This biological farm in Te Awamutu was not affected as severely as neighbouring farms during the Waikato drought.
magnify imageGreenpeace is not saying "stop farming"; rather we're advocating a win-win way forward. It's what we're calling smart farming, or what's known globally as ‘bio-logical' farming.
Smart farming is about reverting back to more traditional farming practices. It's about less input, and better output. It's about cutting down on chemicals, cutting back on herd numbers and looking after soil so that pasture thrives and lasts. Generations of farmers have successfully used this method in New Zealand - they knew how to work with the land and doing so is how they survived. In a way it's time to go back to basics.
This view was reinforced in a five year scientific assessment of global agriculture undertaken by multiple stakeholders including the UN and released in April 2008. (http://www.agassessment.org/)
The report's findings slam intensive, high input based approaches to food production and find that traditional, holistic farming practices increase productivity and benefit communities.
Smart farming essentially uses natural systems to improve soil structure and pasture quality and help control weeds, pests and diseases. This in turn leads to healthy livestock. These natural processes include:- best tillage methods
- proper livestock manure use
- promoting soil life
- reducing compaction from overstocking of livestock
- using rotational grazing to maintain pasture root health through leaving residual pasture cover, and
- balancing the soil's minerals through the use of soil conditioners..
To a degree, bio-logical farming involves growing the soil, rather than
the pasture or herd. The beneficial organisms it encourages make the
soil alive and fertile, which also feeds pasture forages. A New Zealand
bio-logical dairy farmer summed it up to the media this way: "If you
look after the stock below the ground, they'll look after the stock
above the ground."
It may sound too good to be true – or too much like common sense – but
it actually works. Lower stocking per hectare increases milk and meat
production from each animal and the reduced cost fertilisers and the
resulting reduction of expensive animal health problems allows farms to
become more profitable and sustainable.
A study by AgResearch [1], which examined different demonstration farms
in New Zealand showed that intensification of dairy farming is
detrimental to farms’ eco-efficiency, and can greatly reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions advantage compared to European systems. The
study found that milk produced and delivered per cow per year was
highest under the ‘low input’ farming system.
The low-input system didn’t use any chemical nitrogen fertilizer and
kept lower numbers of cows per hectare. This system also recorded the
lowest impacts per kilogram of milk and per hectare for global warming
potential, acidification, nitrogen contamination of water and energy
use. The study also shows the low input system is the least financially
risky and is more profitable when milk-price payouts are low – as they
were between 1987 and 2006.
[1] Eco-efficiency of intensification scenarios for milk production in New Zealand, Claudine Basset-Mens, Stewart Ledgard, Mark Boyes, AgResearch Limited, Ecological Economics, In Press 2007.
