| CFG Farm Visit |
Peter Berryman explains his farming technique to CFG Chairman Rick Braddock |
We held a recent meeting in Edgecumbe at a farm owned and run by Peter Berryman. Berryman is a client of Peter Burton of Eco-logic who organized the day. Berryman uses a fertilizer regime including a range of beneficial soil fungi and bacteria which encourages the “biology” to assist the improvement of the soil structure and therefore pasture production. The farm is a 70ha dairy farm with a 10ha of run-off. The farm runs 190 milking cows at an average of 2.7 cows per hectare. The key difference from conventional farming systems is the use of calcium through the measured application of dolomite and lime. Berryman’s philosophy revolves around looking after the soil which in turn looks after the pasture which results in healthy and productive live stock. As an example of having good pasture and breeding stock the empty rate is around 7%.
The production results have been compared to a nearby monitor dairy farm in the table below:
Data as at April 2010
|
Berryman |
Local Monitor Farm |
Cows/ha |
2.7 |
3.4 |
2009/2010 Prod kg/ha |
1300 |
1025 |
Kg/cow |
467 |
300 |
Condition Score |
4.5 |
3.7 |
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Visual Soil Assessment
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Graham Sheppard demonstrates how easy it is to do a Visual Soil Assessment |
While on the Berryman farm we were given a field lesson on how to use the visual soil assessment (VSA) developed by Graham Shepherd. This is a very straight forward soil testing method and the results were very interesting. The VSA seems like a very useful tool for farmers to gauge soil health. We have put a summary of the VSA on our website here.
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