Taupo farmers feature in Country Calendar book

Taupō farmers Mike and Sharon Barton's story features in the commemorative book, Country Calendar - Stories from our Rural Heartland, celebrating the television programme's 50th anniversary.

Taupō farmers Mike and Sharon Barton are suitably modest about their inclusion in a new glossy book featuring 15 of the best stories that have appeared over the past 50 years on New Zealand's longest-running television series, Country Calendar.

They say having the 2013 programme Nitrogen Bomb updated and featured in the book Country Calendar - Stories from our Rural Heartland is testament to all landowners farming around the lake.

"It's a real privilege," says Mike Barton. "What I take heart from is that it represents what all farmers in the catchment have done in terms of accepting a [nitrogen] cap on livestock."

The couple bought their 142-hectare sheep and beef property in Taupō's western bays in 2004.

In the last 13 years in the face of challenges posed by nitrogen restrictions introduced to protect Lake Taupō's water quality, they have launched their own meat brand, Taupō Beef.

The couple, who swapped academic careers for life on the land, also got involved in politics, with Mike chairing farmers' group Taupō Lake Care and becoming a trustee on the Lake Taupō Protection Trust.

As well as attracting the attention of Country Calendar, their success with Taupō Beef saw them took top honours at the 2014 Ballance Farm Environment Awards.

They say the original television item had an enormous reach. Sharon says friends in Argentina and Canada contacted them after seeing the programme on the Discovery Channel and Mike was is often recognised as the guy from Country Calendar programme when he travels around the country.

"It's been quite incredible" she says.

Around eight farmers in the Lake Taupō catchment are now part of the Taupō Beef brand.

Taupō Beef has established markets and Taupō Lamb has now been added to the product line.

Pak'n Save Taupo is selling product, Nadia Lim's My Food Bag is using it, and the couple are working with The Neat Meat company in Auckland. A number of Taupo restaurants and a cafe also have Taupō beef and lamb on their menus.

Mike says every catchment in the country will eventually face the same issues as Lake Taupō in terms of protecting water quality, and their property is now being treated as a case study.

As well as talking to farmers in other catchments they are constantly in contact with scientists, policy makers and university graduates from around the world.

"As [nitrogen caps] roll out to other catchments New Zealand will have to sort out how it deals with it, because the real price producers are getting is declining."

He says the usual option of intensifying may no longer be an option.

The next challenge for the Bartons is to see whether the international market will pay a premium for their product to meet the costs of environmental protection.

In the meantime they are rapt that their story was considered interesting enough to make it into the Country Calendar celebratory book.

The 10-page feature on the Bartons includes some stunning full-page photographs of the property by New Zealand photographer Rob Suisted.

- The book is on sale now at local bookshops and retails at $59.99.