Erosion scheme motivates hill country farmers

In recent years, the Hansens, with their wives Grethe and Fiona, have retired and fenced marginal land and a forestry block, and planted poles, with help from the council’s soil conservation fund – the South Taranaki and Regional Erosion Support Scheme (STRESS, co-funded by the Taranaki Regional Council and MPI through its hill country erosion fund).

“The losses and benefits are easy to see but hard to capture when you’ve got a lot of things competing for resources, so when the council said, ‘it’s possible we could benefit from the waterway, and you can get some benefit and we’ll help fund the fence’, we were motivated to do it,” Niels Hansen says.

“It’s to protect the asset, and if you can improve your asset and make it more robust and future-proof it, why wouldn’t you?”

The family have two eastern Taranaki hill country farms at Huiroa and Matau.

The Hansens have worked hard getting the Matau property into good shape since buying it five years ago. They run 1071 sheep and 232 cattle on 205ha of productive land, and have fenced 14.3ha of its marginal land and native bush with help from STRESS funding. 

“It’s given us an 18ha forestry block,” says Hansen. “And the original forestry block here at home (Huiroa) is pretty much going to be perfectly timed for succession planning.”

Matau is more productive now and Peter Hansen says they “don’t lose anywhere near as many stock from going over bluffs and getting stuck in swamps.”

The fencing has also improved stock control because they’re grazing smaller areas of subdivided land.

“It’s very satisfying: you’re in a much better position to harvest grass at the right time, and shift stock around.”

The improvements have also solved the problem of hill country areas going rank if not grazed properly in late spring.

“We have older cattle trying to survive on that, rather than having nice, green grass, so you put a pump and some troughs into a farm like that and suddenly you can see the opportunity to subdivide land,” Niels Hansen says. “I know strip grazing isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s incredibly powerful to cut your easy paddocks in half, for example.”

He believes stock management is as important as planting and retiring land, so they’ve attended field days and discussion groups, and debated and tested theories. 

The Hansens are now thinking about mitigating erosion by fattening more cattle during the summer surplus and having fewer on the hills in winter.

They also aim to fence wetlands, but they are behind after the June 2015 flood, which brought 440mm of rain in 18 hours, causing slips and breaking about 45 major fence lines.

The repairs are consuming and ongoing, but they’re still planning how to conserve and optimise their land, with help from council land management officer Nathan Zieltjes.

Niels Hansen says they don’t feel suspicious of the council.

“They’ve got a good balance and they’ve always had enthusiastic staff and that’s good. I accept that eventually in the odd place they might need a ‘big stick’ approach, but I think they’re getting 90% of the job done just by giving advice and support.”

Peter Hansen says the STRESS scheme has been a great help and “motivation from the council has helped us a lot”.

He is also chuffed that Max, one of Niels and Fiona’s five children, wants to join the family’s dairy grazing, fattening, service bulls, trading and sheep operation.

“I was born on a farm in Denmark. Max is as mad a farmer as me – we just love it. It’s pleasing to be an immigrant to New Zealand and Niels wanted to be a farmer and now his son Max (18) does too. It’s a gift to me.”