Rural delivery: Go-it-alone sheep farmers venturing into new pastures

By JANET TYSON*

The green of New Zealand is changing. Where once it was one shade of grass, now it is a patchwork of different pastures, forages and fodders.

Like tourists dining at the Viaduct Basin, sheep and cattle have their own trendy high-energy salads to feast on. Instead of rocket, mizuna and chervil, it is chicory, pasja and lucerne.

You cannot pick up a farming paper without seeing how someone is doing trials with fodder crops or brassicas.

Over the autumn, tractors and contractors were working around the clock on some farms, meeting the demand for new pasture and fodder crops.

One farmer told me his regrassing programme would triple his pasture productivity to 18,000kg of dry matter per hectare. Just think what that will do for his bull beef business.

Everyone has caught on quickly to the spectacular growth potential of lambs, when genetics and feed quality come together at their best.

The spinoff value of feeding all animals well, in everything from increased calf and lamb survival to decreased animal health expenditure, is well-recognised.

But I cannot help wondering whether everyone should have his own brassica patch or try to lift lamb production from birth to finishing all by himself.

I wonder if some are risking too much by aiming to be super-finishers on land where it has been hard to keep pasture established. New crops in marginal locations are a risky venture, even if everything has gone well this year.

High hopes have been rewarded in an excellent season, and the biggest problem most people face is what to do with all that grass. It is even green in areas where there is usually still permafrost at this time of year.

In such good times, when everything seems possible, who wants to take a cold, hard look at the realities of lifting productivity, year in, year out?

But when all the costs of management and establishment are examined, it may not be best to "do it all yourself," despite the fact that it is an honourable Kiwi tradition. Instead, it may be best to focus more tightly on what you do exceedingly well - breeding or feeding.

If so, we should hear a lot more about "stratified farming" or "in-line farming." It is a common concept in the beef industry but relatively new to some sheep sectors.

True stratified production that involves establishing long-term commitments between breeders and finishers, setting up a win-win relationship that smooths out price fluctuations, is still relatively rare.

Such initiatives are still confined to a small group of confident innovators.

The do-it-yourself Kiwi wants to make (or lose) all the money himself rather than have a setup that would cut someone else in. That character trait could stand in our way as we try to push productivity boundaries.

Meat firms say the most dangerous animal is a farmer with grass in front of him. That is when supply contracts tend to go out of the window because there is no need to send animals to the processing plant.

It is no bad thing if the balance of supply and demand tips back in favour of the grower now and then.

But it pays to remember that as the market's appetite for lamb grows, so does the length of the season for consuming it.

One of the strengths of stratified production, and other schemes for working in with other specialist farmers, is the ability to build long-term relationships with the best-paying customers because you can assure supply through the bad times as well as the good.

* Janet Tyson is a freelance researcher, editor and writer specialising in agriculture