http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/articl ... dairy.html
MARK and Lynne Peterson are contented dairy farmers. The Petersons are happy with the price they receive for milk and have a great relationship with their distributor. They even relish the day they will pass the farm to their children, confident the next generation will make an equal success of it.
At a time when dairy farmers across Victoria have their backs against the wall, with low prices offered by the big processors, the Petersons of Nathalia are an anomaly. The secret to their success? Biodynamic milk.
Scoffed at by some for its alternative methods, biodynamic farming has given them an edge that sees their milk command 70c/litre, sold to top-end cafes and which was judged No.1 in a state-wide blind milk taste test. "It's quite a profitable business," said Mark, a third-generation dairy farmer. "We are getting a good price for our milk, which gives us opportunities to pay the bills and upgrade infrastructure and it's rewarding to know our milk goes into a quality product that is appreciated by our customers."
The Petersons farm 180ha at Nathalia, with 150 Jersey-Friesian cows producing 750,000 litres of milk a year. The milk is sold to the Bio-Dynamic Marketing Company, a non-profit organisation that is a centralised distribution system for Demeter products (the largest certification organisation for biodynamic agriculture). The company then bottles and distributes their milk under the Demeter Biodynamic label, in one-litre and two-litre bottles, and in pasteurised and not-standardised varieties. About a third of milk sales are in Melbourne's coffee trade - "Australia's barista of the year uses our milk", Mark said.
He said the 70c/litre price was not sheer profit, but underpinned the costs associated with biodynamic farming.
"A lot of that cost comes from having an even supply all year around." As the Petersons don't give their cattle antibiotics or drugs, they ensure a low bacteria count and a low cell count for subclinical mastitis through natural remedies, which includes a "snack bar of mineral licks" that cows graze on such as sulphur, salts, seaweed, dolomite and copper, as well as homeopathic treatments as required. Every month they herd test each cow to monitor milk production and to check for subclinical mastitis.
Mark said their cows were not pushed for high production. "We are happy for our cows to do 20 litres on average a day, where some others will push to 30 or 40," he said. "What we sacrifice in production we get in flavour and quality in the milk." Their milk has high solids, 5 per cent butterfat and 3.7 per cent protein, compared with the conventional of about 3.8 per cent fat and 3.2 per cent protein. "Fat and protein is what farmers are paid on. If we had a lower F&P we we would get less cents per litre under conventional payment systems," he said.
Beyond these biodynamic principles, there are a host of complex philosophies and techniques, all of which originated in the early 1920s from the work of Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner; while Demeter biodynamics in Australia was pioneered by Alex Podolinsky in 1953. A key principle to Demeter Biodynamic farming is the use of what is called preparation 500, or cow-horn manure - "it's like a culture starter in bread that aims to enliven the soil microbes and good bacteria", Mark said. A complex, laborious task, preparation 500 is made by filling a cow's horn with cow dung, and burying it in the soil during the cooler months. When it is ready to be sprayed on to the pasture, it is added to warm water - even this process is conducted according to biodynamic lore in copper or stainless-steel tanks - one to two times a year. Even the timing of that spray is vital - not too wet and not too dry for maximum absorption.
Putting aside the hours required to fill and bury cow horns, 500 is a cheap fertiliser that Mark estimates costs about "$1.50 an acre" or about 61c/ha. While 500 is a cornerstone, biodynamics is also focused on creating a closed system of farming with limited or no outside inputs. "We can use rock phosphate, for instance, but we don't do that as a regular thing. After the drought we resowed the pasture and put 50kg to the hectare to rehabilitate the pasture," Mark said. "The only other input is a bit of hay and grain in winter - about 100 tonnes of hay a year and 150 tonnes of grain - one tonne per cow per year, which is the limit."
The Petersons irrigate about every 10 days, compared with the usual seven, "because our soil has better water holding ability, due to the increased humus levels in the soil". The lush pastures are rye grass and clover with some paspalum grass as well as chicory, plantain and lucerne. Mark said stock rotation was another key biodynamic principle.
"We did a 'Feeding Pastures for Profit' course (with the Department of Environment and Primary Industries) and the principles were a good fit with biodynamic farm management," he said. There are 90 paddocks, with a maximum of 30 used at a time. In spring paddocks are left ungrazed for up to 20 days, 90 days in winter. After cows have grazed, the paddock is slashed and the manure is harrowed into the soil.
"The thinking is if the cows haven't eaten the grass it's low quality, so we cut it off so new growth can come up. And rather than leave hard crusty pads of manure, it's best to get it into the soil," Mark said. About 10 per cent of the farm has been planted with 28,000 trees, to encourage birds and biodiversity. Now a passionate advocate of biodynamic farming, it wasn't always this way for Mark.
His parents first started dairying along conventional lines when they bought the Nathalia farm in 1976. At the time Mark was 13 and from the moment he stepped on the property, he knew he wanted to be a dairy farmer. In the early '80s he completed his farming apprenticeship at Shepparton TAFE, even becoming Victoria's apprentice of the year. "I was very focused and driven," Mark said. When his class visited a biodynamic farm he was intrigued. "We were told the farmer didn't use chemicals or fertilisers and he had no trouble with bloat or mastitis," he said.
"When we visited I marvelled at the health of the cows and the quality of the pastures, and more so the quality of the people themselves." Now a father of three, he convinced his parents about the benefits of biodynamics and in 1987 they converted. "Dad hadn't come from a farm background so he didn't have the mindset that you must put fertiliser down to make it work," he said. "We came out of the '70s when there weren't a lot of chemicals anyway. It was minimum inputs so it wasn't such a big stretch to change."
Mark avoids talking about the eccentric aspects, but adds he was was sold on the concept because, "it works". "It's all about healthy soil making healthy plants and pastures, making healthy cows and healthy people," he said. "I haven't found a better way of doing it than biodynamics." For 16 years the Petersons supplied their milk to Parmalat under the Paul's biodynamic label. In the middle of the drought Parmalat discontinued the biodynamic line and added the biodynamic milk in with their organic line.
Consumer demand pushed for a biodynamic milk to be available which is when the Biodynamic Marketing Company offered to buy the milk and have it contract bottled. "But we were in the middle of the drought and didn't even know whether we'd be milking the following year". So in November 2008 they launched their milk under the Demeter Biodynamic label through the the Bio-Dynamic Marketing Company, priced at $3.80 for one litre and $6 for two litres. "We launched the most expensive milk on the market as the global financial crisis hit," Mark said. "Sales bounced along for a while until an article came out in 2009 blind taste-testing milk with ours number one." Since then, sales have been strong.