Out on Waikato’s west coast, surfers put their suspensions to the test along unsealed Te Akau South Rd as they follow the surf guide’s directions to a sandy break where it’s promised the Tasman Sea will deliver them challenging right and left hand waves.
The guide describes the Te Akau break’s waves as "punchy and powerful" which is not a bad description either for the land and people of this area about 70 minutes from Hamilton.
Back up the road before the pot holes get ferocious, and about 4km back from the sea as the crow flies, can be found John Jackson, all 2.1m (6.6ft) of him, and Providence Green, the 1500ha bull finishing and sheep farm he owns in partnership with wife Jenny and parents Jo and Anne.
The back of the coastal property (effective 1400ha) has glorious views of the Tasman Sea and the farm contours range from 100ha of flats to 100ha of steep hill country with the remainder sloping somewhere between. Soil type is also hugely variable, ranging from peat to sand. The property rises from sea level to 130m and its views from any point pack a punch.
Jackson, who grew up on this road, has seen, and overseen, the growth of the operation from 242ha settled by his grandfather in 1947, to its present size. His father Jo and uncle Peter Jackson, a former Affco chairman, farmed with his grandfather to grow the farm to 1200ha. The successful partnership ended in the mid-70s when Jo and Peter split the land to go farming on their own accounts, with Peter and his family now running the adjoining Piquet Hill romney stud.
John Jackson is Jo’s only son. The more recent family partnership has extended the farm from 700ha to its current size by buying four blocks of nearby land, and called the result Providence Green. Recently Jo and Anne Jackson have bought a property in Hamilton but keep their hands in at the farm.
Jackson says most farmers in this district who have managed to grow their operations have a point of farming difference. An example is bloodstock maestro David Ellis, principal of the country’s leading racing stable Te Akau Racing, with his thoroughbred breeding business Te Akau Stud on his beef and sheep farm.
Jackson reckons his farm’s point of difference is its permanent single electric wire "cell" grazing management system which covers the entire farm.
But it has others too.
The farm grows out bulls on country many would consider to be traditional breeding ewe and breeding cow territory; it doesn't dock lambs; and about five years ago completed the transition from selling all its lambs for store to sending its whole crop for slaughter.
The Jackson family has been finishing bulls since John Jackson was a toddler and when he returned in 1992 from two years playing rugby overseas and achieving a diploma in philosophy, politics and economics at England’s Oxford University, his mum and dad were running a breeding herd of angus cross cows, 2800 ewes and killing about 300 bulls a year.
Jackson, who was a lock for Canterbury and New Zealand Universities prior to the scholarship which took him to Oxford, was by the time he returned "a broken down" rugby player, he says. But he had followed his dream to play rugby overseas and see the world, and with his BCom from Lincoln University, was ready to be a farmer and work with his parents.
By 1997 the breeding cows and gone, motorbikes had replaced horses, the farm had moved into an all-male cattle regime and a single wire rotation system was being established with bulls divided into mobs of about 20.
"We believed that with adequate fencing in the form of permanent single wire we could manage the bulls to do a good a grazing job as the breeding cows. By subdividing we could pressure the bulls to graze…and let’s face it, harvesting pasture with young, growing cattle when it is green and at its optimum is always going to create a better financial outcome than trying to clean up with a breeding cow herd when the grass is past its best," Jackson says.
Bulls are predominantly friesian and bought in as yearlings through to two years of age.
"We tend to buy at the lighter end of the age group," Jackson says.
He uses livestock agents to buy bulls and prefers them to be hand-reared to reduce risk to his staff. Aggressive bulls are only an occasional event and go straight to the works.
The farm typically carries between 1600 and 1750 bulls through a winter. This year 1660 bulls were sent to meat companies, most aged 2 1/2 years. For about five years now, the average weight of bulls leaving the farm has been 300-315kg, Jackson says.
There are 650 grazing cells on the property.
"A cell is defined by a single wire boundary so within a conventionally-fenced paddock there might be six cells with permanent single wires and the cattle are rotated around that. You need to take the view it is a property with a whole lot of farmlets and within each farmlet are a mob of bulls."
Laneways criss-cross the farm to allow bulls and staff access and provide an extra degree of seperaton between mobs. Not all cells are used constantly – for example on the flats which are prone to flooding.
Keeping mobs small is important in farming bulls, Jackson says. Mob size on the farm averages 18 bulls. Which are typically shifted twice a week.
Jackson reckons the single wire concept is under-utilised in hill country farming systems.
"It has the ability to not only fence cattle onto an area, but fence them off an area for a particular period of time."
Such areas could be vulnerable to erosion or flooding.
"We like to maintain 4000 volts or better but being coastal, the salt iodises across insulators at times and can cause a decrease in power. Constant maintenance of the electric fencing is part and parcel of running an efficient cell grazing system."
Bull beef returns this year – about $6kg at time of writing – are reward for patience and endurance after a long price drought.
"In the time I've been farming we've sold cattle for as little as $1.80kg. We were in the mid $4s in about 2002 and then we were back to late $3s and early $4s so it’s certainly a substantial shift upwards this last year and strong prices look set for another year at least," Jackson says.
"But we have to remember we are in a margin trading game and no matter the prices, the profit will be the relative difference between the selling and the purchasing price. Whether we can procure our replacement cattle economically is another matter and to me there is a scarcity of suitable replacement stock.
"I expect increasing demand for beef cattle to finish with the solid schedules we are experiencing."
Jackson says given improved beef returns to farmers, he expects to have to pay $3kg plus for replacement cattle this year, an increase on last year.
"We had super-normal margins last year that we won't get this year because replacement stock has gone up in price."
Providence Green typically carries 2000 romney breeding ewes. Jackson likes the breed for its durability on this class of country, which traditionally gets 127cm of rain a year but has endured harsher summers in the past six or so years, four of them drought-like, he says. (He reckons the dry summers have shaved 20kg off the average carcass weight of his bulls).
Twinning ewes are set-stocked for lambing at around five to the hectare over some of the steeper country and an appropriate stocking of cattle are rotated among them, Jackson says.
"Obviously the ewes can move about unrestricted by the single wire and extreme care is needed over lamb drop to ensure mis-mothering is minimised,."
The past year has recorded the farm’s best lamb productivity to date with 2782 lambs safely out the gate from 2200 ewes rammed to a poll-dorset terminal sire last year. That’s a survival to sale rate of 126 per cent.
Of the total lamb crop, 1616 went to the processors on December 9, 10 and 11, with another 580 exiting in January and the rest between February and April.
The average carcass weight was 16.3kg, which Jackson says is par for the course for the past few years.
Wool is an "incidental", he says.
"The key contributor to any breeding and fattening enterprise is the efficiency with which you can get your lambs fattened and sold, especially in a summer dry.
"I'm a big believer that the greatest threat to a lamb is the one grazing next to it, hence the light ewe stocking rate over lambing, which reduces the intestinal worm burden and improves the selection of grass available for the lambs."
The decision not to dock lambs was made after Jackson’s on-farm study showed docking made no difference to a lamb’s growth rate, but created mis-mothering risk, stress for the sheep, and a lot of extra work for little gain.
Lambing on Providence Green starts in early August. The farm doesn't run hoggets and buys in ewe replacements as two-tooths or four-tooths.
It employs three full time staff – two stockmen and a fencer-general hand. Improved returns mean Jackson has been able to take on a teenager as a trainee fencer-general hand. The farm has 20 registered work dogs. Strong dogs are essential in farming bulls, which tend to stay respectful of people in the run up to two years of age, but like "unruly kids need to be taught their manners," he says.
"Current staff strength is a far cry from some of our tougher periods when we ran the farm with a fencer-general and a bit of casual help," says Jackson.
Improved earnings also mean the business has been able to employ consultant soil scientist Dr Doug Edmeades for advice on the property’s fertility status.
Historically the partnership has applied 250kg of superphosphate a year but in the last 12 months as a result of Edmeades advice, has made a heavy investment in capital fertiliser, phosphate, potash and sulphur on the hill country in a push for a productivity increase. The farm has reticulated and natural water supplies.
For the past five years it has supplied stock to Greenlea, Affco and Riverlands in Eltham.
Jackson declines to share the farm’s key performance indicators but his bank manager Darren Brooks, agribusiness partner at BNZ, says among his clients the farm is easily in the top 5 per cent of bull beef performers in the Te Akau area.
Jackson says his wife Jenny is a "huge support".
An Australian, she is from a farm, is trained and experienced in commercial rural business management and is responsible for Providence Green’s books.
The couple have three school age children.
Jackson says the good beef prices will help the partnership consolidate financially and upgrade infrastructure.
"The fact we are both coastal and run bulls means pressure on infrastructure. There’s a lot more water reticulation to do and we need to get our kids educated and on their way in life so I don't forsee the same rate of expansion we've achieved in the first 20 years, but one would never say never."
AGRIBUSINESS PROGRAMME SET TO TAKE OFF
John Jackson has a long history of community service and is a passionate advocate for St Paul’s Collegiate School’s new agribusiness programme.
As a director of St Paul’s foundation board, the school’s fundraising arm, and deputy chairman of the Waikato Anglican College Trust which oversees the running of St Paul’s, Jackson has been active in launching the proposed subject at NCEA levels 2 and 3, which will be university entrance approved.
The programme, developed by St Paul’s, DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb, is being trialled exclusively at St Paul’s, with the aim it will be available to all secondary schools by 2017.
Ten other business partners are also involved, seven schools from Southland to Auckland have been selected to trial the curriculum and the Gallagher Agribusiness Centre of Excellence is nearing completion at St Paul’s in Hamilton.
Jackson, whose role was to put his agriculture contacts alongside educators, says without NCEA levels 2 and 3 in agribusiness "we are not going to attract tertiary-capable people into the industry".
Jackson’s eldest son, Hugh, 17, is among the first St Paul’s pupils to study agribusiness, and the Te Akau farmer believes daughter Sarah, 15, who starts at the school next year, will also be a candidate.
Jackson’s youngest son Charlie, nearly 13, also joins the school next year.
The pilot programme started last year with 40 students, 15 of whom went on to study agribusiness at tertiary level compared to two the year before. This year 88 students are reported to be seriously considering a career in the primary industries.
DairyNZ and Beef+Lamb estimate the sector needs 1200 graduates a year, but only 250 are emerging from New Zealand universities. The curriculum is awaiting Education Ministry and NZQA approval.
