Big is good. Being better is best.
That was the simple message from Lone Star Farms general manager Boyd Macdonald at the Beef and Lamb New Zealand Central South Island Farmer Council field day in the Hakataramea Valley on Thursday.
It was held at Lone Star Farms' Caberfeidh property, which comprises 6000ha (about 5300ha effective) and runs about 32,000 stock units - made up of about 15,500 ewes, 4000 hoggets and 400 cows, with the balance being trading lambs and cattle.
While being big was relatively easy if you had good access to capital, being better "year in and year out" was a challenge that was more satisfying and rewarding.
Being better was also something that all farmers could aim for, regardless of their scale, Mr Macdonald told the large crowd of more than 450 people at the field day.
While Lone Star Farms could not claim to be the best, that was the company's focus and aim over the next few years, he said.
Lone Star Farms is owned by American-born Tom Sturgess, who served with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam before gaining a master's degree in business administration at Harvard.
He spent the next six years as an accountant with Ernst and Young before embarking on a corporate career in private equity firms, food service, aluminium manufacturing, housing and office products, later moving to New Zealand.
Lone Star Farms has seven farming units running sheep and beef throughout the South Island -three in Nelson/Marlborough, three in Otago, and Caberfeidh.
While the company was often referred to as a corporate farming enterprise, it was not a true corporate because it was owned by one man, Mr Macdonald said.
However, it probably operated and behaved like a corporate, with its structures, procedures, policies and reporting lines.
The company did a lot of measuring and recording and firmly believed "if you don't measure, you can't manage".
Having the scale that it did and the range of climatic and environmental differences between properties also presented opportunities.
Overall, Lone Star Farms was wintering about 120,000 stock units, peaking at about 160,000-170,000 in late spring and early summer, with a staff of about 35. The company was "pretty passionate" about prime lamb production.
The company's goal was to maximise farm profit by fully utilising available resources in an efficient and sustainable manner. At Caberfeidh, those resources were the land, water, people and capital.
The property comprised about 3750ha of easy downs and flats and about 1520ha of hill country and employed eight staff.
Rainfall varied from about 350mm a year on the valley floor to about 650mm under the foothills.
About 400ha was under gravity-fed irrigation, put on through two pivots, two roto-rainer irrigators and K-Line, while seven water-storage ponds provided some reliability.
The Hakataramea Valley climate could be good, but could also be a challenge and get dry.
It was a very good area for stock health, the soil would grow "anything" with moisture, the contour of the land was "pretty easy", winters were not too severe and lamb survival and stock performance in the spring could be extremely good, Mr Macdonald said.
Caberfeidh had been reviewed, covering where it was at current production and then where it could be taken.
It became evident there was huge potential to increase production without factoring in any extra irrigation.
The main areas to be addressed over the next five years were pasture and pasture species, stock and stock performance, infrastructure, and the staff required to implement those things.
There was a need to change from ryegrass to lucerne and lucerne mixes to fully utilise the water, Caberfeidh manager Andrew Harding said.
By 2016, it was planned to increase areas in lucerne/cocksfoot from 48ha to 994ha, lucerne/fescue from 74ha to 688ha and lucerne from 629ha to 826ha.
Irrigation was economical on Caberfeidh only because it did not have to be pumped. The benefits of irrigation would not always make it pay, just because you lived in a dry environment, he said.
Caberfeidh runs Romney-Texel and Perendale ewes, which have been lambing about 135%, with an average carcass weight of 18kg last year.
However, Mr Harding said they were looking for a more efficient sheep to push lambing to about 150%, to do justice to what was being done with the pasture mixes and pasture types.
A few hoggets were lambed this year but that was not as successful as hoped. It would be done long-term if the season allowed.
Mr Sturgess, who first got involved in prime lambs 25 years ago in the US, said he was "wildly enthusiastic" about the product and more optimistic about prime lambs than ever before.
"We've got a groovy thing going on," he said.
What was being seen in the marketplace was that the market would take New Zealand farmers' lamb if it was a superbly processed product with integrity.
Referring to the red-meat sector strategy released earlier this year, Mr Sturgess said he was "not sure how many read between the lines and decoded it".
It was full of consultants' talk - "polysyllabic words and saying things but not saying them". Between the lines was where the power was, he said.
He was concerned about a suggestion they should "get rid of" stock agents, saying they performed a very valuable function inside the whole system.
Contested farm gate procurement every day was good but nobody showing up at your farm to bid for lambs was bad, he said.
Mr Sturgess's request to the country's meat processors was that they co-operate over in-country marketing.
Lone Star Farms had looked at the possibility of a dairy conversion at Caberfeidh but could not make it work. That was "good news" for Mr Sturgess, "because it means we can double down what we can do here".