Talking Dairy

Tips for future-proofing your effluent system | Ep. 121

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When effluent systems are designed and run well, they support your whole farm. 

In this episode of Talking Dairy, Debbie Care from AgVice and Shaun Hazelton from DairyNZ share insights into how to set your effluent system up to improve productivity, make the most out of valuable nutrients and protect your business over the long-term. This conversation looks at what’s involved in establishing good systems, what’s worth prioritising, and why autumn is a smart time to get things in shape. 

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Introduction

SPEAKER_02

Kioda and welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm your host Jack McGowan from DairyNZ. It's great to have you with us. Today we're talking about a part of farming that isn't glamorous. And yes, sometimes it does stink. But good effluent management doesn't have to. In fact, when it's well designed and well run, it saves money, protects the environment, and removes a whole lot of stress. So in this episode, we're here to clear the air and help you feel confident your effluent system is compliant, future-proof, and built on the right advice. We'll unpack the biggest challenges we're seeing on farm, what councils are telling us, and the simple steps you can take to protect your business, especially with more farmers now in a position to invest off the back of a good payout. And because autumn is the perfect time to get ahead of maintenance, drop pond levels and make sure your gear is running right, we'll talk through what to focus on now so nothing turns into a bigger stink later. Joining me are Sean Hazleton from Dari and Z and Debbie Kierr from AgVice, two people who know effluent systems inside and out and have seen just about everything that can go right and very wrong on farm. Let's get into it. Tienakuru, Debbie and Sean, let's start with a little about who you are and how you each work with and help farmers. Debbie, we'll go to you first.

SPEAKER_01

So I started uh working in Effluent in DariNZ Krogi 2004. It was a job nobody wanted at that stage, and I thought that I would actually work myself out of a job at some stage, but no, it just keeps coming. And so set up my own business in 2009 as an environmental consultancy, but we do a lot of work in Effluent, seen a lot of change over the last 25 years in sort of systems and management, but it's still a key issue for lots of people. So it's still there, still needs work, and yeah, good to see some positive changes happening as well. Thank you, Debbie. And how about you, Sean?

SPEAKER_00

My role here at Darian Z is a senior regional policy advisor. So often dealing with compliance and drafting new regulations at national and regional level. When it comes to Effluent, I guess my background to a little bit of time consulting using Dari and Z's resources. Also, I spent a few years in the real compliance space at a regional council as well. So I've seen thousands of different effluent systems over my time as well. So yeah, now it's good to be back at Dairy and Z doing some work supporting farmers on the tools we've got, which is an extensive list.

SPEAKER_02

All right. To kick us off, Sean, can you talk us through what you mean when you talk about effluent on farm? What are the key components and what parts of the farm system rely on good effluent management?

SPEAKER_00

We've got a bit of a transition process where we were traditionally going from discharge to water through two-pond systems. Now we're we're moving on to the capturing and irrigation of effluent to land. It has also now moved on further from just having a yard and shed collected into a sample pond and then irrigated to managing effluent from underpasses, feed pads, standoff pads, herd homes, and a bunch of other things as well. The good news for farmers is the investment in effluent systems generally correlate with the investment in infrastructure and the proportional scale of your system. Yeah, the simpler system you have, the simpler priced effluent system you can get, hopefully. As far as the good effluent management, the leading thing I would state is probably that all systems can be managed and maintained well. But ensuring you've got a well-designed system to start with really sets you up for a good 15-20 years of certainty before you have to do any significant upgrades to those. So making sure that that design, that advice matches the soil type on farm, the infrastructure you've got, and the staffing and management capabilities that you've got, or the time that they've actually got to manage effluent as well.

Effluent Nutrients And Fertiliser Savings

SPEAKER_02

Debbie, we know effluent is a resource.

SPEAKER_01

How valuable is it? When Sean just mentioned, you know, that we used to have a two-pon discharge system. We used to literally be flushing our nutrients down the waterways. So shifting to land application has been a really strong thing to happen within the industry. It still treats the effluent in terms of sunlight and stuff like that on the land, but it's the nutrient content that is the real clincher in effluent where depending on your system, you have a lot of nitrogen, a lot of phosphorus, and also a lot of potassium. So potassium is actually the most abundant nutrient in effluent, and it's actually one of the most expensive ones that you can buy. So if you're actually looking to save money, nitrogen and phosphorus get the big focus because they're, you know, sort of environmental pollutants in the media and things, but potassium is actually the best bang for buck on farm in terms of saving your nutrients. If we look at dairy shed effluent, so this is just without a feed pad or anything like that, we've probably got between 0.25 to 0.45 kilograms of nitrogen per meter cubed. For phosphorus, it's quite a bit less, it's 0.03 to 0.06. And then potassium is 0.3 to 0.35 kilograms per meter squared. So if we sort of multiply that up on a typical dairy farm, so let's go say for 400 cows, you're probably producing between four and six thousand cubes of effluent per year. So depending on your water use and your rainfall. So if you've got more water, it's a bit more dilute, less water, you've got a bit more nutrient in there. Working with those ranges, it means from nitrogen we could have from 1 to 2.5 tons of N available from effluent. Phosphorus, 120 to 300 kg, so you know, not quite so good there. And potassium sort of 1.2 to 2 tons. And so if we compare that to a fertilizer, so if we're going to look at the nutrients and you know, we look like what we'd do with our fertilizer, we certainly wouldn't be putting it in one pile in the ground and just letting it seep away, would we? No. So if we're managing those nutrients, it's sort of 5 to 10k worth of fertilizer each year. So it's one of the few things we can do sometimes where you get a return for your investment. So think of it not as something to dispose of, but it's effectively the cows have eaten the nutrient, you've paid for it in terms of grass, and then it comes out and voila, we've got some fertilizer. The key to actually being able to capture all that nutrient value is to look at your timing and putting it on so that plants are actually in a position to take the nutrients up so you're not running off. It's just sitting in that root zone. So you've got a safe distribution, but you've also got some economic return and you can grow some grass to make some more milk to make some more nutrients. So it's a pretty good cycle.

SPEAKER_02

Sean, you mentioned Dairy and Z tools and resources. Can you talk us through those and also industry initiatives that help farmers design and manage good effluent systems?

SPEAKER_00

Probably far too many to keep track of. I'm still picking up new ones on our website every now and then. But if I could try my best to categorize them all, you've got three separate categories. So you've got the industry standards and good design practice. So they're a bunch of documents and standards which Darian's has developed to support the industry. Probably the stuff that farmers don't see in the front end, but it's stuff that the real professionals leverage on to make sure they design a system that'll comply with all the regional council requirements. You've got the farmer resources and tools that we provide. So the likes of the Dairy Affluence storage calculator for sizing how much storage you need, irrigation bucket tests. So we have some nice Excel sheets that farmers can use to estimate or to measure their irrigation. And then a bunch of farmers' guides on how to use specific types of systems, whether you've got low-rate irrigation, whether you've got a traditional traveling irrigator, or different types of storage. The other thing that's hopefully we'll talk about a bit later, but is the training and farmer support that we provide, as far as the likes of the Fort and Accreditation Program and Warren of Fitness program. So those are two services that Dairy and Z developed for the industry to make sure that farmers have those right people to go to. So if they're looking for an audit of an existing system or looking to upgrade and get a new system, there's those right people that are back in behind industry standards there.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. And Debbie, I presume you are one of the right people. Ha ha. I hope so. Been pretty involved in a lot of those processes that Sean was just talking about. You've been involved, as you said, in effluent management industry for a long time. And you talked about how our sort of approach has changed. What's driven that shift?

SPEAKER_01

To be fair, there's been quite a bit of an increase in sort of social and environmental expectations in that time and a recognition that we sort of need to look after those things more. And so you've sort of got that on one end, and then at the other end, we've got we can get better bang for buck by um using the nutrients that are in it and then getting it treated and using it to grow grass. When I sort of saw the Toupon discharge treatment thing, I was like, oh god, I wasn't around when that was done, but I was, and there was actually quite a few. I was just looking at the deck manual from 2006 the other day, and you know, that was talking about coupon systems and discharge, and it's like what a waste that is. And so over time we've sort of shifted to fully containing effluent. It's got to be captured and contained, sort of one of the principles of the documents that Sean was talking about. And then land application rather than discharge. So we're putting it on at a time and a depth and a rate that suits plants and gets a growth. And then with some of the sort of more complex systems, I suppose, you know, if you're just sort of a grass-only system, there's no need for solid separation, but we've gone into feed pads and herd homes and things like that. So there's a whole lot more effluent caught, and you're getting a whole lot more solids in that. So what do you do with it? So we've ended up with, you know, lots of different solid separation systems, which again creates two products. Then we've got a solids that are separated, and that can be anything from sort of a slurry from a weeping wall to something that's really fluffy from a screw press. So you've got to sort of think about how you manage those. And they're really good products for cropping, for building organic matter. That has a real positive effect, especially on some of our young soils. And probably the other big one is going to synthetically lined ponds. There never used to be any overview, I suppose, whether ponds were leaking or not, and things like that. And so that's something that recently, sort of probably the last 10 years, has become quite forward in everyone's thinking. And, you know, is our pond sealed? Are we keeping our nutrients within the system and not sort of leaking into the environment there? So this the advent of sealed storage ponds has actually created a really good way to get those nutrients in and recycle them out.

Council Compliance Risks And Paperwork

SPEAKER_02

Sean, you talk to councils across the country. From your perspective, what are the common challenges farmers are facing with effluent systems and what are the key things they can do to stay on the right side of compliance?

SPEAKER_00

Some of the statistics that you see from councils and also in the media can look pretty grim. But the one thing I would say is councils are starting to prioritize inspections based on those higher-risk farms, farms where they've seen non-compliance before, or they've got concerns around the infrastructure as far as storage volumes or over-irrigation or slightly higher irrigation than it should be. The past few years we've definitely seen rates of non-compliance slightly increase. A lot of these are also tending to be from technical non-compliance type issues as the bars increasing.

SPEAKER_02

So, what's technical non-compliance?

SPEAKER_00

Good question. So technical non-compliance are a lot of those conditions which you might be asked to record, such as are you recording irrigation events? Are you doing a bucket test and providing those records to council to show you're complying with 25 mil application maximums, for example? They may not be causing active environmental issues, but it's a condition put in your consent you've got to meet. So that's often seen as something that can be missed annually. The other thing that we're starting to see is there's a lot of the common trends lie down to the maintenance and upkeep of those systems. So whatever type of system you've got, making sure that you're maintaining your irrigator, you're managing solids the best you can, those sort of things correlate to usually a less risk system. One example that I did a few years ago was we ran an event on a farm just doing a normal bucket test, and we had the tyres flat, we had the bearings collapsed, we had the nozzles cut, and it was applying 35 millimeters on average over that paddock. Just by fixing all those things and restarting the irrigator, it ran down to 18 mils when it was at 35 before. So just those simple maintenance tasks are key to keeping you in the in the good books and also better utilizing that nutrients as Debbie's highlighted before.

SPEAKER_02

What I heard you say there was that councils are increasingly focusing on the risk farms, so the stats risk farms, so the stats don't necessarily reflect the real risk across all farms. And also you talked about the importance of crossing the T's and dotting the I's on the sort of paperwork side, which is like where the technical non-compliance comes in, as well as maintenance. That be right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I think even when you call it technical non-compliance, a lot of it's good from a liability perspective.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

What High Performing Systems Share

SPEAKER_00

The Resource Management Act that has recently been amended and the fines have gone up. So here's a company, I think the the maximum fine is$10 million now. So there's a lot of liability. And if you've got the paperwork behind your good practice that you're already doing, that means when there's a slip-up or something goes wrong, it's always that one event or one occasion when something goes wrong. It's not through negligence. You can demonstrate and you've got the records, you've got the evidence behind you saying this is how I run my system. And it was a true one-off situation, I guess.

SPEAKER_02

Now, Debbie, you see a range of systems in your consultancy work. What are the common features of the effluence systems that consistently perform well?

SPEAKER_01

It's a combination of two things. We have people and then we have a system, and you can have the best system and the worst people, and that's not going to work, or you can have the worst system and the best people, and that'll work. So sort of putting those two things together, sometimes it's not actually, do you have a part to your effluence system, but it's having a management plan that includes things like Sean was just talking about, like your record keeping and how do I operate my system? If someone comes on when I train them, do I have something that I can take them through the system with? You know, it just might be on their phone in a series of pictures or or something like that, but actually being able to have your whole team competent in operating your system and knowing when things are going wrong. A really good thing is to have a really good amount of storage. If you've got just the right amount of storage, you quite often, especially with the weather events we've seen this year and last year, you back yourself into corners. So you've got to irrigate every day. And, you know, we get busy in carving, people get tired, they make mistakes. So if you're looking at storage as part of your sort of autumn thinking, don't do it as small as you can have it. Actually build in some flexibility so that you don't irrigate for eight weeks during carving or something like that. And just when the systems are made simple, even though we're using technology, but the management's simple and you give everyone breathing space, then you're not getting silly mistakes made. Autumn, a great time to do some of that maintenance work and making sure that your system's working properly. You've actually got to have good, reliable irrigation equipment. And so, you know, whether it's a traveler or a pivot or pods, you know, look at it, measure it, make sure that it is actually spreading as evenly as it can and at the best rate. I was measuring some on farm a couple of weeks ago and uh it's on its fastest rate. But because it had a few things wrong with it, you know, its fastest rate was actually very slow. And so having all of those things cleaned up and ready to go. And also what Sean was talking about was compliance. Having fail safes and monitoring is getting key. High-level pump alarms, pump shutoffs when the irrigator gets to the end of its run. You know, some means of turning things off when they stop moving is just crucial these days. Something else that's really good is flow monitoring because then you know how much you're putting on for each irrigation event. So if we get a nutrient test done, we can then work out how much nutrient we put on. So you can get quite strategic in your placement and your management. And so looking at all of those things, you've got good storage, good management, and then you're using the nutrients right, you're going to have a system that performs well.

SPEAKER_02

There's something called an effluent waf. Ah, yes. What's that? And what are the benefits of getting one?

SPEAKER_01

Basically, a WAF is a risk assessment or a health check on your effluent system. So if council comes out, they'll look at symptoms of things wrong. The WAF sort of sits behind that and it looks at the whole system and looks at the potential risk. One that would get missed heaps is what I call oval pipes. And so you've got a pipe and it's going oval on the ends. And if that gets left, it actually gets really weak at the top. So you know, when you bent your credit card, when it's passed, it's used by date, and you get those white lines. That's what happens to the pipes. And that's actually one of the higher risk things we see because they burst. And so it's sort of quite interesting, you know, it's just such a little thing. But when we're talking about risk, it's a completely different thing to saying, oh gosh, you've done that, you know, and that's a symptom of those things. We start at the shared, make sure that all effluent is captured and contained within there, so you know, got no broken nibbing, no crack concrete, that sort of thing. Look at pumps and pipes, so we measure those as well. So we measure flow and pressure of the pump to get an idea of how it's actually performing. And soft things like if you're walking on the ground and it's really bumpy under your feet, so it's obviously quite compacted, it got really wet and sort of stock on it at some stage, you know, that's going to have no absorption. So you're thinking about those things, and then listening to a pump. I mean, if a pump sort of sounds bad, it's not performing that well. So there's sort of some softer stuff as well. We look at the storage capacity based on the farm system, um, irrigator performance, pond condition. We walk the pond, we're looking for any signs of seepage, holes and liners, that sort of thing. We do a bucket test and flow and pressure test on the irrigator or the applicator. And so that gives us the rates for the soil type, what compliance risk there might be with that, depending whether you're in a permitted activity framework or a consented framework. And so that's the risk sits around that as well. So that's what you've got to meet for your system, depending on what sort of regulatory regime you're in.

SPEAKER_02

You've talked about what happens in the effluent WAF. Who does these and how can a farmer organise one?

SPEAKER_01

So one of the things Sean talked about earlier was some of the programs that Dairy and Z had developed to give farmers confidence in the rural professionals that were going on farm. The WAF certification program was one of those. There was lots of trained professionals throughout the country, and they're actually listed on the WAF assessment website. So you can go and have a look there and see who's in your area and where those people operate as well. And it's a really good time to get a WAF done about now. Things are a bit quieter on farm, so you've got time to have a discussion with the person that's coming on farm, and then you can actually implement some of the recommendations that might be made through that process.

Accredited Advisors And Smart Questions

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so farmers can find someone to do an effluent WAF for them on our website. They can just go into Daisy or the search bar and type effluent waf and that'll come up. And then if you follow that link, you'll find out who works in your area. Cool. Thank you. Now, Sean, when farmers are looking at upgrades or new infrastructure, which some of them might be now, what's the value in using effluent system design accredited advisors? How does that help ensure the system is fit for purpose and future-proof?

SPEAKER_00

Like I highlighted earlier, there's a bunch of stuff that Darian Z has done in the background that farmers often don't see, but one of the industry tools is the Farm Dairy Effluence System Accredited Advisors Program. So something that Darian Z developed, similar to the MTA assured logo that you get when you're looking to find somewhere to get your car serviced or warranted. So it provides that same level of value. I think the companies and professionals that operate under the accreditation program, it ensures that they are designing and building systems tailored to your farm's needs and any future goals you may have down the line. The work that they do aligns with council's compliance and regional council rules and also operates under those industry assurance standards and design practices. So those accredited advisors are operating under what we call best practice. But it also gives you that point of contact. If you look for the green tick, you know that you're going to get confidence in the quality and reliability of service, and that hopefully that service is pretty consistent across all the companies that have the green tick or the accreditation tick beside them. If you want to try to find them, they're also on our um DairyNZ website as well. So we've got a link for them, and that's a service that Irrigation NZ runs and trains and certifies those accredited advisors.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, Sean, you've talked to us about the benefits of using effluent system design accredited advisors. So when a farmer gets in touch with one of these or is you working with one, what questions should they be asking?

Autumn Jobs Storage And Maintenance

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks, Jack. I think as far as for designing, developing new systems and new types of storage, the big thing that you need to chat with the designers about is just asking those leading questions. So what is the maintenance required with this type of system? How many days am I going to have to be irrigating on average a year? We often see a lot of systems being installed and designed. And I don't think the farmers are actually fully aware of what they've signed themselves up to. We can see some storage calculations that assume 350 days of irrigation. Irrigation. In reality, I don't think a farmer has the time or capacity often to do that. So you've really got to be asking those leading questions. What's the maintenance requirements? How many days do I have to irrigate? How many hours do I have to irrigate when I am irrigating? And then considering how that works with your staffing arrangements on farm as well. Because not everyone has all day to manage effluent.

SPEAKER_02

Both of you have talked about autumn being a great time to get on top of effluent. And that there's lots of practical checks and jobs farmers should be doing now to help avoid issues in winter and make next spring run more smoothly. If each of you could just give your top one or two.

SPEAKER_00

From my perspective, I mentioned I spent quite a few years in the regional council compliance team. The big thing for me that stands out is having a management plan, downloading one of Darian Z's management plan posters, sticking it in the cow shed or close to your irrigation system, and just working through all of those checklist items to make sure that all the staff and people operating the system have clarity on the rules, clarity on how the system's run and what risk to look out for. The big thing from that is the liability side of things. If something goes wrong, you've got all the processes and procedures to fix whatever issues pop up. And also it looks nice when you're a council compliance officer turning up on farm and you can just see right in front of you all the things ticked off and tickety-boo.

SPEAKER_02

And surely, Sean, it also prevents things going wrong.

SPEAKER_00

Hopefully, or allows you to identify them early on.

SPEAKER_02

Reduces the risk, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

All right, Debbie, what's yours? For me, it's storage capacity. So we're in April now, autumn's just happening. Sorry, we're in March and autumn's happening, but our source temperatures are still warm. So actually irrigating the effluent from the pond. So A, you're getting nutrient bang for buck because we get it sort of autumn flush with a bit of water and a bit of temperature still. And so actually using that nutrient before winter so that you get your bang for buck, but then the other side of that is going into winter with a low pond so that when we get big rainfall events or when the soils are just too cold to irrigate to, you've got storage in that pond to manage it and not have to apply in wet soils and get yourself in trouble.

Key Takeaways

SPEAKER_02

Or waste the very valuable nutrients as well. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you both. That brings us to the end of today's episode. A huge thank you to Sean and Debbie for sharing their knowledge and for helping us all keep effluent management from turning into a bigger stink than it needs to be. Remember, good advice, good design, and proactive management make all the difference. Time your irrigation to get the best value out of the nutrients, check your irrigator performance, tidy up any weak spots in your system, and if you're looking to invest, make sure you're working with the right experts. To learn more or find accredited advisors, check out the effluent management information on the DairyNZ website and there will be links in the show notes as well. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Matewa. 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 dash connected and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes. 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. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.