Nick Collins knows how to talk about soil health. The former organic dairy farmer from Piopio has made it his business to share his hard-earned knowledge about how to improve soil function and animal health. He says it’s never been more important.
“We’ve kept our heads down over the years and not spoken out much about the methods of regenerative agriculture, but I can see now that it’s urgent to be sharing this knowledge with other conventional farmers and landowners,” says Nick.
The farm engagement lead for a soil health project in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty called Rere ki Uta, Rere ki Tai, Nick is working alongside 10 dairy farmers to help them transition toward practices that promote healthier soil.
One of the key methods he advocates for is a form of silvopasture, where trees are integrated into a diverse pasture system, delivering holistic benefits for stock, soil health, land stability, carbon sequestration and local biodiversity. His method involves incorporating four different grass families into a pasture, along with trees for shade, fodder, attracting pollinators, and providing leaf litter to nourish soil life.
“All of these combined have massive benefits particularly for farmers to reduce nutrient and sediment loss, increase water storage, carbon drawdown, drought tolerance and assist with animal health.
“It comes back to the life in our soil, and the building blocks of this start with mindset. In everything you do, adopt that mindset of positive change by considering yourself part of the ecosystem. That’s when the magic starts to happen.”
Gavin Fisher is just as passionate about the topic. One of the first farmers to supply Fonterra with organic milk, he has hosted thousands of people on his Te Aroha farm over the years, including the farmers working with Nick Collins on the soil health project.
Gavin’s farm was certified organic 23 years ago, but his journey to what he calls ecological farming began five years before that, after listening and learning from his grandfather and father about their historical practices and on-farm observations.
“When they’d started a certain practice like increasing fertiliser, we started getting the vet in more. My one advantage was being able to turn the clock back, and see when the problems came into the system. With a lens on the future, I focused on removing those problems.”
Now almost three decades on, Gavin has established a thriving farm ecosystem, where cows and chickens graze and forage beneath groves of feijoas, olives, pears, nut trees and paulownia, contributing to a productive cycle of nutrients.
“My cows are bovine biological harvesters. They harvest the food, and with good nutrition going in, there’s good nutritional food coming out. I’m not just talking about meat or milk, but what they’re dumping out the back end which is laden with beneficial biology from the diverse food they’re eating.”
Despite multiple extreme rain events, Gavin’s pasture is not waterlogged or pugged, but lumpy underfoot with mounds of castings from earthworms. He turns over a cow pat to reveal the strings of beneficial fungi and abundant worms in the rich black sweet-smelling soil.
Gavin says that when it comes to managing land and farms, it’s important for people to always question the prevailing wisdom and advice.
“I was spreading potassium that was rusting the bottom of the tractor, leaving burn marks on the grass and stinging my skin and being told that was good for the soil. That just didn’t compute in my head.”
In 2024, soil health scientist Dr Christine Jones was brought over from Australia as part of the Loyal to Soil tour – an event hosted by AgriSea to promote on-farm soil health. Speaking at Gavin’s Te Aroha farm, she explained how plants function at their best when there are many different kinds of microbes living around their roots.
The easiest way to achieve that is by planting pasture made up of different kinds of plant families such as Fabaceae (lucerne, red clover, white clover), Asteraceae (chicory and sunflowers), Plantaginaceae (narrow-leaved plantain), Linaceae (linseed and flaxes) and a range of grasses such as cocksfoot, prairie grass and fescue.
“There’s not a huge benefit from putting six different grasses together. But if you can put six different families, that’s going to be more beneficial,” she advises.
“As your pasture comes up for replacement, instead of doing the same-old with rye grass, put a diverse mix in, use a biological fertiliser, and use deferred grazing so you can get some seeds on the pastures that you’ve got.”
Benefits include being able to reduce the reliance on chemicals and synthetic fertilisers as the soil microbiome can play its natural role delivering nutrients in the soil to the plant roots.
Diverse pasture, trees and animals above the soil and the life under it become part of a circular ecosystem that includes birds, bees and livestock. •