Comparing risk for different dairy farm management systems in Taranaki using the Dexcel Whole Farm Model

Abstract

The approach was to use the Whole Farm Model (WFM) and Taranaki climate to compare a conventional, twice-a-day milking farm system with variations of once-a-day (OAD) milking and high-input systems. The aim was to compare production, return on assets (ROA) and risk as affected by climate and price variability. Simulations were run over 9 different climate years (1995/1996 - 2003/2004). The high-input system had the highest production (1333 kg milksolids (MS)/ ha) and highest ROA (10.8%), with variability thereof dampened by a feed buffer of higher quantity and quality that existed because of higher pasture yields (15.8 t dry matter (DM)/ha with 200 kg nitrogen (N)/ha vs. 13.5 t DM/ha with 105 kg N/ha for the other two systems), maize silage and grazing-off. The high-input system was followed by the OAD and conventional systems in terms of production (1068 and 975 kg MS/ha respectively) and ROA (9.8% and 9.2% respectively). Both OAD and conventional systems showed risk values nominally lower than high-input, but both these systems were more severely affected by climatic var iability, which lowered the average return and increased the risk relative to the return. Keywords: climate var iability, high input farming, once-a-day milking, return on assets

75 years of scientific and technological advances in pastoral agriculture - what will it take to continue to deliver?

“…• The use of satellites to measure pasture growth appeared in the 1970s (Cochrane 1976; Ellis 1977) • The knowledge wave was heralded under the guise of information to continue to improve New Zealand's competitiveness by Trim (1980) • The development of a large range of models for understanding farm systems and to assist with decision making on-farm began to occur in the 1980s (e.g. McCall et al 1986;Baars 1990;Marshall et al 1991;Lewis & Garrity 1993;Barker & Baars 1993;Rollo et al 1996;Metherell et al 1997;Barioni et al 1997;Martins da Silva et al 1997;Wheeler & Thorrold 1997;Davis et al 1998;Barker et al 1998;Ledgard et al 1999;Woodward et al 2000;Ogle et al 2000;Ogle & Tither 2000;Ridler et al 2001;Fiorelli et al 2001;Webby 2002;Wheeler et al 2003;Thorrold et al 2004;Monaghan et al 2004;Zhang et al 2004;Beukes et al 2005). • The potential impact of plant genomic technologies on pastoral agriculture has been discussed since the 1980s (e.g.…”

The impacts of milking frequency on nutrient composition and functional characteristics of Cheddar cheese

“…With OAD systems, milk solids yield can be reduced by up to 40% in early lactation (R emond et al 1999), or, by as little as 7% in late lactation (Stelwagen et al 1994). The impact of OAD milking varies across the milking season, but the overall association of OAD milking with lower milk solids helps to explain why TAD milking is generally favoured, dairy farm profitability is closely linked to the volume of milk solids produced (Beukes et al 2005;Armstrong and Ho 2009).…”

“…The impact of OAD milking varies across the milking season, but the overall association of OAD milking with lower milk solids helps to explain why TAD milking is generally favoured, dairy farm profitability is closely linked to the volume of milk solids produced (Beukes et al . 2005; Armstrong and Ho 2009).…”