38 | Craig & Tina Alexander Buckland Road, RD2, Matamata P 07 888 1703 M 027 774 6644 E calexander@outlook.co.nz Otiwhiti Station’s experiential learning Richard Loader The use of technology like FarmIQ is becoming increasingly key for Otiwhiti Station, a working sheep and beef station, that since 2007 has also developed a renowned reputation for its experiential farm training school — Otiwhiti Station Land Based Training (Otiwhiti LBT). Sixteen kilometres inland from Hunterville, Otiwhiti Station and Otiwhiti LBT has plenty to offer cadets by way of experiential learning, taking between sixteen and eighteen students a year from fifty applications nationwide, with each candidate hopeful of acceptance. Encompassing 1700 hectares, along with a further 400 hectares used for finishing, of which 120 hectares is irrigated, Otiwhiti Station ranges from steep to very steep. Home to 4500 ewes, 1100 replacements, 5300 trading hoggets, 200 Angus cows along with 540 other cattle plus their replacements, the Station is owned by the Otiwhiti Westoe Farming partnership. A partnership between the Duncan family and Land Based Training, Otiwhiti LBT’s experiential training encompasses every aspect of farm work, with a philosophy of learn-by-doing and repeating the task so that it is mastered and remembered. The use of FarmIQ is also providing benefits to the school, its cadets and their future employers. Part Owner and operator of Otiwhiti LBT, Charlie Duncan, says the station has had FarmIQ in its tool box for the last six years, but it has only been in the last three years that the best use has been made of the rich features the application has to offer. “We use FarmIQ because it’s a tool that captures all farm information and, once captured, becomes useful information to our business. It captures our fertiliser and agri-chemical inputs. It can be your management tool for planning your winter rotation, or setting up paddocks for how you’re going to deal with your twin or single lambs. You can record cropping plans and roll them out year-on-year, or make a change.” Presenting a valuable top down/global view of everything that is happening on farm, FarmIQ provides an animal health recording and inventory tool, and a reporting tool, producing time sheets, records of what people have done, where they have done it and who they have done it with. “When you get an audit from MPI or the freezing works and you get to withholding period inventory, animal health reporting and recording batch numbers, I can quickly show all those reports in FarmIQ, that the auditor can match their record with.” Charlie says the power of FarmIQ goes from being a practical day-to-day management and reporting tool, to a key organisational tool, with tasks carried onboard in a calendar. “Using Calendar, every week my wife organises where our cadets are going to be at any one time. In addition to using Otiwhiti Station for our training, RURAL PEOPLE » Otiwhiti Station Land Based Training we have ten farmer partners who our cadets work with out on their farms. FarmIQ goes to the cadets’ phones and tells them where they are going to be and what they will be doing. This generation loves their phones and FarmIQ is the only system with a mobile phone app that we are aware of, and that’s why we have gone down that track.” In the past, at graduation each cadet has been presented with a discount voucher from FarmIQ, with the idea that the cadet will offer it to the owner of the farm they will be employed on. “Because the cadets have been exposed to the technology and the benefits that it provides, they can help their new employer get up and running with the tool, if they choose to make use of it. It is one of those things that you don’t know what you don’t know. Having our graduates already familiar and comfortable with the system, who can take some of the fear away, is a helpful way of exposing more people to FarmIQ, to make their lives easier. The discount voucher just adds a little incentive.” We take care of your accounting needs, so you can focus on the everyday business of running a farm. Proudly supporting Otiwhiti Station www.ruralca.co.nz | (06) 322 8359 The three major award winners for 2021 Most Improved - Felix Charteri; Top Cadet - Jed Baker; Top Academic - Emma Baldock.
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