Farmers told to embrace technology

The uptake of new technology by sheep and beef farmers is slow according to the Red Meat Strategy report, and Beef And Lamb NZ are endeavouring to improve this, by holding fieldays promoting best practice in this area.

While dairy sector operators lead the farming industry in technology uptake, they do have the daily measurement of milk yield to accurately measure their production. The introduction of electronic identification tags will allow more efficent weighing and identifying of better or underperforming animals in the sheep and beef sector.

And another good year like this one will allow the costs of such tecnologies to be budgeted into the farm operation. Farming smarter seems to be the catch cry of top operators and better quality information will allow managers to make more profitable decisions. Do you see use of this new technology helping you farm more profitably in the future?

Sheep and beef farmers could take a big step towards closing the gap between their production and their dairy industry counterparts' by using technology more effectively, farmers attending a field day last week were told. A failure by the sheep and beef sector to embrace technology and use it to make information-based decisions was highlighted in the Red Meat Sector Strategy, released earlier this month. It found significant productivity gains could be made if farmers took advantage of existing technology and knowledge, and applied best practice to their farming operation reports Stuff.

Embracing technology and using it to maximise production and ultimately returns was the theme behind a Beef + Lamb New Zealand "Meat the Future" field day on an Aparima farm, attended by about 75 farmers, last week. Speaker Matt Wyeth, 2005 Wairarapa sheep and beef farmer of the year, told attendees to consider what technology they used and how better information could be used to make improved decisions.

The key was to collect the information, transfer it to the right system, and put it in a form that provided data that could be used, he said. Not using a computer was no longer an option but farmers needed to use it to their advantage, Mr Wyeth said. He ran spreadsheets on almost every farm operation he could think of to give him total control, with the farm budget updated daily with data from the previous days, so he knew exactly how the season was progressing.

Mr Wyeth farmed challenging country at the base of the Tararuas but had done an impressive job lifting production since buying the farm in 2002 from his parents. With about 800ha effective, he ran about 10,000 stock units, using different feeds to fatten lambs, supplied on contract to Silver Fern Farms. The module-based field day allowed farmers to hear about the introduction of the national animal identification scheme, the benefits of regular weighing of stock using electronic identification tags, websites that covered farm production decisions, on-farm GPS systems, pasture measuring tools and FarMax, a programme that allows farmers to plan how they could effectively convert pasture into profit.