We talk to South Otago TSR Tim Grant about pasture management across various soil types.
The Co-op’s Technical Sales Representatives (TSRs) are experts in their field and their regions, helping local farmers with technical farming advice and tailored solutions for each farm. We talk to South/West Otago-based TSR Tim Grant about his role, pasture planning, and seed selection.
I’ve been around the farming sector pretty much my entire life. I grew up in South Otago on a grain farm in Clinton. During school holidays I’d work on local farms, contracting and driving tractors. When I left school, I carried on for a season driving tractors and then moved to Dunedin to do a building apprenticeship at Polytech. I returned to farming, working on dairy, sheep and beef farms all around South Otago, driving tractors and making baleage, and stock management.
I joined Farm Source three seasons ago. I had the background for pasture planning, in terms of ground preparation and planting the crops but in this role I’ve widened my knowledge into how plants grow, how they establish, how they look and what we need to do to maintain them. It’s been a good learning curve.
Being a local I have known most of my customers for years. Many of my customers are contract milkers who don’t have a lot of experience with cropping. They’ll tell us “I need X amount of hectares of crops put in.”
Our role is to advise and make a plan to get the crop in place.
It is quite different working with farm owners directly – this is more of a collaborative relationship. We discuss what they’ve done in the past, what they’d like to do, and then using our combined experience, we’ll collaboratively look at the best approach.
Most farmers are open to making changes on-farm and trying new things. You definitely come across farmers who are happy with their traditional approach. I won’t try and convince them to change but will help them to maintain what they’re doing and ensure they’re still getting peak performance. We can offer farmers a range of options – there’s a lot of flexibility to try different approaches and combinations.
I look after 138 Co-op farms in the region and spend a lot of time on-farm. I’m definitely more about being on-farm than in the office – I’d rather go and see people in person than ring them over the phone. I like sitting down with farmers, making plans and having a catch up. It’s good to be part of it all. I also work out of the Balclutha and Gore stores from time to time.
It’s a reasonable spread of farms in my area – there’s about an hour and a half between two of my customers, and the land types are varied. Some of it is irrigated – especially those near the Clutha River. I’ve got quite a big range of farms on wet, sandy land down towards the beach near the Catlins. Yet 20 minutes away there’ll be farms with dry, rolling country under the hills. All have very different soil structures – peaty, sandy, clay – and need tailored approaches to pasture management.
I make sure I’m across all the different seed and crop options that are best for each farm.
My favourite part of the role is the agronomy side of things – just being a part of it all, right from the start, making plans, through to watching it all grow in the ground, and learning more from that too.
If you’re looking to optimise homegrown feed on your farm, book a free visit with a Farm Source TSR or check out the On-Farm Efficiency Hub.