Grass management a forgotten skill

That's the view of Chris Kelly, made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in the Queen's birthday honours.

He says the dairy sector as a whole has taken on too much debt and become far too reliant on supplements such as PKE. He says many farmers do not see the advantages of all-grass farming developed by great scientists such as Dr Campbell McMeekan in the 1970s.

"The reliance on supplements is fine in years of high payouts, but it becomes a major challenge when the payout is low as it is now," he says.

Kelly has spent his whole working life in the agricultural sector. His father was a vet and he followed in his footsteps, graduating from Massey in 1969. He then practiced as a vet in Bay of Plenty before being appointed a lecturer at Melbourne University; then he returned to Massey University to study for his masters degree in veterinary science.

In the 1990's he worked for the then Dairy Board as general manager of strategy and strategic planning.

"Those were the days the Dairy Board controlled the exports out of NZ for all dairy products. We developed some techniques whereby we could work out the profitability of those products, and shipped them to various parts of the world -- a very exciting time.

"Even in those days we were beset by low payouts and high payouts but I think the extremes of volatility we are seeing in the dairy industry today are greater than we saw in those days," he says.

While at the Dairy Board Kelly helped form Fonterra and was involved in the setting up of Dexel and Dairy Insight. But when the new Fonterra moved to Auckland, Kelly decided to stay in Wellington and soon took on the role for which he is best noted – chief executive of Landcorp.

Now retired from Landcorp, Kelly is still involved in the ag sector. His roles include chancellor of Massey University, chair of Beef + Lamb NZ Genetics and other roles in ag science.

Rosy view of the future

Chris Kelly sees many great things happening in agriculture such as productivity in the sheep and beef sector and new software devised to enhance farm management and productivity.

But he notes the problem of the gap between urban and rural.

"In my youth my fellow townies and I had aunts, uncles or cousins on farms and the vast majority of New Zealanders spent their holidays helping people with lambing beats and rearing calves. But this doesn't happen nowadays and this is having significant reverberations through the whole country because people are not aware of what agriculture is and how exciting it is," he says.

Kelly says he likes to see more money spent on promoting agriculture as a career for young people.

"As farming gets more sophisticated there is no doubt there will be fewer but larger farms. We have environmental and animal welfare challenges which can be overcome but you need science to do that and you need to bring young people into the sector to undertake that science."

Kelly says he's pleased to see the Government putting more money into science, especially Primary Growth Partnerships, and he says that will have a positive impact.

He says the project that has reduced the maturation time for mozzarella cheese from seven months to a matter of hours is exciting. Kelly also notes the science being done to develop new dairy proteins for use in paediatrics.

Kelly says he's humbled by the award he's received and notes that like most others he could not have achieved what he did without help. But he says it's good to see agriculture recognised.