Glencoe farmers awarded for financial, environmental results
Jason and Quentin Miller felt they were standing on the shoulders of their parents when they received a farming award in Invercargill.
The brothers, who own a farm in Glencoe, received a Regional Supreme Award on Thursday.
“Much work has been done before us and there will be much work to do after us,” Jason said.
“So this is just a point in time.”
The 59-year-old said he was born in Gore and has been on the family farm since he was a kid.
His parents bought a 149-hectare sheep farm in 1960, he said.
“Back then it was only running about 1000 sheep, it was very rough and undeveloped,” he said.
Over the years, the family expanded the farm, until in 2020 they bought a 480ha dairy farm about 4km down the road, he said.
Today, the Millers operated a 1034ha dairy, sheep and beef farm and they run on average 4000 ewes.
They are helped by Chris Henderson, and Jason’s son Andrew with his wife Rachel joined the business too.
When they bought new land, they noticed the previous owners were running a system with high cows per ha and low production per cow, Quentin said.
“We didn’t see that as a sustainable farming option. So, we’ve opted for a system here we run a lower stocking rate, about 2.7 cows per ha,” Quentin said.
And that required a higher production bar. He said in the coming years, they were aiming at producing 500kg of milksolids per cow.
Quentin said over the years they faced some big challenges.
“We’ve got over 10km of waterways through our property and at that time [about 15 years ago] most of them were unfenced,” he said.
Since then they fenced off most of the waterways on the farm and planted around 10,000 riparian plants along the edges, Quentin said.
“It also created sediment traps and wetlands to try and capture nutrients from getting into river systems.”
The Millers also implemented a data-driven approach to farm management and water monitoring.