30 | nzdairy Proposed new motorway Richard Loader All Greg and Ingrid McCracken really want is for the new National led coalition Government to put a line in the sand, and deliver certainty about a proposed motorway cutting through their farmland. The McCrackens farm two adjoining dairy units in Te Hana, on the northern boundary of Auckland. Both dairy units operate independently of each other, and each is home to 400 cows. “We’re on the northern end of the next stage of the motorway from Warkworth to Te Hana, proposed and approved several years ago by the then National government,” says Greg. “With a construction date set for 2030, the route of the motorway was going to go dead centre of one of our farms, and cut the other farm off from some lease land. It was a holy shit, what do we do now experience!” DAIRY PEOPLE » Hayden and Alecia Lawrence / Greg and Ingrid McCracken Carbon mapping gives couple valuable data Karen Phelps Being involved with CarbonCrop is helping dairy farmers Hayden and Alecia Lawrence to gain valuable insights into carbon emissions and sequestration on their 151ha effective/175 total located between Eltham and Hawera where they milk a herd of 400 predominantly Friesian cows. Hayden grew up on the farm, making him the second generation to farm the land, and they split calve to gain the Fonterra winter milk premium. CarbonCrop is a spin-off from the Nelson Artificial Intelligence Institute, where the core of the technology was conceived, that enables scalable monitoring and verification of carbon removals over vast areas of mixed species biodiverse forest. The company’s website says that it uses AI technology to ‘assess forests, calculate carbon sequestration, monitor for reversals and speed up the process of issuing carbon offsets at scale’. The Lawrences say after carbon mapping their farm, if they exclude methane from the equation, they have discovered that their farm is close to carbon neutral “And that doesn’t include grass – it’s just from our tree planting on farm,” says Hayden. Although still in the early phases, the Lawrences are considering whether it is worth entering a pine tree block on their land in the Emissions Trading Scheme or to take the block through to harvest then look to plant those areas into a more sustainable long term carbon sink crop. “We have some marginal hill country for dairy farming. And with this technology we can model if we planted that in pine trees and put it into the ETS how much carbon it would absorb over the next 50 years and how much profit it would return. It’s a cool innovative tool.” The Lawrences have always been early and passionate users of new technology. They were one of the first farms to use the smaXtec bolus system, which is inserted in the cow to measure inside the cows’ reticulum. “So unlike a collar, where you get secondary information such as counting the number of bites the cow takes, the bolus actually measures true rumination by measuring contractions,” explains Hayden. The Lawrences say after carbon mapping their farm, if they exclude methane from the equation, that it is close to carbon neutral. “We don’t have any issues with NZTA doing it, it has to go through someone’s property. It’s just how do we keep farming ...” “Calving alerts tell us 24-48 hours before a cow calves. We now draft them out and have them close to the shed on grass. It’s been better for cows, calves and management. “Around 95% of cows calved in breaks around the cow shed so the technology was pretty accurate. The farm is also 50-70% down on antibiotic use for mastitis than previously because the technology can also pick up the diseases 24 hours before it goes clinical.” Another new technology they are using on the farm is a management software called Trello. Although not a specifically agricultural programme, the Lawrences have developed it into a farm management and communication tool. When Labour was elected to government benches in 2017, the Warkworth to Te Hana stage of the motorway was taken off the table, though Greg understands NZTA has been quietly working away in the background with design work and buying land as it became available, pending a change in government that would reignite an appetite for the motorway. While National is yet to announce its major roading projects, Greg’s fears about the future of the family farms have come flooding back. Hayden&AleciaLawrence “It’s very nimble and documents can be communicated with everyone on mobile and pc. We’ve made virtual white boards – for example daily task and feed management boards – in Trello that can be updated across multiple devices. “ It provides a single place for all information and has really enhanced our efficiency.”
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