The recent Maize Conference was an opportunity to have a good look at what is being done with maize in New Zealand, and its future potential yields and uses.

FAR chief executive Neil Pyke, in a speech about planning for 20 years out, said as we were already world leaders in export of carrot and clover seed, he could not see why we weren't focusing on exporting our safe and GE-free maize seed.

Important grains

An interesting speaker from Australia's Go Grains and Nutrition movement, Robyn Murray, woke participants up to the realisation that a major factor of current diets, and the widespread obesity epidemic, is that people aren't eating enough grains these days, especially whole grains.

The currently promoted food pyramid doesn't specify that we should eat six serves of bread and cereals each day, and only about 20 per cent of the Australasian population does so – and even this is declining despite the fact that it is now known that wholegrains and legumes reduce the risk of chronic disease by 20-30 per cent.

Hawkes Bay farmer Hew Dalrymple bemoaned the fact that so much of our flour is imported, when high quality local product could be used, delivered immediately with less freight costs.

He praised the recent Arable Industry Marketing Initiative and said we should be marketing cooperatively, and with more focus on providing the dairy industry with supplement, apart from maize silage.

Feed efficiency

Dave Clark of DairyNZ talked about improving the efficiency of farm systems to be able to increase on-farm feed production to 1750kg/DM/ha from the current levels of about 1000kg, partly by growing crops of maize and oats.

The recent emphasis on using imported PKE now saw about seven per cent of the total diet of dairy cows consisting of this, when it was possible for us to grow other crops to match this amount.

Trevor James of AgResearch gave two presentations on weeds, including a field presentation at the Tamahere Research Station. He pointed out that ‘same old, same old' use of weedicides didn't work, as nature's bugs were rapidly adapting to create resistance, in both weeds and the soil.

New Zealand now had at least 10 resistant weeds, and Australia was up to 57. Pre-emergent sprays such as atrazine had now been found to last only about five days in soil, compared with early expectations of 30-plus days.

Depending on resistance in the soil, these could now be a waste of money and post-emergent sprays were probably more effective.

Weeds grow faster

The weeds that did grow, could grow faster than ‘good' grasses and maize plants. Annuals such as summer grass and yellow bristle grass could both race away once germinated, and the recently discovered velvet leaf could outgrow them all. If undiscovered, it can grow as tall as a person and seed profusely in short order. Recommendations for post-emergent spraying had now been changed to be done when only 20 per cent of weed cover was present, or it would be too late for good control. Sprays should be rotated from type to type each time to slow resistance.

FAR adviser Diana Mathers stressed the need for farmers to actively and extensively soil test and acquire nutrient budgets and then management plans as a basis for farm planning. Otherwise it was likely they would be regulated on environmental issues in the future.