Dairy Organic Discussion Group
Key Funders
Fonterra and Altum, with support from ODPG (Organic Dairy and Pastoral Group)
Consultants Involved
Sally Lee currently but James Allen, Nicola Waugh and Dave Miller have also been part of it.
Project Brief
Organics is a growing alternative to mainstream farming and many farmers convert for lifestyle and health. This project initially set out to provide support around farm management and productivity, knowledge and providing best practice advice to existing and future organic farmers, as well as raise awareness and build confidence.
The initial Focus Farm, being Russell and Deanna Bayley, Wharepapa South, focused on what Russell and Deanna had achieved and enabled us to use farmers, rural professionals and scientists to come together to share their knowledge and build their skill base.
Project Goal
To increase the knowledge and awareness of organic dairy farming systems in a safe and friendly environment.
Key Project Outcomes will include:
- Farmers having the confidence to convert to organic dairy farming;
- Established networks between industry and farmers, providing support for each other;
- Best practice information collected and disseminated on key farm management issues;
- Provide information and knowledge as a result of monitoring key factors;
- Increase productivity and profitability of organic farms while minimising risk; and
- Increase the number of certified farms
There are three key target ‘end-users’ of this programme:
- Farmers who wish to convert to Organics – the programme will give them support, advice, encouragement to do so.
- Existing Organic Farmers – the programme will give them something to benchmark against. Due to the limited number of Organic Dairy Farmers, many of them cannot gauge their performance. The aim of the programme is to get others to share their information in a non-threatening environment.
- Industry – there are limited ‘experts’ in this field and the Focus Farm provides an opportunity for the information held by these experts to be disseminated to a group and for other agribusiness personnel to extend their knowledge and therefore provide assistance to others.
Description of Project
The initial Focus Farm, being Russell and Deanna Bayley, Wharepapa South, focused on what Russell and Deanna had achieved and enabled us to use farmers, rural professionals and scientists to come together to share their knowledge and build their skill base.
In 2009/10 it was elected by the group to convert from a Focus Farm to a Discussion Group allowing meetings and discussion at alternative venues. Since then, the group has visited many of the participant members farms, focusing on a topic.
Progress of Project So Far
On average 30 people attend the open public field days, with a mixture of farmers, rural professionals and scientists.
Some of the field days and topics to date have been:
Growing More Feed – Mark and Jane Pike
Setting up for next season - How can we improve?” – Doug and Kathy Bentham
Soil Balance – Nick and Jo Collins
Impacts of growing good young stock – Margaret and Michael Oliver
Pasture trials and bull genetics – Dairy NZ and LIC
Mastitis – Janette Perrett
Growing Young Stock – Phil and Tracey Bax
Soils and Fertiliser – John Vosper
Outcomes of the project
If interested in going onto the mailing list for this project please contact sally.lee@agfirst.co.nz