Water key to farm development

For Strath Taieri couple Ben and Anna Graham, irrigation provides certainty and gives balance to a dry property.

The Grahams' hosted a Beef and Lamb New Zealand East and North Otago - Farming for Profit programme field day at their farm last week.

The focus was on more effective irrigation and dryland farming issues.

They are going through a transition period with the installation of a 470m pivot, on an area previously watered by a K-line irrigation system.

Originally from a station on the shores of Lake Aviemore, Mr Graham had seen the "massive expense" that some farmers were going through in that wider area to get irrigation through various schemes.

After moving to Strath Taieri in 1999, they initially leased Hartfield and later bought the farm, along with a neighbouring property, and there were water rights on both farms.

With those water rights and electricity handy, he wondered why nothing had been done in an area that was hit by "screaming droughts".

In spring, 2002, it was decided to put a K-line irrigation system on Hartfield, costing about $130,000, which included the power and pumps.

K-line had been "OK" but it was expensive to run and there were high pumping costs, labour input and maintenance.

"In short, it's a life sentence," Mr Graham said.

It battled to keep up in drought years - "just keeping things green" - and while K-line certainly had its place, "I think if you can fit a pivot in, it should be your only option".

Irrigation gave them certainty, knowing they could finish their lambs, hoggets and cattle, and provided some balance on the property.

Contour challenges and wet patches meant careful preparation was needed for the installation of the pivot.

The cost of the pivot machinery had been kept to $187,000 because the pump and main line was available.

All up, including filling wet patches, creating wheel runs, upgrading the pump house with a self-cleaning head, and fencing, the bill will be about $300,000.

The pivot was supplied by Plains Irrigators and director Graeme Cooper spoke of how the company started as a "one-man band" about 16 years ago and has grown to employ 31 staff, selling pivots throughout the South Island.

The next key development at Hartfield is to gradually change over existing pastures to a fescue base to extract even more benefit from the watering.

Mr and Mrs Graham run Angus cows and merino sheep and have also been trialling some halfbreds on the 3500ha property, which comprises 2570ha hill country, 800ha arable and 130ha irrigated.

Merinos had been good for them, they were kind on the drier, more fragile hill country, and they left "enough tucker" to run a good herd of cattle.

"For me, wool is an easy way to make money. They grow it 24/7 and you shear it off. You don't have to dag it and drench it... and all those things. It's a good way to make 50% of your income. It's easy," Mr Graham said.

His aim was to keep the flock footrot-free and to lift the lambing percentage to 100%. This year was looking good, with the best scanning ever, but two storms in early October knocked merino lambing back to 90% from a 135% scan.

The halfbreds - bred from their own merino ewes put to a Romney ram - had been very good. They lambed a lot earlier than the merinos and missed a couple of storms. They lambed 155% ewes mated to lambs tailed, from 178% scanning.