A love of the land and all the life its supports, is of great importance to Amanda Hasselmann. Alongside her husband, Mark, she has been farming sheep and beef on Temple Peak Station, at the head of the Wakatipu Valley, since 1979. Over her time on the farm, Amanda has lived through livestock incentive schemes, tenure review, changing sheep breed in their farm system, and now a shift to regenerative agriculture and becoming a Toitū Certified Carbon Zero Farm. Their farm is marginal farming country, and Amanda states that if you are interested in being an efficient farmer that this area isn’t the place you’d choose, but their love for the area, the Glenorchy community, and the beautiful scenery, combined with the opportunity to farm, is what has kept Amanda and Mark at Temple Peak for all this time.
In addition to her farm work, Amanda has been heavily involved in her passion for predator management to support restoration and protection of native biodiversity. Her role as a trustee on the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust, since its inception 10 years ago, as well as being part of the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, has been another way in which Amanda has given back to the land with a positive lasting impact.
The need for sufficiency
Sustainability has become a bit of a buzz word in recent years and in all facets of life, humans are struggling to prioritise living within the constraints of the natural environment. Amanda challenges the notion that sustainability encompasses the track we ought to be headed down and suggests that words like ‘sufficiency’ better capture the essence of how we need to be living and working.
“The economic system has just led us down this path of more, more, more, more, more, and the planet just can’t cope with that. And so, we might be better just trying to think about things in terms of, you know, what’s enough? And I think that’s why the whole regen movement is getting traction. Most farmers have a huge appreciation and love of their place. They don’t want to trash it, but we’re only as good as the knowledge that we can learn. And that knowledge has been very product based. So, yeah, an interesting response, but possibly, I think sustainability might not be what we should be focusing on. And I think if we start thinking of things like sufficiency, a lot of words that, you know, are really useful for how we build community, come back into the language again, you know, kindness, caring, community, not so much of this transactional focus on life, but much more of a relational focus. As I said before, I think most of us are looking for community and, the more we can do in that space, the better we’ll all be and it builds resilience and that’s what we’re gonna need.”
It is also of utmost importance to Amanda to be able to incorporate intergenerational thinking into approaching the challenges in front of us. This means that taking a lens of sustainability, sufficiency, or whatever feels right for you, is not only framed in the scenario of your farming business or your life, but in ensuring that it is enduring for those to come after us.
“We’ve got 5 mokopuna now, and they’re all very smart cookies, and I really want to have an answer for them when as teenagers they come, asking all those hard questions saying, you know, granny, you knew, you knew. Why didn’t you do anything? So, behind of a lot of our thinking, you know, we want some more intergenerational thinking so that they’ve got a good future ahead of them.”
The journey to becoming a Toitū Certified Carbon Zero Farm
Farming has been a challenge at Temple Peak Station, particularly with their very high annual rainfall of around 1800 mls. Early in their farming careers, driven, and in debt, Amanda and Mark thought they were doing the right thing by pushing up livestock numbers, which was being encouraged by the livestock incentive scheme at the time. However, the purebred merino sheep that they were running on their country were not managing the wet hills of Glenorchy, compared to their more common home of dry Central Otago. This led to a shift in breed to Dohnes Merino which was a game changer for the farming couple.
“They’ve got amazing survivability, and we end up with a fat hogget that to sell so we get meat cheque, and we also get a fine wool fleece and we’ve increased the lambing percentage and, we’ve got much better stock survivability.”
Having a dual-purpose sheep and still being able to sell into the fine wool market has been not only pivotal for the farming couple in terms of farm productivity, but it has also presented them with the opportunity to explore regenerative agriculture.
“We’ve been really lucky with New Zealand Merino because they’ve been early leaders, I think, and they’ve been really thoughtful in anticipating what’s coming down the track for selling commodities. And so, when they started being interested in what regenerative agriculture might look like, they looked at the people who were probably further to the back of the pack and we’ve been really fortunate they’ve done an awful lot of research on our place to try and understand what regen ag might look like. And they held quite a few really good workshops and that really piqued our interest because, the prescriptive formula of farming wasn’t delivering particularly good results or an enormous sense of satisfaction So we started experimenting with, mixed species paddocks, which has been hugely successful.”
Thanks to the involvement of New Zealand Merino, Amanda and Mark have been able to secure a wool contract with Allbirds, a company who makes shoes from fine wool, who had been very focused on the carbon footprint of their brand. This allowed for the opportunity for Amanda and Mark to look into the raw material on their farm so there were many tests done like deep soil tests and figuring out the carbon sequestration of their farm. They came out knowing that their carbon stocks were still good, and that over 45 years of pastoral farming the soil carbon hadn’t been diminishing. Temple Peak Station was emitting being 1,500 – 1.600 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year but sequestering around 2,400 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, deeming them a carbon positive farm. Having made it through that part of the journey, the opportunity to become a certified zero carbon farm was worth the final step and market premiums is an area that Amanda looks forward to seeing grow in the future.
“So having got all that, raw material, it seems silly not to go to final step and get the Toitū Accreditation. So we did that for the first time last year and I’m just in the process of, redoing that now. But, you know, it’s an expensive process and without the help of New Zealand Merino, we probably wouldn’t have done it unless we can see that there’ll be benefit to us from selling our wool and selling our meat. The brands are all talking about, consumers wanting nature positive produce, but we’re not really seeing a massive price premium yet. So, really interesting space, really happy to do it, so we can eyeball our mokopuna, but whether it’s commercially worth it at the moment, I don’t know.”
The opportunity in nature positive impact
Biodiversity is a love of Amanda’s and is something she has dedicated substantial time to in her community.
“I’ve been part of the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust for 10 years, since its inception, and we’ve initiated and maintained a really good trapping network on the braided rivers at the head of the lake. DoC does an awful lot of work in the National Park, in the alpine areas and in the bush and we felt that if we picked up the braided rivers, we’ve got that real vegetation mix from the valley floor to top of the hill and I’m also part of Southern Lake Sanctuary, which is a consortium of all the trapping groups in the Southern Lakes area and we’ve come together as Southern Lakes Sanctuary to really try and focus on landscape scale predator control. We all know we live in a pretty special place, but we often forget that, you know, a large chunk of the Southern Lakes area has got World Heritage classifications, so it’s significant not only in New Zealand, but it’s globally significant.”
Amanda sees biodiversity credits as an area that could be an important space for agriculture, and particularly on sheep and beef farms that are struggling financially.
“We often retain really good biodiversity on our farms and it would be really, cool to think that we benefitted from that…The story of our birds being the iconic part of the New Zealand make up is often not well understood overseas. I think we can do a much better job, and with brands saying that people are wanting nature positive solutions, we can certainly offer some really, really good outlets for them to invest in grassroots predator control, which is going to make a real difference to biodiversity in New Zealand. And it’s really good to have that farmer initiated too.
We’ve had a couple of great developments at the head of the lake. So, back in August, nine or ten pairs of takahē were released into the Greenstone Valley. which is still actively farmed. I mean that’s a really exciting space. They’ve been breeding up Takahē for quite some time now and the Merchant Mountains are full. Most of the bird sanctuaries are full. So, the next step is to take risk in areas that are trapped but the birds will be faced with some level of risk because we can’t reduce the feral cat numbers down to zero. So, um, that was amazing to see those iconic species being brought back to areas where they once roamed. And there’ll be two more releases there. And then the next focus is going to be the head of the Rees Valley because the vegetation there is, very suitable for takahe, and that’s an exciting initiative on land farmed by the Scott family.”
“Carry a spade”
When it comes to sustainability tips for other farmers, Annabelle is drawn to the notion of ‘carrying a spade’. For Annabelle and Mark, the journey into regenerative agriculture has had great benefits above and below the soil. Carrying a spade with you on farm and checking what is going on in your soil resource in response to different conditions and management can provide a wealth of knowledge, as well as spark ideas about how to best manage your paddocks in the future.
“ReGen Ag has faced a lot of criticism by not having prescriptive solutions, but that’s its real bonus. It’s just a great big shopping list and figure out which bits of the list work for you.”
Grazing management has been the biggest win for Annabelle and Mark. Leaving a bigger residual has meant that they have seen their paddocks bounce back quicker after grazing. Adopting the mentally of ‘carrying a spade’ has meant that Amanda has been able to “see what is happening in the paddocks rather than in the pasture itself”. This is such an awesome reflection from Amanda, showing the benefits of understanding the condition of the soil resource which drives pasture production, rather than just looking at pasture itself. This holistic systems approach has also had other benefits on Temple Peak Station with mixed species paddocks resulting in a big difference for not only soil health but also animal health. Amanda and Mark have gained a lot on farm from a more holistic approach, but the biggest difference is their view of the land and the joy that that brings – “that pleasure of being much more aware of the farm as a living system.”
Amandas’ farming business and the Sustainable Development Goals
When looking at how the SDGs are integrated through Amandas’ farming business from the full podcast conversation, there were a clear top five:
SDG # 15: Life on Land
- This goal is a huge part of Amandas’ life with her passion for predator management, biodiversity management and restoration. We often forget about this component when fencing and planting on farms, so it is a key factor to highlight and build into our planning.
SDG #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Living remotely in Glenorchy is a challenge but they are blessed by a vibrant, diverse, and supportive community. Amanda brings up several times how important the sense of belonging is. In her own definition of sustainability, which is informed by the concept of sufficiency, Amanda refers back to the vales inherent in a sustainable community of kindness, care, less of a transactional focus and more of a relational focus on life and living within our ecological limits.
SDG #13: Climate Action
- Amanda highlights the need to unite over Goal 13 and take responsibility for the role that we play in climate change. This challenge should be something that brings us together rather than divides us.
SDG #8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
- As part of the climate change conversation, Amanda and Becks discussed the monetization of climate action, and we heard Amanda’s thoughts on carbon credits and biodiversity credits. We also heard a call for investment from companies whose conscious consumers are asking for nature-positive products, into farmer-led and collaborative nature positive solutions. These thoughts contribute to providing decent work and economic growth, as without investment to be able to cashflow nature-positive action, nobody wins.
SDG# 17: Partnerships for the Goals
- This goal is woven throughout the conversation, referring to the collaborative nature with which farmers should work in the space of conservation, but also in the sense that without a strong partnership with New Zealand Merino, Temple Peak Station may not have had the exposure or support to take up the opportunities to explore regenerative agriculture and to obtain carbon zero certification.
Keep up the fantastic work! Kalorifer Sobası odun, kömür, pelet gibi yakıtlarla çalışan ve ısıtma işlevi gören bir soba türüdür. Kalorifer Sobası içindeki yakıtın yanmasıyla oluşan ısıyı doğrudan çevresine yayar ve aynı zamanda suyun ısınmasını sağlar.
Keep up the fantastic work! Kalorifer Sobası odun, kömür, pelet gibi yakıtlarla çalışan ve ısıtma işlevi gören bir soba türüdür. Kalorifer Sobası içindeki yakıtın yanmasıyla oluşan ısıyı doğrudan çevresine yayar ve aynı zamanda suyun ısınmasını sağlar.