Prime Movers sector report: Meat

Sheep and beef farms are facing stiff competition as farmers seek higher returns. Agriculture reporter SUE MILLER talks to a farmer living in a battle zone.

A quiet, hidden valley barely 15 minutes drive from the high-rise buildings of central Wellington has been home for five generations of the Best farming family.

For many Wellingtonians, Ohariu Valley has been known over the years for the popular, but now closed, country club, its horse trekking and riding stables, and more recently for adventure tourism. To more and more commuters, it is becoming a place where they can retreat at the end of the day to peaceful rural surroundings on their lifestyle blocks.

Howard Best has lived there all his life, seen the changes around him, and is fighting to stop the whole valley changing from productive beef and sheep farming to lifestyle blocks which produce, at most, a few bags of black wool for the handcraft industry, more road traffic, and some really nice and varied neighbours.

The Best family moved into Ohariu Valley sometime around 1860, initially leasing 20 hectares and gradually buying more land over the years until in the mid 1970s various family members owned 728ha.

Best, a great-grandson of the original settler, now owns about 400ha, and normally runs about 2500 ewes, 600 hoggets and 120 head of cattle. This past year numbers were down, hard on the heels of several years of drought when stock were sold off early at low prices. He was faced, as were all drought-stricken farmers, with restocking at inflated prices. However, lambing has been good - ultra-sound scans indicated 155 per cent or more than one lamb expected per ewe - although heavy rain last month caused some losses and the final figure could be 130 per cent.

In the decade-long, nationwide land-use change from sheep and beef farming to dairy, forestry and deer, the valley is one of the few places where farms have not converted to dairying. Until about 30 years ago, many of the farms in the valley were dairy farms, contributing to town milk supply - Best left school at 15 to milk dairy cows on the family farm - but no dairy cows remain and, because of the hilly terrain, are unlikely to return.

Instead the valley farmland is selling to lifestylers or for subdivisions and Best pragmatically accepts that its beauty and closeness to the city makes it a developers' dream. But he is fighting through the Environment Court, and with local authorities, to limit the speed of change.

Keeping the valley green is important but, equally, flooding the market with residential properties impacts negatively on land prices. He proposes that each landowner be entitled to subdivide 2ha every five years for small clusters of houses to maintain the landscape which appeals so much to visitors and new residents. It would mean farmers, as in his own case, could also sell their farm but retain a small block around their home.

But he is indignant at the rate the region's productive farmland is reverting to scrub and gorse. In the past 30 years, 100,000 stock units have gone out of the greater Wellington region, he says. Almost all have vanished from land no longer farmed, although some is now covered in forest.

Two large farms that comprise the southwest corner of the North Island - partly visible from Best's farm - are now scrub-covered hills stocking only a small percentage of the stock they could carry.

A lifetime supporter of the National Party, Best laughing admits that in recent decades farmers and rural communities appear to have done better under Labour.

One indication that his farmer neighbours agree is that for decades one evening on the phone would raise thousands of dollars for National. In the lead-up to the last election, the National candidate had to do his own letter box drop in the valley.

But if he could be Minister of Agriculture for a week, he would tackle the Resource Management Act - long overdue for a major overhaul in Best's view.

The legislation was undoubtedly necessary but he says it is unacceptably complicated, slow and has horrendous fees. If farmers wanting to improve their farms will not be a nuisance to anyone, cause pollution, ruin the landscape nor have a visual impact, they should be allowed to without running the gauntlet of the RMA and the local council.

Now in his early 70s and slowed by health problems, Best is reducing his daily involvement on the farm while a son takes on more. But he has not reduced his commitment to the battle for his beloved valley and its farmers - quite a number descendants of settlers in the 1860s.

He has seen many changes in 60 years of farming and recalls when the Johnsonville sale yards attracted huge mobs of sheep, and flocks were driven though the streets of Wellington from Happy Valley or Terawhiti Stations to the old Gear meat works. As a youngster he loaded lambs on to a dray to go to Johnsonville.

Now, he sometimes goes to the Feilding sales for a day out and a chat with old mates. Mostly he supplies his stock direct to meat company Richmond - and is proud to have been an original shareholder of the innovative Waitotara company which merged with Richmond.

He praises the meat industry for its efforts to improve lamb quality, and cannot speak highly enough of the temperature controlled packaging that allows chilled product to arrive at its overseas destination in perfect condition.

Best sees a very strong future for farming but believes the family farm may vanish as farms amalgamate into much larger holdings. He predicts they will be owned by companies, run by managers with a commitment to the land driven by finances, not family roots.

Facts:

Export value: $4.5 billion

Meat volume: 1.1 billion tonnes

Key markets: Europe, North America

Number of farmers: 16,800

Major areas: nationwide

Area farmed: 9 million ha