CSB - John Roach - JMPI

Catching up with the team from MPI. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly live at field
Days on gold Sport.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And live on the brand site at field Days. It
is coming up to a quarter past that we check
weekend with around the country for all the big sport
coming up this weekend. But right now we're catching up
with John Roach, who is the Chief Science Advisor at MPI.
That's a pretty impressive title, John, Welcome along.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Thanks Brian, It's great to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're you're here on a stand. What's it called Science
for Farmers? And there is a lot of science in farming,
isn't there?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh, there absolutely is, and farmers are naturally very scientific themselves.
You know, they battle the weather on a day to
day basis as we see this morning, all the challenges
that come with commodity prices, with logistics, et cetera. And
they put it all together and New Zealand farmers do
it better than anyone.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
What can people see on your site?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So the site, this is our first year running the
Science for Farmers site and it really is. It's a
result of as I took on the role as well
as the Chief Science Advisor as the director of un
Farm Support Services, which was a new initiative in the
ministry to years ago, and advisory service to help farmers
be more profitable, meet their sustainability goals, everything like that.
And as we've traveled around, farmers have talked to me

(01:09):
about how they feel disconnected from science. And of course,
if you're long enough in the tooth or gray enough
in the hair, you'll remember the days when the rukor
of Farmers Conference used to precede field is So farmers
would go to the Farmers Conference and then they go
to field days afterwards. So not able to emulate that now.
But what we've tried to do is bring a farmer's
conference of sorts to the field is so on the

(01:31):
site this year. The theme is around greenhouse gas mitigation
and adapting to climate change, so we've got a number
of partners in there. We've got LAIC and Egg Research
talking about the work they're doing on breeding low meat
in animals, dairy cattle and sheep. We've got Messy University
working on diverse pastures versus our standard perennial regress pastures.
And is there an advantage during drier summers hotter summers,

(01:55):
can we capture more carbon in the soil and then
we've got egg ri zero and ends at AGRC talking
about how they're investing for tools for the future to
help farmers meet their green house gas targets. We've got
Manachi Fenowall length Care Research talking about salt carbon and
you know, busting some of the myths but encouraging farmers
and practices that will help them build more solt carbon.

(02:16):
And then I've got my own team of advisors roaming
around there talking with farmers about what they can do
today to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
It's amazing, really, I mean, farmers now almost have to
be scientists. They're not just you know, I want to
go and grow sheep and cattle.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Well, they always have been, and actually New Zealand has
one of the proudest traditions of that in the world.
I would argue the success of the New Zealand primary
sector has been the partnership with between scientists and farmers.
In the nineteenth century, the term for scientists was a
natural philosopher. Farmers are natural philosophers, so I treat them
with one and the same.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
What are some of the questions that farmers ask you
are They're fascinating questions that you get put to by farmers.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Look, absolutely, they come in with an open mind. We've
had a great, great interactions with it. Two days of
a con and flow of farmers coming through. We've got
a petdic of grass. We've got a pettic of perilla
y grass, white clover, and functionally diverse pastor so five
different species different legumes and a couple of herbs and forbes,
and then a hyper diverse pasture with a nineteen or
twenty different species of grasses, legumes, forbes, et cetera in there.

(03:17):
And so they're drawn in looking at the pasture, talking
with our messy colleagues about you know, some of the
advantages challenges around management things like that. The board that
we've been working on on farm support, you know, they're
really engaged because these are these are management things that
they're doing every day that they didn't realize were contributed
to their greenhouse gas footprint.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
It's at about farting and booping and.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Not so much farting, lots of and today you've.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Got a couple of semenars too, I think one on
persistent pastures that you'll be running.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Absolutely, so we've got to again our partners so This
has been really a partnership. MPI has taken the initiative
to try and bring a collection of our science entities
together to talk on a common theme, and so we've
got both Egg Research and mess University in there. On
pastures any I'm confident I can say any question that
farmers have about pastors, We've got the experts in to

(04:06):
answer them for them.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
That's what I'd like to hear. Hey, John, we'll let
you go back because the gates are open. You'll be
people ready to pop the questions to you.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Thanks very much, Brian, I appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Absolute pleasure. John Roach, chief Science Advisor for MPI, here
on Gold Sport The Country Sport Breakfast