| 45 nzdairy Multi-year, ten farm project for Miah Smith Richard Loader DAIRY PEOPLE » Wilith Farm The biggest barrier farmers face to trying regenerative methods is their own mindsets, says dairy farmer Miah Smith who has been part of a multi-year ten farm project. The project has led to the creation of an incorporated society built upon work initiated by AgriSea. The research project has assessed whether farming practices that respect and enhance the soil’s natural vitality and life force could deliver greater resilience, profitability and environmental sustainability, while better withstanding societal and regulatory pressures. “The idea of the project was to get farmers to understand how their soil works and how multi species and biological inputs can help improve it and reduce fertiliser costs,” explains Miah who farms Wilith Farm, located 22km south of Rotorua, with wife Jenny Smith. “It’s about changing mindsets and trying new things. People have been taught their whole lives they can only do things one way with nitrogen and other conventional fertilisers but there are definitely other options out there.” The couple farm a 260ha effective Atiamuri forestry conversion. The bad condition of the soil, which wasn’t responding rapidly to conventional methods, led them to try regenerative farming methods. Two years into their own on farm trials, which began eight years ago, they had double the root depth in the trial paddock, and in five years the pH went from 5.4 to 6.2, with no lime, just using AgriSea product. This led them to gradually roll out AgriSea across the whole farm. Miah says the difference has been palpable: “The cows are healthy, top soil has built up and our plant roots are deeper. The varied grass species we use also hold on longer in the summer. When we first got here the rye grass would just about die with some weeks of dry weather. But the deeper rooted plants have worked really well.” Wilith Farm milks 520 cows and has been once a day for four seasons. “There were lots of reasons. Our kids were teenagers and played a lot of sports and we wanted to be more involved with that. It’s a steep farm so it suited once a day and we wanted to keep our costs down and not have to get more staff. We also didn’t want to struggle with our mating any more using CIDRs, pre-mating heats etc. We now do none of that and empty rates are between 4-8%.” The research project has assessed whether farming practices that respect and enhance the soil’s natural vitality. Miah is not keen on labels and says regenerative farming doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach: “The word ‘regenerative’ puts you in a box but it’s just a more environmentally sustainable way of farming. And if I need to use conventional fertiliser from time to time, I do.” Miah says while he’s been an early adopter he thinks negativity from some about regenerative farming has scared some people away from trying new things. He suggests farmers dip their toes in the water via a similar methodology to what was tried on Wilith Farm: “The biggest advice I could give is to trial something on one paddock and see how it goes. You might be surprised by what happens. If you get a failure don’t give up. There is lots of advice out there and many farmers are doing things differently with great success.” He suggest farmers check out groups such as the Quorum Sense Farmer Network Facebook page. “They are a good bunch of guys passionate about regenerative farming. They have some great ideas and field days, speakers etc all over the country.”
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