At a glance:
Location: Uruguay
Farm size: 265ha
Main enterprise: Dairy (140 head + calves and heifers)
Other enterprises: Beef cattle (40 head), corn and soybeans (200ha)
Team size: 8
Fieldmargin plan: PLUS
Simon Regehr farms in Uruguay, his farm’s main enterprise is a 140-strong dairy herd, as well as producing corn, soybeans and beef cattle. With a variety of enterprises to manage, Simon sought farm software that could help digitise the farm paperwork and make things a little more simple.
There are lots of dairy farms in Uruguay, with milk and milk products making up 60% of the value of all Uruguayan exports. This is due to 90% of the milk produced being exported, with similar levels seen with the beef and grain produced in the country.
Regenerative farming “is beginning to become a conversation among farmers in Uruguay” says Simon, however regulations to limit fertiliser and chemicals used on farms have only recently been introduced. Due to a number of problems with the quality of drinking water in cities, the government is now keeping a close eye on how much and where farmers, specifically dairy farmers, are spreading the manure across their farms.
The government also controls the water and fuel supplies for the country, but all other farm inputs are subject to market conditions and are traded privately. While some inputs are traded in the local peso currency (namely fuel and labour), most larger inputs such as fertilisers, chemicals, machinery and seed are traded in the US dollar. Outputs are also traded in both currencies, with soybeans, wheat and canola being traded in USD and milk in peso. Simon explains he is “always changing from one currency to another”.
The farm is currently experimenting with organic farming, which is the only certification scheme available in the country. However, there isn’t much of a premium for organic produce. The only produce that sees much benefit from sizeable premiums is organic soybeans, as they are exclusively supplied for China.
Becoming more sustainable is a key theme in Simon’s priorities for the farm going forward. The driving force for using more organic-style farming practices is their impact on the planet. Without much of a premium available, they are not financially able to transition to a fully-organic system. He would like to make more efficient use of inputs such as fertiliser, and in the long-term, would like to house the dairy herd indoors, rather than out in a pasture, to improve the milk production and overall efficiency. Simon hopes in future he will be able to phase out the other farm enterprises to focus on the dairy side of things, with a more circular nutrient cycle.
Also on the list of priorities is improving yields, however the last year or so has made this particularly challenging due to the droughts across the nation. Having had no rain for some four months, residents ended up bathing, drinking and cooking in a mixture of fresh and salty water.
The farm’s two agronomists have access to the farm in fieldmargin and both find it useful to see what Simon gets up to, often creating tasks for him to complete. They also like to use fieldmargin as a point of reference when field walking to check key dates for field work such as sowing or spraying. Simon finds fieldmargin particularly useful for the dairy herd; he is quickly able to check when the cows moved fields and their new locations.
“fieldmargin is very simple – if I make a task to spray a field, you put in all the inputs and it automatically calculates how much you have to use.”
In his efforts to improve the farm’s efficiency, Simon utilises the Reporting features in fieldmargin, exporting them into Excel. From here he undertakes further analysis to better understand the positioning of the farm.
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