Farmer Andrew Rees on applying regen principles in dairy

It's not, not using them at our disposal, right? It's just using them more efficiently.

Like, why, why, why would we not want to be doing that, you know? It's like for me, the regenerative movement is synonymous with increased efficiency or just good agronomic practice and, and, and not wasting.

And you were talking earlier about the, the phosphorus leaching out into the river where you're at.

It's like if we can be more efficient, then those knock-on effects, they're going to have huge impact, not only for the economics of your own farm, but for the, the wide- wider scale ecology of, of your environment right there.

So, um, I mean, gosh, going from 220 to 20 to 40, if you need it, is just, it's bananas.

I mean, it, it's huge, right? So from, just briefly from a financial standpoint, from what would you say, 2019 to today, like, what's your fertilizer bill? Is it 50%? Is it 70% less? Like, where, where are you sitting a- after almost, not even 10 years?

So where would we be? So the prices of product have changed around a bit in that time, but we used to buy probably four Artics of bagged fertilizer a year.

I mean, at the time it was, what, 220, 230 a ton [laughs], but I suppose you'd be talking 450, 500 today.

Um, I think our last...

I tend to sort of budget on about 100 and f- yeah, 120 pound a hectare a year now.

That's everything, so sort of not much of that is nitrogen anymore.

But when you start getting into the traces and things like that, it starts getting a bit more expensive per kilo.

[laughs] Um, but I suppose back to your point on sort of regenerative, but I'd love to get to the point that hopefully we're sort of encouraging the natural system along.

But it's also to understand we've spent 70, 80 years completely buggering up our mineral cycle as well, that-Think to, to get everything rebalanced is gonna take time, I think.

And it's like we could just pull right out and it will correct itself in time, but it's also the understanding that it's a commercial business as well, and we've still got bills to pay and a family to feed and commitments to repay.

Um, and it's also from a dairy context, it's actually understanding dairy's...

Something say isn't really a natural system because if you think of a life cycle of a cow, sh- from a suckler cow point of view, she's never in that real productive, um, position for such a period of time in the year that you ha- you...

In dairy you are holding that cow in a real productive state for nine, 10 months.

But we need to make sure everything is flowing from an engine nutrition point of view, that to get those sort of natural cycles going, they're allowing sort of enough rest and recovery for plants to sort of go through a natural recycle to regenerate stuff to the level we'd want, is very difficult to manage in a dairy context.

[laughs] So it's, it's, it's, it's starting to appreciate what the weaknesses are of the system to get to the point we want to get to, and we probably have to give it a nudge here and there, um, to make up those shortfalls.

So it sounds like there's a lot of compromise.

Yes.

I think any syst- I think any sort of productive syst- So as we see it, as there was something like sort of mentioned we've done already with, I suppose, sheep only farms, like there's a, there's a limit to how far you can push a sheep to handle forage of more mature st- more mature stands in.

Um, and it's understanding sort of, again, and then lambing time you've got to set stock and because the tr- the risks of mismother and things like that in a rotational system just aren't worth the headache.

[laughs] Um, so as we was understanding for a week, dairy's sort of that balance bet- you've got to have that balance between production and cost, and because dairy's got that capital intensive sort of infrastructure side to it, particularly in a Welsh climate that I'd love to keep cows out 365 days a year, but reality is it's just not going to happen.

It's not, not using them at our disposal, right? It's just using them more efficiently.

Like, why, why, why would we not want to be doing that, you know? It's like for me, the regenerative movement is synonymous with increased efficiency or just good agronomic practice and, and, and not wasting.

And you were talking earlier about the, the phosphorus leaching out into the river where you're at.

It's like if we can be more efficient, then those knock-on effects, they're going to have huge impact, not only for the economics of your own farm, but for the, the wide- wider scale ecology of, of your environment right there.

So, um, I mean, gosh, going from 220 to 20 to 40, if you need it, is just, it's bananas.

I mean, it, it's huge, right? So from, just briefly from a financial standpoint, from what would you say, 2019 to today, like, what's your fertilizer bill? Is it 50%? Is it 70% less? Like, where, where are you sitting a- after almost, not even 10 years?

So where would we be? So the prices of product have changed around a bit in that time, but we used to buy probably four Artics of bagged fertilizer a year.

I mean, at the time it was, what, 220, 230 a ton [laughs], but I suppose you'd be talking 450, 500 today.

Um, I think our last...

I tend to sort of budget on about 100 and f- yeah, 120 pound a hectare a year now.

That's everything, so sort of not much of that is nitrogen anymore.

But when you start getting into the traces and things like that, it starts getting a bit more expensive per kilo.

[laughs] Um, but I suppose back to your point on sort of regenerative, but I'd love to get to the point that hopefully we're sort of encouraging the natural system along.

But it's also to understand we've spent 70, 80 years completely buggering up our mineral cycle as well, that-Think to, to get everything rebalanced is gonna take time, I think.

And it's like we could just pull right out and it will correct itself in time, but it's also the understanding that it's a commercial business as well, and we've still got bills to pay and a family to feed and commitments to repay.

Um, and it's also from a dairy context, it's actually understanding dairy's...

Something say isn't really a natural system because if you think of a life cycle of a cow, sh- from a suckler cow point of view, she's never in that real productive, um, position for such a period of time in the year that you ha- you...

In dairy you are holding that cow in a real productive state for nine, 10 months.

But we need to make sure everything is flowing from an engine nutrition point of view, that to get those sort of natural cycles going, they're allowing sort of enough rest and recovery for plants to sort of go through a natural recycle to regenerate stuff to the level we'd want, is very difficult to manage in a dairy context.

[laughs] So it's, it's, it's, it's starting to appreciate what the weaknesses are of the system to get to the point we want to get to, and we probably have to give it a nudge here and there, um, to make up those shortfalls.

So it sounds like there's a lot of compromise.

Yes.

I think any syst- I think any sort of productive syst- So as we see it, as there was something like sort of mentioned we've done already with, I suppose, sheep only farms, like there's a, there's a limit to how far you can push a sheep to handle forage of more mature st- more mature stands in.

Um, and it's understanding sort of, again, and then lambing time you've got to set stock and because the tr- the risks of mismother and things like that in a rotational system just aren't worth the headache.

[laughs] Um, so as we was understanding for a week, dairy's sort of that balance bet- you've got to have that balance between production and cost, and because dairy's got that capital intensive sort of infrastructure side to it, particularly in a Welsh climate that I'd love to keep cows out 365 days a year, but reality is it's just not going to happen.