The farmer who ditched sprays
Decades of chemical farming left David Crutchley’s soil appearing ‘‘somehow dead’’.
Shortlands Station is a 6122-hectare farm in the Otago hill country that was left to Crutchley by his father in 1978 ‘‘in good condition’’.
But after decades of chemical agriculture, Crutchley realised he would not be handing the farm down in the same state. That was in 2009, the year he adopted regenerative farming techniques to rebuild the microbiology in his soil. Healthy soils contain colonies of both bacteria and fungi, as well as algae and worms. Known as the soil food web, it is the complex community of organisms that live in the soil.
The way farmers manage soils – how often it is disturbed, the acidity, the types of residues added, the crops planted, whether animals are grazed – determines how much life is within the soil and the health of the plants and animals that live on top.
‘‘We were doing what we were told and applying more fertilisers and getting no results.
‘‘By researching we discovered that by using chemical fertilisers we were destroying our soil biology,’’ he said.
Using trial plots Crutchley worked out he could rebuild his soils using natural fertilisers and other practices like diversifying forage and strict grazing management. ‘‘I wanted to work through all the b ....... and find the answers.
‘‘Now we put liquid biology over the whole thing. A liquid soil feeder with heaps of microbes all over it.’’
The idea was that by feeding the soil, the quality of the pasture and animals was, in turn, improved, Crutchley said.
Grass-fed beef and lamb is the norm in New Zealand, something American consumers may envy, but Crutchley said aiming for grass fed alone missed an important point; it was the quality of the pasture that really mattered.
The farming practices Crutchley uses include growing a mixed forage of grasses and herbs. As a result, he says his lambs are exceptionally healthy and uniquely tasty.
While many traditional farmers remained sceptical about biological farming, consumers had a far better understanding, because they were tasting the end product. Crutchley said it took a certain mindset for farmers to move away from traditionally ‘‘tidy’’ farms.
‘‘Green paddocks leaching nitrates from soils, or paddocks with humus and biodiversity that are not leaching into the rivers.’’
Crutchley tests the creeks coming off his farm and said he was not getting any leaching.
He said interest in biofarming had increased over time.
The first seminar he attended on the topic 10 years ago attracted just five people, two being ‘‘naysayers’’. At the last seminar earlier this year there were 220 people, he said.
Crutchley sells his lamb to chefs at high-end restaurants under the brand name Provenance.
His son, James Crutchley, who farms 350-hectare Glenmore Farm in coastal Otago, also produces for the label.
Shortlands Station and Glenmore Farm are small – with just one farm hand each – and together produce about 12,000 lambs per year.
The label provides traceability by using technology developed by Dunedin company Oritain, which scientifically tests and proves where a food has come from.
Science commercialisation director at Oritain Sam Lind said soil geo-chemistry differed around the world. ‘‘The attributes are [taken up] by plants and animals, and carry what we call the chemical fingerprint,’’ Lind said.