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Farm overview
Meredith Dairy is located on a 1450 hectare farm at Meredith, about 100 km west of Melbourne. About 1000 hectares of land are arable, and of this almost 700 hectares are cropped. These crops include wheat, canola, barley and oats. Meredith Dairy does not grow GMO crops.
Of the remaining 300 hectares, 80 hectares is remnant native grasslands, that we are protecting and 20 hectares of remnant bush that we also exclude stock from, about 50 hectares of plantations that surround paddocks to reduce wind erosion, and shelter stock, and about 150 hectares of waterways and attendant valleys which we have revegetated with indigenous trees. This 300 hectares contains much of the original fauna of the district including kangaroo, wallaby, koala, echidna, platypus, various possums, reptiles and numerous birds.
Milk is produced from a flock of 2500 sheep and two goat herds totalling 2500 goats.
The sheep are lambed down throughout the year so that we obtain almost uniform year round milk production, so that our product is always fresh. Typically our Monday morning milk is heading to Melbourne as yoghurt on Tuesday morning. Generally 800 ewes are being milked on any one day (twice a day), and a further 700 ewes are pregnant, and we have a further 1000 young stock, ranging down to a few days old. Lambs are either hand reared, or reared on their mothers, depending on the demand for milk. Our average ewe produces about 250 litres of milk over a 7 month period. The ewes are never housed. They graze pasture for around 9 months of the year (supplemented with barley at milking), and receive hay and grain for the other 3 months.
The goats are divided into 4 groups that kid each 3 months, so that again we always have fresh milk. The fresh taste of all our goat cheeses is a consequence of us always having fresh milk, which we turn into cheese every morning of the year, and then sell as soon as possible. The young goats are hand reared. The does are milked for ten months, and have a two month break while heavily pregnant. Typically our goats yield about 700 litres of milk each year. The goats always have access to housing, as they have only a fine coat of hair, and are fed daily on a mix of hay and grain. They often have access to pasture, particularly through spring and early summer.
We have no genetically modified plants or animals in our production system. |
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Sustainable farming
What is sustainable farming?
A good introduction to sustainable farming can be found on Wikipedia, from which comes the definition “sustainable farming refers to the ability of a farm to produce food indefinitely without causing irreversible damage to the environment”.
A sustainable farming system must first be economically and socially viable so that the farmer can pay to maintain the physical aspects of the farm, including purchasing inputs. Sadly many farming systems around the world fail this initial test because farmers are locked into selling commodities at ever lower real prices.
Key physical aspects of sustainability are:
- Prevent soil erosion and damage to the soil structure
- Prevent salinity (whether dry land, or through the use of irrigation)
- Maintain aquifers
- Prevent soil acidification
- Replace nutrients used in production
- Not impinge on the broader environment by polluting water or air (including with greenhouse gases).
Sustainable strategies adopted by Meredith Dairy
- All our milk is processed on our farm. This way we can return sufficient profit to the farm to be able to farm it sustainably.
- We have planted about 5,000-7000 trees per year for the past 6 years (and many more trees had been planted over the preceding 70 years). These collectively act as windbreaks to reduce soil erosion (many paddocks have trees on all sides), stabilize hillsides and waterways, act as wildlife refuges, sequester carbon dioxide, and in the future may provide renewable fuel.
- We use conservation farming techniques on our cropped land, which means we retain stubbles, and don’t cultivate, but instead directly drill the next year’s seed into the old stubble. The retained stubble mulches the soil, which retains moisture and prevents wind erosion. Nutrients in the stubble are eventually returned to the soil.
- Many of our soil nutrients are replenished by spreading manure.
- Nitrogen is supplied to our pastures through the use of clovers and Lucerne, which have the ability to convert atmospheric nitrogen to soil nitrate.
- We regularly lime paddocks to avoid acidification.
- We employ local people.
- We have no irrigation.
- We attempt to minimise our carbon footprint by purchasing only green power for both the farm and the factory. We have two large “conventional” solar hot water services and will soon install an evacuated tube solar system to largely replace our gas fired system.
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Landcare work at Meredith Dairy
Just a couple of examples of works undertaken on the land.photo taken by Graem Anderson (DPI), April 2000
Photo taken August 2009, same site as above, showing-laneway, re-vegetation and exclusion of stock from escarpment and water way, improved pasture and ground cover on flood plains. Cessation of erosion, weed control and improved stream quality and biodiversity.
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