Many farmers have a five- or 10-year plan, but few have pushed their far-sighted blueprint to the scale of Mt Somers Station’s David and Kate Acland.
The couple run the dryland 3900ha property and other commercial operations with a 100-year vision.
That’s right — 100 years.
Mr Acland can already picture what the station might look like extending into the next century.
"I would hope to see an Acland on the station and hope to see a thriving farm community that’s inter-connected to a profitable and sustainable farm — environmentally, economically and socially — that can be repeatable so generation after generation can live and enjoy the place."
With three children aged from 10-12, they aim to position the farm business so they can pass the baton on to them.
"Hopefully, one of them shows an interest and does want to go farming and take on the challenge, but you have to do that equitably and that’s what my parents managed to achieve and what we wish to achieve."
He sees their over-arching vision looking forwards, as well as backwards.
"You acknowledge the work that has gone on behind you by your predecessors and you look to the future to where you wish to be. It’s to recognise other people have come before you and helped mould the farm. Sometimes the decisions that were made in the past are different to the decisions you might make, but you recognise them and look to the future."
A simple example of long-term thinking, he says, is designing a building that fits into the landscape. The easy option would be to put in a pre-fab structure, but spending a bit more money gives pleasure, a better workspace and fits more comfortably into the environment.
Mr Acland says this philosophy extends to farming decisions.
"We could have rushed into a whole lot of dairy conversions a long way back, but you have a core structure to your farm which you are comfortable with — you just don’t jump round to what seems to be the most profitable at that point of time. You have a plan and stick to it."
History
The family connection to the land can be traced back to his great, great grandfather, John Acland, who took up the station and other Canterbury runs in 1856 with business partner Charles Tripp.
A few years later, the partnership was dissolved, with the Acland family retaining Mt Peel Station to the south and Mr Tripp taking Orari Gorge and Mt Somers stations.
Subsequently sold several times over, eventually Burnett Motors agreed to a price for two-thirds of Mt Somers Station to go to Mr Acland’s parents, Mark and Jo, in 1983. The remainder of the property passed hands in 2002, the same year he returned home to the station.
His parents ran commercial businesses outside of farming, which helped with distributing the estate fairly among siblings and they’ve made good progress in this direction.
Before they were married, Mrs Acland developed a winery in Marlborough called Sugar Loaf Wines and they own the nearby Staveley and Mt Somers stores as well as producing their own brand of lambs’ wool blankets.
Mr Acland says he and his wife work as equals in the business. They talk through most components before making governance or strategic decisions, aside from the daily minutiae of running the farm.
Both of them feel strongly about representing their sector and somehow in their busy schedules he’s the Mid Canterbury president for Federated Farmers and she’s a Northern South Island director and deputy chairwoman for Beef + Lamb NZ.
As in the past, the station spreads over stony silt loams to heavy Kakahu clay soil types on rolling to steep hill country that collects an average 1600ml of rainfall.
The layout and stocking, however, is much changed from when the first Acland stepped into the heart of Mid Canterbury’s foothills. Mt Somers has transitioned from a straight sheep and beef station to a "relatively intensive" farm system.
To this day, it continues to evolve and be tweaked by the latest Aclands at the helm.
About 2400ha of the station carries the sheep flock and beef herd as well as acting as dairy support for a dryland 330ha dairy platform. Another 270ha in pine forestry is set aside for carbon farming and tree harvesting, while all stock are barred from 480ha in native bush.
Removing deer
Not so long ago, 3000 English Red Deer roamed the rolling downs with the hinds crossed with elk and composite sires to produce mixed breed offspring. When the higher-returning dairy unit was reduced, a call was made to exit velveting and eventually the breeding and finishing operation.
The herd’s foundation was captured in the 1970s and early ’80s between Mt Somers and Orari Gorge stations by his father. He was one of the early pioneers of live deer capture and deer farming in New Zealand.
This legacy made the decision difficult.
"We’ve been here since 1983 and Dad had deer farming as a part of that ... that unfortunately didn’t work out with us wishing to be here for a long term and we had to say that no longer fits. So there was an emotional component we had to put aside to look at the longer-term vision."
The Aclands rationalised that deer farming and wallowing hinds didn’t fit with environmental rules for their wetlands and it would’ve been difficult to deer fence around these areas. Removing deer simplified their farm system to dairy, sheep and beef and took out the stock classes of breeding hinds and finishing animals.
Dairy
Putting in the dairy farm helped with farm succession planning to make it fair to Mr Acland’s siblings when the estate was divided.
The 870 Friesian and crossbred cows are milked 10-times every seven days to lighten the load for the herd and staff. This allows them to ease the stocking rate to 2.7 stock units to the hectare and reduce the dry rate by between 4% and 14%.
"We are restricted by the fact that we don’t have irrigation, so we are in a dryland environment in the foothills sense because it hasn’t been that dry over the past couple of years," he said. "We are relatively lowly stocked for the farm and the 10/7 milking rotation has allowed us to carry a slightly higher stocking rate than if we’d been twice a day milking and it’s helped this year with the condition of cows."
He says pregnancy scanning, starting this month, will show if they’ve got it right. The cows have held on well after a tough start to spring following a wet winter.
"Anecdotally it feels like the right decision, but it’s difficult to compare season on season and probably three or four years down the track we will be able to reflect on, hopefully, the numbers. So far, it’s been a good call."
Fence-less Halter collars have been put on the herd this year, which has allowed them to drop a staff member.
In a new trial this winter, they plan to put just over half of the cows on pasture and silage rather than winter feed crops because of the change of winter grazing regulations on slope and area rules for brassicas and annual forage.
They’re far from exiting winter crops, with cows on winter feed over 70-80 days continuing to do so. But those on for 50-60 days or others dried off at the end of May for an early-August calving will go on staged pasture, silage and straw.
Field day
Mr Acland says this change intrigued more than 100 farmers attending a Beef+Lamb NZ Farming for Profit field day at their property.
They are limited in the area they can use winter feed at Mt Somers as a permitted activity without having to go to resource consent.
Part of their reasoning is they had a challenging winter last year and wanted to see if this could be improved, he says.
"That fits within our farm system as well and why we’ve gone into store lambs a bit more and finishing lambs rather than deer which has allowed us that flexibility."
Calves
The Aclands expect their calving journey and forestry plantings will also help them farm into the future.
Both dairy cross and beef calves are bred for breeding replacements, finishing and trading.
About 500 beef-cross dairy calves result from their Angus bulls going over dairy first-calvers or Hereford genetics going to mixed-age cows failing to get into calf after artificial insemination.
Between 80% and 90% of the dairy calves are reared with all of the males planned to be finished this year within a techno system.
This depends on the markets and feed supply, so the couple use this stock class as release valve for the property. If the pressure goes on, calves are offloaded. The goal is to improve growth rates and days to finish for the Friesian and dairy cross bull beef animals.
The same approach is taken for beef calves from the Angus and Hereford breeding cow herd.
In the interest of flexibility again, some of them could be sold as calves in weaner fairs in April or kept through the winter and traded.
Last year, they retained the steer calves and moved on the bottom end of heifer calves.
Some yearling bulls go after their first winter and the 18-month-old bulls will be sold from next month to June.
Each year is different with the weather playing a hand. Mt Somers is a summer-safe property from consistent foothills rainfall, but falls within a dryland environment without irrigation.
Dairy calves, beef calves and lambs are traded over the summer with the flexibility that if the weather turns, they can be sold at any point.
"That gives you that wiggle room," Mr Acland says. "When we had more deer they don’t have that same flexibility because there aren’t as many deer farms around and you can be stuck with them. We have a bit more flexibility within our farm now than we did."
Sheep
The wider Romney sheep flock includes 6300 mixed-age ewes, 3000 two-tooth ewes, 3300 ewe hoggets and about 100 rams from Orari Gorge and Waireri stud genetics.
Hoggets over 42kg liveweight by May 1 are also mated, while 1000 un-mated hoggets are also kept over the winter.
A total of 13,700 lambs were weaned last season from an overall tailing rate of about 140% and the hoggets average between 90% and 100%. Kelso Terminal rams also crossed over the flock yield about 4200 terminal sire lambs for an average carcass weight of 18.7kg.
Last year, about one-third of the lambs headed to the processing works at weaning and about 3000 store lambs were sold in an on-farm sale in December.
Perhaps 3000 to 5000 of them are finished in January and February with about 1000 sold as store lambs by a March cut-off depending on feed availability.
Forestry
A pivotal part of their long-term thinking is forestry, revolving around mostly pine plantations and native bush. The tree planting is being widened to eventually include douglas fir and redwoods with stands of oak, elm and walnut for a 100-year forest.
Mrs Acland says carbon farming and forestry are a key diversification and long-term income stream to manage family succession and debt reduction.
"The forestry and carbon story is critical and we’ve planted quite a bit of pinus radiata in the last three years in the foothills and where we can. It’s a revenue stream and we’re using land that’s not taking anything away from our sheep farm. We have carbon budgeted out for 40 years and so we know how much carbon we have available over the next period to trade. It’s all part of [the 100-year vision] and enables us to transition to the next generation as well."
The trees are growing where gorse once stood or in steeper gullies and hard-to-manage areas.
All post-1990 forests over 130ha are registered in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the goal is to increase this by a further 100ha over the next three years. The combination of species and staggered harvesting dates spreads their carbon liabilities at harvest and also the overall risk.
At this stage, carbon income is used for repaying debt and to offset high interest rates. In the future, they envisage it becoming critical to manage passing on the business fairly to the next generation.
Another 125ha of regenerating native bush is also registered with ETS and they’re in negotiation with officials for registering another 60ha. The remainder is mostly virgin bush with tracts of beech forest.
The couple’s immediate environmental focus is to exclude stock by fencing wetlands and streams and plant riparian strips.
That way their grand-children can enjoy the areas and they comply with their environmental responsibilities.
Flood recovery
Some of this thinking was forced on them by Mt Somers being among farms hit by floods 20 months ago. Torn fences, gravel and silt was strewn over 100ha under floodwaters from the Ashburton River.
It took six months for the paddocks to get back to providing some sort of winter feed for the following season and hopefully they will be returned to their original lucerne soon.
The Aclands continue to work through a staged recovery with some of the damage from 530ml of rain at the western end of the station still visible.
Mr Acland says a long journey of repairs and disruption from damaged floodgates has followed, but they were lucky in many ways. The floods arrived in May just after the cow herd had been dried off and before lambing arrived with ewes in good condition and only a little winter feed lost.
Their experience was nowhere near the degree of North Island farmers hurting from Cyclone Gabrielle, he says.
The flooding cost was significant, but every generation has its challenges, he says.
"We took a hit and it slowed down our plans with everything else like debt repayment and other projects, so it delays your journey. But it won’t stop us from looking ahead or working to shape the farm in its future direction."
