A grass-roots solution to mitigating dairy downturn
Kiwi dairy farmers need to stay ahead of the game and rise to challenges in the industry to retain their position in the world. By Craig Piggott.
Kiwi farmers are the best in the world at growing, harvesting and converting pasture into milk. Their efficiency is renowned the world over. That’s largely because of their hustle and resilience, having adapted through tough cycles to become top-performing farmers and without relying on government subsidies like many farmers in other dairy markets.
Right now, dairy farmers are adapting to these extremely challenging market conditions by managing their cost of production as tightly as possible.
Fonterra’s recent downgraded milk price payout, to a midpoint of only $6.75 per kilo of milk solids, was a tough blow after a year tainted by wet, extreme weather and rising farm costs.
And global hikes in the price of boughtin feed will see farmers relying more than ever on the cheapest form of cow feed, which is, and has always been, grass.
Pasture is four times cheaper than buying imported feed. Pasture harvested per hectare drives at least
85% of profitability for most dairy farms. Therefore, effectively managing that pasture is essential to both reducing the cost of production and boosting profitability.
Unfortunately, conventional methods of managing pasture make it almost impossible for farmers to capture the full value from it. Historically, we’ve had to accept age-old constraints such as paddocks being fixed shapes and sizes, or managing round lengths to best estimates – constraints that have prevented pasture precision and maximum value capture.
While leading industry research behind optimal pasture management is well proven, in reality it has not always been very practical to implement it each day.
The daily grind of manually setting up physical fences, and using plate meters, are two examples. Virtual fencing has helped farmers overcome some of these constraints, but only to a certain extent.
What has been sorely lacking is the data to help farmers make fully informed decisions for true precision. Exactly how much pasture should be allocated for cows to feed, and exactly when and in which paddock? This was a void that we at Halter were uniquely positioned to fill.
Recognising the headwinds facing dairy farmers, we undertook deep research into what could help these farmers unlock greater profitability. Turns out, the answer lay in how grass grows and how exactly we manage it. Over several months, our data scientists obsessed over industry research and the first principles of pasture management.
For example, with ryegrass (New Zealand’s most common grass species), a first principle is the three-leaf emergence rate. Loosely translated, farmers should graze their paddocks when the third leaf has grown and before the fourth leaf emerges to optimise for pasture quantity and quality.
However, this isn’t easy to do every day as it requires pulling leaves and analysing them, which is time-consuming. Our data shows how few farmers are able to graze to the optimum leaf emergence stage using conventional methods.
So, we set out to build something that incorporated the best practice proven in research. Since August, hundreds of farms have been using our world-first precision farming app, Pasture Pro, to grow and harvest more grass.
Pasture Pro is like having an agronomist in your back pocket every day. It combines machine learning, satellite imagery, on-farm local weather data, and even photos of grass taken from a farmer’s smartphone. Artificial intelligence responds with pasture growth rates and residuals, paddock performance and supply/demand curves.
Even the smallest daily improvements to managing pasture can have a massive impact on the bottom line. For example, based on research by New Zealand’s leading pasture experts, a 300ha farm grazing a mere ‘half a leaf stage too early’ could see $90,000 of potential lost profit. Accurate, real-time data can prevent that.
Farmers have been through tough times before, and they know how to come out the other side even stronger. These are the times when they build better businesses to capitalise on the opportunities that lie ahead.
In the current climate, and with spring upon us, the stakes are high with every decision. Every blade counts, and now is the time for farmers to take stock of how they’re managing their pasture and their business.■
Pasture harvested per hectare drives at least 85% of profitability for most dairy farms.