This week South Otago had a special visitor with acclaimed Australian soil scientist Dr Christine Jones here for two events. On Tuesday nearly 200 farmers attended a Beef and Lamb New Zealand hosted events at Clinton where Dr Jones spoke on regenerative farming practices. Dr David Stevens of New Zealand research institute AgResearch also contributed some local research findings.
Farmers from all across the southern South Island attended.
This was followed by a field trip to Hamish and Amy Bielski’s property between Balclutha and Clinton. Hamish has been experimenting with various pasture cropping and diverse multi species pastures, with the hope of reducing chemical and fertiliser inputs, restoring land function and increasing on farm profitability.
On Thursday a more in depth day with Christine was held in Balclutha. This allowed the sell out crowd of 50 to delve deeper into some of the processes and more discussion on the grazing aspects of regenerative farming. Those that had not done had a look at Hamish’s various pasture and crop trials afterwards.
Organic Farm Systems 