Farm Sustainability Services

How can our Farm Sustainability Services help you?

Ballance has established Farm Sustainability Services to make it easy for you to achieve economic, environmental and social sustainability on your farm. Building on Ballance’s 60-years’ experience in nutrient management advice, our specialised team work with you to meet compliance requirements whilst getting the best from your land and leaving it in great condition for future generations.

With regional councils focussed on reducing nitrogen, phosphorous, sediment and faecal bacteria loss from farms – our service will identify your environmental risks or opportunities and provide practical advice and solutions that work for you on your farm.

We work with key industry partners, including regional councils, irrigation schemes, industry good bodies and dairy companies to ensure your nutrient management solutions are effective and fit for purpose.

What services do we provide?

Our services will help you to meet the needs of industry certification schemes, regulatory compliance or applications for resource consents.

YEAR END NUTRIENT BUDGETS
Generated in Overseer®, a Nutrient Budget provides a picture of nutrient inputs, outputs and losses for a particular year. When the farm reaches a near steady state, it is a reasonable estimate of the farm’s nutrient flows.

SCENARIO NUTRIENT BUDGETS

Allows you to model how potential farm system changes will impact nutrient flows. These scenarios might include stock numbers, fertiliser changes, effluent or feed usage, changes in irrigation, or adding a feed pad, herd home or wintering barn.

FARM ENVIRONMENT PLANS

A Farm Environment Plan is a plan for sustainably managing the soil, water and nutrient resources on farm. The plan is specific to you and is developed to reflect the environmental risks and opportunities associated with your farm and how these can be best managed.

Our process

You’ll have a single point of contact during the process and receive the ongoing support of your Ballance Nutrient Specialist.

Who should use Farm Sustainability Services?

By 2025, New Zealand farmers will be farming within limits. Together we can work proactively to set you up to meet those limits, and achieve ongoing profitability.

Farm sustainability Services Testimonial

Why did you choose Farm Sustainability Services?
Farm Sustainability Services is a great tool for me and my farm. It helps me understand what we do, and what we’d like to do. It allows us to develop systems that will be sustainable. It makes what I’m doing more enjoyable because I know I’ll be still doing it in the future.

Did new regulations affect you immediately?
It was more about being proactive actually. We had recently purchased this farm and it was important to us to set up environmentally friendly practices that were going to be sustainable for the future. We knew were going to push the boundaries with a higher stocking rate so I wanted an understanding of what and how we could manage/mitigate our challenges.

Was the process easy to understand?
They came out, collected the data, and we discussed how we were planning to operate the farm. They went away and loaded the info and then came back and discussed the results with us. It was really helpful. We thought we were going to be challenged by the area that we had, and Farm Sustainability Services confirmed a lot of things for us – the loading that we had, what and how we applied our nutrients, and when we applied it. They gave us some good advice around our management and we were able to put practices in place to develop a sustainable business.

If you found this page interesting and would like to enquire about our services, you can contact our Farm Sustainability Services team on:
Email: farm.sustainability@ballance.co.nz
Phone: 0800 222 090

Other information you may be interested in:
Meet our Farm Sustainability Services Team
Read about Farm Nitrogen Reports
Meet this year's Ballance Farm Environment Award winners