Young take lessons from NZ

These were among the findings presented by five young Victorian dairy industry participants who took part in a New Zealand Study Tour in February.

The Gardiner Foundation/United Dairyfarmers of Victoria tour visited the Waikato region in NZ’s North Island and was led by UDV councillor Tim Leahy and UDV officer Yaelle Caspi.

Focus on business

“It gave me fire in the belly – I want to get more involved,” he said.

“The New Zealand farmers we met were the most enthusiastic group of farmers I have ever seen.”

Mr Missen, who has been farming for 19 years, said career options and progression were better in the NZ industry.

He planned to apply some of the ideas around succession planning and employment structures to his own business.

Farm managers generally had more training than those in Australia with most holding degrees.

Mr Missen said he had been surprised that about half the number of workers employed on NZ farms were from overseas, reflective of an easier visa system and something that Australia needed to match.

He was also surprised that farmers were not regarded as highly as he had expected with community concern around effluent issues, which made it a major management concern.

Effluent systems that would have been regarded as good quality in Australia were being replaced to ensure the farm met guidelines.

The New Zealanders also had a stronger focus on quality with milk rooms showing high levels of cleanliness.

But not everything was better.

Mr Missen said the variation among cows within herds was noticeable and farmers still faced herd fertility issues, particularly in higher producing herds.

Career pathways

Mr Young started working on a dairy farm on weekends when he was 16 before undertaking a school-based certificate 1 and 2 on the farm in Year 11 and 12.

He is now studying for an Advanced Diploma of Agriculture and a Diploma of Agronomy.

“Every farmer in New Zealand seemed driven, they were not lazy,” Mr Young said.

All had goals and could clearly articulate those goals.

They also selected jobs on how they could give them wider experience and allow them to build assets.

They budgeted for a wage they could live on and accepted the rest in assets (cows).

Sharefarmers saw their position as a job but with a different way of being paid.

Mr Young was particularly interested in the contract milker positions offered on farms.

These staff were paid for kilograms of milk solids produced, were responsible for most stock activities and paid for inputs including power, rubber ware and labour.

They could be employed by 50:50 sharefarmers.

Mr Young said the Kiwi attitude to work could be summed up by his of tour: “work like your next boss is watching”.

Supplementary feeding

He said the maize crops were impressive.

Maize was seen as a good choice to use effluent water and was harvested and fed when there was less pasture to graze.

Other crops included chicory, plantain, grazed turnip and rape.

Mr Lindsay said all farmers fed palm kernel expeller (PKE) with the maize to help balance the diet.

PKE was cheaper but the dependency of the NZ industry on it could be a risk.

There was a trend of increased supplementary feeding in NZ with more mixer wagons being used and a variety of supplements being fed, including tapioca, molasses, potatoes, corn and PKE.

But the Kiwi approach was generally to milk off the cows’ backs, particularly when grass was in short supply.

Many farmers had adopted a three-times-in-two-day milking regime post peak lactation to try to help cows maintain body condition.

Industry confidence

Everyone involved in the industry set goals, was keen to share information and had a mentor.

“Mentors – get one and be one,” she said was one of the lessons she had learned from the tour.

Other lessons included the benefits of getting involved in industry, hard work gets people places and to not be afraid of risk but also be prepared to walk away if something was not right.

Ms Snell said the NZ industry was also unified and cohesive – partly as a result of having the one dominant processor in Fonterra.

Profitability focus

It was the key to why NZ had grown in the past decade despite having higher costs of entry into the industry than in Australia.

NZ had higher land and cow prices and farmers had to buy shares in Fonterra to supply it.

But farmers in NZ understood margins, for example they understand they must get a return for the cost of feeding grain.

Although there were farmers in Australia who also understood that, there seemed to be a ‘longer tail’ here of farmers who did not.

“They are having the right conversations there,” Mr Potts said.

Farmers talked about creating wealth.

Profitability paid the bills, but the reason why they invested was equity growth.

“The ability to grow equity gives the ability to reinvest,” he said.

Mr Potts said Australia needed more bigger farms that could accommodate sharefarmers if it wanted to match NZ’s growth.

An 800-cow farm gave the opportunity for a sharefarmer to grow equity quickly – making it appealing.

This also grew wealth for the farm owner.

Mr Potts said he planned to develop spreadsheets and tools to allow young farmers understand their equity growth and to help attract outside investors to 800-cow farms that would appeal to sharefarmers.

Future bright

Mr Ryan had been selected for the tour but was unable to attend tour as his father died just before it started.

He said he hoped to have another opportunity to be part of the tour because he saw the future of dairy farm sector in Australia as bright.