Better collaborative leadership is needed if the primary sector is to more readily uptake technology that could help reduce on-farm diseases.
There are around 10 organisations that could provide that leadership and they need to work together, Techion founder and managing director Greg Mirams said, speaking at the New Zealand Institute of Primary Industry Management conference at Mystery Creek.
“If our productivity comes under threat and we can’t deal with disease, we are all impacted.”
Mirams said New Zealand is slower than other countries to take up technology that could lead to better animal health outcomes.
“We are not proactive enough.
“The problem is getting that acceptance that this is a new wave of tech that can make a massive difference to their day-to-day operations.”
He pointed out that Techion’s FECPAK business sells more offshore than in New Zealand.
“When we do offshore, we get no questions about our tech. They pretty much grab it – they grab it and go and I think it’s the reverse of the ‘No 8 wired’ – we come up with the good stuff but we’re not that good at taking it to the next level.”
Every year Techion analyses more than 50,000 faecal egg count tests at its Mosgiel laboratory through its network of FECPAK users, and faecal egg count reduction tests through its DrenchSmart service.
Artificial intelligence technology allows them to get information on the spot and get expertise on the ground in remote locations and could be used to help farmers get a better understanding of animal health issues such as parasites.
The industry has to uptake the technology and data to be effective and this is a major problem in New Zealand, he said.
“We don’t have a quality uptake of this tech and consequently, we don’t have the datapoints that we have emerging in Australia.”
While treatments likes drenches are readily available, access to testing is limited and until there is better alignment between these two, it will be a struggle to change behaviour in the industry, he said.
In farming, parasites are the No 1 performance inhibitor in livestock production and farmers spend around $150 million on drenches every year and have done so for the past 40-50 years.
“The thing about these diseases is that they are biological and are influenced by many things – management, climate; what’s happening in our daily farming lives will influence the impact of these diseases – so what happens is that you have something that is very changeable and shifts all the time.”
Because these parasites cannot be seen, farmers use the drench treatments to prevent them from developing.
As a result, there is now triple drench resistance in the sheep industry on 34% of farms, he said.
The cattle industry has very little data and there is very little data about drench resistance among calves and heifers and bull beef systems “but anecdotally, it’s pretty bad out there. We hear stories all the time,” he said.
There are real concerns about how NZ will continue to farm with parasites and the drugs that are failing them.
It is not just parasites. The primary sector also loses $320m on facial eczema, using high levels of zinc, and the cattle industry has issues with coccidia in calves.
This is treated by putting a coccidiastat in the meal and in the milk of the calves’ feed – but there are growing concerns about how this is impacting New Zealand’s antibiotic-free status, he said.
These animal health issues are all related to methane emissions – “we know something between 10-30% of methane increase can be impacted by an undetected disease profile”, Mirams said.
