Resources for farmers to increase productivity.

The team with Jeff at the Farm

We invited Jeff White to come and talk to us about his work as an agricultural consultant in our region. The Shoalhaven region is predominantly a Dairy farming area because of high rainfall and pockets of rich alluvial and volcanic soils which allow for good pasture growth for most of the year.



Jeff provides a range of services to farmers to assist them in making their soils and pastures more productive, so that they can increase their outputs from their farms. At the end of the day our farmers have to work long hard hours and invest huge amounts of money to earn an income, so any help to make a profit is welcomed.

Jeff talked about the importance of good soil fertility and structure to increasing the output of pastures. This is particularly important on Dairy farms where the nutritive value of the food that cows eat is linked directly to the quantity and quality of milk that they produce.

Jeff told us that there has been a huge shift away from the use of inorganic fertilisers to the use of organic fertilisers such as chicken manure to improve soil fertility. This makes sense as we now understand the importance of organic matter in soils for increasing soil microbial activity and water retention. Inorganic fertilisers can reduce the soil structure over long-rem use.

Jeff explained how important it is for farmers to have plans so that the farm runs in a sustainable way. Sometimes farmers have to invest up to $800 per hectare to implement a soil fertility improvement program and then have to wait to reap the benefits in the long term.

Jeff also spoke about how much the local farming landscape has changed over the past 30 years. The deregulation of the Dairy industry and the end of the quota system saw many of the smaller dairy farms close or become part of larger farms as they could no longer make a profit.  Additionally in recent years, prime agricultural land has been developed for housing to meet the demands of growing populations.
A huge thanks to Jeff for coming to talk to us and sharing his wealth of knowledge.


There have been lots of newspaper artlicles in our local paper The South Coast Register over the past few months about the impact of the supermarket price wars on local dairy farmers where reduced milk prices along with the rising costs had increased pressures on farmers trying to make a living off the land.

Interestingly is the most recent which shows that the consumer has a lot of power and that:
In the age of the supermarket ''milk wars'', where the major stores discount milk to $1 a litre, many dairy farmers have been forced to run at a loss or get out of the industry. But the milk wars have produced an unlikely victor: tiny, independent dairies are re-entering the market and thriving.
With just 100 milking-age cows and a prescient 2004 investment in a small bottling factory on their farm near Picton on Sydney's south-western outskirts, the Fairley dairy's revenue has risen 45 per cent since the supermarkets began discounting.
''We all have [had that growth]; all the small people up and down the coast,'' John Fairley said.
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1712711/small-dairy-farmers-are-the-surprise-winners/

We will be highlighting the ABC Cheese Factory at Tilba which bottles its own milk straight from the cows in the paddocks next door in a future blog. Talk about low carbon footprint milk!! Also South Coast Milk at Berry is about to expand its operations and we will be reporting on this as well.
Other local news stories, all of which interview local farmers, can be found at the following links:

http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1443878/dairy-farmers-cut-out-the-middleman/
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1313763/dairy-free/
www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/.../farmer-warns-of-dairy-free-future/?
http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1405721/farmers-keep-eye-on-woolworths-milk-deal/
 http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/1429841/coles-dairy-deal-in-sour-taste-for-sa-farmers/