Southern Dairy Hub delayed until 2017-18

Southern Dairy Hub delayed until 2017-18
Wednesday 21 October, 2015

Southern Dairy Hub (SDH) chair Maurice Hardie said today that the SDH project will delay the start of milk supply until the 2017-18 season because the board has not yet found and secured a suitable farm.

"We are committed to making the project work, and to do that we need to identify the best farm for the job; but finding a farm of suitable size and scale is proving to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. This is a long-term undertaking and obtaining the most suitable property is important as we don't want to compromise what SDH is setting out to do," says Maurice.

The Southern Dairy Hub is a project that will include a 300-380ha dairy farm with four comparative herds of approximately 200 cows each, as well as buildings for research, demonstration, education and farmer meetings.

To meet the requirements of SDH, the farm needs to be self-contained and as such, be of a size to support not only the milking platform but also be suitable for rearing young stock and wintering. A variety of soil types are preferred to allow regionally appropriate research around environmental and wintering options for southern farms. Location is important, ideally, the farm should be in central Southland and within 30 minutes of Invercargill Airport so that it accessible to as many people as possible.

"Finding all these attributes on one property is challenging, and we are still looking. In the meantime we are continuing with planning and design, so that when we do find the right farm, we will be ready to go without delay," says Maurice.

The southern region is one of the fastest-growing dairying regions in New Zealand and a local hub will allow for farmer-led and local issues to be researched on southern soils in southern conditions.

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