New Zealand farmers have done the tough part.

Our pasture-based farming system is acknowledged as efficient, having the world’s lowest carbon footprint. Our animal welfare systems are considered world class and we no longer engage in deforestation.

These are some patriotic, baseless claims. This is what global politicians, food processors and retailers say.

But what they acknowledge and what they can quantify are two different factors.

As we say, farmers have done the tough part; they now need to show that data to those who need to know.

Having crossed the first hurdle, our customers want continuous improvement.

The quest for data to prove that sustainability is being acted on is coming from multiple directions: politicians, financiers and companies who have publicly announced carbon-zero targets, non-government organisations who want faster action in climate change, and consumers.

Rules and regulations require regular reporting on meeting sustainability targets but companies are also being judged by pressure groups and their consumers on progress or lack of it.

There are benefits to farmers from meeting these requirements.

That accumulation of information will give farmers greater insight into multiple aspects of their business, but there will also be another significant benefit.

Food companies and retailers today talk about having a partnership with farmers and their processors rather than basic commercial relationship.

They certainly want quality and functionality, but as they meet reporting requirements demanded by governments, boards and consumers they will need buy-in from throughout the supply chain.

They also need confidence and trust that the data being provided is accurate and in a form that is comparable and relevant.

The world is moving fast. We have a ticket to play in the major leagues and we cannot let this slip through our fingers, exposing us to lower-paying, uncertain, price-driven customers.

But we need a process that doesn’t require the filing of duplicated data.

OSPRI, dairy and meat companies, StatsNZ, regional councils and the Ministry for Primary Industries all require data, much of which overlaps.

It must be a priority for those parties to get together and find a way that farmers can collate that relevant data in a way that is useful for all parties.

As we report this week, global agricultural trade is slowing as countries become more nationalistic and protectionist.

There has also been a deluge of rules and regulations imposed by governments such as the European Union, often under the guise of environmental protection but which some say will be at the expense of food security.

One proposal that has earned the wrath of exporters such as NZ is the EU’s deforestation policy, a blanket requirement for producers of products such as beef to prove it did result in deforestation.

Record agricultural subsidies of nearly NZ$1.4 trillion were paid by 54 wealthy and emerging countries each year between 2020 and 2022, but the trend is to start linking payment with environment outcomes.

These two factors are likely to result in lower domestic food production in places like the EU, but the demand for food is not going to slow.

NZ is ideally placed to full that void, but it will require some changes in the way we supply. We will need to quantify just how efficient and sustainable we are at producing food. 

Almost a generation’s worth of dairy farming data has been captured by DairyNZ’s DairyBase platform as it marks its 20th year of existence this season.

Kicking off in 2005-06, DairyBase launched as a system for collecting dairy farmers’ financial and physical farm data. It came into being just as the internet’s penetration was starting to hook deeper into farm businesses albeit often a slower process, thanks to dial-up modems.

Today the system captures data from about 20% of the country’s dairy farmers, identifying them by region, farm system type (1-5) and overall performance. It provides a way for farmers to compare their financial and physical performance with their peers, within region, system and the country.

Mark Storey, DairyNZ’s head of economics, says 20 years of data collection also makes DairyBase an invaluable long-running longitudinal data base that not only provides dairy farmers with an idea of how they are performing, but also generates industry meta data for identifying trends and doing deep research dives.

His efforts in dissecting the data and comparing farm revenue, cost centres and profitability today against 20 years ago also provide some insights into how the country’s top-performing farmers channel their expenditure.

“Looking back in time to compare the top farmers of 2005-06 with 2022-23, there are some really notable differences in their budgets.” 

He said the top quartile farmers in 2022-23 are spending more on feed supplement expenses. Back in 2005-06 that was about 45c/kg milksolids, compared to over a $1.00/kg MS today. Adjusting for inflation that amounts to an additional 80c/kg MS, representing 20% of their operating expenses.

“I think this reflects that in those good payout years farmers were able to optimise their farm’s viability by utilising supplements more intensely.” 

He notes, however, that this has tended to subside in recent seasons, partly in response to the inclusion of the Fat Evaluation Index test in 2018. 

The overall increase in supplements also partly reflects farmers’ response to some tough seasons. He cites his own family’s experience in north Waikato, where summers can hit hard.

“Supplements have been quite critical for farm performance in the last 10 years and pure grass-fed systems can’t always cut it in those conditions.”
But the fact the top 25% of farmers in 2022-23 also spend about 30c/kg MS more on labour and pasture management than in 2005-06 indicates they are combining good grass management skills with smart supplement use that enhances production, rather than simply replacing grass with bought-in feed and wasting their cheapest resource.

“The top quartile of farmers, by making investments in supplements, labour and pasture management…

“We do have to remember though that operating profit is only one indicator of  financial performance, for example it  does not reflect expenses like interest costs, which have grown significantly in the past few years.”

Fertiliser costs as an inflation-adjusted percentage of farm costs have also dropped for the top performing farmers, from about 12% of farm expenses in 2005-06 to about 8% in 2022-23.

“We saw especially with the post-Covid- Ukraine conflict price spike how fertiliser use dropped. It is one of the things farmers do have immediate control over and can respond to the quickest. They also have a lot more information now regarding their nitrogen surplus, and understanding what their optimal application is. 

“I think there have been some marked signs of improved practices.”
Regionally, Canterbury proves to be the most profitable area to dairy farm in, coming out top for Systems 5, 4 and 3. Bay of Plenty claims the top profitability for System 2, and nationally across all systems, while Taranaki is winner for all-grass System 1 type dairying.

With DairyBase accounting for about 20% of dairy farmers nationally, Storey said it represents a very robust sample providing invaluable industry data cross-tabulated by region and system type.  

However, in an effort to get even more farmers on board, DairyNZ is removing the $100 a year fee.

“DairyBase has been a great example of DairyNZ bringing our farm systems and credible evidence-based approach together to benefit all farmers,” said Storey.

A new national database for recording and reporting the work being done on land for New Zealand’s waterways launches today.

Farmers and community groups have been working to improve the health of our rivers and lakes – planting trees, fencing rivers, changing farm management practices – but what exactly has been done, and where? 

The Healthy Waterways register is a free online tool that makes it possible to record the work New Zealanders are doing to improve rural water quality all over the country.

Healthy Waterways enables restoration activities to be recorded in a systematic way, Katharina Doehring of the Cawthron Institute, the project’s science lead, said. 

“Once we know what actions have been done, where, and how much, we can link these actions to water quality outcomes,”she said. 

“This register is an important piece of a jigsaw puzzle of restoration information that will eventually help us find out which actions work best to improve water quality.”

The register is a first step in linking actions done on land with changes in water quality at monitoring sites. 

“Being able to link land management actions to water quality outcomes allows us to manage water quality restoration more effectively, saving land managers resources in the long run,” said Doehring.

It will also enable people in one catchment to make comparisons with other catchments, to see what has worked elsewhere and over what timeframe.  

Healthy Waterways can be used to record a range of land management actions to improve water quality, and encourages the sharing of restoration knowledge and activities. Research supporting the development of the Healthy Waterways register shows that catchment restoration stories play a vital role in triggering ongoing freshwater restoration in rural communities. 

Later this year, data recorded on Healthy Waterways will be pulled through to the LAWA platform. This will give people all over New Zealand greater awareness of the efforts underway to improve freshwater, and a clearer picture of how far the country has come. 

Maintaining the privacy of land managers has been a top priority in the development of the website, Doehring said. 

“Actions will always be displayed at catchment scale, recognising the confidentiality and privacy of individual property owners. The register is not a compliance tool and was designed so it can’t be used in this way.”

Healthy Waterways is now available to the public after user-testing. It can be accessed at https://healthywaterways.nz

By Dr Sagi Katz, vice-president of agronomy at agri informatics company Agmatix

When looking to increase crop yields, a stable biological environment is the ultimate goal. Environmental needs vary from crop to crop, but the one constant is that each crop has an optimal environment to support maximum yields and crop quality. Creating and maintaining this environment is key to a successful farm. 

The biological environment encompasses many sub-factors, such as soil health, water retention, biodiversity, and chemical composition, just to name a few. With so many factors at play, it can be hard to know where to start, and what should be the priority. 

We can’t determine what to prioritise without communication. Trees show the value of communication, transferring food, water and information with other trees through underground fungus mycelium. To ensure that our businesses thrive, we must also transfer knowledge and communicate more as an industry. What’s more, this communication of data on a global scale will enable us to be more sustainable and help us to solve global food poverty.

Just like the trees, farmers have been sharing knowledge through conducting field trials and sharing their results with fellow farmers. Driven forward by the need to comply with new regulations, increase yields in a sustainable way, future-proof the farm and drive profitability, more and more farmers are looking at data as a solution. By considering available research, including data gathered through individual field trials, we can determine which factors have the largest effect on yield and crop quality. In time, this data can be aggregated on a regional, national or international basis.

Conducting a field trial can be a complex undertaking, leaving one to question where to start, and what factors to prioritize. As the medium in which you grow your crops, and the factor most likely to determine crop quality and yield, soil health is the most important element to consider. When looking to assess this, the best indication is biological activity in the soil – otherwise known as biodiversity. A highly biodiverse environment brings many additional benefits, ultimately improving yield and crop quality. 

When looking into soil health, an important factor to measure is chemical composition. This can be relatively quick and easy to improve through the correct nutrition plan, so it is a great place to start. That said, it does depend on the chemical you’re looking to alter. For example, increasing the amount of carbon in the soil is much harder than increasing nitrogen.

Once results are gathered, the most effective way to begin implementing changes towards optimizing your soil nutrient balance is through the use of an agro-informatic tool. These tools can determine the right amount of chemical fertilizer and optimal application time, factoring in all the variables of your specific field. 

These tools can also advise growers on farming practices that will aid the development of a highly biodiverse environment, such as no-till agriculture, or the cover crop approach. Biodiversity and its benefits vary greatly depending on the organism present. However, one overarching theme is that the presence of one organism encourages the presence of others, creating a positive “snowball” effect. A natural bio stimulant, it’s an important factor for farmers to consider. 

If you get the balance of this ecosystem right, yields will increase year on year, and carbon emissions will simultaneously decrease. Agro-informatics tools can provide information on the impact these regenerative farming practices – and the biodiversity benefits that they bring – will make on yield and crop quality. Not only this, but they can help to track carbon emissions, allowing farmers to more easily make use of carbon credit schemes.

In agriculture, the decisions you make today will have a lasting impact for months, and even years down the line. So, it’s important to drive your decisions with high-quality data, collected through well-planned, accurate field trials. There’s no better way to obtain specific data about your farm than to conduct your on-farm experiments. Ultimately, if we are to ensure the long-term success of the industry, as well as reduce our impact on the environment in a meaningful way, we must also share this data with fellow researchers and farmers through open data programmes – communication is the key.

Data as varied as a suitability index for growing cherries across the regions to levels of sediment loads in New Zealand rivers has been unlocked  in a “data supermarket” funded through Our Land and Water National Science Challenge.

Now online for open access, the supermarket contains a wide variety of data that has been publicly funded between 2020 and 2023s, but often shelved in hard-to-find places or difficult to access.

AgResearch senior scientist Dr Robyn Dynes said the supermarket is an effort across many disciplines and institutes to bring the many and varied data projects to light, making them accessible to, among other things, better aiding future land use decisions in NZ.

Dynes said the data supermarket offers anyone who is looking at land use options data that enables them to use science to examine their options with more clarity, and help with the inevitable risk involved. 

So far the data repository includes data from seven animal-based industries, five arable-vegetable and four fruit, forestry and tree crop sectors. Dynes said this is added to every week. 

“Farm advisers with good technical skills will be able to use the data to create a short list of potential land-use options that may be feasible for their clients to consider as candidates for in-depth business cases from local experts,” Dynes said. 

She said a couple of farm advisers are already using the data market to help clients determine their land use options. The data access also enables those with the skills to overlay different land use types to create a mosaic of options in specific regions or districts.

Upcoming data types will include work that models the effects of climate change, including changes in potential pasture yields across New Zealand and alternative arable crop rotations.

Reports specific to climate change include a land use impact report, forest fire risk projections, and even look up tables to estimate carbon sequestration in forests.

Dynes said the supermarket also aims to try to account for the more holistic approach land use changes are likely to lead to in coming years. 

After a history of rapid land use change that has usually been driven by the best return capable of being generated, future use is likely to be more nuanced and conscious of human and environmental impacts. 

“At the moment we are focusing on what you could grow, which is not always what you should grow.”

Over time more  reports and data that capture the more holistic elements of land use will become available.

Dynes said having a common source for such data also provides a valuable levelling tool for parties engaged in land use change, including iwi and community groups, helping balance negotiating capabilities as change is proposed.

Our Land and Water is one of 11 National Science Challenges focusing on defined issues of national importance, identified by the NZ public.

The data supermarket can be accessed here.