Towards more sustainable biological hill country sheep and beef farming

Abstract

This paper describes the research method adopted to identify the constraints to biological (chemical-free) sheep and beef production and to develop management systems that overcome these constraints. The method adopted to meet these objectives has three distinct phases; I A farmlet study, II Component research, and III Farmer survey and on farm testing. The objective of the farmlet study was to establish two farmlets, initially as similar as possible in terms of stock numbers and management practices. The only constraint imposed on the biological and not the conventional farmlet, is that the management practices must comply with the production standards of the New Zealand Biological Producers Council. The conventional farmlet acts as a baseline against which the performance of the biological farmlet can be compared, and to identify constraints to biological hill country sheep and beef production. Component research is used to investigate alternative methods of overcoming these constraints. The third phase of the programme is to survey practising biological producers, which number 50 at present, to identify their major constraints to production and to describe the management practices of successful biological producers. The information from this survey could then be used to further develop the biological farmlet and component research programme. Progress to date in the farmlet study and the information system used to manage and evaluate the performanceof the conventional and biological farmlet is also detailed. Keywords: biological, chemical-free, alternative farming, hill country, research method