Hill country sheep and beef farming systems cover much of the farmed area of New Zealand - probably around 8 million out of the 11.5 million hectares of grazing/arable land. That figure recognises that a hill country enterprise is usually an integrated system - predominantly breeding, perhaps with some deer, will often have forestry and increasingly, moving more to fattening at least a proportion of the surplus stock. Climate varies hugely across the hill country land use area with droughts and dry periods requiring adaptive systems to manage the risk of feed shortage. Products able to be generated from this land type include: meat, carbon, fibre, wood, energy and ecological services such as biodiversity and landscape values. In looking at the opportunities and challenges ahead, I am going to take a five to 10 year view rather than focus on the impacts likely to be experienced over the next year or so. If we confined ourselves to the short term, all the discussion would be about currency, cost of fertiliser, interest rates and predicted rainfall - none of which we could greatly influence! My focus is more on global trends and the nature of the land.
