Transformational change at Tunanui Station

Added 4 months ago

By Bonnie Flaws

Transformational change at Tunanui Station

Historic Tunanui Station in Northern Hawke’s Bay is a classic Kiwi sheep and beef farm, owned by Andrew Russell and managed by Kieran Wills, who is also an equity partner in their operating company.

In its heyday Andrew says the station ran 5000 ewes and 300 cows and heifers, but that’s all changed now.

In order to gain more control over production and profit, they’ve changed up their farming system over the last 15 years, but with bigger changes in the last 5-6 years.

They’ve moved away from breeding because of problems like facial eczema and drought, and changed to a finishing system. First they got rid of the ewes and later the cow herd. Now they deal in trading stock that they buy in at the right time.

Why? Buying stock at the right time allows them to keep more grass on the farm, without running short, and gives them more tools to work with to fix any problems that arise because they’re working with longer covers.

“We’ve gone from being short grass farmers to long grass farmers. That sums it up,” says Andrew. By using a programme called Farmax, which models the whole farm biologically, they can match feed supply with feed demand by timing when they buy and sell stock and through buying in a lot of supplementary feed.

“It’s a two-pronged attack. It’s not just supplements, it's nutrient transfer as well. What we’re doing now, rather than using nitrogen to get a paddock going, is that we’ll use supplementary feed on those paddocks and use the poo and wee for that. It’s brought in on the back of a truck in the form of maize silage or corn waste or whatever it is, and we use it to build those paddocks up.”

Kieran says there are certain times of year that you have to feed the animals in order to get the production levels you want. With the new system, they can wait until they have enough grass and then buy in stock at a set price and sell it when they’re ready

“It’s much easier to have a fixed margin that you make rather than hoping that the season will go your way. You can manipulate things to make money, or get the production you are looking for,” he says.

In a conventional system, farmers allow all the grass to be eaten and when it’s gone they start feeding out. “We don’t wait until it gets short - we feed out when we can get good utilisation of the food, to maintain that grass cover. What we find is that the grass grows faster.

“We have changed when we feed and what KPIs determine when we start. The leaves are a big solar panel. We can still end up running a bit short in August. It's a very different system. We look after the plants, keep them longer, and they in turn put nutrients in the soil and keep it covered so you don’t lose as much moisture,” says Kieran.

This new system is a lot better for when there are dry patches, too.

“From our observations, this system certainly handles it better. And once it does rain our feed jumps away faster because there is leaf there. The more cover you’ve got the more insulated the soil is so it keeps growing into the dry season.”

Their visual soil assessments and general observations have shown that rooting depth is much better. In the old days they might measure 100mm if they were lucky but now they have probably tripled that. “They go down as far as you can dig a hole.”

The earth worm counts have leapt from an average of 10 to between 20-30 at a time, with a record of 74. They also have improved their BRIX readings (sugars) to regularly over 10, up from 7 or 8 previously.

Kieran says they’re still buying fertiliser but the mix has changed and they will continue to look at how they can reduce it or introduce products that are friendlier to the microbiology in the soil.

Another observation is that after rain, the runoff takes a lot longer to start (there are no permanent running streams on the farm). Previously, after 10mls the creeks would be running, but now it would take 40-50mls before it starts - and it will run “gin clear”, says Andrew.

“It tells me two things. Because our soil doesn’t repel water so much, the water goes into the ground. The grass is holding the water on the hills or in the pasture and when it does run off, the grass is filtering it and holding the soil there. Gabrielle was a bit much for us, however.”

No kidding!

B2R Catchment Group
Andrew co-chairs the local catchment group, named B2R or Between the two Rivers, to represent the fact it falls between the Ngaruroro and Tutaekuri Rivers. The other co-chair is Meihana Watson, who is the kaumātua at Omahu. The catchment is about 70,000 hectares, and there are hundreds of farmers living and working there.

“The group has worked with the local iwi and the council to get flax delivered out to here to go on farms to plant on damaged areas and things like that. From what I can see the catchment group is building momentum and is able to get on with doing some important work,” Andrew says.

Funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries has been used on to pay for people - a full-time administrator - and education, rather than fences or trees.

“It’s not a true, old-fashioned catchment group full of middle-aged farmers like me,” he says. “It’s more of a whole community thing. Small holders, mana whenua, viticulturists, orchardists, croppers, forestry, lifestylers. People are pretty bought into it and we are getting more and more uptake”.