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In 10: What do new plantain trial results mean for dairy farmers? · Talking Dairy

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Kiara and welcome to Talking Dairy in 10.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host Jack McGowan from DairyNZ.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: New results from a four-year Lincoln Farmlet trial are giving farmers stronger evidence that plantain can help reduce nitrogen losses to fresh water while maintaining milk production.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm joined by DairyNZ senior project manager Kate Franson and Canterbury farmer Andy McFarlane to talk about what the results mean and how plantain is being used on farm.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into it.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Tina Kurua.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Kyona.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Afternoon, Jet.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start with hearing a little bit about who you are and your involvement in this work.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Kate, you go first.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Kate Franson.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I lead the Plantain Potency and Practice Program with DarienZ.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've been with Dari and Z for the last 12 years, and my focus has been on leading these sort of large programs.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I love bringing farmers together with scientists and looking at that whole farm system and our impact on the environment.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Kate and Andy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a farmer in Canterbury, a background and advisory until recent years when I've been uh heavily governance oriented in dairy with Fonterra, retired at the end of last year, still with ANSCO in the meat and uh red meat industry, and I'm on the AgriZero board now with some local interest around irrigation schemes, uh Eshbert and Lin test irrigation, where we're interested in how we can mitigate nitrogen losses.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Kate, for anyone who hasn't been following the Plantain Potency and Practice program, can you give us a quick overview of what the program is trying to achieve?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: The plantain program, funded through the Primary Sector Growth Fund, MPI, and Darian Z, as well as Fonterra and PGG Rights and Seeds, is a seven-year program.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we are in year six of seven now.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: We end in February 2028.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: The focus has been on looking at plantain as a cost-effective mitigation for nitrogen leaching.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: The program has spanned farm systems research to look at that impact at farm scale, as well as much more detailed research using lysimeters and even sort of hydroponic type work, understanding how plantain works.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then a huge part of the program is on farms.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: So working with partner farms across New Zealand, developing management strategies and working with farmers about how plantain works in their systems.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So a really sort of complete package of a program with everyone involved from scientists through to farmers and other partners.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So a big team effort.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, how did plantain surface as a tool for nitrogen management in the first place, Kate?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we hear stories, particularly from Agricom, about how when they were looking at plantain as an anthalmentic for sheep to reduce worm burden in sheep, they were trialing it, but also noticed that there weren't any urine patches across paddocks where plantain was being used.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so started to look into why that might be.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the early research very much focused on what was going on in the animal and reducing the nitrogen in the urine patch in the animal.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was found that plantain diluted urine as well as reduced the amount of nitrogen going into urine compared to dung.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That was the early work.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: But then later with the research, where they started to apply urine from an animal that had been eating ryegrass, plantain was still reducing nitrogen leaching.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So from there we understood that there was something more going on in the soil, and that's been a key focus of this program to understand the full picture and how plantain is reducing nitrogen leaching.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Kate.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Andy, you've been involved as a partner farmer in the program.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: What first interested you in looking at plantain as part of your farming system?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've been interested in it as a farmer a lot longer than I've been uh caring the program.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I've agreed to clear the program because I was passionate that it could add something to it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And look, we've seen that as a plant it's been a really interesting plant, and we've been able to work out what it could do.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at a very high level, what we're trying to do as farmers is to increase our profitability and decrease our footprint.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the decrease in the footprint comes in multiple areas.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's less nitrogen down, phosphate across the soil, sulphur losses down, concentration of potash, you know, from animal movement and emissions upwards.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the one that's most critical at the moment from a regulatory point of view is nitrogen.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all of these things, when we lose them as farmers, we have to spend money to replace them.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so the key issue is can we get more productivity, more profitability, and a lower footprint?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And from my point of view as a farmer, the combination of less synthetic N applied, more white clover in the pasture to replace the nitrogen that the grasses need, and more plantain as a companion plant to keep the nitrogen in the right place at the right time is generating high productivity for us with a lower cost footprint.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: I suspected you'd been using plantain for a long time before you were involved in the program.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: But what did you get out of participating in the program?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or why did you agree to jump in there, Andy?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's potentially a lost opportunity, Jack, if we don't do something about it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and with my wider involvement with Fonterra and the irrigation schemes, we have an imperative to make sure that we can continue to grow, but also be able to demonstrate that we're not doing any harm to our groundwaters.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is a little bit of a political football.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if we want to be in charge of our own destiny, we need to do the right thing.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Kate, the latest results have attracted a lot of attention.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: What did the Lincoln trial find?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Lincoln results are exciting.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the Lincoln trial was a fully replicated farm systems trial.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: We essentially had mini farms that were compared with plantain in a squad with ryegrass and clover compared to a standard ryegrass and clover pasture run as full farm systems.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in those areas where we had plantain and ryegrass, we were measuring nitrogen leaching using suction cups.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we found at the beginning of the trial, the pastures were established with plantain and ryegrass and clover, and we had about 25% plantain as part of those pastures.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that declined through time, which is something that we've seen across farms, is that plantain is not a long-term perennial.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got to work to keep it in the pastures.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: We managed to do that at Lincoln and it plateaued to around 12% over year three and four.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: But really significantly, we ended up with a 33% reduction in nitrogen leaching over those four years on average.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that result was pretty consistent through the years as well, showing that we can get a reduction in leaching despite not having huge levels of plantain in the system.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a really significant result.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And encouragingly, we didn't see differences in the milk production between the systems with and without plantain.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: The profitability was similar, but lower in the plantain farmlets by about the amount that was needed to spend on seed to keep the plantain in the system.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a system like Andy's and that the other partner farmers in Canterbury, they are maintaining around 10 to 15% plantain in their systems.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think Andy's averaged 14% this year, and doing that by putting plantain in their new swards on 10% of the farm every year and maintaining that with broadcasting seed, a couple of kilos of seed across the farm each year.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that strategy is costing about$46 per hectare.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: So about 1% of profitability and a 33% reduction in leaching.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's much cheaper than doing other things like reducing stocking rates or reducing inputs essentially to get that level of reduction.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so very good news.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Andy, when farmers hear environmental gains like that are possible, one of the first questions is usually about production.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So how did the Lincoln results resonate with how plantain has performed in your pastures?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Totally consistent between the trial work and what we're seeing on the farm.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see the cows select for or against plantain.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just part of the pasture mix, and it's got easier as we've gone from one paddock on the farm to 100% of the paddocks on the farm.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just part of their mixed diet between clover and grass and um plantain, and our production per hectare is stable and our production per cow is going up.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't see any issues whatsoever.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I take it from what you just said that you started with more of a cropping approach to plantain and then moved to integrating it in your pasture, or did I misunderstand that?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: We started out just only sowing it with the new pasture.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe once every 10 years, and then we realized that you know it is a short-lived perennial like white clover.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the percentage drops off after two or three years.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we just started sowing, we added a kilo of clover and a kilo of plantain into our pastures every spring from year three, and we found we stabilized in the sort of close to 10%.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now we go into a kilo and a half to two kilos, and we're pretty confident we'll be in the 15 to 20% bracket.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Kate, one of the interesting findings was that relatively low levels of plantain still delivered strong results, as you said.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that important?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, look, just exactly what Andy just said.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So plantain is not a long-lived perennial.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: We are essentially seeing most farmers are able to achieve that 10 to 15% across their farms in Canterbury.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: In some areas like Rotarua, it seems easier, and broadcasting a couple of kilos of seed can push it up to around 20%.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, achieving higher levels is tough.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that we can still achieve those really, really good leaching reduction results at lower levels of plantain is quite a significant finding because it means it's much more applicable to what's possible on farm.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Andy, can you talk us through how you establish and manage plantain on your farm?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: What tips do you have for other farmers there?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, we establish it in the new grass, do nothing different to a normal paddock of grass.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: If it needs spraying, we spray it with a we've got one of three spray options to spray thistles and other weeds out to leave the plantain and the clover behind.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't need weed spray, we don't need weed spray.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the establishment's very easy.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Main tip is not to sew it deep.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same as white clover, you've got to sew it shallow, otherwise you'll get a poor result.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So sew it shallow, get it going, and then three years later we start tipping a little bit in the kilo and a half of plantain in the sprint fertilizer mix and we go from there.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it was three kilograms per hectare in your in your initial seed mix.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: The program isn't finished yet.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Kate, what's still happening between now and 2028?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got three or four main priorities, Jack.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one is that right now, if a farmer goes and models their farm in overseer and puts plantain in, they will see the benefit of about half of the effect, which is what you see in urine.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So going through the animal.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: We would like to be able to reflect the full effect of plantain, which is those mechanisms coming through the soil.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're working towards having all our information together and working with Oversea to get that change made in Oversea.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: The second priority is around continuing to work with our farmers and achieve adoption in nitrogen-sensitive catchments.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we have quite a lot of farmers using plantain at the moment, but trying to get those percentages up to make a real difference in the water in nitrogen-sensitive catchments.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're working together, working together with regional councils as well as irrigation companies and catchment groups, et cetera, to help farmers to adopt plantain.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: The third priority is that we have done some work on cultivar evaluation.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so looking at different plantain cultivars and their effectiveness or the traits that would cause them to be effective for reducing nitrogen leaching.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so pulling that information together and forming some recommendations for farmers.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, you know, plantain is a great tool for reducing nitrogen leaching, but also has some dual benefits for reducing nitrous oxide emissions.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And some early work is showing reductions in methane as well.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've just started talks with MPI around the greenhouse gas inventory and working towards potential for inclusion of plantain into that greenhouse gas inventory.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a great set of resources already on our website on Plantain.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're still developing that with our latest trial results, as well as regionally specific information, stories from our partner farmers, videos.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something that's right there right now for the farmers to go and check out.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so yeah, it sounds um very exciting.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of promise there.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Andy, for farmers listening who are considering plantain, and it sounds like they should be now, what would your advice be and what should they think about first?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I would just get started.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if that means spinning some on with the fertilizer, just go and do it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're sowing some new grass, incorporate some in the mix and learn by trialling.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what's getting me excited at the moment is we could be starting to stack benefits.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got a a long-held view on animal health benefits, we've got a very strongly trialed benefit on nitrogen, and we're starting to see benefits around greenhouse gases.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So as farmers, if we can do all those things and um stack the benefits together, it's a big win.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you very much, Andy and Kate.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Key takeaway there is that we now have added evidence from another completed trial which demonstrates plantain can help reduce nitrogen losses while maintaining milk production, making it another practical tool that farmers can consider as part of their own farm system and pretty low cost too.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: More information on this research is available on the DairyNZ website.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Matewa.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to get connected with DairyNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get-connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdairy at dairynz.co.nz.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.