Nuffield Scholars Field Reports

18th April 2004
Brent Alexander reports from New Zealand

Welcome to my first Nuffield tour report. For those of you who are not right up with the programme, there are eight scholars traveling from Australia and we have been joined by two New Zealand scholars, a Canadian and one scholar from France. It is a great opportunity to travel with such an informed group of farmers and the knowledge gained from discussions in the bus or over a beer a night, is as valuable as the visits themselves.

We have just finished our tour of New Zealand. It is a very pretty place and looks very good at the moment after widespread rain in February. It was described to us as the perfect grass growing country in the world and it certainly looked that way.

New Zealand agriculture was turned upside down after all government help was removed during the 80's.They have even less financial support from their government than ours, and it has turned their agriculture in to a very lean and efficient operation. We saw a good presentation from New Zealand Meat & Wool and typical of some of the gains, was a 20% lift in lambing percentage across the country since the late 80's.

Many of the people we talked to in New Zealand were keen to liaise with Australia. Meat and Wool NZ were already working with Meat and Livestock and Australian Wool here in Australia, on research projects and they were very keen to extend this relationship, as we share many similar problems.

The idea of combining as trading nation and possibly even sharing the same currency also had a lot of backing. We have many exports that compliment each other. Our wool is at the fine end of the market, NZ is predominantly crossbred and carpet, our lamb is mostly headed to the US and NZ is selling into the EU. The extra power and efficiencies generated by this relationship must be to the benefit of both nations.

Combining farming with the environment is a big issue facing all farmers worldwide and New Zealand is no exception. They are very aware that they are an export based economy and that these export dollars are almost entirely from agriculture. This has made them very protective of their clean green image overseas and hence biosecurity is a very big issue. They see a much higher threat coming from introduced diseases and pests (whether accidentally or in a bioterrorism form) than from any form of military style terrorism.

Farmers in New Zealand are already facing big issues with water contamination. Livestock producers along waterways are voluntarily fencing them off to reduce faecal contamination and there is increasing pressure being applied to fertilizer users in recharge areas to limit their fertilizer usage.

Water management was another big issue about to face New Zealand farmers. Currently there are no restrictions on the use of surface or ground water and very only a nominal charge for the water. This will surely have to change in the next few years, leaving a big opportunity for current users to profit from the sale of water rights when there is finally a value put on this water.

We've also managed to enjoy some of New Zealand's attractions. Swam in the hot springs at Lake Taupo, enjoyed the views of Auckland from the sky tower (which the kiwis proudly tell us is higher than centre point in Sydney) and of course tried bungy jumping, even if it was the reverse style.

We've moved onto the US now and looking forward to an interesting couple of weeks there.