Shelter a key necessity
Mature grazing livestock are generally very well-adapted to maintain a comfortable body temperature regardless of the weather.
The concern has spawned a series of events on the topic where research into some of the assumptions about the benefits of housing will be relayed, and use of financial tools such as internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV) to assess the investment will be discussed.
“The main reason for holding these events is because some people making these decisions are probably not doing the right analysis and they’ve not got the right information,” Dairy NZ’s regional leader for Canterbury and North Otago, Virginia Serra, told Rural News.
Dairy NZ is doing research to provide data on some of the assumptions people are having to make when assessing the merits of housing, such as how much more grass they’ll grow without cows grazing.
“In some cases there’s not been enough research yet to provide the answers but where there has we are bringing that to the table.”
Farmer-targeted events will be held November 13 and 14 in Waikato and November 17 and 18 in Canterbury, plus one with the NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management for rural professionals. “The NZIPIM one will be run a little differently,” says Serra.
Each event has four specialist Dairy NZ speakers, and concludes with Dairy NZ’s view on what a wholesale move to housed systems would do for New Zealand’s competitiveness in international markets.
“I think we’ll lose our competitive advantage very fast,” says Serra. “As one of the speakers, David McCall, puts it having studied high input US systems: ‘we can beat them, but not at their own game’.”
