Thursday, 05 November 2020 10:12

The winds of change

Written by  Staff Reporters
Castlepoint Station’s Anders Crofoot says everything they’re doing to look after the soil and fine tune their management system is simply ‘good farming practice’. Castlepoint Station’s Anders Crofoot says everything they’re doing to look after the soil and fine tune their management system is simply ‘good farming practice’.

When New Yorkers Anders and Emily Crofoot took over Castlepoint Station on the eastern Wairarapa coast in 1998 they had to make some big adjustments, quickly.

Gone were the freezing winters and reliable summer rains – replaced with year-round growth, frequent summer droughts and relentless wind

The Crofoots quickly discovered that looking after their farm’s soil required a shift from traditional thinking and practice.

Two attempts at sowing pasture in a conventionally cultivated paddock—and two spring gales that blew about a third of the seed straight out to sea each time—convinced them that there had to be a better way to establish pasture in this climate.

And that’s been a theme throughout their 20+ years on Castlepoint Station, a 3,700-hectare sheep and beef operation about 65km due east of Masterton.

Weather and topography are constant challenges.

In winter, pugging and hillside slippage are problems. In summer, it’s dryness. But it’s the wind that Anders Crofoot describes as the most striking feature of the property. In his first year at Castlepoint, a storm with sustained winds of 160 km/h struck. He’d never experienced anything like it. Now he barely blinks unless the wind rises above 120 km/h!

The station has three alluvial valleys, separated by hills that in some places run north-south and in others east-west. That variable aspect, coupled with the relentless north-westerly winds and periods of dry, create pockets where maintaining soil productivity is extremely difficult.

In these conditions, some of the traditional practices weren’t working well.

The Crofoots now sow by direct drilling to reduce soil disturbance and wind erosion. 

They are also experimenting with deeper-rooting forages – such as lucerne and plantain. These plants extract moisture from the soil more effectively without compromising feed quality and their roots also help to hold the soil together during periods of fallow.

Dung beetles are now also part of the mix. In theory, these can help to improve soil productivity by pulling nutrient-rich manure deeper into the soil and opening up channels through which more moisture can flow.

About 15,000 poplar and willow poles have been planted to stabilise hillsides prone to slipping in winter and provide shade for livestock in summer.

There has also been some tweaking of animal numbers over the years to optimise the stocking rate/productivity mix, as well as a focus on high-value outputs like Wagyu beef to shore up the business against market vagaries.

Crofoot says that while they’ve made something of a shift from the conventional, everything they’re doing to look after the soil and fine tune the system is simply “good farming practice”.

Their actions have seen lambing percentages and weaning weights increase, while the soil is visibly richer in organic matter and better able to cope with nature’s harshest assaults.

Meanwhile, those assaults will inevitably keep coming.

• Source AgMatters website, which is funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries and managed by the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC).

Featured

Sheep drench resistance costly

Analysis by Dunedin-based Techion New Zealand shows the cost of undetected drench resistance in sheep has exploded to an estimated $98 million a year.

Dairy sheep and goat turmoil

Dairy sheep and goat farmers are being told to reduce milk supply as processors face a slump in global demand for their products.

Hurry up and slow down!

OPINION: We have good friends from way back who had lived in one of our major cities for many years.

National

Knowing bugs means fewer drugs

A mastitis management company claims to deliver the fastest and most accurate mastitis testing available at scale for New Zealand…

Machinery & Products

AGTEK and ARGO part ways

After 12 years of representing the Landini and McCormick brands in New Zealand, Bay of Plenty-based AGTEK and the brands’…

100 years of Farmall Tractors

Returning after an enforced break, the Wheat and Wheels Rally will take place on the Lauriston -Barhill Road, North-East of…

JD unveils its latest beast

John Deere has unveiled its most powerful tractor ever, with the launch of the all new 9RX Series Tractor line-up…

Biggest Quadtrac coming to NZ!

In the biggest announcement that Case IH Australia/New Zealand has made around its tractor range, its biggest tractor is about…

» Latest Print Issues Online

The Hound

Why?

OPINION: A mate of yours truly wants to know why the beef schedule differential is now more than 45-50 cents…

Fat to cut

OPINION: Your canine crusader understands that MPI were recently in front of the Parliamentary Primary Sector Select Committee for an…

» Connect with Rural News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter