Peter Bodeker: Fund helps to keep good ideas flowing

Modern dairy farmers spend their days juggling staff, on compliance issues, animal health, calving and doing the books.

Throw into the mix a couple of hundred cows and I can assure you it takes more than a piece of No 8 wire and a pair of good gumboots to keep a successful business running.

Dairy farmers rely on technology and have to be innovative; it's essential to their business. New ideas and fresh thinking keep our dairy farmers ahead of the pack in an internationally competitive market.

A collective fund of over $47 million pays for investment in industry-good activities and responds to the need for innovative thinking.

Through a levy, every dairy farmer contributes about $10 per cow per year, which Dairy InSight invests on farmers' behalf.

Present industry-funded projects include improving water use efficiency on irrigated dairy farms, looking at milk characteristics, managing nutrition-related lameness in cows, automatic dairy farming, once-a-day milking and contributing to the national TB pest management strategy. This year there are 101 investments.

New Zealand is a country filled with talented people who have great ideas, and deciding what to invest in is no easy task.

But it looks as if the industry is on the right track.

A survey of 5000 dairy farmers, funded jointly by Dairy InSight and the Fonterra Shareholders Council, shows farmers' money is being well spent and on the type of research that will be essential to their business.

Farmers are primarily looking for investment in activities that will reduce on-farm production costs. They are also keen on investment in workforce development programmes.

Highest priorities are disease eradication, animal reproduction, feed production, farm management and animal health and welfare.

Sixty-seven per cent of farmer respondents indicated they were always looking for new technology and ideas.

Environmental research is also a key component of the funding portfolio. Eighty-eight per cent of dairy farmers said they tried to minimise the impact their farm had on the environment.

Research into sustainable farming includes an investment of over half a million dollars into agricultural emissions.

Over the next few months Dairy InSight will be assessing which of this year's research proposals best meet the expectations of dairy farmers.

The research is focused on three key areas: farming productivity, farming business and community interface.

* Peter Bodeker is the chief executive of Dairy InSight.