Workshops

Resilience building tools and strategies we can all use 

Gerard Vaughan and Hugh Norris – Farmstrong 

What are the key objectives of the workshop?

• Increasing understanding of mental wellbeing and why it is such an important asset for life and work. 
• Giving practical ideas, tips and skills based on the latest science that will help improve farming sector performance and resilience. 
• Increasing confidence to apply tools and strategies as a wellbeing leader to help others cope through ups and downs. 

What will you take away from this session? 

• We will draw on participants existing knowledge and expertise to create open discussion, as some of the best learning about what works will be shared by those there.   

• Farmers wisdom on wellbeing through videos and tips. 
• The “big picture” – mental health through the ups and downs in life. 
• The “Wellbeing Bank Account”. 
• Helpful thinking techniques and mindsets that improve performance. 
• Why sometimes struggling can contribute to your wellbeing in the long term. 
• Applied learning from high performers in the world of business and sport. 

 Who should attend this workshop? 

Anyone with an interest in mental wellbeing for themselves or others.

190 N Cap – An opportunity to be more efficient, improve profitability & learn strategies to successfully reduce N fertiliser. Charlotte Wright, DairyNZ Senior Policy Advisor

Paul Edwards – DairyNZ, Brent Boyce – LIC Farmwise, Steve and Tracey Henderson – Legendairies southland farmers 

A panel discussion challenging traditional thinking about milking times 

Paul Edwards – DairyNZ, Brent Boyce – LIC Farmwise, Steve and Tracey Henderson – Legendairies Southland farmers Paul Edwards will review and discuss the results from the studies he has carried out into the 3-in-2 milking trials on the Lincoln farmlet, as well as the on-farm trials.

Brent Boyce will talk about how 3-in-2 looks at the bigger picture and how you could implement some of the different milking routines into your current system.

Steve and Tracey Henderson will talk about their actual practical experience of trialling 3-in-2 and 10 milkings in 7 days.

What are the key objectives of the workshop?

• Farmers will get some evidence-based feedback from trials carried out by Paul Edwards and DairyNZ on 3 in 2 milking

and the preliminary findings from this research.

• To challenge the traditional thinking of farmers about milking times and what we can get away with while achieving the same production.

What will you take away from this session?

• What other potential milking routines look like and how these would impact your business at a farm level.
• The potential for changing milking routines to create a resilient farm system that can improve the work environment of dairy farms.
• Ideas to enable time to be spent on more rewarding and interesting work for managers and employees alike.

Who should attend?

This workshop is aimed at all levels of attendees, with a range of presenters to cater to decision makers and the team on the ground.

Volatile milk prices have had a big impact on many farmers. Is Fixed milk price the way to manage it?  

Charles Fergusson – Head of Farm source Canterbury, Tasman, Marlborough  

Harry Hewitt – Vice President, Derivatives, Jarden NZ 

Securing your milk price  is a new business strategy for many  farmers and  business owners. Jarden  NZ has  been a specialist in offering  milk futures for period of time and  now Fonterra has  also started to offer guaranteed milk price  to their  suppliers. Using milk futures and  guaranteed milk price  as a business tool is a great way to reduce volatility and  risk while securing income that  can be used for development, growth or debt repayment.

 What are the key objectives of the workshop? 

• Introduction to how fixed milk price works. 
• Different ways to manage business risk. 
• Why you would do it, or not.  

 What will you take away from this session? 

• New ways how to manage risk. 
• A challenge to your current thinking and the way you manage your business.  
• How to take control of your profits and development. 

 Who should attend? 

Anyone who would like to secure a milk price or to understand the benefits and risks.

BrightSIDE is new initiative to the conference in 2019. It aims to get entry level farmers connecting, networking, challenged, empowered and informed about the tools available through future training, on-farm development and the many other opportunities in the dairy sector.
BrightSIDE is a forum panel of speakers where you’ll learn about new opportunities in a changing landscape, get tools to manage your personal finances, and gain understanding on how your daily on- farm performance impacts your career. BrightSIDE is a great personal development opportunity.
BrightSIDE starts at 1.00pm with a Keynote address from innovator and entrepreneur Logan Williams and finishes with drinks and nibbles with the sponsors. You can also register to join us for SIDE Barn Dance on Tuesday night at Pemberton, Prebbleton buses available from Lincoln.

BrightSIDE Workshops

MC Tanagoroa Walker – Farm 4 Life

Budgeting with the Sorted.org team
Tom Hartmann
Get your personal finances sorted. Tune-up your Daily on-farm performance.

How to have a successful career in dairy

Sarah How  – Developer in the DairyNZ people team

Planning for 2030 by adapting in 2021

Callum Eastwood, Senior Scientist – DairyNZ

This workshop will provide you with information on how New Zealand workplaces are evolving to attract talent and will give you some great ideas about what you can do on-farm to further improve your workplace and make it more attractive to current and future staff. You will also get an insight into how New Zealand’s workforce might change by 2030, and what might appeal to our future workforce.

Who should attend this workshop?

Farm owners, farm managers, key decision makers, people managers and farm staff.

An opportunity for you to get answers from a range of experts on environmental topics and farming practices, with a different format. This event allows you to sit in small groups with each expert for an opportunity to discuss what you want to know.

This is a chance to dig deep into the knowledge and experience of these experts, to answer questions from you!

Get specific answers for your specific questions about:

• Farm systems to reduce environmental impact
• Environment Canterbury regulations
• Freshwater reforms
• Irrigation practices
• Supplier environmental support
• Fertiliser application practices

Who should attend this workshop?

• Sharemilkers, contract milker and managers wishing to understand the current environmental requirements for the operations they are managing – compliance, audits, etc.
• Farming business owners wishing to understand current tools available for reducing the environmental footprint of their operations.

Due to the style of this workshop numbers are strictly limited – do not miss out!

The DairyNZ Dairybase  team,  with Brown Glassford  and  Co Ltd

What are the key  objectives of the workshop?

• For farm managers and  new business owners to have  a better understanding of their  financial statements.
• To show  how benchmarking your farm can help  make  your business more profitable and  drive future management decisions.

What will you  take away from this session?

• Attendees will take  away a much better understanding of their  accounts and  use  this to make  better business decisions in the  future.
• They will be able  to start having better financial conversations with their  rural  professionals, be more confident to benchmark their  business against others, and  competent in analysing results.

Who  should attend this workshop?

Farm managers and  sharefarmers.

Nicola Neal – Vet and Share Milker

Growing our young dairy stock fast for the first eight weeks of life has the potential to affect their first lactation and future production more than any other single thing.

Are we getting our calves off to the very best start? Could we do it better, faster, more efficiently and more cost effectively?

This session is designed to challenge you to think about your young stock system and how you can turn surviving into thriving.

Nicola has over 25 years in the dairy industry, as a large animal vet and progressing from summer student dairy farm assistant to herd owning share milker.

For the last ten years she has been focussed on really understanding how to produce good young stock in New Zealand

conditions and helping clients to build robust efficient calf rearing systems.

Who should attend?

Anyone involved in calf rearing on-farm. Farm owners, managers or team members who want to have a better understanding of how to improve calf rearing to achieve better lifetime production.

Chris McDonald, Manager Financial System Analysis Reserve Bank of New Zealand, David Seath – Brown Glassford & Co, Kelvin Hore– ASB

Get an update from Reserve Bank on:

• new bank regulatory capital requirements – what is changing and why, and when do the changes become effective, and commentary from the Reserve Bank regarding the risk of dairy sector debt
• background to the monetary policy measures introduced because of COVID – Large Scale Asset Purchase programme (LSAP or quantitative easing), and the Funding for Lending Programme (FLP)
• The workshop will also provide an update from the banking sector on it will meet the regulatory capital requirements, how they will use the LSAP and FLP, and how that will impact on the availability and terms of debt capital to the farming and dairy sectors.

The session will cover what information dairy farmers should be preparing and sharing with those that provide them capital so that capital is achieved on the best possible terms.

What will you take away from this session?

• Better understanding of Reserve Bank policy, and the reasoning behind current bank regularity requirements and monetary policy
• Information about how regulatory and monetary policy changes may affect the types and terms of banking products and services offered to dairy farmers
• Information on what banks may want to see and how to prepare this information. This can inform what questions you.ask your financial advisers and banker.

Who should attend?

Farm owners or sharemilkers or those considering getting into farm ownership or sharemilking. Anyone who wants to know more about how financial and monetary markets operate.

Hear  from farmers who are  operating efficient, high  performing farm businesses,  and  the steps they are  taking to lower the farming footprint and  remain profitable.

Virginia Serra Co-Development Lead DairyNZ: Meeting  a Sustainable Future: Hinds and  Selwyn, with a panel  of Canterbury farmers involved  in the project

What are the key  objectives of the workshop?

• To consider the  key drivers  of current losses from dairy farm systems, primarily through N surplus and  drainage.
• To understand, with real life farmer examples, some of the  initial practical steps you can make  to influence a reduction in these losses, through efficient management and  application of technology and  science.
• Real-life examples of the  effect  these applications have  current and  future operating profits.

What will you  take away from this session?

• Know how to access support to work out  where in your farm business unnecessary losses are  occurring due  to Nsurplus or additional drainage events.
• Understand from farmer examples what  some of the  steps are  that  you can apply to your farm business to begin  to operate a lower footprint farm.
• An appreciation that  many  of the  efficiency gains you can get on farm through strategic use  of inputs could  actually be better for your bottom line, depending on management decisions to date.

Who  should attend?

Owners, sharemilkers, contract milkers, LOSM and  farm managers, decision makers who can drive implementation on farm. Farm staff would benefit from understanding.

What  costs can  we  control? How  can  we  do  better? Hear  from farmers currently operating and  benefiting from low-cost systems.

Blair Robinson – Dairy Holdings Ltd

Blair grew up on a 400-cow dairy farm in Taranaki.  His background includes time spent in the fertiliser industry, with Fonterra and in rural banking (including debt recovery).  Blair’s family currently reside on a small block just out of Ashburton. Their involvement in the primary sector includes part ownership in two North Island dairy farms and two poultry farms.

Blair’s role at DHL is Chief Operating Officer, leading a team of seven farm supervisors who oversee 59 dairy farms with 50,000 milking cows. DHL run a farm system of high pasture utilisation and low cost of production. DHL try to replicate a farm system built on people, pasture, and process.

Carlos Cuadrado

Carlos and his wife Gisela have gained a strong reputation for working hard and achieving on their own merit.  From Argentina, they came to New Zealand to work as farm assistants on a dairy farm near Tauranga. By 2009/2010 they had set up their company (Canterbury Pampas Ltd) and started operating as Lower Order Sharemilkers. Since 2014 they have also run the farm on behalf of the owners. In 2011 they had the opportunity to invest in a dairy farm with neighbours. Carlos became Managing Director/CEO for this business. In 2015 this company purchased another farm, and they were able to increase their shareholding to 33 percent of both businesses. In November 2020 they dissolved their partnership and are now farm owners of one of their former partner farms.

Hannah Fulton

Hannah Fulton has been involved in the New Zealand dairy industry since moving to New Zealand in 1997.  Hannah and her partner Craig spent time milking in North Island as 50/50 sharemilkers until moving to Hinds in 2009 and going into an equity partnership farm milking 950 cows. They then moved to their current farm milking 630 cows and have been there since 2014.  Hannah has a business studies degree focused on agricultural food production from London University. Their farm Paddock Wood has been a LUDF comparison farm for the last three years.

What are the key objectives of the workshop?

Hear about:

• Getting more for less out of what you are doing
• Spending less on what you are already doing
• Ways of saving
• How to keep control of spending
• Tools for monitoring costs
• Policies for maintenance to avoid large bills.

What will you take away from this session?

• Practical steps to take on-farm which will save you money over time
• Ideas for good decision making and cost control implementation
• The opportunity to ask questions and get answers that are relevant to your farm.

Who should attend?

Everyone who has a financial interest on farm.

Trish Rankin

We’ve all heard of the 3 R’s – reduce, recycle and reuse – but what are the 6 R’s? And how do we implement them on-farm?

Trish is a dairy farmer sharemilking with husband Glen, a primary school teacher at Opunake Primary for three terms (she has the third term off for calving) , mother to four busy sporty boys, a Dairy Environment Leader, and DairyNZ Climate Change Ambassador, among other things.

What are the key  objectives of the workshop?

• Find out  how to reduce waste on-farm and  across the  whole  agricultural sector.
• Recycling is number six on the  decision-making triangle – there are  lots of other aspects. You will find out  more about

reducing, refusing, swapping out  for something re-usable, and  re-purposing.

What will you  take away from this session?

• Learn  about the  many  ways to reduce waste on-farm.
• Simple and  easy steps to be able  to reduce waste on-farm.
• Learn  to make  better decisions around consumption.
• Greater awareness of our  carbon footprint.

Who  should attend this workshop?

This workshop is aimed at everybody who wants to reduce their  waste.

David Williams and Brendan Kelly – Maatua Hou Ltd

This workshop will focus on how a group of young rural professionals came up with a new approach to rear bobby calves. Maatua Hou Ltd is an equity partnership of four young couples.  In 2020 they purchased a Burnham property to provide

a pathway for dairy farmers to rear a larger percentage of their less desirable dairy beef to grazing animals.

While Maatua Hou Ltd are calf rearers, their goal is to avoid the traditional calf model of selecting good beef calves to purchase, rear and sell to the beef market. This model can involve up to a $400/calf overdraft and only allows farmers to sell their best beef calves.

Maatua Hou rear dairy beef heifers, and other rejected animals that were going onto the bobby truck. Farmers retain ownership of the calf, provide Maatua Hou an advance payment on each calf and then both parties profit share on the sale price of the calve when it reaches 100kgLW. Maatua Hou has been able to rear 550 calves in 2020 with very little overdraft.

They believe it is necessary to rear a cattle beast for 18-24 months to achieve market. This involves taking a calf from birth, through one or two winters.

A challenge that has great potential is building a new beef market, that could see an animal reared to 8-12 months, producing very tender beef.

• This would allow farmers to reduce wintering impacts.
• If beef farmers take on a larger number of dairies born beef animals, this removes the need for beef cows that produce just one calf a year. The grass that was fed to that cow could instead be fed to growing young stock. This allows more meat to be produced from the same amount of grass and likely the same amount of carbon emitted.

What will you take away from this session?

• Information about new calf rearing options and their profitability
• Insight into alternative futures for the dairy beef industry and market.

Who should attend this workshop?

Farm owners and key decision makers, sharemilkers, Farm advisors

Dawn Dalley, Senior Scientist Dairy DairyNZ  

This workshop will provide an update on recent wintering research and what the results mean for achieving the Wintering Taskforce recommendations and Essential Fresh Water requirements.

The workshop will cover what good management looks like, particularly relating to critical source area identification and management.

At the workshop you will be assisted to assess the risks of your 2021 crop wintering system and develop a plan for winter

2022 which improves outcomes for animals, people, and the environment.

What will you take away from this session?

• a plan for addressing wintering risks for 2022 on your farm

• improved knowledge of options which achieve better wintering outcomes

• understand what current good management practice is and what still needs to be done in the sector

• an understanding of how addressing wintering concerns will enhance our sector’s reputation.

Who should attend?

• Farm owners, managers and farm staff involved in wintering planning.

How  do  we  attract the right  people, and  retain them, in our  farming businesses?

Jair Mandriaza – LIC, Senior Reproduction Solutions Advisor; Vanessa Robinson – DNZ, Developer Feed & Animal

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Yet we often see farmers apply this approach on farm to their herd reproduction.

This workshop will help you focus on assessing your herd’s current reproductive performance, identify what you want to improve and start your journey to developing an improvement strategy.

What will you take away from this session?

You will:

• understand how your decisions throughout the season affect reproductive performance
• learn what hormonal and non-hormonal interventions are available, and how they might suit your farm
• understand Canterbury’s reproductive journey over the past six years and how your herd compares to others
• get insight into the key opportunities Canterbury farmers must improve their herd’s reproductive performance
• identify what you should focus on to improve reproduction so you can start to work on this with your rural professional.

Who should attend this workshop?

People who make decisions about herd management and reproduction

What those getting out want and what those getting in have, and how they fit together successfully.

Are you thinking of where you want to be in 10 years’ time? How do you get there? What might that scenario look like for you and your business? Start taking steps ahead of time by giving yourself a clear plan and some clarity on how you get there! Come and listen to what the other half want and get both sides of the picture.

Malcom Ellis – LIC General Manager NZ Markets and ex hands on dairy farmer

Malcolm has a lifetime association with dairy, and a particular passion for farm system profitability, the value of herd improvement and the positive progression of young people through the industry. Malcolm and wife Jody owned and operated a multi-farm Waikato based business until Malcolm took up a role in the Breeding scheme at LIC in 2011.  This is a story of staying involved in the industry but removing yourself from the day-to-day management of the farm and ultimately reducing the financial interest in the business to allow the pathway of others.

John Donkers – Farm Consultant

John Donkers has spent most of his consultant career in the dairy industry. For the last twenty-five years he has worked as a farm consultant advising dairy farming businesses in Canterbury. John is a shareholder and director for an equity partnership established in 1994 which owns four dairy units.  Irrigation has been a key interest for John over several years and he is currently a director of Central Plains Water Ltd.

Sam O’Reilly – Farm owner

Sam and Anna O’Reilly are a great example of a successful equity partnership. Over the past seven years they have grown their business to 50 percent farm ownership position on a 740-cow dairy farm. Sam also manages a second farm of 1600 cows nearby. They have worked hard and progressed from being a Herd Manager to 50/50 Sharemilking to ownership by making timely moves and good decisions with a little bit of luck.

What are the key objectives of the workshop?

• Hear how other dairy farmers have made their way through the industry. Pick up some tips and tricks that may help you to get where you want to go.
• Look at models that ease you off farm over time or get you off farm, possibly without having to sell.
• Key ideas for how to manage the changeover to step down.
• How to maintain a positive attitude towards change

What will you take away from this session?

• Steps for planning successful change.
• Ideas of what to include in the future.
• Ideas of how to keep the deal sweet for both sides.

Who should attend this workshop?

Farm owners still on farm and those looking to progress.