Ashburton dairy farmers Phill and Jocelyn Everest have come back from an overseas trip brimming with innovative and environmental ideas for New Zealand farmers.
A cheese factory owned by farmers which has become an Oregon tourism hot spot, an 18th-generation small dairy farm in Germany and an incentivised greenhouse gas tax in Denmark were among eye-opening insights to impress them.
The couple won the Gordon Stephenson Trophy with their son and daughter-in-law, Paul and Sarah, after finishing top nationally in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards in 2022.
With a lot on their plate, it wasn’t until June the couple could travel to the United States and then Europe, returning last September.
In Oregon they visited Rob and Amy Seymour, with the latter attending Lincoln University with the couple before settling in the United States.
At their dairy company they learned it took them four hours to milk 240 cows and do this twice daily.
The Seymours supply milk to the Tillamook Creamery run by a farmer co-op.
Mr Everest said the dairy outlet had become the second-largest tourist attraction in the state and showed the potential for farmers to add value in New Zealand.
"The bit they had done very well was that they actually talk about the production of the milk to start with. Then there is a fibreglass calf the kids can feed and a true scale cow with cups to put on so it was a great promotion of dairying showing the whole process. So there’s no entrance fee, but they sell merchandise and ice cream and cheese. For the year before they reckon every man, woman and child that walked in spent $US16 a head."
In the front is an ice cream shop and on the other side burgers made from local beef are available with wedges of Tillamook cheese, selling for $US20-$30 among a wine selection and Tillamook branded cups, T-shirts and other merchandise.
"It shows opportunity we can do in New Zealand that we don’t do very well."
Mrs Everest said it was good to see dairying being seen in such a positive light.
"I feel like we still look down on dairying for the environment and it was just such a cool story for people to see where their food comes from. It was more about the life cycle of the animal and where it lives and what it eats and how they get the milk out."
She said the marketing was on another level, with a bright orange Kombi van in Tillamook branding catching the eyes of visitors at the main airport.
Mr Everest said New Zealand may not have the population or the scale of the US, but had many tourists and it would be good to see dairy attractions opening up to them.
Their next stop for three days near Crescent City in northern California was the Alexandre Family Farm, with two sisters, former exchange university students who had worked at the Everest farm.
The family runs 7500 cows over five farms and had progressed from organic milk farming to an organic a2 milk and regenerative system.
"Their father Blake was struggling to get a regenerative definition out of the American system and after getting frustrated just got on with it and set up realistic audited rules. They had seen a need, but the key thing is they are getting a 32% to 46% premium for their milk.
"We are fluffing around in New Zealand still trying to argue what a definition might be and they have done it, audited it and certified it on their bottles."
The family sells a fresh and flavoured milk range as well as cheese and yoghurt and also have laying hens. Their regenerative system of multi-species pastures has rotational grazing so the ground can regenerate.
"We have done this in New Zealand, but it’s a big change for Americans who predominantly do milk through barns from grain feed systems," he said.
The mother Stephanie’s passion is bio-health and a range in this direction included bottled eggnog.
Mrs Everest said the innovative family had worked hard over 30 years to grow scale since opening a farm shop now supplying organic eggs and dairy products as well as caps, shirts and mugs. They process the milk themselves and sell $US1 million’s worth a week through 1000 supermarkets.
"Getting this regen thing off the ground after his frustration with the regulation was inspiring. What I took out of it was that it’s a huge change for Americans, but my Dad used to do this 40 years ago and put the green water through the irrigator in the middle of Waikato, had rotations, grew silage on the farm and he was doing all that stuff," Mrs Everest said.
"Why do New Zealanders keep beating ourselves up when our farm has got more carbon in the soil than the average New Zealand arm and the average New Zealand farm has got about four times the carbon in the soil America has?"
There was huge demand for the regen products world-wide and farmers needed to stop knocking it and "join the boat", Mr Everest said.
"We already tick those boxes already and we should be celebrating it and taking that market advantage. The Alexandre family have just shown what can be done on a small scale, but that’s quite a large scale when you are selling $US52m of milk products."
The couple noted, without criticism, that US farmers could meet the definition of producing 100% grass fed milk if 60% of their cows’ diet is grass for 150 days, while the definition for organic milk is 30% pasture diet for 120 days.
They wonder if the New Zealand industry is being too tough on itself after facing criticism for palm kernel being fed in a mainly pasture diet.
At the University of California Davis they were impressed by research progress being made in mitigating greenhouse gases.
"The interesting thing I found was their work looking at what we can do to change gut flora to reduce the methane production," Mr Everest said.
"So that’s the bacteria themselves and they are doing some exciting work on that. What I hadn’t appreciated is that I thought the little calf came with no bacteria in its rumen and just picked it up in the grass and all the rest. In actual fact the calves are getting some of that bacteria across the placenta membrane from mum."
Research was also being carried out on the Asparagopsis species of red seaweed to reduce methane and while it was working there were challenges of intake limitations with scientists looking at ways to change the flavour.
Mr Everest said it was good to see large-scale applied science working on a tool farmers could use as a natural remedy if they could get cows to eat more seaweed.
In Ireland they spent four and a-half days at the state agri-research agency, Teagasc. On the first day scientists took them through seven research projects.
Teagasc’s research included nitrogen fixation from different strains of clover, different pasture mixes, catch cropping, reducing nitrogen use and a "well constructed" action plan for better farming water with eight actions for change which were almost exactly the same as New Zealand.
The Irish had a major soil carbon project with solar flux meters measuring solar radiation into the ground, reflected off the ground, pasture growth as well as gas from 100 metres away and the animals’ output. Over 20 years they had found their soils were accumulating an average of 1.3 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.
"If you look at it in terms of New Zealand, then that’s a huge amount of carbon we could be sequestering and in the past we’ve just said it’s very hard to measure," Mr Everest said.
"But the Irish have gone about and said we will measure it and now they have put 28 of those meters at $800,000 each throughout the country to try and look at different farming systems and various locations to see if there’s any difference."
Since then they have learned several meters are in New Zealand.
Mr Everest said the Irish had challenged climate change rules including calculations their wetland losses were the equivalent of nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide. After going over the numbers they found this was reduced to three million tonnes which was far more manageable for meeting a reduction target of 10%.
He said New Zealand needed to check to see if the same 1.3t carbon/ha/yr sequestration was occurring as it had a similar climate to Ireland.
A highlight was seeing the agency take on 12 to 30 young, aspiring researchers each year as research assistants who help write up papers.
This was followed by a visit to the Blarney Woollen Mills. After it went broke a staff member developed it into a thriving business selling Irish gifts, wool and Aran sweaters, Irish crystal, Celtic jewellery and other goods.
In the Netherlands they learned about the Natura 2000 programme’s target to have fewer farms and produce the same amount of milk by 2030 and visited Wageningen University to see its greenhouse gas research.
Mr Everest said the Dutch called the target an "extensification" and it would be interesting to see how they navigated the challenges of controlling greenhouse gases with more pasture farming, compared with barns, and a major manure policy.
From there they travelled to Germany and stopped at an emerging science museum in Berlin where they saw exhibits, including a battery made out of algae, a jacket designed from orange peel, hemp fibre reinforced with mycelium fungi and the high energy costs of growing rice via vertical farming.
At Wahrenholz, they visited an 18th-generation dairy farm owned by the Evers family whose daughter, Sophie, had stayed with them about 10 years ago.
On the farm, started in 1489, the family continues to milk 60 cows on the doorstep of the town where there were once 11 dairy farms, now reduced to three.
On the back fence of the dairy shed is the supermarket and the effluent from the one-hectare farm has to be shipped out at night to keep any odour down, with feed grown on small blocks held by families and brought in from outside.
The family makes yoghurt, ice cream and cheese themselves and sell this at a farmers’ market, with some of the cream going to the local bakery and eggs to an outdoors stand.
"While we were there the kindy kids came holding hands together with no orange vests and hats and walked through the middle of the barn to look at the cows and watch the tractor load the feed wagon," he said.
"Then they walk back to kindy after learning where their food comes from and cows actually make milk.
Opposite them, the council has built a bus shelter with a vending machine selling local produce and the Everests sell $12,000 of product there a month. An app tells them when food needs restocking from 10m across the road.
In another income earner, they have 500 kilowatt and 800kw wood burners — fuelled by slash and waste wood felled from sustainable forestry — at the back of the farm which provides all the hot water for the village.
On another German farm they drove past a 4km-long stretch of solar panels over 100m wide along a fenceline.
Catching their interest in the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia were ultra high temperature waste furnaces in cities. The burned waste providing hot water is carried out in the middle of built-up areas and they never saw smoke coming out of the chimneys monitored every minute of the day for emissions.
A burner with an angled roof in Copenhagen Square in Denmark also acts as artificial ski slope in the winter.
"It seems like an obvious step for here when you consider we are putting a dump in Waipara and having to deal with that for ever," Mr Everest said.
"You don’t have to deal with the emissions that produces or the waste you can’t utilise and it’s a source of energy in the middle of the city."
In Denmark they got to see the inner workings of its GHG tax on farmers.
Mr Everest said it was an enlightening system after eight government ministers got together with fish and game, forest and bird, environment protection, manufacturers and farming agencies to shape a solution.
"They were locked in a room to sort this out and the really smart farming president knew there was no way they were going to get away with a low price being acceptable to the urban population. He went for a reasonable price at a higher end at a tax level, but negotiated so farmers get a 60% discount on that tax with what they can do with their mitigation tools currently available.
"If all the farmers do the mitigations, and it will change, the net cost to the farmer is zero. Suddenly there’s no tractors blocking the roadways and everybody in town thinks they are getting a good deal because the farmers are being taxed at a high price. You look at that and think there’s some good messages here and everybody’s ticking along and they start to meet their targets."
New Zealand could follow some of their lead to build a working model, he said.
Back home, they are digesting all of the information accumulated during their travels to complete a report and a presentation in Wellington on the opportunities available for the wider farming community.
They are extremely grateful for the New Zealand Farm Environment Trust which helped fund the trip and the Ministry for Primary Industries for opening overseas doors which would have been otherwise closed to them.
The initial plan was to work for three or four days each week and holiday for the rest over the course of the tour, but that was extended to five days because of the valuable insights they were gaining.
Weighing everything up, they feel the trip could be boiled down to a handful main points; farming challenges are similar across the world, but the solutions are different; farmers aren’t hearing about amazing research, and answers to environmental challenges, which need to be shared, and the ability to challenge is being kicked out of farmers and needs to be recharged.
The Everests only wish they did the study tour 20 years ago to carry out some of the opportunities themselves.
