In this series, the team each offers a big-picture strategy for food & fibre.
My Farm today looks significantly different to what it did 30 years ago. It will be different again in 2050.
For a start, 30 years ago stock water came from streams. As a family, we’ve proudly fenced most of these off – pumps and pipes do the watering now.
Paddock numbers have increased from 30 to 156. Our neighbours now include lifestyle blocks, dairy sheds, kiwifruit orchards and Pinus radiata plantations.
Our place hasn’t undergone wholesale conversion, but it is more intensive and diverse. Sheep and beef remain, but dairy support, cropping, horticulture, off-farm income, bees and carbon are all parts of the business now. We’re eyeing up energy, too.
Although nature isn’t yet a major profit source for us, we have proudly enhanced the bush. More than a few cockies have commented that the scrub and rocks – once a hazard to farming – now offer significant returns as agri-tourism, attracting AirBnB guests who value fresh air, birdlife and farm life.
We didn’t make these changes because we dislike the status quo, because they are easy or out of a save-the-planet wokeness. We just believe that owning a farm is a joy and a privilege. These things make us happy, and we want our kids to have a crack at farming when their turn comes. So, we’re making the farm work in new and different ways to keep it viable for the world they’ll step into as adults.
As a farm (and a nation), we are well past peak cow and sheep numbers. For us, growth by more cattle is not an option; bulls replaced breeding cows decades ago. I don’t think land, man or beast could handle an increase from 1200 to 2500 kg/ha wintered live weight. So, year by year, we’re turning up the complexity and diversification dial on the farm.
As a farmer, I want to know that the bodies I elect and fund are set up to help us on this path of growing differently.
There has been some good discussion about the role of industry good lately. I welcome it. The recent AGMARDT& KPMG report – The Common Ground – looks at the 150+ bodies that lead the sector, including membership organisations like Federated Farmers, levy bodies like Beef and Lamb NZ and others such as AWDT or the Aotearoa Catchment Group Collective.
The report suggests that while the current system isn’t entirely flawed, there is a heap of duplication and that we’re struggling to get in front of new and hard issues like data management, climate change, water quality or meeting our global consumers’ needs. The report says a new way of working together is required.
Ag loves a sporting analogy – so here’s one that works for this issue. Wingers and props generally have little in common outside of rugby. Yet they come together as a single team when the goal is simple (to win a rugby game) and their roles are well defined – blue moons and beers afterwards are as likely.
Great teams don’t worry about the ref either. As a sector, we need to move much of industry good away from the game of politics. We might have a more friendly ref in Andrew Hoggard now, but to reach our big hairy goal of doubling export revenue, we need to get in front of the inevitable rule changes that will follow future elections, or the distractions by climate conspiracy streakers.
It’s entirely within our control to act on the issues we know the next government ref will call us on – emissions reductions, water, on-farm biodiversity and the like. Under a fit-for-purpose industry good system, we can hand them the plan, show them the progress and get back to playing the ever-evolving game of farming. Rather than fighting every red card and wrong call.
We’ll win the game by doubling exports. To do that, we’ll need to be both the best farmers in the world and for the world. The Common Ground report is the prompt we need to really look at ourselves and ask if our industry good system is up to that challenge.
It’s not a perfect report, but it acknowledges that we need more than the platitudes about incremental improvement or removal of red tape we’ve become used to. It says that we should use this breathing room afforded by a friendly ref, to step back and look at how we play the game.
Like my family’s on-farm change to bulls or horticulture development, this kind of system change will be hard and has some risk. But staying the course in a rapidly changing world has its own risks too. I’d rather take the pain of change, than the pain of regret.
DISCLAIMER: The thoughts and opinions shared here are my own and don’t represent anyone else, including any organisations or groups I’m connected with. They’re based on my personal perspectives and experiences.
More: Weir is an associate trustee of AGMARDT and a Beef + Lamb New Zealand farmer-elected director.
Props and wingers on the same team
