DairyNZ Farmers Forum with Sue Edmonds

The Irish presence at our National Fieldays seems to grow every year, and they offer an amazing range of machinery, equipment and ideas. This year there were 18 companies exhibiting and their catalogue listed 13 more who already have a presence here.

Enterprise Ireland also hold a dinner the night before it starts. This year I was fortunate enough to have a discussion beforehand with Dr Frank O’Mara, director of research at Teagasc, which is the semi-state authority in the Republic of Ireland responsible for research and development, training and advisory services in the agri-food sector.

Unlike in New Zealand, where all these areas are under different organisations, Teagasc puts everything together – and the data they collect is very comprehensive, including from individual farmers.

As part of the European Union, Ireland is subject to EU regulations, one of which is their Good Agricultural Practice for Protection of Waters (S.I. No.31 of 2014). This sets out in detail the way in which every type of animal-produced waste – including soiled water – must be calculated, spread, and sufficient storage provided to cope with a whole winter’s effluent production. What it comes down to is that for dairy the basic stocking rate is two cows/ha, and the animal produced nitrogen level is not to exceed 170kg/ha.

Derogation

If a farmer wishes to increase their stocking rate they must apply for a derogation. And this year the amount of data, maps, soil analyses, buildings coverage etc to be taken to the one-on-one meeting with a Teagasc expert has been increased, and the derogation approval is checked every year, with inspections. If farmers are found to have exceeded the 170kg/ha limit, there are a range of increasing percentage penalties which are applied to their payments from EU-funded schemes of which they are in receipt.

An interesting feature of their official calculations is a figure of 85kg/head/year for nitrogen excretion of fully grown dairy cows. This presumably includes urine, cowpats, and a proportion of effluent from feed pads, dairy sheds and wastewater. From the minor mentions of chemical fertilisers in their listings, I’ve had to assume this figure is calculated largely against cow feed – pasture and concentrates – which is not distorted by copious amounts of applied urea.

However, urea is certainly being used, as the figure for usage is 350,000 tonnes/year. This may go some way to explaining why, with all these requirements, Dr O’Mara’s lecture slides revealed their EPA reported: “the quality of our surface water has remained relatively static since 2007-2009 and improvements, planned for under the first river management cycle, have not been achieved”.

Progress

However, in other areas they’re making considerable progress. With a strong focus on their Economic Breeding Index, since 2008 this has gone from a figure equating to around 8 euros, to one around 76 euros. These ‘elite’ cows are producing around 300 litres more milk each, and the milk solids figure has increased, as well as protein and fat percentages of the milk. They’re getting pregnant quicker and more reliably, with an in-calf percentage of 92 per cent at 12 weeks. Their Body Condition Score is better, although they’re a bit lighter overall.  And overall milk production for Irish dairying increased more than 500,000 litres in the last year.

And after last year’s announcements about their Origin Green scheme, their agri-food exports rose 13 per cent to 12.6 billion euros in 2017, so it must be working for them.

If NZ brings in even half the measurements required in Ireland, our farmers will have some subduing lessons to learn. And Ireland still aren’t achieving their water targets!