Devondaler-March-2015

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12 MARCH 2015 DEVONDALE MURRAY GOULBURN David’s ready to stake his claim in dairying David Ballagh has returned to work the family farm at Alvie in south west Victoria. By SUE WEBSTER WHEN his son, David, said he wanted to come back to the farm, Devondale Murray Goulburn supplier, Ian Ballagh, decided to sell half the herd. The sale meant the 23-year-old could ease into milking with only 100 cows and 120 heifers on the farm at Alvie, just west of Colac in Victoria’s south west. About 90 per cent of the herd has only had up to four lactations. “A fresh, young herd, that’s the plan,” said David, who is a qualified builder. “But it’s going to be tough breaking in the heifers.” Already he’s been making some changes to the herd. Previously, the calving period was very long, stretching from February to September. “I started using our own bulls a lot more, and putting two to three in with the cows.” Now, 60 to 70 per cent of the herd calves in February/March and the Ballaghs count on 50 replacements from the mainly Holstein-Friesian herd. “The cows are bred for good udders and good type. Everything else flows from type,” said Ian. Milked through a 16-a-side swingover dairy, they average 28 litres/day at 4.2 fat and 3.4 protein off the 140ha home farm and 160ha run-off. The volcanic soils are watered by two pivots covering 24ha with an annual groundwater licence for 380ML. The irrigation is used for the summer crops of turnips and millet and for the useful stand of lucerne alongside the pastures of mostly annual ryegrass. They cut up to 1500 rolls of fodder a year, including two silage cuts. Initially David had wanted to start a registered Holstein herd, but he has since bought 15 stud Illawarras and is now interested in making them the basis of his new stud. David’s farm work will be a shared interest with his girlfriend, Erica Zarb, who is in the final stages of studying her vet science degree in Perth and who is keen to come onto the farm. David is not the only family member interested in animals, One of his sisters, Erin, is an elephant keeper at Melbourne zoo. The other two sisters, Amber and Nicolette, work away from the farm, one as a marketing executive and the other as a teacher’s aide in London. David travelled Australia for a year after gaining his building ticket. “I always liked the farm but I thought I’d go out and experience something different,” he said. Most of his friends are builders and cannot understand his return to the land. “But one day someone’s going to realise there’s not enough food being produced and there’ll be a big turnaround in attitudes,” he said.
DEVONDALE MURRAY GOULBURN MARCH 2015 13 GROWING global market opportunities and the need to strengthen supply chains are creating a thirst for capital among agricultural cooperatives as they seek to invest in their future, according to a recently released research report. In the report Agricultural cooperatives – quenching the thirst for capital, agribusiness banking specialist Rabobank says sourcing capital is on the agenda for almost every large agricultural co-operative, and is rapidly moving up the list of priorities for many. Report author, Rabobank Research Director, Hayley Moynihan, says the traditional source of investment capital for co-operatives, their member base and modest debt facilities, may now no longer be enough to allow co-ops to fully participate in an increasingly dynamic global and local food and agribusiness market. “For agricultural co-operatives seeking to capture value from the favourable global market environment, maintaining the status quo is not a strategy. “Confronting the issue of sourcing capital will be required, alongside tackling increased market complexity,” Ms Moynihan said. The report said that with the food and agribusiness supply chain becoming increasingly complex and global, and with rising demand for food and agricultural production, the need for further expansion of productive capacity was clear. “With this, the co-operatives’ operating environment is also becoming more complex and the basis for competition is changing,” said Ms Moynihan. “Co-operatives are under pressure to participate in these changes. “Playing a greater role may be necessary to secure the future survival of the particular cooperative or to provide members with flexibility and additional resources as competition to secure their production off take intensifies.” The report said that this increasingly complex operating environment was also creating the need for dedicated or more closely-aligned supply chains to evolve, to reduce or better manage risk for all parties, the report says. “Co-operatives have the potential to be at the forefront of this supply chain evolution,” Ms Moynihan said. “With the special relationship a co-operative has with its members, a degree of integration already exists. “However, to fully capture the opportunities available in the current environment, co-operatives will require further investment and therefore capital.” Ms Moynihan said agricultural co-operatives usually accrue capital from members over a long period of time, based on setting aside contributions from members transacting with the co-operative, through retained earnings or the capital comes from modest debt facilities. “Obtaining capital from these sources alone will limit many co-operatives’ ability to pursue the current opportunities and is unlikely to provide sufficient or timely funding at the current rate of change,” she said. “This is leaving co-operatives now, in many cases, facing a quandary of how to access sufficient capital to tap into the opportunities before them without compromising the co-operative business model.” Co-operatives are increasingly turning to external capital options, such as third party investors (including pension funds, hedge funds, retail investors and end users seeking supply) and financial instruments (including capital notes, bonds, shares and units). The report said that external capital was alluring for co-operatives due to its accessibility and availability, but brought with it challenges for the cooperative model. “For large agricultural cooperatives, accessing external capital in the same way that a publicly listed or private company would is not straightforward,” Ms Moynihan said. “Strategic and financial investors typically want the capability to influence and control strategy and enjoy the benefits of ownership and full recourse in return for their riskbearing capital. “For co-operatives though, retention of ownership and control strikes at the very core of co-operative enterprises and is usually non-negotiable. “So the challenge is to accommodate the needs and additional demands this type of capital can bring within the cooperative model and strategy.” In seeking to address this challenge, the Rabobank report urges co-operatives to ensure they have a clear vision for the business, are highly relevant to their members and that they have strong member engagement. Time management is key to success SUE WEBSTER found that if you have a job to do, you find a busy person to do it. IF you haven’t got enough hours in your day, take a lesson from the Taylor family. It all comes down to numbers. Jae and Nyree are parents to four children. Between them they hold four off-farm jobs and still manage to milk 145 cows twice daily and calving twice yearly. And last year they expanded their 80ha farm at Yarram in Gippsland by 24ha. How do they do it? Here’s a typical day. At 5am Jae gets the cows into the 16 swingover dairy, with Nyree rising to make the school lunches. Then she comes to feed the calves and help in the dairy. The pair is finished by 7.15am. By that time the two eldest children, Ty 11, and Kade, 15, have fed and dressed themselves and arrive at the dairy to help with the wash down. Depending on the season, there’s also grain to feed to heifers and fresh cows to bring in. Nyree then heads back home to supervise, feed and dress the two younger children, Miley, 9, and Darby, 7. “That’s it until about 8.15 and I’m showered and ready to go to work.” Work can be either in the school library, or as an integration aide at nearby Yarram Secondary College or as an emergency worker for Ambulance Victoria. As an ACO – a paramedic assistant – she can be on call at any time. Meanwhile Jae finishes at the Jae and Nyree Taylor with their children, Ty, 11, Darby, 7, Kade, 15, and Mylie, 9. ner stashed into the slow cooker. A lot of casseroles and silverside gets eaten at the Taylors. After dinner there’s reading for the youngsters and bed by 8.15pm and the home WiFi gets turned off. The older children do their own thing and Jae does the cow records and breeding sheets. Multi-skilling, multi-tasking … the Taylor household works like a clockwork. How do they do it? Here’s a few secrets. Another time saver is the dairy, returns home and prepares for his off-farm job. He also works at the secondary school, teaching woodwork and building construction. A former carpenter of more than 10 years’ experience, he gained teaching qualifications in a career that has also spanned truck driving. The children are loaded into the cars and everyone gets to school by 8.30am. Before she leaves the house, Nyree often has that night’s dinproximity of the dairy to the house, maybe only 70 metres away. The couple built the house after they took on the original farm from Nyree’s parents, Graham and Wilma Price, who still live down the road. The grandparents are the family backstops. They collect the children after school if parents are held up. They check on calving or downer cows when Jae or Nyree are away at work. And, during the occasional weekend away, the Prices help the relief milker, Emma Foat. And when it comes to getting children to work, money helps. “It’s easy because they like motorbikes, so they get paid in petrol and spare parts,” said Jae. “Ty gets $3 per yard wash. He comes in and signs his sheet to prove he’s done it that day and then every dollar he saves we match him dollar for dollar. But if they don’t save it they don’t get it. They don’t get the bonus. So he’s saving for a new motorbike - a KX85.” He’s taken the task over from Kade, who used a similar system to acquire his dream set of wheels, a CRF150. “He saved for half of it and then Santa thought ‘oh, he’s been such a good boy’, You know how it is,” said Jae. “We are breeding a self-reliant batch of kids,” said Nyree. Already Kade is hoping to become a mechanical engineer. And what about the farm? The new block has been renovated to prepare for milking. They are also leasing 18ha last year and a further 34ha this year across the road as run-off block and for silage. Jae cuts pasture silage off the farm, aiming for three bales of silage per cow. “I like to store 850kgDM in pasture silage per cow and any hay after that is a bonus. There’s also 5kg/cow/day supplementary feed - a premium grain ration mixed specifically for the farm to address low zinc and. The couple took on the farm in 2007. It comprised 40ha with another 40ha leased, and no house. Now there’s the house, shed and the growing herd of Jerseys, Holsteins and some crosses. They try to keep a lid on costs. “Only put in what you know you’re going to get a return on. We’re low input, but the inputs we do put in, we make sure we get a return on them.” “We’re happy with how the farm is running at the moment, although we do find it hard to catch up on fencing and maintenance around the farm. “You’ll see little bits and pieces that we’re going to have to spend time doing, and then there’s the paperwork. “We’ll have to get someone to do some data entry for us once a month to send to the accountant.” Nyree contemplates their offfarm work life, which seems to run alongside the push for robotic dairies that allow farmers to work off farm. “We’re doing that already. It’s busy but it’s great. I sometimes wonder why are we doing this? But we do it. This morning,when I was on call before I went to the cow shed, I also had a whole week’s worth of washing to do. But you just catch up!” Capital a priority for co-ops - Rabobank
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Devondaler-March-2015

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