Shenley Station - Smart Farming Prepares Property for Climate Change

View looking East towards the Pacific Ocean, from the highest point on Shenley Station. The land is covered in tussocks interspersed with a wide range of native and introduced grasses. The Shenley steer fattening operations occur on the lower reaches of the property.

"I used to do the power farming thing", says Rit Fisher. "It drove my cost per kilo of beef up to $1.40. I like keeping things simple and we now have it down to $0.55/kg. Now I don't care what the beef price does." Seven years ago Rit and Sara Fisher were running 12,000 sheep and 500 cattle on Shenley Station, a 3,500 ha property inland from Timaru. Now they've 5,500 sheep and 1,400 cattle (900 cows). Every decision they make focuses on improving the performance of the engine of their business - the land.

Simplicity is the key to any successful operation. The Fishers cattle finishing business averages no more than 2 hours labour per day and a profitability exceeding $300,000. This is not the kind of business you'll see in the monitor farm programme.

The Fishers have always had a very long term perspective to their business planning. "Most farmers want a return in six months. The things I'm doing take six to ten years to see an outcome," says Rit. "The production indictors of our business have never been targets we've set. The figures are simply consequences of choices and decisions we've made with the long term in mind." A prime example is their 40 year beef breeding programme. In their herd of 900 cows, 40 animals are between the ages of 28 and 34 years of age and still squeezing out a calf each year.

Like many farmers, Rit spent years looking for solutions to his production problems. He credits his desire to question and learn to his father, a farming philosopher and great observer of the land. Rit's own observation skills are outstanding, sharpened from years of fishing, hunting, and rodeo. A prolific reader with an investigative attitude, he tenaciously sought answers to the high debt, low profitability, and difficult market circumstances consistently dogging their operation.

In 1992 they bought the neighbouring property but it was only when Rit met Stephen Bell-Booth did they find a cheap way to increase its performance dramatically. They initially used humic acid to release a huge lock up of mineral cheaply. This started a whole new way of looking at information and sources of new ideas and why they stopped using conventional farm advisors.

In 2000 they did a Holistic Management course with Australian educator Bruce Ward. "What we learned wasn't a revelation, says Rit. "I didn't see the light, but it made us focus on the engine. Sara made me explain every decision I've made using the process. She's the Gatekeeper! It extended my boundaries. Holistic Management is about finding what suits you. We began finding ways to bring fertility onto the property."

As he recalls, "Animals are there for the grass, not the other way round. We use them to benefit the four ecosystem processes. The new property had choked to death because a hand was over the carburettor." They started developing their own grazing regime, the Rito-system, after looking at Harry Wier's techno-system and doing the planned Holistic Management grazing.

With their soil biology working and raising post-grazing residuals to 5000kgDM/ha, they claim their soils are 2C warmer in the winter than neighbouring properties, allowing them to target spring beef premiums. It also buffers the property against drought. During the three driest years in South Canterbury earlier this decade, they never dropped a stock unit. They are confident of handling any adverse effects of climate change.

The Fishers grazing regimes have increased the soil organic matter on Shenley, which in turn improves soil water absorption and retention properties. Grazing has also enhanced native species. The analyses from the 1950s soil conservation Run Plans have soil carbon measurement indicators. With intense interest in the property from Government agencies they are considering whether to review these and compare them with current records. About 90% of Shenely is crown pastoral lease and they are considering claiming increases in soil carbon as capital improvements to the property.

Yet meeting people thinking outside the square was the biggest impact of HolisticManagement training. Other than Bruce Ward, they met American animal nutritionist Mark Bader and now use his ration balancing technique with steers to achieve annual liveweight gains of 0.70kg/hd/day compared with 0.5/hd/day 7 years ago. They also met Kim Stevenson, a local soil and animal health consultant and scientist whose questions changed Rit's thinking about farm production.

Talking farm business and production ideas with these three people challenging Rit's thinking inspiring him to work with the environmental to lower production costs and minimise market and climate risk.