The annual NZ Grassland Association conference comes to the South Island every second year. This year, it will be hosted in Oamaru for the first time since 1996. The Grassland Association is being joined by the Agronomy Society and New Zealand Society of Animal Production.
Mrs Kearney is joined on the voluntary organising committee by North Otago farmer Grant Ludemann, agronomist Craig Cox and agronomist and animal nutritionist Wayne Nichol.
"Somehow I managed to find myself steering the ship and I didn’t realise just how much of my time it was going to take up, but that’s fine – I am happy to do my bit, I am very excited about the line-up of people we have presenting," she said.
This year’s theme is ‘Dust to Dollars’ and focusses on how the region has changed dramatically.
"There has been so much change in this region over that time. From irrigation to dairying and the technology applied."
Planned over two-and-a-half days from November 5, Mrs Kearney said the morning sessions would focus on theory-based farming topics such as legumes, animals and genetics and agronomy from scientific leaders in their fields. In the afternoon, the conference will cover how these subjects are applied in a practical sense.
"Sometimes conferences can be very heavy theory-based sessions, and it can be difficult to see how they can be applied from an on-farm perspective," she said.
In the past, there had been a cost to attend the afternoon field day but "this year we have managed to get it over the line so we can offer it free to farmers to attend", she said.
"Many farmers don’t like the idea of sitting inside for any great length of time at the best of times", she said, laughing. "In a field day setting, we hope there is lots of chat and that farmers can dig deep into the topics that interest them and ask the scientists that are attending some curly questions which they can take away and apply to their own systems.’’
The first field day will be looking at the sheep and beef operation of Rogan and Michelle Borrie and the second day there is two concurrent field days; one is at Russell and Cathy Hurst’s dairy operation and the other is an agronomy field day focusing on the Webster’s TopFlite bird seed operation.
Registrations for the conference will open soon and a programme can be found on the NZ Grasslands Association website.
