Millbrook hosts final farm day

Millbrook Station, Pakiri, the home of the Longuet-Higgins family, hosted its final field day as the Lower Northland monitor farm last month.

For the past three years the family’s farming practices have been under the spotlight and the subject of discussion and review from around 50 of their peers. The monitor farm programme is funded by Meat & Wool New Zealand through farmer levies and with the support of sponsors PGG Wrightson, Summit Quinphos and SBS Rural bank.

As a result of their involvement in the programme, Anne Longuet-Higgins and son Alexander and his wife, Fiona, have implemented some major changes to the way they farm their almost-500ha property.

They are decreasing sheep numbers (down from 3302 in 2006 to a projected 971 for 2011), and while cattle numbers remain steady, the ratio of sheep to cattle will have dropped from 51 percent to 21 percent by 2011.

Originally, the cattle policy was based on a breeding herd of Hereford and Hereford cross Simmental; now the focus is on a dairy cross beef herd of Angus x Friesian cows mated to a terminal sire – either Angus or Charolais. Other changes included producing more bull beef, trialling new pasture species and implementing a techno-grazing system.

Gorse control on steep country, which comprises a third of the farm, has been “economic suicide” with the Longuet-Higgins spending $45,000 already this year on spraying the gorse by helicopter.

The family has applied to MAF for money under the Afforestation Grant Scheme for planting 100ha of hill country as the best use of this part of the farm. This decision was made easier by the two years of pasture monitoring carried out on the property by AgFirst scientist Chris Boom, which determined that the hills only grew half the pasture of the flat land, as well as costing more to maintain than it returned in profits.

One of the several challenges facing Millbrook as a monitor farm was having to embrace a myriad of suggestions about how the farm could be more productive, as well as facing up to criticism about how it could be better developed when the budget said don’t spend anything – and then “spending the money, but still getting criticised anyway”, said Alexander.

However, the farm had developed a land and environment plan which identified land capability accurately, as well as an animal health plan which had cut costs through a concentration on monitoring stock more closely rather than just treating them regardless of need, particularly in terms of drenching for parasites. Having a set of objective data from the three years of monitoring meant that the correct decisions could be made in terms of stocking rates and most efficient land use.

Monitor farm facilitator Bob Thomson said that retiring unproductive steep country to forestry not only made sense in terms of gorse control and limiting liability for carbon credits, but also freed Alexander up to focus on farming the productive land more efficiently.

“This is an historic day, as not only is it our last visit to Millbrook, but quite possibly the last time you’ll have a monitor farm in this area,” he said.

Image: Fiona and Alexander Fonguet-Higgins.