Know your farm’s green footprint

Jolene and husband Hadleigh milk 550 dairy cows on 200ha at Aparima, between Nightcaps and Otautau in Southland. They are in their sixth season on their current farm and previously their fertiliser rep had run their Overseer analysis for them. When OverseerFM was introduced, they decided to start owning the process themselves. 

The online software, designed specifically for farmers and their advisors, analyses the flow of nutrients through a farm, based on the management practices applied. This produces annual budgets for seven key farm nutrients, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reports. 

Jolene was first introduced to an earlier form of Overseer during two years working as a fertiliser rep for Ravensdown some years ago. Today, she also works part time as a farm management consultant for Agribusiness Consultants but as two of her colleagues are very experienced using Overseer, she doesn’t have much professional involvement with it.

“So, when we decided to start using OverseerFM directly ourselves, we got one of my consultant colleagues to do a proper analysis and provide the base model for us. I’d recommend to any farmer planning to use OverseerFM to start by doing that,” she says.

“Once that is done, it’s pretty straightforward to use. OverseerFM is much more user-friendly that previous models and it is very simple to start playing around. Nothing can go wrong. You can change things but you still have the original base model and if you are struggling with anything, you can get the consultant to check it, because they have access to the account.”

Jolene and Hadleigh have a long standing interest in sustainability. They started the Mid-Aparima catchment group four years ago and have been involved in making presentations on the group’s behalf as part of the Environment Southland Water and Land Plan development process. Hadleigh is also chairman of the dairy section for Southland Federated Farmers.

“Previously, our fertiliser rep would run the Overseer programme for us and we would send the data to Fonterra and get a summary back,” says Jolene. 

“But when OverseerFM came out, we saw it as a new tool we could use directly. Now, rather than sending the data to Fonterra and just getting a summary, we can look at our whole analysis ourselves and check every piece of data, like grazing blocks, soil type, animals and crops.

“A real advantage of OverseerFM is that the farmer ‘owns’ the account and can add people, like your farm consultant or fertiliser rep.”

Jolene and Hadleigh also use OverseerFM to help plan changes on farm and comply with Appendix N in Environment Southland’s Water and Land Plan, which requires a nutrient budget completed by a certified individual. 

“It is really easy to run scenarios through OverseerFM, that is a key benefit,” says Jolene. “Farmers here have nutrient budgets so it is good to know now what your current net losses are and then you can model things before nutrient limits are introduced in Southland.

“A big driver for us, and many Southland farmers, is winter crops – they have a big impact on nutrient loss. From a net point of view, a lot of nutrients are lost through our winter crop. You can use OverseerFM to model your farm with different amounts of winter crops or with wintering animals off and see what drives nutrient loss.”

Jolene says it is important not to fixate on variations.

“People get hung up on it not being 100 per cent accurate, but Overseer is a model and you are modelling a complex living system, so there will be variations. If you run scenarios then the variation is cancelled out.”