Bright Wings

Dairy factory farming, Mackenzie Basin - follow-up

This week's NZ Listener has an excellent feature on the proposed dairy factory farming venture in the Mackenzie Basin.

In the iconic Mackenzie Basin, plans to factory farm cows are stirring up a storm. Farmers say irrigating the land is the only answer to their economic struggle. Environmentalists say this will destroy rare ecosystems. And the tourism industry fears the loss of a unique landscape. Who will save the Mackenzie, and how?

You'll need to purchase a copy of this week's issue of the NZ Listener to read the full feature, or wait until it is available online, on 23 January 2010.  Very worthwhile holiday reading.

Crafar farms had long history of animal welfare problems

Stuff reports that Crafar farms had been visited 35 times in the last six years for animal neglect issues.

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act showed concerns about illegal euthanasia methods, inadequate food, and failure to provide vets for injured stock.

See earlier posts about Crafar farms:

MAF finds significant animal welfare issues on Crafar farms

Have cows become factory farming components?

Starving calves dairy farming disgrace

Proposed dairy factory farming raises alarm

Proposed "cubicle farming" of dairy cows in the Mackenzie Basin is causing alarm to animal welfare and environmental groups and threatens the country's credibility as a producer of pasture-grown dairy products.

Proposals by the three companies for resource consents for 16 new dairy farm developments managing nearly 18,000 cows housed in cubicle stables are before Environment Canterbury (ECan).

Under the plan

cows will be confined in cubicle stables 24 hours a day for eight months of the year, from March to October, and allowed outside for 12 hours a day from November to February.

Cubicle farming involves each cow having its own cubicle, where it can return to lie down or sleep, and a "stable" area where it can eat and socialise with other cows.

Herd sheds are not new to New Zealand and are common in Europe. Used appropriately they provide shelter for the cows from climatic extremes and cows are able to come and go at will.

Cows to be kept inside for eight months

The proposed development in the Mackenzie Basin is in a different league. This proposes keeping cows inside for eight months of the year and then allowing them access to grass for 12 hours a day for the remaining four months.

Minister of Agriculture David Carter comments on intensive farming in the Mackenzie Basin

"I am concerned about the proliferation of dairying in fragile environments. They shouldn't be allowed to proceed unless we can be sure they can mitigate any adverse environment effects.

He then goes on to say

"Providing it adheres to acceptable animal welfare standards, I don't think there are issues there." 

National Animal Welfare Advisory Council (NAWAC) chairman, Dr John Hellstrom, speaking on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon programme, noted that herd sheds were not necessarily a bad thing but that current welfare guidelines did not cater for the Mackenzie Basin proposal.  He further noted that animal welfare considerations were paramount in setting guidelines.

Keeping all the eggs in one basket

Farming's love affair with dairying has seen huge areas of rural New Zealand sold off at outrageous prices and turned into dairy farms.  Dairy farming on the Canterbury Plains - land ideally suitable for arable farming - has seen huge amounts of water sucked out of rivers and aquifers for irrigation.  Effluent pollution is seeping into those aquifers and ruining important water sources.

And what if the bottom falls out of dairying?  With all the eggs in the dairying basket there is now insufficient diversification to protect rural New Zealand - and the economy - should the rest of the world decide some other protein source is the Next Best Thing.

Others writing on this issue:

Farmgeek - Factory farming in New Zealand

TV3 - Factory farming would harm NZ's clean green image 

Homepaddock - We can't have it both ways

Thinking Relating Celebrating - Intensive Dairy Farming 

Voxy (Chris Ford) - We will all be losers from factory dairy farming

Have cows become factory farming components?

In the last 20 years - in the eyes of some farm owners - cows have gone from being animals that feel pain and deserve good husbandry to mere dispensable components in a dairy factory farm.

We look in horror at bear farming in Asia, yet not far from us may be cows and their calves living lives of equal misery.

The response to the dairy animal welfare issue from rank-and-file farmers has been huge, while response from various agencies has been focused around getting rid of one bad apple.

Bernard Hickey, who broke the story about calf neglect at the Crafar's Benneydale farm is now calling for an inquiry into large herd dairy farming.

The growth in large herd dairying over the last decade has been explosive. Often funded by massive debt, these farms with more than 1,000 cows have changed the nature of dairying in New Zealand. They require a different style of management, different corporate structures, different ways of managing and recruiting staff, and different ways of managing animals.

New Zealand has never done a stock-take into a major change in the way we use land. It’s time to take a breather and work out whether this structural shift in our biggest export industry can be sustained without damaging our reputation, blowing out our our debts and putting massive strain on workers and animals.

The big conversions and irrigation driven expansion is continuing apace. Applications to build 19 farms with more than 22,000 cows on 25,000 hectares in the Mackenzie Basin are being considered by Environment Canterbury, the ODT has reported.  This type of farming requires intensive irrigation and cows to be in cubicle barns in winter and parts of Summer.

Farmer after farmer has added yet more horrific information about the unspeakable practices adopted by some of these large-scale farming operations.

Calves, often born with depressed immune response because they have been induced two weeks early so that the owner can get two more weeks' milk production out of the cow, fail to thrive, are expensive to rear and there is currently little market for bobby calves.

From one farmer:

The things I have seen. Tiny perfectly formed induced little bodies lying dead and dying in heaps around cowsheds. Every morning lines of labouring cows waiting to be helped with calving. If these cows had been seen to at an earlier time, much pain and suffering and more successful outcomes would have been achieved.

Outside bobby calf sheds calves that havent quite died yet left to dehydrate and die in the sun. Or wind. Or rain. Calves crook with Navel ill, something easily fixed with an antibiotic, not treated and left to die. Stretched out and suffering on the shed floor. Often being stood on by others because the pens are too full.

Induced cows foetuses dying inside them and becoming mummified. Induced cows dying just because inducing is rough on their metabolic systems.

Bernard Hickey has posed the following questions:

1. Are we using water properly? Are large herd dairy farmers paying a fair price for that water?
2. Are these large herd farms and their debt levels sustainable when they eventually have to pay for greenhouse emissions?
3. Has some land been converted that is not sustainable without the Fonterra payout being higher than NZ$5/kg
4. Are some large dairy farms financially unsustainable given likely long term payout levels and their current debt levels?
5. Is the intensification of land use, particularly through nitrate leaching, destroying our waterways?
6. Are the managers of these large herd farms, who are often employees and contractors rather than share milkers or owners, up to the task?
7. Are the workers on these farms, who are often from the Philippines, India and Indonesia, well trained enough to keep themselves and their animals safe?
8. Are the processes for monitoring animal welfare and staff welfare strong enough and well-funded enough?
9. Is MAF focused too much on enabling growth in output and not enough on monitoring sustainability?
10. Is Fonterra monitoring the quality of its suppliers/shareholders closely enough? Are its penalties and sanctions for suppliers strong enough?
11. Is reform needed in the bobby calf industry, given prices are now so low it isn’t often economically viable to feed calves?

I hope some good comes from this concerted effort to change dire animal welfare and environmental practices which are bringing great shame to this country.

Do farmers need to be licensed?

Once upon a time - not that long ago - family farms dominated rural New Zealand, handed from father to son, from generation to generation.

Sons learned the craft of farming by watching and helping their fathers. They learned how to look after their stock, their horses and their dogs. They learned how to manage stocking rates, lambing and calving, how to identify and deal with stock that was diseased or failing to thrive, how to manage feed and pasture. They learned how to kill stock, whether it was because of an untreatable problem, or for homekill or dog tucker.

Mothers kept the home fires burning and produced children, huge batches of scones, roast dinners, millked the house cow and made butter. And worked the drafting gates and helped with mustering as required.

The son took over the farm when Mum and Dad retired to town.

Over the last 30 years many of these little family farms became too small to hold their own. Land - particularly land suitable for dairying - has become unaffordable.

Enter the age of the corporate farm, where the owner(s) are more likely to be gazing at a computer screen in a highrise office block rather than contemplating whether the ewes needed to be moved to fresh grass.  And the farm - probably an amalgam of several smaller farms - is run by a farm manager.

Most farm managers are excellent but, where the owner visits infrequently, or is possibly not from a farming background, some less scrupulous managers might cut corners. Or, poor recruitment by the owner might mean the manager simply doesn't have sufficient skills to do the job.

The shocking situation at the Crafer Benneydale farm, detailed by Bernard Hickey, points to a number of systemic management problems, a culture focussed on building a farming empire, and where animal welfare was not paramount.

Is it time to look at licensing farmers, farm managers and sharemilkers?  Those responsible for managing and running farms carry huge responsibility for both animal welfare and the environment. At the moment anyone can call themselves a farmer and set up shop, even if they can't tell a cow from a steer.

Licensing would need to be phased in over several years, with "sunset" provisions for existing farmers whose management and technical skills are proven. 

Licences would be granted by a registration board, after completion of qualifications, appropriate work experience and production of satisfactory referee reports.  The board would also deal with complaints against licence holders and take appropriate disciplinary action. Dairy companies would be unable to accept milk from a farm unless appropriate licences were held.

And yes, it would require setting up a little more bureaucracy, but might be a small price to pay for preservation of New Zealand's clean, green image.

Starving calves dairy farming disgrace

There are times when I feel deeply ashamed of the New Zealand dairy industry. 

Bernard Hickey's exposure of dairy calves left to slowly starve to death is yet another unfortunate chapter in the history of New Zealand's biggest dairy farm, Crafer Farms.

Poor management and the pressures of massive debts obtained during rapid expansion meant this farm was so poorly managed that none of the staff trained the calves to drink milk, allowing them to die of dehydration in a muddy pen even though their trough was often full.

Read the full story.  Be warned - this is sickening reading and another nail in the coffin of New Zealand's clean, green image.

Dairying denting clean green image

The massive $90,000 fine handed out to the Crafer family for inadequate effluent management should send a clear message to the dairy industry that the practices of some of their more cavalier colleagues damage both the environment and the perception of potential overseas tourists.

The Crafers have been running 22 farms, with 20,000 cows. Is it time some limits were set by regional authorities? To quote independent consultant, Dr Clive Dalton

"megaherds" such as those farmed on Crafer properties are a risk to both animal and human health, and the environment.

Protection of the environment, he argues, is paramount and more important than profits or productivity. He notes that the average stocking rate on a farm is 2.7 cows per hectare, and the stocking rate at Collins Road - 3.82, based on a minimum 1400-cow herd - was "just too high."

"The individual cow welfare is lost, therefore the standards of the whole farm drop, because the staff are so tired and worn out ... they're not caring for the cows, and so not caring for the environment.

"The whole bloody show goes down the gurgler when herds get big, driven by people trying to be bigger than everyone else."

The term "cash cow" readily springs to mind here.