Ambitious farmers put heat on leaders

Go-getting southern dairy farmers, who back the South Island to eclipse North Island milk production, are looking to industry leaders to match their ambitions beyond the farmgate.

New Canterbury dairy farmer Errol Begg was attracted to the industry three years ago, impressed by the marketing performance of the Dairy Board and the financial certainty that gives producers.

He said high-achieving farmers had migrated south in droves and locals had joined them to rapidly expand dairying in Canterbury, Otago and Southland. They wanted to keep up the development, which is estimated in a Lincoln University study to have poured $521 million into the regions' economies over 10 years.

Mr Begg said that if the industry outside their gates did not continue to cater for farmers' ambitions, they would be ripe for approaches from others keen to take their milk.

He pointed to Itoham Foods, one of the biggest food companies in the world, which already has a stake in Canterbury with a half-share of the Five Star Beef feedlot near Ashburton.

"It wouldn't need to be even an existing dairy company," he said.

Milk production has grown 35 per cent in the past three years in the South Island to bring it to nearly 20 per cent of the nation's total.

A moratorium on new supply has stemmed the rising tide for now, although existing farms have still been expanding.

An immediate challenge to North Island dominance may yet seem a country mile away, but Southland and Canterbury, which have had the most growth, have huge unrealised potential to quickly close the gap.

Anchor Milk senior field officer Shane Lodge said only 6 per cent of land suitable in Southland for milking cows was at present in dairying. The 48 per cent of suitable dairy farms in Mid-Canterbury meant plenty of spare capacity there as well.

And as in Texas, things tend to be done on a larger scale in the South Island.

On average, farms and herds are bigger, stocking rates are higher, and milk volumes, protein and milkfat content greater than in the north.

Those factors, combined with lower land prices, fewer stock health problems and fewer climatic swings, have proved attractive to progressive farmers.

Mr Begg is one of a growing number of born and bred southerners who have switched to dairying instead of selling out to a North Islander and continuing sheep farming or cropping elsewhere.

He acknowledged that many locals had initially resented the northerners as cocky interlopers, but said that view was changing as dairy farming offered them business opportunities such as grazing or feed-cropping which, in some cases, provided rare financial security.

Many of the Canterbury dairy units, which can top 900ha and run more than 1200 cows, are simply milking platforms. Young stock are grazed off the farm and feed supplements are imported. The average size herd nationwide is 220 cows.

Mr Begg knows the exact centre of his milking platform - the second farm he has converted to dairying since 1996.

He used satellite technology to pinpoint the heart of the 220ha property so a giant irrigator could pivot on the point and gush water from a lengthy, dinosaur-like arm, which swings around the entire block unimpeded by trees or buildings.

Electric fences are flattened in its path, to spring up again behind its crawling wheels, while the 50-bale rotary shed, also at the centre of the farm, was built to be safely skimmed by the arching arm.

Irrigation is the key to dairying in Canterbury where farmers say it gives them the means to control the weather. They believe that with irrigation, grass growth can go sky-high.

In 1996, Mr Begg sold his 322ha beef and cropping family farm to a five-member partnership from the Waikato, including Dairy Group director Jim van der Poel. He bought a cheaper 240ha block, converted it to a dairy farm and now milks 800 cows.

The second block was developed this year and has 500 cows. Both farms were irrigated and each capable of carrying up to 1550 cows.