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THE SOUTHLAND (NZ) PROJECT THAT LAUNCHED THE TOPOCLIMATE CONCEPT
AND EVENTUALLY FARMING SMARTER.
Farming
Smarter has evolved from a lifetime of working with farmers on land resource
issues.
It
has always frustrated me to know that, as a land resources scientist, I was
involved in gathering lots of high quality information on the land, producing
scientifically credible reports in glossy publications that seemed to be
forever destined to gather dust on the shelves of government agencies or local
councils that commissioned the work or occasionally on the shelves of the local
library. I realised that this information needed to be clearly explained in
layman's terms if farmers were to receive any benefits from the research but
there was little interest from the agencies in funding the vital translation
task that was needed to convert potentially valuable data into useable
information.
A
large opportunity opened up for me in 1998, when I was approached by a group of
farmers from the Southland region of New Zealand. I was working at the time for
AgResearch, a large New Zealand Government research agency, that undertook
agricultural research on land resource and farming matters. The Southland
farmers explained to me that their problem was that their region, a very
productive farming area, was very largely dominated by fat lamb farming. This
was fine when lamb prices were good but a major problem for the whole region
occurred when the price of lamb plummeted, as it was prone to do on a regular
cycle."We need to diversify our farming into other types of livestock and
crops to ensure that our region doesn't continue to go through these boom-bust
cycles" they said.
Insert photo
They
further explained, "Our fat lamb farms are, on average, about four hundred
acres (160ha) in size and while they have in the past carried 2000 ewe flocks
on those farms, and made a good living from those numbers, the fact is that
there has been a long-term decline in profitability for fat lamb farming, in
spite of and masked by the annual fluctuations in returns. This means that
farmers now have to carry 3500 sheep on the same farm area to remain profitable
and a number are finding this too hard and selling out to their neighbours, or
to farmers new to the area, who are wondering if there are more profitable
things that can be done with their land."
"Our
trouble as a region is," they said "that we don't have any good
quality information at a farm scale on our soils or climates that we could use
as a basis for developing new crops or livestock farming systems." They
had tried to get some soil mapping carried out by the usual Government Agency
(Landcare Research) responsible for this work but were told that there were
very limited resources (staff and funding) for soil survey work and that
Southland was nowhere near the top of the priority list for this survey work.
Their
challenge to me was “how can we come up with quality information on our
soils and climates at a farm scale at a cost that we can afford as a
region?”
In
solving this question, I developed the Topoclimate Process- the final
expression of years of training and experience and a desire to solve the
problem of the disconnect between data and information that I had expressed
much frustration about earlier.
When
I began to develop the germ of the Topoclimate Concept, it took me quite a
while to realise the scope and power of this concept and I'm sure that the
first few farmers that I tried the concept out on, must have wondered whether
I'd been smoking some of those funny smelling cigarettes !!!. However, I
persisted in developing the idea and the farmers of Southland, to their
everlasting credit, got right behind the concept and adopted the project as
their own. The Southland farming community were so convinced of the merits of
Topoclimate that they were determined to develop a regional pilot project to
test the idea. This determination flew in the face of much initial negativity
from New Zealand Government who were not convinced enough to invest taxpayers
dollars into what they described as “untested science”.
The
Southland community raised $4.8 million from local sources and asked me to
manage a large scale mapping programme to deliver the Topoclimate concept to
the 4500 farmers in their district. This was a huge mapping programme and had,
to my knowledge, never been tackled anywhere in the world by a local community
without any form of government assistance.
I
employed a staff of thirty-six people on contract to carry out the mapping
programme including pedologists (soil surveyors) and climatologists. We
developed new and novel ways of mapping soils and also undertook the first ever
regional scale mapping of microclimates at a farm scale anywhere in the world.
We mapped over 3000 different temperature recording sites, collected over 27
billion temperature records, recorded over 47,000 different soil profiles over
a total of 4500 farms to produce the final maps and output information.
The
New Zealand government watched the project working for the first 18 months and
saw how the Topoclimate process had engaged its farmers in the process. At that
time, there were general elections in New Zealand and a new Government under
the Prime Minister Helen Clark was elected on a platform of supporting regional
initiatives such as Topoclimate. One of the first acts of the new government
was to then successfully negotiate with the local Trust operating the project
to buy into a 40% share in the work.
Caption
1: Southland District Council Mayor, Cr Frano Cardno (centre) gets her hands on
a $1.8 Million Government cheque for support of the Topoclimate South project
on behalf of the Southland region from New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark
and Deputy Prime mister and Minister for Regional Development, Jim Anderton
(November 1999)
Caption
2: New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark presents a Certificate of
Appreciation to Gary Hutchinson, (Project Manager) at the Celebration Dinner in
November 2001.
The
New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has been a champion for Topoclimate
since she visited the project in 1999 as Leader of the Opposition. When she
became Prime Minister in November 1999, one of her first actions was to
negotiate with the Southland Community for the Government to buy a 40% share in
the Topoclimate Southland Project. She maintained her personal interest in the
project until its completion and was Guest of Honour at a Celebration Dinner to
acknowledge the successful completion of the project in Southland in November
2001.
Because
the microclimate mapping concept was so new we had to educate all of the 4500
farmers in the region as to the value and meaning of the information and
provide each of them with a soil and microclimate map of their own area. This
course aims to achieve the same outcome for you. By the last year of the
project, the first farmers were receiving their maps and the owners of the
properties in the last year of the programme were lobbying my staff to ensure
that temperature loggers were installed on their farms rather than their
neighbours and that their farms were mapped for soils first.
Farmers
had quickly grasped the value of the information and were quickly putting it to
use in making better productivity, diversification and sustainability decisions
about their farms.
We
ended up mapping over 820,000 hectares of farm land in Southland over the three
and one half years of the project and produced seventy-two different soil and
microclimate maps for each District in the region. We finished the job on time
and to the budget but more importantly we unleashed the power of land resource
information to over 4500 farmers.
Suddenly
farmers had good quality information to make better decisions about their
farms. All sorts of diversification projects in to crops as diverse as tulip
and daffodil bulbs, peony roses, Echinacea, ginseng, blueberries, meadowfoam,
eucalyptus plantations and even expansion of dairy farming and development into
deer farming started to happen.
There
was some Dutch research that showed that every time you created an extra job on
the land in the Dutch economy, up to eight extra new jobs were created
downstream in their very regulated economy. Thus for every extra farm job, new
jobs were being created in areas like teaching, truck-driving, policing, and
more bureaucrats to service their significantly regulated land use policies. We
wondered whether we would see a similar effect from the Topoclimate mapping
process in Southland in our far less regulated economy and were surprised to
see that for every hectare of land that changed to intensive cropping uses, one
additional job was being created on the land and at least four new jobs
downstream in the regional economy.
By
the time the project was even finished, we had contributed to the creation of
over three thousand new jobs, both on the land and in the rural service towns of
the region which started to boom for the first time after many years of
decline. The jobs situation turned around so much that there was a shortage of
people to take on the skilled jobs created in the regional economy. The local
government and regional council was forced to take out a four page newspaper
supplement in every newspaper throughout New Zealand to advertise the fact that
there were big opportunities, good salaries, cheap housing, and a great
lifestyle awaiting those who wanted to immigrate to the deep South of New
Zealand.
What
the Topoclimate Southland Project taught me, and what I now want to pass on to
you in the Farming Smarter course, is that:
• Even
large groups of Farmers can work together to explore regional advantages and
develop new ways of obtaining information on their land resource. (This is
explained fully in Putting It All Together Module of this course.).
• You
need a clear focus, a common objective and some strong local champions to make
a project of this nature work. (Outlined in more detail in the Setting Goals
and objectives part and the Putting It All Together Modules of this course.).
• The
community dynamics of rural communities are generally pretty strong, bound by a
common love of the land, their region and farming in general. (Described more
fully in the Putting It All Together Module of the Course.).
• There
are significant benefits to regional economies by investing in their rural
sector. (Outlined in the Crop Options Module and Putting It All Together Module
of the Course.).
• The
importance of microclimates to most farming systems. (Detailed in the
Microclimates Module of the Farming Smarter Course).
• For
successful outcomes from resource mapping, there needs to be an intensive
parallel effort put into educating farmers into the value of the information.
(This is why we have designed this online learning course to educate farmers
and explain the value of land resource information).
• Technologies
to gathering information are rapidly evolving and there are always going to be
cheaper and better ways of collecting resource information. This course,
particularly the Knowing Your Farm Module through to and including the
Environment Values Module, outlines new and novel methodologies and how to use
the information from these.
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