Canterbury Plains Could Lead the Way in Push for Increased Wheat Production

As Canterbury dairy farmers look to diversify land use, adding wheat production could make New Zealand self-sufficient in wheat while reducing greenhouse gas production and water demand.

A new agricultural model developed for the New Zealand arable farming sector looked at how to achieve this, developed by the Future Scenarios for Arable Agriculture research project funded by Our Land and Water. Producing up to 700,000 tonnes of wheat is needed annually to cover current shortfalls and low production years and meet dairy sector needs.

The modelling showed, at current yields (9.9t/ha), an extra 25,000 hectares are needed to achieve self-sufficiency in milling wheat for human consumption - an extra 250,000 tonnes. Widespread use of precision agriculture to improve yields (to 12t/ha) could see this drop to an extra 20,000 hectares.

From the environmental side, the modelling suggests that introducing this wheat production in a dairy system has clear positive impact, producing almost 8 times less CO_2-e biogenic emissions and using one-third less water for irrigation than dairy.