Farmer champion sees red at treatment of sector
Andrea Fox meets a dairyman who has made championing farmers his life’s work.
New Zealanders should be ‘‘absolutely ashamed of themselves’’ at the way the agriculture sector is being treated, growls veteran rural advocate Malcolm Lumsden. As usual he tells it like it is, although not long out of hospital after a nasty run-in with kidney stones.
The Waikato dairy farmer and rural activist is back home and on the mend, itching to get back into his vast, fully equipped engineering shed beside the farm homestead, and to his advisory and liaison roles on behalf of farmers.
It’s ‘‘scurrilous’’ that the average New Zealander is being misinformed by ‘‘a small group of radicals’’ whose ideologies, notably about carbon emissions, are not based on science, says Malcolm, who farms on Lumsden Rd at Ohinewai north of Huntly.
The former Federated Farmers national senior vice president, who reckons he didn’t make it to the top spot because he was seen as ‘‘too hard and non-compromising’’, isn’t so much in the public eye these days but is still deeply involved in rural advocacy.
He’s chairman of the Lower Waikato Catchment Advisory Committee, with a seat on the biggest committee on the Waikato Regional Council, the Integrated Management Catchment Committee. A former counsellor with the Waikato Rural Support Trust, he’s an adviser to national trust chairman Neil Bateup and works behind the scenes in various other roles ‘‘standing up for farmers’’.
Wife Eileen, to whom he’s been married 47 years, says if Malcolm had been paid consultant fees over the years ‘‘we’d be rich’’.
As it is they’re rich in achievements, being debt-free after a farming career marked by hard work, self-sufficiency and at one stage, a struggle against bureaucracy to regain their land compulsorily acquired by the government.
The couple’s homestead looks over low to rolling Lumsden family land as far as the eye can see. It’s 430 hectares (415ha effective) amassed from the patient purchase over the years of nine farm titles, including the home farm block wrested back from the Government in 1989. It had been acquired under the Public Works Act, along with other farms in the area, for an open cast coal mine that never eventuated.
Another 22ha near Huntly is leased for when the going gets tough on the flood-prone farm.
The business carries 800 friesian cows. Up to 860 cows have been farmed at peak, but numbers have been reduced in the past two years and the aim is cut back to 750 next season.
The farms are owned by family trusts, which lease the land to Lumsden Farms Ltd, an entity of which Malcolm and Eileen, and their youngest son Roger and his wife Roanne, own half each. Eileen and Roger ran the farm when Malcolm was at the peak of his Federated Farmers commitments.
Cows on 300ha of the total Lumsden operation are managed by a contract milker, who employs three fulltime staff. Roger is responsible for management of the whole farming operation.
Malcolm and Eileen also have an older son, Andrew, aka comedian Te Radar, and a daughter, Jennifer.
Production last season was 292,000kg milksolids. This season’s big wet means production is tracking behind that.
‘‘Pastures have had a hiding,’’ says Roger but he expects the season’s tally to come into line after Christmas when pastures become drier. Twenty five per cent of the Lumsden replacement cattle are on the lease block near Huntly because of the sodden conditions. The family was on the point of calling in a helicopter to apply this year’s fertiliser. ‘‘When it’s wet the grass still grows but it’s utilising it that matters,’’ says Roger.
‘‘We are very dependent on drainage systems here. We’ve had cows on our higher country a lot more this spring,’’ says Malcolm.
Soils on the Lumsden Rd front of the farm are Horotiu silt, with clay loam on the low and rolling areas and Whangamarino peat at the back. Roger says the decision to reduce their high breedingworth herd to 750 cows was partly to find the right balance between production and costs, and partly about maintaining cow condition.
‘‘It’s about getting the most out of the cows you have and 750 is about right for this dairying area we think.’’
Malcolm: ‘‘Our cows are bred to produce 400kg milksolids. If we are not achieving that we have too many. At the moment it’s about 360kg per cow and Roger’s aiming for 400kg. All our autumn management is based on cow condition. And by reducing numbers we can focus a bit more on the breeding worth side of the business.’’
Roger says cows must score 5 at calving time, and heifers 5.5. The aim is for cow condition to stay above 4 all year round. The Lumsdens’ System 2 operation supplies Fonterra from a 50-bail rotary the family built in 1998.
The Lumsdens build and maintain much of the farm’s equipment and gear themselves. Malcolm, who trained as a welder and has ‘‘the best engineering workshop around’’, says this keeps repair and maintenance costs low. Farm working costs are around $3.30/kg. Malcolm says during the milk price downturn, the farm still made a profit.
One of the operation’s biggest costs is upkeep on the nine houses on the farm. Three are rented out, the rest are used by farm staff.
‘‘People underestimate the cost and time of looking after these houses,’’ says Roger.
‘‘Getting tradies in is expensive when you can get them, but it’s important to keep them up to scratch.’’
The Lumsdens buy in cow meal to get through spring. All other supplementary feed is grown on the property, including 12ha of maize silage. The farm aims to annually harvest 300 bales of hay and 600 bales of silage, as well as
35ha of stacked silage. Calving is in spring with 250 replacements kept this season –
200 dairy heifers and the balance beef cross calves. The Lumsdens run about 40 bulls a year – their own top BW friesian sires and herefords – and carry beef steers and heifers. Artificial breeding
We are very dependent on drainage systems here.
Malcolm Lumsden
starts this week for 51⁄2 weeks. Calving will start on August 1.
Perhaps due to his recent brush with hospital, Malcolm is in a reflective mood.
‘‘I’ve had a wonderful life,’’ he says. But given he nearly died while a Feds official from legionnaire’s disease, possibly contracted while caving in the Waitomo area, it’s probably more to do with his zest for life than a new sense of his own mortality.
Born at Ngaruawahia to Frank and Margaret Lumsden, who farmed 57 cows and a clutch of pigs on the then-118 acres home farm – half of it often under water Malcolm was sent to board at Sacred Heart School in Auckland. He was given a guinea to last the year. Out of this he was expected to buy his school books.
‘‘I made money out of being the dorm bookie. I made enough to buy a coke and a slice on Saturdays. I was allowed to go for runs around the bays so I charged boys a margin for buying them lollies and cigs when I was out.
‘‘I got caught one day by the brothers sitting in the rain on the side of the road eating a pie. My privileges were removed. I went from being third in the class in the first year to 31st out of 32 in the second year. I got a bollocking for that from my school teacher mum. So I knuckled down and ended up seventh in class and got School Certificate.’’
When he was 15, his father had a major heart attack. Malcolm, the oldest of three boys, went home.
‘‘Mum didn’t know what to do on the farm so I milked cows and fed the pigs. I went to a welding course in Auckland and then got offered a tractor apprenticeship with big money. But I said no, Dad needs me here. I believed Dad was doing so much for us kids I should stay on the farm. He was my best friend. I worked with him for the rest of his working life.’’
Frank Lumsden lived until he was 91.
The tussle over their land came when the Government in the 1980s designated about 240ha of Ohinewai farm land for mining, including the Lumsdens’ home farm, by that time 74ha. Malcolm had to sell out, and the family leased it back for three years under a clause which said the acquired land was leasable until ready specifically for mining.
When it became clear no mine was coming – ‘‘It was a false premise from the start as it was impossible to develop’’, says Malcolm – the Government started selling the acquired land by private sale. Malcolm kicked up a fuss, saying it should be offered first to the original owners under the same Public Works Act terms.
Local MP Rob Storey took up the case on behalf of farmers, thereby pitting himself against his own (National) party and according to Malcolm, jettisoning his parliamentary career. Meanwhile the Lumsdens managed to buy 80ha next door, and were offered another, smaller block which the original owners couldn’t afford to buy back.
But they still didn’t have the home farm back because the State Coal Department was blocking the sale to them, says Malcolm. The Crown Law Office ruled in the Lumsdens’ favour and the department was ordered to sell it back.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The department tried to charge the family tax on the sale and it wasn’t until Malcolm approached thenDeputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech that the issue was favourably resolved.