Kiwis Playing Catch-Up on Farm Tech

New Zealand farmers are putting their businesses at risk by being slow adopters of new technology around animal health, warns the Kiwi creator of a world-leading diagnostic tool.

Greg Mirams is the Founder and Managing Director of Techion (pronounced ‘tech-tion’), which produces the FECPAK testing kits that farmers can use to test for parasite levels and facial eczema exposure in livestock. Techion is headquartered in AgResearch's Invermay campus near Dunedin and has sites in Australia and the UK, with plans to open another facility in the US in 2025. Farmlands has teamed up with Techion to offer farmers across New Zealand easy access to either purchase the FECPAK on farm technology, or to utilise FECPAK’s low-cost sample testing kits, which can provide results in minutes thanks to advanced AI technology now being used in the diagnostic process.

But Greg says despite being able to purchase the FECPAK kits off the shelf from Farmlands anywhere in the country, Kiwi farmers have been slower than their overseas counterparts in their uptake of the testing. Techion exports about 80% of its product offshore, and Greg says they are not an isolated case in the New Zealand ag-tech sector. “There's many, many agricultural technologies developed in New Zealand that have been far more successful offshore. Our fastest growing markets are offshore.”

Creeping Complacency 

He highlights New Zealand farmers’ isolation from the meat consumer as one of the issues, which he says can result in complacency when it comes to animal health and environmental issues that are top of mind for farmers elsewhere. Couple that with the kiwi approach of I think it’s working, so I won’t change, and you have a reluctance to adopt a different approach. “If you take the European market, I think a lot of it is because farmers there are a lot closer to those signals from their product consumers, who are the people that are buying meat in their supermarkets,” he says. “You can ask a New Zealand farmer ‘who's your customer?’ And they will often go, ‘Alliance’ or ‘Silver Fern Farms’. They're your processor, not your customer.” 

Greg says overseas consumers are paying increasing attention to where their food is from and how it is made, and the media are quick to jump on any horror stories. “You can't pick up a Sunday paper in the UK without having a food story in it, it's such a hot topic. We are going to see stories blow up just as they have in the past, and then people will do something about it. “I don't think we will see a major behaviour change to our use of drugs in our food systems until our leading companies in this country start to show stronger leadership and encourage behaviours that support their food story.”

Farming in the Blood 

Greg understands the challenges farmers face, having grown up on a sheep and beef farm in Silver Peaks, near Blueskin Bay north of Dunedin. He graduated from Lincoln University with a Diploma in Agriculture during a “brutal” time in the industry following the 1987 sharemarket crash. Like many young Kiwis at the time, he ended up on a plane to London, where he got a job as an accountant. “It was a complete transition, but it showed me that you don't need to be afraid; you can normally find your way.” The inspiration for creating FECPAK came after Greg returned to New Zealand in the early 1990s, when he was talking to friends about the challenges of getting tests done to measure parasites in their animals. 

“They were moaning about the problem, so I made some comment that it can't be that hard to do. They said, ‘well, if you're so bloody clever, go and find out how to do it.’ And that set the whole wheel going.” A lot has changed since Greg developed the first FECPAK kits in 1992. He sold the company to PGG Wrightson in 2006 and bought it back in 2010, when he renamed it Techion (a combination of technology and action). The testing technology has not only gone digital but is now also being used for human health applications, with Techion doing work on human parasite detection in countries like Ethiopia and Tanzania. “Agriculture in New Zealand has been a fabulous test bench for this platform,” Greg says. “It's a real Kiwi story. Now we partner up with Microsoft and Awanui and other big companies, which is pretty cool, but it's come out of ag.”

Informed Decisions 

The FECPAK tests give up-to-theminute information on the parasite burden, allowing farmers to tailor their drenching regime, but Greg says it can be hard to shift their mindset away from a regular drenching schedule. “Farmers love simplicity, and drenching on a calendar is a simple thing. Everyone gets ‘it’s been a month since we've done them’, but you may have missed that by a week. Maybe you should have done them earlier, or maybe you don't need do them at all right now. Parasites change as much as grass growth, so farmers need to tune their drenching to what’s going on at the time. “Human beings don't like change, and we really only change when we have to, and sometimes those lessons can be really severe.” Parasite control is becoming a major challenge for many New Zealand farmers, with Techion’s data showing triple drench resistance on at least one third of Kiwi sheep farms (34%).

Greg says the situation is not all doom and gloom, and farmers can “absolutely” farm successfully with triple drench resistance, if they have the right information. “It's just like a few years ago when they stopped mulesing in Merinos to deal with fly strike. Some said the industry was gone. Well, it's funny, the Merino industry is still doing fine. “Farmers will adapt, but you can't drive that adaption until we get easy access to testing. That's where I've got to thank Farmlands for supporting the strategy and making the access to testing so easily available to farmers.” This means whether you are a large farming operation or a lifestyle block farmer, you can access testing for your livestock.

A Property Issue

Although Techion’s FECPAK kits allow farmers to adjust their drenching regime based on the data, when it comes to drench resistance, Greg says the focus needs to shift from treating livestock to understanding when farms are bought, sold or leased, alongside other forms of soil testing. “I certainly wouldn't buy a place to finish calves or lambs on without a faecal egg count reduction (FECRT) test to know whether the drugs were working, and which ones were working, because you're going to struggle to finish livestock if your drench options are limited.” 

Faecal egg count (FEC) data can also help inform non-drench related strategies for managing parasites. Greg says for example; parasites hate sunshine and love water and warmth. few or no parasites on those pastures, at least when you first graze them. “What you don't want to do is move a mob of lambs that have a high egg count and unwittingly dump them all on your fancy crop. “Why would you pollute that pasture that you've spent $800 a hectare on? Often if you experience poor live weight gain on novel forages, it is nothing to do with the plants, it was the unseen parasite burden causing the problem.”

Methane Reduction

More effective parasite management has another benefit: lower greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane. Greg says science tells us that greenhouse gas emissions can increase by 33% in animals with a heavy parasite burden. “There are two main reasons for this. One, it disrupts the gut functions, so you get more emissions because your gut's inefficient. “But the other one is these will grow at a much slower rate, which means they're on farms for longer, which means the emission profile is far higher. “Can you imagine what we could do if we just actually got on top of our diseases? We would reduce our emissions and produce more. That sounds pretty good, but no-one's talking about it.” 

Looking ahead, Greg sees new diagnostic tools for animal health and farm management becoming available, with Farmlands giving farmers easy access to these game-changing products. But he says farmers need to be willing to make use of these tools. “I challenge farmers, if you could just look on the ground and see the parasites without doing anything, would you change what you're doing? Of course they would. “All we are doing is we are showing you. As someone said to me, it's like someone turned the lights on, and now I see what's going on.”