Research farm to test dairy organics

Massey University dairy cattle researchers are establishing the nation's first organic dairy research farm.

The farm will take three years to be certified to an organic standard, but once running it will be compared with an identical unit run on conventional lines to assess costs and yields.

Project leader Zarah Smith said the growing organic movement needed sound scientific knowledge and information, while not much research was yet available for dairy farmers trying to make informed decisions about the cost or effects of changing to organics.

"We're hoping to identify the everyday problems farmers might face, find solutions, help set guidelines and offer helpful tips," she said.

The research could help conventional dairy farmers by offering alternatives to using antibiotics, sprays and animal health products.

Organic farm advocate Nicola Shadbolt said the research unit would address needs identified by industry and seek certification to Agriquality's recently launched Certenz organic standard.

The Dairy Board has previously said it wanted only a minimum standard for organic produce, sufficient to get the food into key customer countries, with any higher standards for organic dairy produce to be defined by the consumers buying the products.

The Dairy Board is already selling organic Anchor-brand butter in Europe, made from Austrian cream, and is gathering marketing information for an industry based on organic milk from New Zealand.

It says the dairy industry has identified two key requirements of organic certification for New Zealand dairy goods - allowing the product to be legitimately labelled "organic" and enabling access to the three key trading blocs, Europe, Japan and United States.

The Dairy Board has said organic exports from New Zealand would require at least a million litres of milk at the peak of the season to be cost-effective, which would require at least 260 farms in a relatively concentrated area.

Massey University has considerable experience running complete farming systems side by side to provide scientific data, with four years work on spring and autumn calving herds on the Massey No 1 Farm.

Ms Shadbolt, a senior lecturer in agribusiness and farm management at Massey, said there was a lack of scientific data about organic farming or its products.

"There is a lot of anecdotal information around but a dearth of quantitative stuff and we are set up to do this research," she said. "To be able to measure differences between organic and conventional farm systems in such diverse areas as soil micro-organisms, gut flora and milk health will provide some fascinating information that will help both farming systems to improve over time."

Ms Smith said the process of achieving organic certification would be documented, including problems encountered and decisions made. This information would be made available to farmers considering conversion to organic production who may be tackling similar issues.

New Zealand has 14,700 dairy farms but just 18 are certified for organic production.

- NZPA