A weekly programme of issues and stories of particular concern to the rural community, and also of interest to a general audience. The programme broadcasts on Friday night after the 9pm news and is repeated on Saturday morning after the 7am news. In this programme:
21:05
Guest Phil Journeaux
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Agricultural consultant Phil Journeaux says in the past ten years dairy farmers, on average, have made $2100 a hectare compared with sheep and beef farmers who've made just $100 a hectare. At present however the dairy earnings will be dropping to negative $250 a hectare.
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Agricultural consultant Phil Journeaux says in the past ten years dairy farmers, on average, have made $2100 a hectare compared with sheep and beef farmers who've made just $100 a hectare. At present however the dairy earnings will be dropping to negative $250 a hectare.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions:
Tags: Phil Journeaux
Duration: 4'22"
21:10
Regional Wrap
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Houses will soon be sprawling over vegetable producing land around Pukekohe, banks in Northland are advising some dairy farmers to sell up, while in the South Island frosts are keeping soil temperatures low and many sheep farmers are shearing ewes prior to lambing.
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Houses will soon be sprawling over vegetable producing land around Pukekohe, banks in Northland are advising some dairy farmers to sell up, while in the South Island frosts are keeping soil temperatures low and many sheep farmers are shearing ewes prior to lambing.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions:
Tags: farming conditions
Duration: 6'00"
21:16
Kevin Ikin Remembers
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After thirty years covering rural happenings for Radio New Zealand National Kevin Ikin is retiring. He says his best memories are the wonderful, resourceful, feet on the ground, farming people he's met.
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After thirty years covering rural happenings for Radio New Zealand National Kevin Ikin is retiring. He says his best memories are the wonderful, resourceful, feet on the ground, farming people he's met.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions:
Tags: Kevin Ikin
Duration: 4'31"
21:20
Father of the Modern Romney
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Holmes Warren is described as " the father of the modern Romney", the breed which is the base of the New Zealand flock. In the 1950's ad 1960's when others bred for wool, Holmes was breeding for twinning and easy care lambing. He was a shrewd observer of stock and a man ahead of his time. In 1970, Homes started the Wairarapa Romney Improvement group. He has just been awarded the 2015 New Zealand Sheep Industry Lifetime Achievement Award with the judges acknowledging the strong influence his work still has on today's national flock.
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Mike and Holmes Warren at Turanganui. (Below) A 1950's Romney with short legs and a squat body.
At 87 years old Holmes Warren still gets out farming most days on his southern Wairarapa property, Turanganui.
Looking out over his 5000 stud romney ewes, which trace their beginnings on the farm back to 1907, he's seeing an animal vastly different to those he started with nearly 70 years ago.
Back then the romney breed had shorter legs and a more squat looking body, with woolly faces. Breeders were selecting on looks rather than productive traits.
Holmes felt this wasn't "commercially sensible", so he started putting effort into breeding from twinning ewes, easy lambing ewes and ones with vigor.
It was slow going because fertility isn't a very heritable trait. Gradually however, the number of lambs climbed from one per ewe to one-point-six.
He says easy lambing ewes that were good mothers and who fossicked well on hill country, were much easier to achieve.
By boiling down the carcasses of ewes who needed help with lambing they worked out that a small pelvic opening was the problem. "So from there on we culled every ewe we had to lamb, heritability was quite high so we got on top of it quite quickly."
Holmes Warren's efforts have been rewarded with a 2015 New Zealand Sheep Industry Lifetime Achievement Award from Beef and Lamb New Zealand. That organisation describes him as "the father of the modern romney".
It says his work continues to have a strong influence on today's national flock.
Topics: rural, farming
Regions: Wellington Region
Tags: romney stud, twinning ewes, mothering ability, Holmes Warren, Mike Warren
Duration: 12'34"
21:30
Oashore
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Ecological protection goes hand in hand with farming at a 550 hectare coastal property on Banks Peninsula. Cosmo Kentish-Barnes meets Oashore farm manager Kate Whyte, who has safeguarded the last pockets of podocarp forest and de-stocked much of the hill country farm. The rugged land leads down to three isolated bays that were used as whaling stations in the 19th century. Nowadays the bays are home to a penguin protection programme and a shipwreck in the sand is a reminder of the dangers the whalers once faced.
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Ecological protection goes hand in hand with farming at Oashore, a 550 hectare coastal property on Banks Peninsula owned by American businessman Doug DeAngelis.
Since buying the sheep and beef farm, Doug has protected over 50 hectares by covenant under the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust. The covenant means the magnificent landscape will remain undeveloped.
Kate Whyte lives on the property and manages it. "I lease out the farmland, manage weeds and pests and make sure all the fencing's up to scratch. Looking after the habitat that's here already is priority number one" she says.
There are no longer cattle on Oashore and the non-covenanted part of the farm is only grazed lightly by sheep. The property is distinctive botanically with a number of rare species, including the only population of the shrub Muehlenbeckia astonii on Banks Peninsula.
In the steep gullies that lead down to three isolated bays are pockets native forest.
"The really significant thing about bush like this on the Peninsula is that it's got all the tiers of the vegetation, you've got the podocarps at the top, then under that canopy you've got the hardwood species and then on the bottom you got the ferns and the ground cover species".
Kate and her partner Bruce McCallum have put down dozens of traps to protect the local birdlife from predators such as cats, ferrets, rats and possums. "We see Kereru much more often and fantails, there are more bellbird sounds and the penguins would have travelled into these areas of bush to burrow once upon a time if it wasn't for the predators".
The three bays on the property were used as whaling stations in the 19th century. Nowadays the bays are home to a penguin protection programme and a shipwreck in the sand is a reminder of the dangers the whalers' faced.
Neighbouring farmer Ted Hutchinson, who has spent most of his 80 years in Magnet Bay, says the shipwreck dates back to 1844. "It was wrecked just round on Magnet Point and then it drifted round and finished up on the beach in Hikuraki Bay. The whalers took all they timber they could get off it to make a store house for the whaling station and the wreck has just laid under the sand ever since".
Topics: rural, farming
Regions: Canterbury
Tags: conservation, pest control, Banks Peninsula, Hikuraki Bay, Lake Forsyth, penguins, podocarp forest, Doug DeAngelis, Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust, shipwreck, whaling station, wildlife, ecological restoration project, sustainable land management
Duration: 22'20"