The green green grass of Patoka

By JON MORGAN - The Dominion Post

Science can learn a lot from farmers' experiences, a climate change scientist says.

In this year's drought in the  Hawke's Bay hills, a dairy farm with luxuriant, glossy green  grass was a beacon of inspiration for its parched sheep- and  beef-farming neighbours.

The farm, in the dairying outpost of Patoka, west of Napier, is not irrigated and uses a fraction of the fertiliser of other farms. Yet its 700 cows produce much more milk than most cows in other dairy regions.

Farmer Neil Armitage says the drought resilience of his farm and stock is due to his use of a farming method championed by American GP and roving agriculture consultant Arden Andersen.

Known as biological farming, it focuses on stimulating soil activity, reasoning that healthy soil grows healthy pasture and crops that produce healthy animals.

Its methods draw from conventional and organic farming systems and are looked on with scepticism by soil scientists. One, Waikato scientist Doug Edmeades, dismisses it as "pseudo science" and advises farmers to avoid it.

But climate-change scientist Gavin Kenny argues that science can still learn a lot from the experiences of farmers. He is running a two-year Sustainable Farming Fund project with Hawke's Bay farmers about how they cope with a changing climate.

The aim is to use the lessons learnt by these farmers to help others make their farms more resilient to future droughts and other climate extremes.

Dr Kenny says science and policymakers need to engage with farmers more in shaping responses to climate change.

"The proactive ones are reading about what's going on in the world and they are thinking about what they're doing with their land. And we haven't taken the time to listen to them and to give them the credibility they deserve."

Farmers have felt climate change imposed on them, he says, by policies that haven't reflected their experiences.

"We've focused on mitigation solutions, including the emissions trading scheme, without understanding enough about the potential mitigation and adaptation benefits of different farming systems."

Dr Kenny's view, reinforced by what he has learnt from farmers in the eastern North Island over the past eight years, is that a smart way of responding to climate change is to better understand the ecology of farms - the interconnection between soil and pasture quality and grazing systems, the fertilisers being used, and the many benefits of trees.

The farmers in his project are looking for drought-tolerant pasture species, adopting flexible stocking policies with more trading cattle and fewer sheep, finding ways to keep more water on their farms and planting trees to break wind, provide shelter and slow the loss of soil moisture.

They are also looking at ways to improve the quality of their soil and its water-holding ability. He has noticed an increasing interest in alternative fertiliser regimes, including more lime-based systems and biological farming.

A lot of this interest has been driven by price, but increasingly farmers are questioning what they are doing, he says.

One of those is Patoka bull beef farmer Steve Horgan. After three years of drought, his stock numbers are down 20 per cent as his 365-hectare all-hills farm recovers. "We've all had a torrid time - man, beast and land," he says.

Even before the first drought three years ago he was thinking about his farming methods.

"Out on these hills, we're all growing less grass than we used to and you start questioning some of the practices you've been using for years."

He knew he had a high Olsen P, a measure of soil phosphorous, and felt an experiment of not using acidic fertilisers would not be damaging. He still needed calcium, so after asking around settled on applications of fine lime.

Then the first drought hit. The hills turned brown but, up the road, Mr Armitage's green farm gleamed. Mr Horgan was just one of many who asked why.

Mr Armitage had begun 10 years earlier experimenting with using low rates of nitrogen, trying to reduce it to the bare minimum needed to grow grass, but was disappointed at the lack of clover.

Then he heard Dr Andersen speak at a field day and followed that up by taking a three-day seminar. "It was a revelation," he says.

"Everything wrong that I had witnessed over 30 years, he had an answer for and he explained it in a way I could understand. If I had had him as a teacher when I was a child, who knows what I could have achieved."

Working with Outgro, a Dannevirke biological fertiliser company founded by Outback Helicopters owner Jim McMillan, he settled on a fertiliser regime aimed at stimulating the soil biology.

If he were farming conventionally, he estimates he would use 50 units of phosphate in a soluble form, 150-200 of nitrogen, 80 of potash and 20 of sulphur.

Instead, he uses greatly reduced amounts of reactive phosphate rock, nitrogen and sulphur and no potash as part of a fertiliser programme that also includes humates (natural sources of trace elements), fulvic acids, sugar, kelp and seawater.

"It's not hocus-pocus," Mr Armitage says.

"The fertiliser is applied after doing soil and herbage tests to see exactly what is needed, so we are using conventional science. But our interpretation of it is different to that of the conventional fertiliser companies."

He has changed from an intensive high-input, high production system to one that has lower costs and minimal inputs, but still has high production.

Pasture quality has improved out of sight - clover leaves the size of old pennies flourish among the dark green, glossy grass.

The pastures are deeper rooting and better able to sustain dry periods and have not needed fertiliser for six months.

He says the joy of farming that first thrilled him as a 15-year-old has returned after 35 years. "I learnt the old ways and then followed the new science I was told about.

"But that brought the problems farmers are having to cope with today.

"Now, I'm not leaving science behind entirely, but I'm going back to the old ways and the problems are disappearing."

Milk production is 470-500 kilograms of milksolids per cow and 1400kg per hectare, well above the national averages, and problems with cow health, infertility and mastitis have markedly reduced.

The cows are benefiting from nutrient- rich pastures - determined by sugar levels averaging 12-14 brix - and producing healthy, nutrient-rich milk that farmers should be paid a premium for, he says.

Other claimed benefits are a severe reduction in pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, no phosphate or nitrogen leaching into waterways and the sequestering of carbon in the soil.

"The rate at which the cow manure is getting recycled back into the soil is increasing," he says.

"It is not uncommon to see a cowpat completely recycled back into the soil within 30 days. And there is very minimal trash on the surface."

Most impressive to his neighbours has been the ease with which he has handled the droughts.

"The pastures last longer and they recover faster than anyone else's. I grow my way out of it in no time."

All this has persuaded many of the Patoka sheep and beef farmers to introduce elements of biological farming into their systems.

Mr Horgan is an enthusiastic convert and now gets his fertiliser from Outgro.

He uses fine-ground reactive phosphate rock, fine lime and a mix of minerals in a seawater solution.

After a mild August-September and cold October, which stimulated grass growth and topped up aquifers, he feels set up for summer, but knows he still has some way to go before the drought problems of hydrophobic soils and lack of clover are gone forever.

For him, the best indication that biologics is working is the improved health of his cattle.

Last year, he had 400 heifer calves arrive on the farm and over the past year they have not had to be treated for any ailments.

Another sign, but one he admits would be impossible to prove scientifically, is a change in the temperament of his two-year-old bulls.

"In the spring they usually get a bit stroppy - pick fights, smash a few fences, that sort of thing - but not any more. There's not so much nitrogen in the system and they're not so niggly because of it. That's my theory, anyway."

He counts 12 farmers in the district who have been inspired by Mr Armitage's green oasis to take on biologics. "It's growing," he says.

"Come back in a year and I wouldn't be surprised if it has risen to 20. We're starting to question the need for the chemicals we're using and the cost involved.

"Scientists may have their doubts about something like this but we have the firsthand experience and they should at least come and talk to us and see it in action."

Dr Kenny agrees.

"There are a lot of stories like this out there that we need to be tuned into. In Hawke's Bay, we can tap into a rich source of ingenuity and experience on what it takes to be resilient to drought and for a future with climate change - from knowledge of farm forestry to match the right tree species with the right land class and soil type to a practical experience with soil biology.

"These are the sort of solutions we need to be focused on for the long term, and the benefits to be gained won't be just to farmers but to whole communities."