Kavanagh Farm in Hāwera. Photo: Supplied / Fonterra
A project aiming to demonstrate it is possible to have a profitable net-zero carbon emissions dairy farm is boasting a 27 percent reduction in absolute emissions and a five percent reduction per kilo of milk solids produced.
Greenpeace says it is a marketing stunt that does not address the elephant in the room - or in this case the cow - the size of the New Zealand dairy herd and the biogenic methane it produces.
Dairy Trust Taranaki operates the 210-hectare Kavanagh Farm, which milks 550 cross-bred cows in the shadows of Fonterra's Whareroa plant on the outskirts of Hāwera.
The dairy giant owns the farm.
Farm Source programme manager, Talia Grala said the 10-year pilot project - run in partnership with Nestlé and Fonterra - aimed to get to net-zero by 2030.
"If we get to net-zero and we're not profitable then the farm's failed," she said of the project, which is now in its second year.
"Net-zero means all the emissions that are generated on a farm in a particular period are reduced as low as possible and then the remaining emissions can be removed within the farm system."
Grala said Ag Research testing showed the farm was making progress.
"So far what we've achieved is a 27 percent reduction in our absolute emissions.
"Then if we look at the emissions and divide them by the amount of milk that comes off the farm we are at a 5 percent emissions efficiency improvement."
That had come at the cost of an 11-12 percent drop in milk production which had caused the farm to return to twice-a-day milking.
Grala said three key areas were being explored at Kavanagh to reduce emissions.
"On-farm efficiency improvements, additional uptake of novel technologies and then carbon removals, mainly through tree growing and the sequestration of carbon."
Improving efficiency was really about driving per-cow production through selective breeding, Grala said.
"Testing shows the top 25 percent of animals produce 16 percent less methane per kilo of milk solids than the cows in the bottom quartile.
"So there is genetic improvement that's possible with the cows and the genetics we have on [the] farm at the moment."
They had also tweaked the breeding programme so that more bobby calves were suitable for the beef industry.
"We are starting to work with Beef and Lamb on their dairy beef progeny test and what that does is it looks at sires - dairy beef sires - that work well for the dairy industry as well as working really well for the beef industry, so that's really focusing on our non-replacement calves strategy."
In the new technology space, the farm was experimenting with heat exchangers, solar panels and an EcoPond solution for its effluent.
Not everything had worked out as planned.
A recently installed heat transfer unit helped chill the milk really fast and heated hot water at the same time.
"The idea is that it will result in about a 30 percent reduction in our power consumption," Grala said.
"It's been really good, but unfortunately it caused some load issues when we initially installed the unit, so we've had to do a little bit of work increasing the electricity supply to the farm to get it operational."
A more straightforward success story was the EcoPond test unit.
Effluent in the Kavanagh Farm's EcoPond has an iron sulphate added to it which inhibits the creation of methane. Photo: Supplied / Fonterra
"It has cylinders in it and half of the cylinders are getting an additive applied to them - an iron sulphate - and what it does is stop the methanogens from producing methane in the effluent pond."
"And so far testing has shown the methane produced from the pond has dropped 93 percent.
"For the net-zero farm normally five percent of the total emissions footprint comes from effluent methane, so that's a significant reduction."
In the real world, it was envisaged a truck would arrive on the farm every eight to 10 weeks and dose a farmer's effluent pond, and that dosing was what was being tested.
But Greenpeace agriculture campaigner Sinead Deighton-O'Flynn said Fonterra and Nestle's net-zero farm was basically conventional farming with small tweaks.
"They are not really addressing the giant cow in the room which is the biogenic methane coming from the oversized dairy herd.
"They are still using destructive inputs like synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which is degrading waterways across the country, and feed inputs such as palm kernel."
Deighton-O'Flynn said there was not enough being done to address the core issues of the intensive dairy model.
"This is one farm out of thousands across the country and Fonterra is the country's biggest climate emitter and they really need to be doing more than applying these practices to one farm."
Deighton-O'Flynn said there was another solution to farm emissions.
"The science is clear that the best way we can protect the climate, protect land and water and human health is to reduce the number of livestock.
"Shift to systems that are largely plant-based and support farmers towards that ecological method."
Grala said other initiatives being explored on the Kavanagh Farm included sewing 15 percent of pasture with the grazing herb plantain along with clover and rye grasses.
"It has a lower dry matter content than some of the other pasture species, so the cows as they consume it their urine contains less nitrogen so there's some really good water quality benefits."
A silvopasture trial - the concept of grazing under trees - was also in its early stages at the test farm employing kānuka and griselia.
"We're hoping they will get to about 10 metres in height and we'll be able to look at what kind of effect that is having.
"The idea is those trees grow up and provide some really good shade and shelter - and heat stress is becoming a bit more of an issue in New Zealand - and so when a cow is too hot they don't produce much milk, but there are caveats. What will it do to pasture growth?"
Dairy Trust Taranaki general manager Diego Gomez said it was his role to communicate what was going on at Kavanagh to the farming community.
"They are definitely interested in what is going on. I understand as a farmer myself that we always want to be ahead of problems.
"We are people from the land and we want to give back to the land."
Gomez said the test farm allowed farmers to see the results of various techniques without taking the risks.
The variety of trials impressed the Argentinean, who'd only been on the job for a couple of months.
"The EcoPond has shown really good results just lately and the silvopasture was also quite promising and the genetic improvement that has been going on on this particular farm had also been showing really good signs."
Gomez was optimistic the test farm would reach its goal of zero-emission by 2030.
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