Droughts force rethink
After years of successive droughts and dry summers, Hawke’s Bay farmer Fanie Erasmus turned to regenerative agriculture to improve the farm’s resilience, and it has been ‘‘working wonders’’.
Erasmus manages Karaka Farms, a 750-hectare sheep and beef breeding and finishing farm made up of two blocks and holding about 5500 animals.
Increasingly dry conditions and disenchantment with the chemical approach led to a rethink and three years ago the farm set up trial blocks to test a regenerative system.
‘‘We got to the point where things needed to change. We couldn’t just keep going on the way we were. Fertiliser was one of the massive major expenses in our budget and we didn’t see the benefit or the money return on it.’’
Erasmus, who runs the farm on behalf of owner Mike Hunsberger, has taken a slow and steady approach, and stressed the farm was not fully regenerative yet and he was still learning.
‘‘Last year was the first year we did rotational grazing with bigger mobs. It worked wonders. We ended up growing a lot of grass.’’
Grazing with larger mobs of animals for less time on longer rotations was one of the tools in the regenerative agriculture tool box to build topsoil, he said.
The method allows the grass to grow taller, which lets the roots grow down deeper into the soil.
By moving animals on several times a day, the pasture is not overgrazed. The animals leave behind some trampled pasture and manure, providing fertiliser and organic matter to feed the soil and provide a protective covering.
Longer rotations allow pasture to recover. ‘‘The decision we made was because we wanted to have more resilience so that the soil would respond quicker to rain and hold a lot more moisture. The only way you’re going to hold moisture is to have more topsoil,’’ Erasmus said.
Traditionally, Erasmus would have grazed no more than 150 animals in one mob, but last year that went up to more than 700. He also mixed ewes, lambs and cattle together in the same mob.
It hasn’t always been plain sailing, and fencing became an issue since three lines of electric wire were needed to contain sheep and lambs compared to just one for cattle because of their size.
He also tried direct drilling more diverse pasture, but this had not been as successful as he had hoped and had also been expensive, considering the cost of seed. He wasn’t sure if the pasture just needed more time, or if it was because of dry weather.
‘‘The traditional way was that we didn’t want to see seed at any time of year. We wanted to keep it in that growing stage all year round. We never seemed to have got it right and we never seemed to have grass in the summer,’’ Erasmus said.
The soil biology was still not in the condition he wanted it but in the first trial block of 18ha, topsoil had increased from about 20 centimetres to 38cm before a shovel would hit the clay. The roots of the grass now extended down into the clay, which was less compacted, and there were more worms, he said.
‘‘Our soils are retaining water a lot better. When we had 140 millimetres recently, the first two days we had no pooling, it all just went into the ground. That’s different from four or five years ago because everything was so hard. The water couldn’t go in and just ran off.’’
He used nitrogen and other fertilisers occasionally, but it was in a targeted way, and much less than in the past. Erasmus said he could see a time when these might not be required at all. It had already come with a huge cost saving, he said.