Improving efficiencies onfarm to combat emissions
Being a part of the Fonterra and Nestlé pilot programme is a golden opportunity for Waterton farmers Glenn and Sarah Jones.
Autumn is New Zealand farmers’ favourite season of the year. It’s easy to see why - we are still getting the warm days, but with cooler nights and relatively settled weather. The pressure comes off irrigation and cows are getting a chance to reset their body temperature overnight. Onfarm it is a great time to try and take some annual leave for us and the rest of the team as things get into a steady rhythm. We have again made the move to variable milking at the end of January and both cows and staff enjoy the change.
At the start of the season, we got the opportunity to be involved in the Nestlé GHG Farmer Support Pilot program with Fonterra. While we often think that it is the Government or the processors that are setting GreenHouse Gas (GHG) targets - it is actually the customers. Nestlé is one of Fonterra’s biggest customers and has committed to reducing its GHG footprint 20% by 2025 and 50% by 2030. One of the approaches Nestlé is taking to achieve these reductions is through reducing its Scope-3 emissions by insetting its carbon footprint at an onfarm level.
The aim of this project is to support the farmers involved to implement changes aimed at increasing the efficiency of their farm system, thereby lowering emissions.
Milking efficiency was the first area we addressed. We had our Fonterra
Milk quality manager out to assess our milkings. While we thought we did a pretty good job at this, and our milking times were okay, we were still able to reduce both AM and PM milkings by 30 minutes each. These changes included platform speed, timing of cup removers, milker efficiency with where to cup on and speed of cupping on. This has been a win for both cows and staff!
Other target areas we will focus on is closer monitoring of body cow condition scores [BCS] with an assessment every two months. An in-depth analysis of our farms reproductive performance to see where we can make improvements and increase efficiency through days-in-milk and limiting time that the cows are dry for. Also, the opportunity to lower our replacement rate with a better in-calf rate.
All our current data from this season is being loaded into the Farmax model. This data will give us more detailed information on our farm’s individual footprint and how it compares and changes over time as actions are completed. Farmax modelling can also be used to model different scenarios, in this case primarily around different feed options and their impact on GHGs. This information will also be used to benchmark against other farms involved in the project across the country.
Information like this is gold. It will set our benchmark from which to improve from, and continue to drive efficiencies and with these gains we will see an improvement in the profitability and long-term sustainability of our farming business.
We look forward to sharing the progress of this programme and the insights that it provides that may be of use to other dairy farmers as they look at their own GHG numbers and improvements in onfarm efficiencies.
This data will give us more detailed information on our farm’s individual footprint and how it compares and changes over time as actions are completed.