the 2016 Supreme winner for Northland in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards. And we visit Peter Lines, fifth-generation hop grower and member of the cooperative group NZ Hops. Thanks for watching. Please join us again next time. SMOOTH MUSIC Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016