NEW ZEALAND-FARM COMPUTER GETS IT SERIOUSLY WRONG.
$680,000 goat monitoring project over four years on 16 farms came up with results which grossly understate the value of meat goats as a diversification, according to a leading meat goat advocate.
Garrick Batten, of Caprinex Kikonui meat goats, in Nelson, has alleged a fundamental error in the stocking unit for meat goats in the financial analysis of the project.He maintains that 0.3 SU should have been used, not 0.8 SU.
The lower figure would take account of the goat’s preference for weeds, which reduces its competition with sheep, cattle and deer for ryegrass and clover pastures.
"If the intention of the long and costly monitoring project was to encourage the farming of more meat goats, then that error should be corrected," Batten said.
He also alleges that AgFirst Waikato consultant Sally Lee, who ran the project under contract from the Goat Advisory Group (GAG) of Meat & Wool New Zealand, accepted a basic error in the financial presentation, corrected it and recommended amendment of the published results.
Lee’s amendment would have boosted the total annual return from a meat goat to $29, not $2 to $12 as published by MWNZ, making extensively farmed meat goats very competitive with sheep at $22.
However MWNZ, on advice from the GAG and its own Economic Service, declined to change the figures, leaving the understated comparison to stand.
Batten has written to the GAG, asking it to reconsider its actions at its annual general meeting in Gore last week.
In response, former GAG chairman Tom Mandeno said "We had to stay with the (methodology) the report used, to get the comparison between goats and the other livestock classes."
Pastoral farmers wanting to weigh up the advantages of running more meat goats can make their own subjective assessments of the likely diet and change stocking rates accordingly, Mandeno said.
The report uses a 40kgLW meat goat doe as 0.8 SU, which Mandeno called a widely accepted figure, used by MWNZ Economic Service and Lincoln University in its annual farm costs manual.
He acknowledged the ongoing controversy about the estimation and use of stock units, especially in the goat industry, where what the goats eat is very important in making comparisons with other livestock classes and when considering the stocking rate.
In that regard Mandeno quoted from Batten’s own book, called Simply Goats, in which it states that 35kgLW does with 130% kidding at a low stocking rate an "ample browse" could be considered 0.5 SU, whereas similar goats run on flat land with only pasture would be 0.87 SU.
Batten replied that his book, written some nine years ago, also said that "some of the points in this book will be overtaken by new knowledge by the time you have read them".
Batten said experience has shown that the common extensively farmed goat mustered from hill country is about 35kgLW, versus the ewe at 60kg. Therefore the doe value begins at 0.6 SU.
"Although I could argue that the goat SU is actually zero, I think that one can reasonably take a meat goat stock unit at 0.3, which assumes they are eating half of their diet as sheep quality feed," Batten said.
Batten is an experienced farm advisor with a strong interest in goat breeding and husbandry. In recent times he has developed the Kikonui maternal breed meat goat and exported genetic material.
He does not deny a commercial interest in seeing that meat goats are evaluated and promoted to their best advantage. He said that more people in the world eat goat meat than any other meat, and that NZ is well-placed to increase production in response to the demand.
Batten is very disappointed that MWNZ and the GAG have not much more positively encouraged the farming of meat goats in NZ, particularly during the recent slump in lamb returns.
"For the past decade the intention of the Goat Council, of which I was a member, and then the GAG has been to get more goats on more farms, but instead numbers have continued to fall," he said.
It has been widely accepted that hill country farmers could add up to 10% of total farm animal liveweight as goat liveweight without reducing their sheep and cattle production, but even that modest target has not caught on.
MWNZ general manager, farm services, Richard Wakelin, said he and Batten had long discussions about the presentation of figures from the goat monitoring project and had agreed to disagree.
"The report stands because 0.8 is the standard meat goat stock unit," he said.
"Farmers and their advisors can use their own figures and if 0.3 is the most appropriate conversion in their circumstances, then use that."
The GAG meeting in Gore considered a buck evaluation scheme along the lines of SIL for rams, although that possibility is only at an early stage, Wakelin said.
Present members of the GAG are Dave Aitken, Ian Pirani, Ray Thompson and Nigel North (farmer representatives), Roger Driver (meat industry), Sue Tullett (dairy goats), Gwen Verkerk (technical) and Richard Wakelin and Phyllis Mangin (MWNZ).
Mandeno has said he will be standing down from the GAG following his defeat in the northern North Island election for Meat & Wool NZ director. The group has one annual face-to-face meeting and three or four teleconferences.
Mandeno said the cash cost of the monitoring project was $390,000, plus in-kind contributions from the farmers. The Sustainable Farming Fund contributed 65% of the total cost, plus levies from MWNZ, the Boer Goats Breeders Association and Mohair NZ.
