Pellow family arable farming in Onewhero for 124 years

Chris Pellow in the last maize paddock to be harvested this season. Photo / Catherine Fry

There has been a member of the Pellow family at the helm of the home farm in Onewhero since 1900, and each one has contributed to the farm’s evolution over the past 124 years.

The present guardian of the land is Chris Pellow.

Pellow’s great-grandfather, William Trane Pellow, broke in the land and developed it into a dairy farm.

His father, Doug, converted it into a sheep and beef farm in 1952.

“I always wanted to farm, but I preferred using machinery to grow produce,” Chris said.

“I completed a three-year horticultural cadetship and worked on several different vegetable farms.”

He returned to the home farm in 1989 to work with his father.

At that point, it was still sheep and beef, but Pellow was keen to exercise his fascination with arable grain farming.

“Dad grew crops for summer livestock feed, which wasn’t common practice in those days.”

He started a side business growing greens, sweetcorn and pumpkins.

In the mid-90s they dropped the greens and continued with the sweetcorn while the Japanese export market was going strong but in the early 2000s, the market became non-profitable.

“We started diversifying into maize on a large scale in 1995, until it became our main crop.”

The attention turns to maize

The remains of the winter beans and lupins are still decomposing by maize harvest time. Photo / Catherine Fry

“I’ve always taken note of what they are doing in the USA, who’ve been using no-till cultivation since the 1960s and had 40 years of results and data available in the early 2000s,” Pellow said.

“I was interested if it would work in New Zealand.”

There were also fuel costs and time/labour constraints to consider carrying out full cultivation when they were really using it only to bury residue.

Pellow looked at strip-till cultivation, but decided to try the ultimate, no-till, starting small with half a field and building from there.

“I’m always looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs.”

The last maize paddock waiting to be harvested on the Pellows' home farm. Photo / Catherine Fry

The introduction of precision technology about 2005 allowed guided application of fertiliser and chemicals, coupled with no tilling. Pellow is farming as he has always wanted, and using machinery he couldn’t even have imagined as a small boy.

The Pellow farm now consists of three properties over 146ha, with 122ha in continuous cropping, 7ha in pine forestry and about 17ha unsuitable for cropping leased out for beef and sheep.

Pellow acknowledged the soils were challenging, with clay and clay loams on the home farm, and silt and sandy loam on the other two properties.

He is always evaluating new crops and tailoring farming techniques based on the previous season’s production.

Using precision technology and soil testing, the system has been tweaked down to 1ha grids, ensuring fertiliser application and planting are exactly right for that area.

Present practices

Precision technology has been a game-changer for the Pellow farm.

With a deep understanding of his land, Pellow has worked out a suitable winter cover crop mix of fava beans and lupins.

They are direct drilled into un-tilled soil and the remains of the maize left to decompose back into the soil.

“The cover crop is purely to look after the soil, keeping living roots of varying lengths in the ground and keeping the soil biology going,” Pellow said.

“They provide nitrogen back to the soil after the nitrogen-hungry maize crop.”

In spring the beans and lupins are rolled down before the maize is direct drilled.

Before it decomposes completely, the bean and lupin residue acts as a mulch for the young maize plants, reducing weed competition.

Pellow said it was a good system for his farm.

The remains of both crops contribute to the soil carbon content.

Less herbicide is used because the winter cover crop mulch reduces the weed burden, and the nitrogen fertiliser requirement has steadily declined.

Chris Pellow enjoys using the heavy farm machinery. Photo / Catherine Fry

Combined with the no-till cultivation, soil disturbance is minimal.

Pellow extended their soil testing to 20cm deep. The farms reveal an impressive soil structure to 20cm, but the cultivation methods are also influencing the soil deeper than that.

With paddock soil testing on a three-year rotation, the farm has excellent data on where to plant particular crops.

Pellow changes his maize hybrids depending on what the market demands, switching between silage and grain for animal consumption or food grain.

Most years it would be 90% grain and 10% silage.

The farm is managed by Pellow and a part-time worker. Pellow is always learning about new ideas and techniques.

He has held field days with the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) and believes it’s always good for farmers to share knowledge with one another.