1 Captions by Kate Parkinson. 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. St Peter's is a coed, year seven to 13 school with 1100 students, including 400 boarders. Within its grounds is Owl Farm that's been operated by the school for 80 years. This week, we visit Owl Farm, which is about to enter a new phase as a demonstration farm for the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions, as well as being a centre of learning for students. We meet Chris Paterson, a dairy farmer involved in the Lake Rotorua Primary Producers Collective. And we find out about the production of salt for agricultural use at Dominion Salt. Owl Farm is a St Peter's school and Lincoln University demonstration farm that aims to showcase best practice to Waikato and Bay of Plenty farmers. It's been set up to emulate Lincoln University's demonstration farm. John Fegan is a graduate of Lincoln and chair of the farm's governance committee. I've always been of the belief, ever since, really, the Ruakura days have stopped, that there's been a lack of focus for the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty dairy farmers. And in my day job as a recruitment consultant, I see and I hear a lot of the Canterbury farmers raving about what the Lincoln University farm does, and they talk about they just follow the Lincoln system. There is an opportunity, I think, for the same thing up here. And so, unashamedly, we're wanting to copy the` what the Lincoln University demonstration farm has been doing. Over the last three or four years, the farm has gradually sort of become more and more important and focused for the whole school, rather than just being something out the back. So, the idea, guys, is that the clover is gonna fix the nitrogen for this ryegrass, but it appears that we're really lacking in clover in this paddock. 'We want a profitable dairy farm that is also sustainable, 'and it's sustainable from an environmental perspective, from a profit perspective, 'from a people perspective, and from a health and safety perspective.' It takes a reading every time, and then it averages out at the end. MACHINE BEEPS See, that's 2100 there. If you go somewhere where it's a bit shorter, that'll be lower. MACHINE BEEPS See, 1900. Half of our students have come from homes where there's a rural delivery address, and so it's very relevant straight away for 50% of our client base. We also have several projects which are community-involved. So we have a swimming pool. We have the Avantidrome, which brings in the community into the school. This also provides the opportunity to do that with the cycleway going right past` in fact, right through the middle of the farm. There's over 80,000 people a year now using this cycleway and going through the middle of our farms. An opportunity for us to engage with them and, perhaps, try and reduce that urban-rural divide that seems to have developed over the last 20 years. We hope to be able to, um, have, what I would call, digital signboards. And so, for example, when the cows are in this paddock beside the cycleway, and they're` it might be at mating time, so they'll have tail paint on them, then we could have the digital signboard in here explaining what all that means and why it's important for the cows to get pregnant again. Or if we had a crop in here, we could talk about what that is and why we're doing it. And so it can be very relevant to people. The advantage of it being a walkway and cycleway is we've got more time, (CHUCKLES) cos they're not going as fast as when you're in a car, so we actually have a reasonable amount of time to be able to engage with them and to, hopefully, educate them slightly. The farm is completely transparent. So all our financial information, all our physical data is put up on to the Owl Farm website. We send out the notes of what's happening on the farm every week to the people that are subscribing, and so we're completely transparent about what we're doing here. One of the downsides of trying to do this over the last three years is that we need money, and not an insignificant amount of money, to run it as a demonstration farm. We targeted seven companies who we felt were relevant for us and who could add value for us and the farming community locally. Absolutely astounded and impressed that not one of them said no. And they've committed to five years, so they've committed for a long time and not an insignificant amount of money. So far, they are just a) being very very helpful in helping us get to where we want, but they're also very supportive in what we're trying to achieve in the big picture. We have 150 effective dairy hectares, about, sort of, 180 dairy hectares all up. We've got quite a bit of planted areas now. Milking 430. We probably winter about 440, 445, but, um, peak milking is about 430. Milk solid production is between 190,000kg and 200,000kg of milk solids. Um, we've got a real mix here of, uh, sort of, soil types. We've got some really high risk, sort of, heavier soils, some lighter soils. So we've got some soils that hang on quite well in summer but then don't do so well in winter and vice versa, so we've got a pretty good mixed bag when it comes to the soil types on the farm as well. Our nitrogen, what we put on through fertilisers, is 150kg. We bring in a little bit of imported feed, but we've got a nitrogen leaching of about 30kg of nitrogen per hectare. But we're obviously looking to significantly improve our environmental impact here in the future to ensure that we can become a sustainable, profitable farm. One of the things that we're looking at doing at the moment is actually building a, uh, constructed treatment wetland, which is designed for the purpose of intercepting shallow groundwater. So it's basically a certain depth, width. The plants are a certain type that absorb the nitrate and emit them to the atmosphere in a non-toxic gas. And then, hopefully, the theory is, discharging a much cleaner water to the Waikato River. So if this works as a treatment option, it's gonna be really good for a lot of farmers in terms of different options they've got available to manage their environmental impact. Our main objective is to apply proven research. We want to do that utilising good on-farm practice, um, to, sort of, prove, hopefully, that we can provide a working model of a profitable, sustainable farm which encompasses all of the aspects around health and safety, HR. We want, you know, dairying to be attractive to people coming in, and, obviously, with the educational side, we want students to see a bit of a future in the agricultural and dairy sectors. That's really important. We're very fortunate with a lot of the crossover of subjects that we've got at the schools. So we've started working, obviously, with agriculture and horticulture. They do a lot of practical exercises on the farm. But there's also a lot of opportunities for your geography, around sustainability; biology, around biodiversity; chemistry, around water quality; um, even looking at getting the photography class out here to try and capture some more positive images around dairying so that we can try and actually start creating more positive sort of feeling around dairy. So we're working really closely with the school. We're trying to work a lot closer with the community as well. We're going to have community planting days coming up with our constructed wetland, whereby members of the community will come in and help us plant. We want to have open days for all the members of the public in the future here as well. We are working with accounting, economics and business studies as well. There's a huge amount of overlap of where there is some really practical, sort of, examples that we can use from the dairy industry to really support some of the learning outcomes that they're trying to achieve. So, certainly, with the subjects that are on offer here and, um, the opportunity with the farm to be able to engage and interact with those classes to provide some really practical examples to what they're learning in class is absolutely important, and, you know, I think, um, agri-managers, fertiliser reps, you know, there's a huge sector that supports the dairy industry, which there's a lot of value to be added from actually practically understanding some of this stuff. We'll be back soon to meet Chris Paterson, dairy farmer and secretary of the Lake Rotorua Primary Producers Collective. 1 Welcome back. The Lake Rotorua Primary Producers Collective was formed in 2011 to advance the interests of rural landowners facing major reductions in allowable nutrient loss from their farms. Members of the collective are participating in funded research aimed at calibrating high-rainfall nutrient losses. A lot of the farms in this region are in quite high rainfall ` like, over 2000mm a year ` and we really don't have any information on nitrogen leaching losses from farms in that anything above about 1200mm to 1500mm. And they make up quite a significant part of the catchment here, and it's, uh` in the overseer model, which is used to estimate losses from here, that's really` hasn't been validated against data from high-rainfall sites. So Chris and Jamie have volunteered to be involved here on their farm, looking at measuring leaching losses under their over-2000mm of rain a year under their coarse pumice soil. The higher the rainfall, the higher the drainage and the more risk of loss. But there's only a certain pool of nitrogen that can be lost, and the timing is also quite important, in terms of when the rainfall happens through the year, the timing of when drainage and leaching occurs and what farmers can do about managing it in terms of the timing. So that's why it's really important to get an understanding of the pattern of loss through the year as well as the amount that drains. To measure the leaching losses, we've got ceramic cup samplers which are buried at 60cm depth, so below the root zone of the pasture. We have, uh, 150 of them here, spread around the farm. So it has to be enough to cover variability from urine patches, management soil differences and so on, and we're linking that with lysimeters to measure the amount of water draining through the soil, and together we combine the nitrate data from the ceramic cups with the amounts of drainage to calculate the leaching losses. And so this is being done over a three-year time period to account for variability between years. We're only partway through the first year, but even in this first less than three months, we've had over 600mm of drainage occurring, which is, um, well over the annual value in the Waikato and other parts of the country. Uh, and that's linked with reasonably low concentrations of nitrate in the drainage water but with relatively high amounts of drainage. COW LOWS (LOWS) We've been here for just on 20 years. This is our 20th milking season actually on this farm. Because of the elevation at 400m-odd, we have hard frosts in the wintertime. So the growing season is later. It's certainly not Waikato-type temperatures. And the rainfall is our biggest limiting factor. (WHISTLES) Come on. MACHINE CHUGS We're really lucky that we've been able to employ our son on the home farm here now. When our previous contract milker moved on, we were able to offer him a position back home on the farm. So Alan and Michaela and their now two young sons are farming here with us. MACHINE CHUGS Our biggest threat at the moment is the rules that are going to be coming down on us from regional council, in that they're going to make farming a conditional practice, and with that is going to be a nitrogen discharge allowance that we're going to have to meet by 2032. If we're not able to meet that, um, then we're strictly non-complying with our resource consent, and, ultimately, I presume, they will be able to shut us down. The benchmark that was given to us back in 2005 effectively capped our nutrients at that level, and we aren't able to increase our export of nutrients beyond that level. So that's over 10 years ago now. So you've gotta farm really smart to stay as you were 10 years ago and still try and increase production. One of the ways that we've been able to do that so far has been to drop cow numbers quite significantly. We've taken 30 head off while still maintaining production. We are aiming to feed less cows better and gain the production that way. The Lake Rotorua Primary Producers Collective was formed back in 2015. It came out, really, because those of us that had been busy lobbying the powers to be in Rotorua were all Federated Farmer members, and we spent a lot of time at our Rotorua-Taupo Federated Farmer meetings discussing Lake Rotorua issues. And so it was decided to set up a separate group to focus on that in its entirety so that the Federated Farmers group could look at all the other issues that were still ongoing. The main positive that came out of the early days was that we petitioned regional council for more collaboration, and from that the Stakeholder Advisory Group was born. And so all those in Rotorua that had some involvement in the lakes, um, were able to sit around a table and negotiate some terms. Our target is to have some understanding of the real issues and know that the science is the best that it can be. We have grave concerns that these rules are being set on dated science. The sustainable load that we're having to meet was originally measured back in 1984, and it hasn't` to our knowledge anyway, it hasn't been recalculated since that time, and science has progressed dramatically. We know that we're all producing nutrients, and we accept that we have to get our act together, and I think our industry has done a really good job in accepting that fact nationwide. And the message from industry has certainly changed. We do have to address what we do on farm, and we are looking at all the best practice measurements, and we are working really hard at meeting every one of those, certainly in terms of our effluent application, um, and how we do that, how we put our fertiliser on, and along with all of that now is record keeping. We're having to, um, measure everything and record it so that it is available for inspection. We'll return soon to learn about the collection and manufacture of agricultural salt. 1 Hello again. Sodium chloride is essential for optimal livestock health and production in many regions of NZ where salt is deficient in soils and pastures. For over seven decades, Dominion Salt has provided most of these needs for livestock through its agricultural division called Summit Salt. Dominion Salt was started in 1942 at Lake Grassmere, and although we're on the Mt Maunganui site, it's still very much concerned with agriculture and is built upon salt, so we are a one-product company. However, around 200,000 tons a year of salt is sent out to the agricultural industry, the paper industry, and, increasingly so, about a third of our revenues are generated from exports overseas, primarily of high-grade food and pharmaceutical salt. We're the only producers, uh, of salt. So, in NZ there is only one salt-producing field, which is Lake Grassmere. But Lake Grassmere is unable to satisfy the demand of NZ and certainly not satisfy the total demand of our exports now. So we import a lot of salt, and the pile behind here is actually primarily Australian salt augmented with salt from Lake Grassmere. So, in a word, we're the only producer. We're certainly not the only seller of salt in NZ. 25% to 30% of the business would be agriculture. In the wider business, obviously a lot more in terms of food and food processing is associated with agriculture, so a long bow would say perhaps 50% of the business could be associated with agriculture. We're an importer into the primary sector, whether that be stock feed, animal health, fertiliser as well, as farms become increasingly aware of nutrient balances and mass balances. We very much are in that sector, and I think that is one of the primary reasons that we've diversified outside of the shores of NZ. The business was originally started by, um, our favourite industrialist George Skellerup back in the '40s, and they were looking for salt to bleach rubber, to re-refine rubber during the war years. Um, over the years, Cerebos Greggs picked up a half share of it, you know, back in the '60s, and you'll know Cerebos Greggs for Gregg's coffee and` and certainly the food products, and the other half was actually owned by Cheetham Salt, out of Australia. We're standing on the stack base at Dominion Salt, Mt Maunganui. The salt has come in off ships, either from our Lake Grassmere operation, and we do some imports to supplement what we can't make at Lake Grassmere. On the stack at any one time, we could have 30,000 ton to 35,000 ton of salt. This is the starting material for whatever we make ` uh, for making all the agricultural products, salt blocks, uh, for fertiliser salt, salt that we recrystallise and turn into high-value pharmacy salt. This is the starting material for everything. Salt is very soluble, and the reason for having the stack lined up high is so that we hopefully can get a surface on it that will shed some water rather than pond and dissolve the salt. There still will be some dissolving, but if we've got a surface on it that water will shed off, we lessen that risk. The raw material, no matter where it comes from, we are bringing in to this site solar-evaporated salt. It comes from a marine brine source, ocean water, uh, dis` It's deposited with sun and wind evaporation and ends up being here. From the raw material, we've got the coarsest product, that we saw in the stack. That's what we use in the fertiliser business. As we wash and clean and dry, we come into some products that are coarser and finer, and we split them in some screening. Coarse ` maybe some agricultural product, but not fertiliser. And medium ` skins and hides type treatment. On the recrystallisation plant, the pharmacy salt, other dairy grades. We've got a much cleaner salt, higher specification. And, finally, a butter salt, which has been milled to the talcum powder type format. From these coarse materials, we put together agricultural mineral mixes. We've got a block, pressed salt block, with minerals in it. And then on a completely different format not made at this site, we have flaky salt, and that is for top-grade food service and consumption at home. We're putting together in our block plant multi-mineral salt blocks ` 20kg salt plus added minerals. Some of those minerals are trace minerals ` iodine, selenium, cobalt. We add those to most of our blocks. We also add some other minerals for a bit of seasonal stuff. Late winter-early spring, we've got a magnesium block that we put out. We do some copper in the autumn. Probably post facial eczema treatment, we've got a block that's higher in copper for cattle. And there's a slightly higher content iodine block as well. Stock generally like salt. However, we also put in some molasses, and we put in a volatile apple flavour as well, uh, and that adds to some attraction. Uh, animals will regularly go and lick the block. Uh, without the molasses and the attractant, sometimes they can be reluctant after they've been and licked a block for a bit. In the world of supplements, most of them are very low in sodium ` palm kernel, lucerne. Maize itself doesn't take up sodium, and so we've got this little balancer that's got calcium, magnesium and sodium in it. And when you're feeding out in silage, you add this to it to get the most out of it. We're in the vacuum refinery, where we recrystallise salt from the raw material and put it into bags for shipping across NZ and into export markets. The vacuum refinery makes high-grade salt, so it goes into dairy products, bread-making, food processing. Much higher quality than the sort of product we would put into agriculture. We're taking the raw crystal. We're putting it back to a brine, and then we're taking a crystal out of it again, and in that process, it becomes cleaner and purer. The vacuum refinery is becoming a more important part of our business. Uh, it` From this site, it does well over 50% of the products we put out of here, and it's growing, and we're doing that on export markets, largely with pharmaceutical salt and with food-grade product. For more information on these and other stories, you can visit our website. Get there via tvnz.co.nz Or if you've missed an episode, you can watch it on TVNZ OnDemand, keyword Rural Delivery. Next week, we learn about the development of an alternative utility farm bike developed for the future. We take a look around historic Te Whanga Station in Wairarapa, home of Te Whanga Angus. And we visit Kerikeri, in Northland, at mandarin harvest time. Thanks for watching. We hope you'll join us again next time. Captions by Kate Parkinson. Edited by Pippa Jefferies. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 (BARKS, GROWLS) BIRDS TWEET