Rural Delivery: Organic dairy farmers' field day brimful with good vibes

By DR CLIVE DALTON*

It's not often you come away from a field day buzzing, but the people at a recent event organised by the Organic Dairy Producers Group at Paeroa certainly did.

The buzz was generated by the farmer speakers' enthusiasm, commitment and mana. I haven't felt such positive vibes at a farming event since the days of Dr Campbell McMeekan, at Ruakura.

The group had a dodgy start some years ago. It came out of a meeting in the Cambridge Town Hall, where people made it clear they wanted a fast track to organics, and to avoid going through the massive learning curve of the first organic pioneers. The instigators got only scepticism from the establishment which, smelling research funds and markets, is now falling over itself to get on the band wagon.

Once formed, the initial group had no funds to hire a venue for an inaugural meeting to test dairy farmers' interest, so the Waikato Polytech offered them a free room.

We heard about the negative reception they received from New Zealand Dairy Group - being told they were small time and would never have enough product to be worth collecting or processing separately. They were left in no doubt that, in effect, they were going to be a bit of a nuisance.

So the original group of about a dozen farmers were worried about the long road ahead to credibility, a market for their milk, if necessary, outside their dairy company, and where they would get the money. And, how they would survive what they were told would be a massive drop in production and profit.

Well, have things changed? At the Paeroa conference and field day, Fonterra was leading the charge. Its target is 250 farms producing organic milk by 2005. So the bandwagon is rolling.

Massey University has dedicated a research farm to organics and is offering courses on organic farming systems, both extramurally and internally.

Dexcel is helping with financial farm monitoring, and veterinary practices are seeing the wisdom in supporting organics and homeopathy, despite the fact that one of the main benefits of going organic is to almost make your vet redundant.

But you have to hear the farmers speak and sense their passion to get the real message. The gloom-and-doom predictions have been silenced.

It's important to understand what drove these formerly conventional dairy farmers into organics. They were on the treadmill of moving to more cows, more nitrogen, more labour, more stress on stock and staff and a poorer prospect of a sensible life for them and their families.

Something had to give to get off the treadmill and they were prepared to accept less income.

But the outstanding thing seen in the accounts is that, of course, production dropped in the first years of conversion, but it was amazing how quickly it went up again - maybe not per cow but certainly per hectare.

In no time income was back to where it was originally. Mainly because of their savings on feed costs and veterinary expenses.

Well, converting to organics or not, there are cost-cutting lessons here. These organic farmers have the milk in the vat and the money in the bank to prove that the answer really does lie in the soil.

*Dr Clive Dalton is technical editor of Lifestyle Block