Ōpepe Farm Trust oversees the collectively managed 455ha Te Mania dairy farm, 345ha Te Maru dairy units and Te Mara, a 2,400ha sheep and beef operation near Taupō.
An indigenous trust has scaled up its commitment to restoring the land and its tribal owners’ reconnection to the land it farms, extending an 84-hectare regenerative-based trial across its entire 3200-ha commercial operation.
Ōpepe Farm Trust oversees the collectively managed 455-ha Te Mania dairy farm, 345-ha Te Maru dairy units and Te Mara, a 2400-ha sheep and beef operation near Taupō.
It operates as an Ahu Whenua Land Trust, a legacy vehicle used by Māori land owners to utilise one or more blocks of tribal land for activities such as beef, sheep and dairy farming and horticulture.
Trustees can only act in the best interest of beneficiaries of the land, with the appointed Ōpepe Trust reporting to almost 6000 collective tribal owners. They must govern the whenua for the benefit of all.
The legal structure is a legacy of colonisation when the Crown sought to move from the Māori practice of joint customary ownership to the European practice of individual ownership of land.
Yet the mission is grounded in tikanga/tribal values – to support and sustain the mana and wellbeing of the lands, marae and people of Ōpepe Farm Trust.
“If we aren’t restoring the land, we aren’t restoring ourselves,” Ōpepe Farm General Partnership Limited chairman Jan Hania said.
“It’s about how we move beyond the system that we have to a restorative and resilient system.
“We’re also undertaking deepened cultural and historical mapping and learnings, this being an important thoroughfare for Tuwharetoa in the past, with a rich narrative through which we can enliven the farm team and owner’s reconnection to this whenua.”
The farm sits above Lake Taupō, and as such it already operates under stricter nitrogen input limits introduced to cut overall catchment leaching into the lake by 20 per cent, as part of the Lake Taupō Protection Project initiated around 2001.
With Mt Ruapehu beyond, this location not only brings the challenge of buffeting and cold winds but also long dry summers and pumice soils, making for tough forage and feed-growing conditions.
The trust is among 10 farms in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty in the Rere ki Uta Rere ki Tai pilot project, which focuses on soil science and mātauranga.
Their involvement followed a four-year transition to a more resilient farming operation through healthy animals, thriving biodiversity and restoring soil microbiology.
Rere ki uta rere ki tai comes to an end in March 2024, after two years of funding from Our Land and Water.
Hania said achieving all that was planned and minimising fertiliser inputs would take some years but the Trust was committed.
“We brought in advisor, Phil Schofield, to oversee the land regeneration into the future during its involvement in the Rere ki Uta Rere ki Tai pilot project,” Hania said.
“Phil brings specific experience in some similarly located farm operations.
“As we talked, he looked at the whole farm and said, if you’re going to go whole hog, here’s the way to go.
“With Rere ki Uta Rere ki Tai, we’ve trialled seed mixes and adapted our fertiliser regime accordingly to revitalise the living microbiology of the soil.
“Phil’s experience with farms with similar soils and climate helped give us confidence to go to the next level.”
Dairy cow numbers have been cut from 2110 to 1950 and seaweed bio-stimulants were added to a specialised fertiliser mix on the 84ha trial area to kick start biology where an initial 10ha of summer diverse pasture was planted and 20ha crop of permanent diverse pasture.
Nitrogen is still used but the transition away from inputs is guided by the Ōpepe management team, PerrinAg, the Rere ki Uta Rere ki Tai team and Schofield.
Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions will be tracked and better managed, to eventually replace imported feed such as palm kernel with locally sourced supplements.
Reducing farm waste and diversifying food products to directly source the owners and local community is another focus for Ōpepe.
“There’s stacks to do to optimise the land,” Hania said.
“With planting out gullies and less grazeable land areas into native, and seeing what biodiversity or carbon markets might bring to speed up that transition.
“We are carrying out a baseline soil carbon stocktake as we undertake this transition.”
The trust is reconnecting with mātauranga knowledge – Māori science – as part of its toolbox.
“People will see, feel and experience smells and see birds and see the shiny coat on their animals and they’ll dig into the soil and see microbiology that’s alive,” Hanis said.
“They’ll see multi-species crops, forests thriving. These are all elements of mātauranga that we elevate.
“We will learn more too about seasonal changes associated with local nature indicators, and we will look to learn more of the maramataka (Māori lunar calendar) approach as we progress.”
As a commercial and revenue-generating arm of the wider Ōpepe Farm Trust Group, the profitability of farm operations drives other activities and requires investment optimisation for the next generation and for the whenua going forward.
But, Hania said, the trust considered the “reciprocity” of its operation.
“We asked who are we serving? What are we giving back? How do we restore the whenua?
“This is how the health of the land is demonstrably being restored, how the mauri of the land and the people is being revitalised.
“Respect, responsibility, reciprocity, redistribution, reverence and reconnection are absolutely critical to how we need to be as a society, not just as a farm.
“This is not just about climate change, but as much about restoring biodiversity and adapting our food systems as well.”
He added: “If it’s going to be extractive and destructive, the business shouldn’t operate. This is the reframe required for society”.
Change is about having the right people talking the right language as much as changing fertiliser and seed mix regimes.
Bringing staff on board with on-farm days where they learn about visual soil assessments and observe changes in biology and animal behaviour is part of the process.
“If people feel it and own the outcome themselves, it’s an opportunity to enrich us and the land through a more holistic approach,” Hania said.
“Once we had others speak to the trust including our soil advisor, off we went. We are instilling a learning and growth mindset in our team.”
Leighton Swan is Ōpepe Dairy operations manager for the Ōpepe Farm Trust land.
Cutting nitrogen in times when grass growth is needed has challenged his conventional farming approach.
“My first reaction was a [expletive] moment, and I said to the trust, ‘But this was a small trial, and it has now become our whole operation?’ I guess I explained that there will be teething issues, and some real system changes involved.
“The challenge is finding the balance point for cow numbers. It brings short-term challenges but in the long run, it will pay off when we find the system that works.”
The farm is high input for production per hectare and per cow because of the harsh climate.
Balance day for Ōpepe will be in October, later than most others, and the grass growing season is short.
“We can be 10 days between green and growing and drought,” Swan said.
“The hope is that a different [more diverse pasture] system will be more resilient to drying out.”
Hania believed most gardeners, hunters or those connected to nature had a sense of how soils can feel.
“There isn’t a prescription. This is the difference – people have to tune into digging holes, smelling the soil, seeing the growth of various species in different climatic extremes and learning how to learn.
“Different kingdoms of species are all apparent through your fungi, insects, nematodes, soil bacteria all in balance, then you know you’re in a living ecosystem.
“Our team have seen the vibrancy of the soil and the forage species coming through. I think we’ve convinced Leighton, he’s into it, and it’s a matter of supporting him through the leaner times. There’s going to be leaner times because of the geo-physical conditions we’re in.
“The aspiration is that those soils will hold more life, which reproduces the natural cycles of mineral cycling and uptake from the atmosphere and through the microbiology.
Ōpepe Farm Trust has a lease agreement with the Lake Taupō Forest Trust on 1350ha, which offsets livestock emissions. It’s envisaged that building underground microbial diversity will increase soil carbon, which we are measuring and looking to see net increases.
Swan learnt from experience and on-farm days such as at Atiamuri farmers Jenny and Miah Smith, who introduced diverse pasture and seaweed to increase biology more than eight years ago.
“Having Miah and Jenny gave the confidence that he’s doing it in a very similar environment to this farm, and going to visit Gavin Fisher’s organic farm through the project this year also helped, and bouncing ideas off other farmers.
“The Trust’s goal with nitrogen is a minimum of one or two dressings a year, so we want to make it like Miahs’ system where he’ll put it on if he needs to.”
The 14 species used in the Ōpepe trial are; oats, chicory, plantain, Persian clover, white and red clover, berseen, spitfire rape, pasja forage brassica, barkant turnip, sorghum, sunflower, phacelia and vetch.
Outside the trial Ōpepe has concentrated on the four-family approach with several different grasses (with minimal perennial ryegrass), plenty of legumes, and plantain and chicory being the key inputs for the permanent pasture mix.
Undersowing with a multi-species pasture without spraying out first led to poor results. “It was woefully unsuccessful. And this was very a useful learning for us, adapting spray mixes also.”
But Swan has seen positive changes.
“I can see in that multi-species is there’s a lot more worms and that’s a good thing.
“Over winter, the two paddocks with the multi-species grew really well when the rest of the farm was sick and hungry.
“It’s only a small area but it appears to be working well. To be fair they’ve been some of the worst paddocks, the ones we chose to trial with were some of the worst.”
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