New Zealand grassland farming’s great fight back against urban encroachment, a proliferation of lifestyle blocks and ever-growing land demands for riparian rights and the DOC estate is under way north of Taupo.

Tens of thousands of hectares of cutover pine forest are giving way to dairy, dairy support and sheep and beef units.

From 1994, New Zealand lost 2.5 million ha or almost 20% of its grazing, arable, fodder and fallow land, down to a current 11m ha. Lifestyle blocks alone now account for 750,000ha or 7% of

the productive land area.

NZ Grassland Association chairman John Caradus noted these losses in his presidential address to the association’s conference at Wairakei.

Caradus notes also the growing divide between town and country as the balance of New Zealand’s population moves from rural to urban, with less than 10% of the workforce working in agriculture, forestry or fishing.

The conflict between agriculture and urban interests over resource use and allocation is leading to alienation between town and country, he says.

Grassland Association members are grassland enthusiasts with a mission statement of “excellence in facilitating the transfer of science and technology within New Zealand pastoral agriculture”.

This includes providing an interface between science, agriculture and farming, “fuelled by science and tempered by experience’.

The rubber hit the road for this sentiment when seven busloads of conference delegates took to bush tracks for a first-hand look at Wairakei Estate, one of several interests turning pine forests into grazing land in Central North Island.

Wairakei Estate in partnership with Landcorp is a major player, with five new dairy conversions up and running. Budgeted milksolids production from these units is just under 2m kilos from 6800 cows for this season. Milking area at mid-November was 2675ha.

More dairies, dairy support units and beef and sheep farms are on the way – the partners will convert 25,000ha from cutover forestry to farmland.

Up to 20 dairy units will eventually carry 30,000 cows and Wairakei Estate’s Rolls Peak Station 80,000 to 90,000 stock units on 8500ha. Stock will include sheep, beef and dairy grazing.

Wairakei Estate and Landcorp are conscious of “sensitivities” over such large-scale farm development. Both are committed to world-leading practice in addressing issues of environmental concern while maximising economic utility of the land.

Riparian areas along the estate’s 15km of Waikato River frontage will total 3000ha.

These are being planted in native trees. Bernard Card, general manager for the developers, says that is a significant contribution to the environment, even for a 25,000ha development.

Riparian areas are permanently fenced off with nine wires.

Conversion costs of the dairy farms range from $5000 to $7000/ha to get to the grass stage. Buildings and infrastructure are on top of this. The five farms already operating feature 60 to 80-bail rotary dairies with automatic cup removers and automated wash systems.

Three of the dairies run Protrack electronic cow identification for cow recording and drafting, with the other two dairies using EID and Milkhub for milking data collection.

Each farm has a manager and one or two production managers depending on herd size, plus dairy assistants.

Farm staff use computers to monitor and coordinate data on milking, herd records, animal health and feed budgets as well as to link into Landcorp monitoring systems.

Computers use high-speed internet connections to speed up information transfer.

Effluent nutrients are monitored, with effluent irrigation area a minimum of 10ha/100 cows and moving up to half of each farm’s area as cow numbers increase.

These are dryland dairy farms, with water irrigation plans deferred following advice that all water in the Waikato River is fully allocated.

This will require the farms to consider winter and autumn crops, says supervising farm manager Allan Bullick.

The first three dairies developed will require further cultivation before permanent pasture is sown. With improvements in the partnership’s development system, later farms will not necessarily require more cultivation.

Some 60% of each farm is planted in a ryegrass base, with 40% closer into the dairy in a fescue base.

Also in the seed mix are chicory, plantain, white and red clovers.

Dairy farms are subdivided into 6ha paddocks with three-wire fences.

The herds are a mixture of crossbreds, Jerseys and Friesians. Crossbred bull semen is used in the six-week AB mating programme.

Bullick says under dryland dairying, production target is 850kg to 900kg milksolids per ha with stocking rate at 2.4 cows per ha.