National Rural Support Trust chief Neil Bateup isn’t sure what’s top-of-mind for farmers right now – the unrelenting wet, or the feeling of being under-valued and uncertain about the future.
Probably both given his farmer support service is averaging one phone call a day this year, says the Te Hoe dairy farmer as the region’s skies open yet again.
«A lot of it is driven by the weather. It’s been a particularly tough year. But farmers are also feeling under-valued and unsure of the future.»
The calls for help or advice come in from all sectors of farming. From those feeling the pressure themselves or needing a steer on an issue, to calls from partners, families and acquaintances, says Bateup, who farms on 250 hectares straddling Tahuna Rd.
In the Waikato most callers are from the dairy industry which has a big chunk of youngish share farmers and contract milkers. But not all are SOS calls – succession planning is emerging as an issue farmers want advice about, says Bateup. «How to do it fairly, or how to get out.»
The support trust entity, now in its 10th year, comprises individual organisations throughout the country, which have their own – mostly volunteer – supporters, helpers and advisers. Trusts are the conduits between farmers, agencies, professions and services in the rural sector. They also provide an assessment support service to the Government in adverse events such as floods and erosion.
Last year a national council was set up to represent all the trusts when talking to the Government, and to co-ordinate and simplify process when negotiating funding contracts with the Agriculture Ministry. Bateup is its chairman as well as chairman of the Waikato-Hauraki-Coromandel Rural Support Trust which he co-founded in 2006. It covers a huge sweep of country from south of Auckland down to Turangi and the top of the Coromandel Peninsula across to Waikato’s west coast.
The oldest son of the late Kal and Hazel Bateup, who were dairy farmers in the neighbourhood, Bateup seems to end up at the top of organisations he’s involved with a lot.
At first meeting, the quietly-spoken grandfather of nine is not the imposing or flinty-eyed type you might associate with leadership. Eileen, his wife of 44 years, suspects his elevations are because people value his good listening and information sifting skills. «Or it’s because he just can’t say no,» jokes the former secondary school teacher who also grew up on a dairy farm in this district.
Bateup became secretary of Ohinewai Federated Farmers for many years, after the Young Farmers Club he started in the district with Malcolm Lumsden folded because of sinking numbers. He went on to be the Huntly dairy section delegate to Waikato Federated Farmers, which proved the pathway to co-founding the Rural Support Trust with fellow Waikato farmers Peter Buckley, John Fisher and Mandi McLeod.
Not long after the trust was formed, the Waikato was hit by severe drought. Bateup also chairs a new «adverse event cluster» which grew out of recent flooding events. It will be a co-ordinator in the event of a major rural natural calamity for primary industry participants, organisations and companies, local authorities, Federated Farmers, Civil Defence and Government departments.
Bateup was voted chairman of the Huntly College board of trustees at the first meeting he attended, and chaired the Te Kauwhata Retirement Trust board for 13 years. He remains a trustee.
Back home, the Bateups have this season employed a contract milker for the first time after their herd manager of 16 years swapped dairy cows for kiwifruit.
The new regime on the System 2 farm is going well. At 645 cows, the jersey herd has been reduced over the past two years to ease «a bit much pressure on the system», Bateup says.
Milking in a 40-bail rotary is once-a-day, and has been for nearly 14 years. Bateup opted to drop twice-a-day milking out of concern for young stock on the winter-wet, summer-dry farm.
«They were too light and not getting in calf. We trialled it with two and three year olds in the first year and added older cows in the second. It went so well we decided to do the whole lot.
«When I look at our business it has to be profitable, it has to look after the animals and the environment, and most of all it has to look after people.»
Production last season for Fonterra was 152,000kg milksolids. The farm was, and is still, recovering from the ravages of the 2015-2016 season facial eczema hit on the Waikato. The farm lost 35 cows at the time and more were culled later.
«It was a bad spring too, we’ve now had two very wet ones. It was our lowest production since 2008 (the severe drought year),» says Bateup, who is hoping this season will yield 175,000-180,000kg.
A neighbour’s rainfall readings showed 1400mm had fallen this year by mid-September – the annual average for the area is 1150mm. The Bateups had to call in a helicopter to spread nitrogen and sulphur on some paddocks the tractor couldn’t conquer. Mid-October the farm showed 2300kg of dry matter per hectare.
The farm only cuts grass silage if it shows a surplus but aims to grow 40ha of silage a year, stored as a stack.
This is not good maize-growing country because of its tendency to dry out, says Bateup.
Cows get no supplementary feed in the winter months with grass and maize silage fed in the summer when the farm dries out and some palm kernel extract if necessary. Farm working costs were $3.21/kg last season. Bateup expects them to remain low with the new management regime this season.
A soggy spring doesn’t set up this farm for summer. «The dry can start anywhere from mid-December to the beginning of February. It only takes a fortnight for it to turn,» Bateup says.
He’s always farmed jerseys. He says they’re efficient animals and their lighter weight is suited to the winter-wet Hamilton clay loam soils of the rolling contour farm.
The farm’s empty rate last year was 7 per cent. Normally it’s 5-6 per cent after 10.5 weeks of mating – AB for five weeks and jersey bulls out for the rest of the mating season. The business kept 130 replacement heifer calves this season. Growing young heifers are grazed off-farm near Huntly.
Bateup started farming his patch of Tahuna Rd in 1972 via a company formed by him and his father and brother Bruce to buy what was then 80ha, milking 120 cows. The agreement was that Bruce would run the Bateup family farm. Then youngest brother Graeme left school and came into the business. Next, the family bought a nearby small drystock farm as a run-off, followed by a another drystock farm alongside it. These two land purchases formed the basis of what is Bruce Bateup’s bull and cropping operation today. Graeme took Bruce’s place on the family farm, where he is still dairying today. The Bateup brothers were able to stake their own claims to the respective properties when they assumed equal value and the family company could be dissolved.
These days Bateup keeps one eye on the weather over the farm and the other on a low-lying front over the Rural Support Trust with the increasing demand for its services.
Pressures on the rural community are complex and widening, he says. Regrettably, the money pool available to Rural Support Trusts to counter them isn’t swelling in tandem.
Take the Waikato trust which covers a huge area of the North Island. Only half its annual budget is guaranteed income from the Ministry for Primary Industries and Government health sources. Bateup declined to share the budget figure due to current negotiations with the Government. For the balance of its financial needs, the trust relies on grants and donations.
He’s grateful for the financial support – and for the generosity of volunteers – but wonders if it will be enough to keep farmers psychologically afloat against a rising tide.
Very few of those who give their time to the 24/7 trust service are paid. Those who receive a payment are the co-ordinators who answer the 0800 787254 number day and night and «wellness» co-ordinators who work with rural services and professionals, oversee training for the volunteer facilitators and organise rural community events aimed at getting farmers and their partners off the farm now and then. A facilitator, often a farmer, who follows a caller’s issue right through to an outcome might get a payment, Bateup says.
These days a new spectre is stalking farmers, he says. Fear of the unknown.
Waikato Regional Council’s proposed plan change which will bite deeply into farming operations, a new government, and public criticism, untroubled by scientific support, of farmer environmental practices will all take their toll.
«Farmers have been proactive for more than 100 years in finding ways to do things better. It’s disappointing that is not recognised. They’ve done a huge amount of fencing. It’s important we use science to improve things rather than emotion. We need to measure what is happening. It’s easy for people to throw up their hands without any science basis.»
Eileen Bateup is more blunt.
«Farmers depend on the environment for their living. Why would you buy a building and then destroy it? Why would you destroy your source of income?»