TE WHANGAI NEWSLETTER SPRING 2020
All the cows and 60% of the ewe hgts away grazing while the lucky ewes munched their way through 1000 big bales of baleage and 80 tons of barley, the rest had to be content with scenery and batten moss! great way to spend the lockdown!
As good fortune would have it, and just to prove we (or Niwa) never know what is around the corner, the drought did break, late sown new grass flourished and the winter has been remarkably kind (with the help of plenty of N). I don't think I have ever seen the pasture at Te Whangai looking better and the way the stock has turned around has been remarkable, the ram hgts have stretched the bounds of compensatory growth, even by my standards, to recover from being 29kg in April to being...well, pretty respectable now.
2020 has heralded in some momentous events, apart from drought and a virus, it is 50 years since the Wairarapa Romney improvement Group (WRIG) was formed and the celebration in July was a fitting tribute to the founding members and quite humbling to understand what a big deal the advent of performance recording was at the time and what proportion of the national flock is now influenced by the Group's genetics.
Roger Barton arranged outstanding speakers for the event and I think we all left with plenty to think about.
Despite the uncertainty Covid has created, Blake Holgate, Rabobank animal proteins and sustainability analyst, pointed out there have been great opportunities in getting closer to discerning customers online and NZ's reputation for food security and reliable supply chains has put us in a relatively strong position
He reminded us that African Swine Fever is still impacting heavily on China's protein supply, taking out 30 million tonnes or 30% of their pork production last year, which is equivalent to the entire annual production of the US.
It now appears that China is importing more protein than it is consuming, effectively stockpiling..., hmm we all know where that leads.
Dorian Garrick is always very thought-provoking, quoting the founding fathers of modern performance recording Hasel and Lush from 1937 "If you are not farming for profit then good luck with your hobby"!
While celebrating the last 50 years, the natural focus for the WRIG group is to look ahead, where do we want to be, what is the ideal sheep, how do we get there...often not a direct route, "If you don't change the direction you are likely to go where you are heading"
Gene editing should be allowed. Reshuffling a gene sequence to replicate one which is producing a desirable result is nothing more than accelerating the selection process we already use.
While the incremental gains we continue to make in the basic traits are important, we are looking for the next quantum leap, not just in animal genetics but also in plants and gene editing has an important role.
Future traits of significant value are likely to address the three-legged stool of financial, social, as well as environmental values that consumers perceive to be important. Methane production is obviously high on the list, just imagine the marketing pitch ' fart free' ' planet friendly' the reality is that it has a heritability of about .25 and reductions of 1% per yr are being measured, it is expensive to record but not prohibitive and there are commercial ram breeders getting into it now. Incidentally of course we have just been told sheep are producing 10.6% fewer emissions than previously thought! and don't forget that's on top of a 32% reduction since 1990! never mind the fact that methane is a short-lived gas and part of the carbon cycle which is self-stabilising! However, in this crazy world where consumers are prepared to pay for something they perceive to be good for humanity so would we be equally as crazy not to take advantage of that?
Attacking the methane issue from a plant angle, NZ pastures are very low in energy but high in protein, animals produce methane as a by-product of this excess protein. This issue could easily be fixed with gene editing.
A trait closer to my way of thinking is feed efficiency. Trials AgResearch have done using indoor supplementary feeders and high tech monitoring showed some remarkable results wherein an extreme example, one of two sheep, growing at the same rate and weighing the same, was eating a whopping 1kg dm/day more than his mate! What I would love to see is what their weight gains were if they were both restricted to the lesser amount of feed, that must be the true measure of feed efficiency and is certainly the basis of our lifelong breeding principle.
The value and cost of science, and in particular, genomics is a topical issue because it is expensive. Genomics is really the process of obtaining Breeding Values (bv's) for a range of traits, from a DNA sample.
We want science to prevail but who pays for it? Levies? taxes? or the market?.
The ram breeder and the commercial ram buyer are really a corporate partnership and the ram price is an investment in that.
The message is that the ram breeders should not be holding back on using the best science available, knowing that the value will flow up to the commercial farmer where his ram investment will be justified with increased profitability
A quick note on the latest upgrade of our national genetic evaluation system, SIL. In a multi-staged development, which will be capable of incorporating all the genomic data with the ordinary (phenotypic) data we collect now, the new system will be called NProve.
The NProve version of the old Flock Finder program has just been released, for commercial ram buyers to go online looking for flocks and animals within flocks, that might fit their desired breeding objectives. All I will say is treat this with extreme caution and a good pinch of salt!
The wool chapter just seems to get harder every year! One cheerful twist that was conveyed to me was that if we are treating shearing as an animal health cost, at least with Te Whangai sheep there are fewer animal health costs so relative to some others you are ahead!
On a more serious note, covid has finally driven the industry to it's knees and I have said before that just as with an alcoholic until the situation is bad enough it will never seek the help it needs, but we must be there now! The joining forces of the two major groups of invested strong wool growers will help reduce some of the farm gate 'noise' where competition is such a waste of resources and put together a strong united front to grow on the existing experiences of capturing more of the value from the further processed product and returning it to growers.
The one thing I am thankful to this Minister of Ag for is his determination to help the wool industry and although so far it has all been talk he is hoping his group will do the leg work and come up with some big 'shovel ready' value propositions for commercial organisations to pick up and run with. That's definitely not saying anyone is sitting around waiting for that to happen as there is a ton of innovation in the pipeline.
Fingers crossed...it can only get better.
As always, good luck for lambing and look forward to catching up soon.
Cheers Hamish and Harry