Sticking with arable
Remaining with arable farming while all those about head into dairying
hasn’t hurt this New Zealand producer.
By Richard Bentley
D
eclining returns for crops
and booming milk solids
prices
have
persuaded
many arable farmers on
New Zealand’s Canterbury Plains to
convert to intensive dairying.
Don Hart has resisted that
temptation and instead has integrated
large-scale lamb finishing with a
succession of sustainably produced
seed, forage and pasture crops.
Since 1986 Don and Sandy Hart
have owned 330 ha of flat, well
drained land near Methven, about
an hour’s drive south-west of
Christchurch.
Over the years they have farmed
it intensively, producing crops of
wheat and harvesting seed from peas
and AR31 and AR37 ryegrasses and
growing around 80 ha of radish seed
for green manure or tillage radish in
rotation with other crops.
“We generally sow about 60 ha
of feed wheat and 50 ha of milling
wheat if the price is right, but we
have to be pretty flexible because
prices are not always good and we
34 THE FURROW
 ABOVE:
Preparing the ground for the next
crop of winter feed for lambs.  LEFT: Don
Hart checks the condition of a windrow of
compost.
need to add value to everything we
do,” says Don.
“Cropping farmers have really
been suffering financially compared
with other farm types that enjoy firm
commodity prices. The high New
Zealand dollar has been making us
uncompetitive and the worldwide
economic recession has created
grass seed surpluses and volatile
grain prices, and although that is
improving now the prices we receive
give us no encouragement to remain
in the arable sector.”
For Don, the wheels fell off the
arable wagon about eight years
ago when production ran into a
brick wall. While fertilisers like
superphosphate and urea had earlier
allowed dramatic productivity
increases, yields had plateaued but
costs had continued to rise.
Endless chemicals. “To get bigger
yields we were told to put more
fertiliser on but when we did that
we got more diseases, but they had
a chemical that we put on to fix that.
Then we needed a straw shortener
because the crops were falling over
and they had a chemical for that as
well,” he says.
“And then we got insects because
we had high nitrites and guess what
– they had a chemical for that too!
We kept being told to put more and
more on, so we called it the ‘moron’
approach. Very quickly the expenses
got higher but the returns remained
the same for 15 years, so we felt there
had to be a different way.”
That way became clearer thanks
to a chance incident. Amongst his
many skills Don is an experienced
agricultural pilot. He and pilot son
Duncan had been trying to put a
fine lime suspension through their
aircraft’s spraying system but got the
mixture wrong and had to wash out
the equipment.
Boost from lime. “Where we had
dropped the lime the grass grew
during that winter as if it were spring
while the rest of the paddock was
frosted and wind burnt. I thought
perhaps it was because the pH of the
soil had been raised but later learnt
that it was the extra calcium that
made the difference,” says Don.
“I found that out at a workshop on
the biological approach to farming
given by the American consultant Dr
Arden Anderson, and subsequently
we used more lime and began to
balance the soil.
“I also went to an Acres USA
conference and then heard about
soils, microbes, fertility systems,
compost and so on, and it appeared
to me that we needed to improve
the organic matter in our soils,
particularly the humus.”
Don set about accelerating the
formation of humus and learning
how to make good compost and to
extract nutrients from it, and began
incorporating compost and crop
residues into the soil to build up the
organic content and “feed the soil
biology”.
He also started to pay more
attention to the minerals in the soil,
bring them into balance using the
Albrecht base saturation approach to
soil fertility – use soil chemistry to
affect soil physics and improve the
environment for soil microorganisms,
and let the soil feed the plant.
The improvements, he says, were
dramatic. The number of worms
increased, straw broke down more
easily and the soil became easier to
work.
A subsequent focus on trace
elements seemed to give crops more
resistance to rusts and insect damage
reducing the need for pesticides. It
also boosted Rhizobium nodules on
clover and pea crops from “virtually
non-existent” to vigorous roots that
were “full of nodules”.
The improved nitrogen fixation,
growing green manure, incorporating
stubble and straw, and grazing stock
have been successful in reducing the
need for artificial nitrogen on wheat
crops.
“Throughout the world growing
a tonne of cereal wheat requires
about 25 to 27 kg of nitrogen, but we
have been able now to reduce our
purchases to about 12 to 15 kg,” says
Don.
“That is really good news because
when you produce nitrogen in a
ABOVE: Ready access to water for
irrigation means the area is ideal for cereals,
seeds, fodder crops and pasture.

biological form it doesn’t leach and it
is readily plant available. When you
put on soluble N fertiliser only about
a quarter reaches the plant and the
rest is either volatilised or leaches out
of the soil.”
Lamb finishing. Grazing stock
has become an integral part of the
nitrogen cycle on the farm and an
important element in diversification
to increase revenue.
In recent years grass has been
grown as a cash crop for selling to
dairy farmers as silage. However,
doing this removes considerable
amounts of nutrients from the soil,
which have to be replaced.
Finishing lambs on grass and silage
is an excellent alternative that returns
nutrients and profits, and this year
the farm will be a temporary home to
around 9,000.
Andrew Hart, Don and Sarah’s
elder son who manages the day-today farming operations, starts buying
THE FURROW 35
in store lambs in January to secure
the numbers he wants at a good
price before the market picks up in
autumn.
“We buy mainly Romney cross and
half breed male lambs at around 32
kg liveweight and draft them out at
about 47 kg so that they yield a 22
kg carcass, which some reach in 8-10
weeks,” says Andrew.
“After the ryegrass seed is
harvested in late January and
February the grass is still growing
and the first lambs go onto it. Then
once the peas are harvested we direct
drill rape and the lambs graze that.
They could also be wintered on kale
or triticale, which is subsequently
sown in spring wheat.
“In spring they graze the young
ryegrass before it is shut up for seed.
We also have some pasture that we
use for the lambs as well as making
silage.”
The farm is 260 metres above sea
level and prone to winter snow so the
silage is a very good feed reserve to
have on hand. Three years ago they
used it to maintain 6,000 lambs on
36 THE FURROW
top of snow for 29 days.
Other than a drench when lambs
first come onto the property very
little is spent on animal health
products. The key, according to Don,
is that the grass and fodder crops
are high in nutrients so the lambs
grow very quickly and are resistant
to parasites.
However, he is constantly
disappointed that the high nutritional
quality and low disease status
of his crops, be they wheat, peas,
silage or lambs, are not recognised or
rewarded.
All around him other arable
farmers have responded to the low
prices for arable commodities by
voting with their gumboots and
making permanent changes.
“Everybody is going dairying and
you can’t blame them. And once
they’ve spent money on water supply,
irrigation, the cowshed and Fonterra
shares they are unlikely to change
because the only thing that can
support that financial commitment is
dairying,” he says.
“However, I believe arable farming
ABOVE: Don Hart’s younger son Duncan
has taken over the aerial topdressing
business.

and dairying can support each other.
Dairy farmers need cropping guys for
their feed and grain and because they
get a good pay-out they can pay fair
prices for our grain.”
Diversification. So, rather than
becoming cow cockies Don and his
sons have diversified. Andrew has
taken over the complex arable crop/
lamb finishing operation, Duncan
runs the aerial topdressing business,
and Don has set up as an adviser
advocating the biological approach to
farming that has been so successful
on his property.
“A visitor once commented that all
our animals were sitting down in
the paddock whereas his were always
grazing or looking for feed,” says
Don.
“I told him it was because our
stock get feed of high quality so
the animals don’t need to graze
continually to get the nutrition they
need and are very contented.”