Producing cattle - and nitrogen - in New Zealand

By LAURA MILLER, Newsletter editor

Mike and Sharon Barton can tell you how many cattle – and pounds of beef – they raise every year on their 350-acre farm in northern New Zealand. They also know exactly how many pounds of nitrogen their farm produces (mostly in the form of uric acid when their animals urinate in pastures).

The Bartons and about 100 other farmers in the 65,000-acre watershed surrounding picturesque Lake Taupo are operating under a nitrogen cap. The cap is designed to limit nitrogen produced by agricultural systems because the region’s porous, volcanic soil funnels excess nutrients into groundwater and directly into the country’s largest lake and one of its favorite tourist attractions. The cap limits Barton’s stocking rate, production and his income because New Zealand dropped its farm subsidies in the 1990s.

The Bartons traveled to Iowa in January to share their experiences and learn ways to add value to their products through market branding. Mike Barton was a keynote presenter at the annual conference of Practical Farmers of Iowa, which received a grant from the Leopold Center’s Competitive Educational Support Program to pay a portion of the couple’s travel costs. They also met with members of the Grass-Based Livestock Working Group and Leopold Center staff.

“The lake is about as pristine as any place on earth and it’s not degraded yet – this process is to keep it that way,” Mike Barton said. “But these cycles are on a 150-year timeline and I won’t see the results, nor will my grandchildren.”

Barton said research in 2000 predicted the lake’s future water quality problems. Although only 20 percent of the catchment was used for agriculture, 93 percent of the manageable nitrogen entering the lake was from agriculture (urban use accounted for 7 percent).

“Our farmers had been receiving environmental awards for 20 years and we thought we were doing the right thing,” said Barton, whose farm has riparian plantings and conservation land. “It was a bitter pill to swallow.”

The farmers formed a corporation, went to court and participated in modeling studies to get more information to show exactly where nitrogen leaks were occurring in the system. The result has been a voluntary program in which Lake Taupo-area landowners follow a nitrogen discharge allowance based on current land use. They submit nitrogen management plans annually.

The New Zealand program becomes law this year, with the goal of a 20 percent nitrogen reduction by 2018. Barton is a trustee in the Lake Taupo Protection Trust, which has a budget of $81 million to plant trees on 30 percent of the acres now used for agriculture. Landowners in the region can buy and sell nitrogen credits -- the first nonpoint source emissions market in the world – to make changes in their operations.

Barton said it’s been a big shift for farmers because they cannot increase production without increasing nitrogen output. He does not apply commercial fertilizer and extends the season by stockpiling forage in large round bales. He said he really needs more research on pastures that will survive longer than seven years before they need to be replanted, and more efficient cattle breeds.

Their business plan is to finish 300 cattle to slaughter every year. Their farm is in the final year of a four-year research trial on options for beef productivity gains under a nitrogen cap.

“I can’t grow more cows per acre so I have to get more dollars per cow,” Barton explained. “I need to convince people that my animal is worth buying, for its environmental aspects. We will certify that our meat has been raised in a manner that will not harm the lake.”

With his story comes a warning for Iowa farmers: this could happen to you.

“I see many similarities between New Zealand and Iowa,” he said. “We are doing different things on the land but the end result is the same.”

“If this ever comes to you, stick together,” Barton adds. “We found out early on that the devil was in the details and the only way we could understand those details was to become involved in the process.”