Swing to dairying under way in 'limitless' south

By Philippa Stevenson

Dairy farmers in Canterbury range from old hands to new-style equity partnerships but they share a common belief - the southern dairying boom has only just begun.

A Lincoln University study shows that in the 10 years to 1998, suppliers to the former South Island Dairy Company converted 102,936ha to dairying in Canterbury, Southland and Otago.

They brought in 262,000 cows to bring the South Island total to 625,591, out of a national tally of 3.2 million.

On-farm investment over the period was $511 million.

Former policeman Geoff Stevenson married into a dairy farming family about 24 years ago and swapped nabbing criminals for milking cows. He and his wife, Julie, bought and ran the 145ha family farm at Leeston until four seasons ago, when they caught the conversion bug and took a leap of faith on 275ha of sheep country at Te Pirita, near Dunsandel.

Mr Stevenson said the land did not look great for any farming. "It was the sort of place where even the rabbits took a cut lunch," he said.

He put in three bores and irrigation has transformed the property. He now feels "the potential is limitless" considering the soil's lack of humus and history of little fertiliser application.

A month after the Stevensons moved in, a corporate farmer, Tasman Agriculture, bought the neighbouring property and more followed. The area that four years ago employed 10 staff now employs more than 50. Eighty-three dairy farmers attended a recent local discussion group.

A stone's throw from Ashburton, Richard and Chrissie Wright manage a 322ha farm in which they are equity partners with four other couples, all from the North Island. The company is called Quintag Holdings.

Dairy Group director Jim van der Poel and his wife, Sue, are Quintag shareholders and they are not the only northerners around the boardroom table to have been attracted by southern prospects. Another property has been converted to dairying in the last year by Cambridge director Hilary Webber and husband Colin.

The Quintag operation, in its third season, milks 1300 cows in two herds with teams of fulltime and relief milkers working in two-hour shifts from 4 am. There is a break in the middle of the day and the last cow is out of the shed at 8 pm.

A tanker, with 29,000-litre capacity, calls twice a day to keep up with the milk flow.

Mr Wright, originally from Britain, worked on North Island dairy farms before moving south.

Canterbury - where with irrigation "you control the weather" - was definitely the place for farm ownership, he said. "In Canterbury you are totally focused on milking cows. In the Waikato, we used to rush milking to go out and deal to the weeds. Crazy."

John Sunckell is the third generation on the 240ha family dairy farm at Elsmere, where his grandfather arrived in 1929.

He recently put in a 30-bale herringbone dairy shed to replace an 18-bale shed and has expanded the farm's irrigated area to 130ha, allowing the herd to increase from 200 to 330 cows.

Anchor Milk senior field officer Shane Lodge said the company had indications from 35 people that they wanted to convert farms to dairying, adding 15,000 cows to the southern herd, if there was no moratorium on new supply.

"But we stopped taking expressions of interest a couple of months ago. If the moratorium came off there would be a rush."