The Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS) is an unincorporated joint venture between the Agribusiness Group, Lincoln University, and the University of Otago.

It started back in October 2003.
The idea is to examine the environmental, social and economic sustainability of New Zealand farming systems.

What it is after is a better understanding of the environmental effects, and the social and economic consequences of different farming practices.

Ideally it will help New Zealanders and their land-use systems achieve more appropriate and enduring accommodations with the New Zealand environment as well as continue to satisfy the demands of market and community stakeholders.

The goal of the ARGOS research is to facilitate innovation and improved performance in primary production systems. The research programme has secured 'long-term' funding for 6 years from the Foundation for Research Science and Technology - as a first step in a 20 to 30 year project.

In practical terms Argos has set out to investigate the environmental, social and, economic effects of different farm types: It’s looking at…..
• Lowland sheep and cattle farms - 12 conventional, 12 integrated, 12 organic
• High country farms - 24 farms with different levels of intensity
• Kiwifruit orchards - 12 growing Hayward variety under the KiwiGreen, 12 growing Hayward variety under the certified organic programme and 12 growing Hort16A variety under KiwiGreen
• A study of Ngāi Tahu land holdings with a variety of types of farming
• A study of 24 dairy farms on the North Island - 12 converting to organic and 12 conventional

Reid Farm - Outram

The Reid farm is at Outram near Mosgiel. It is 1391 ha property. It runs sheep and beef – around 7,000 stock units.

Bob Reid says they pursue an extensive rather than an intensive farming policy. They are basically an all grass system although they do have a winter crop.

They aren’t organic – because they do use some conventional fertilizer – but where possible they reduce chemical use.

Bob is interested in the Argos project because he sees the discussion of sustainability as central to the future of primary production in NZ. He remarked to me that a recent visit to Japan opened his eyes of how far consumers want to take the traceability and sustainability. He says meat packs in Japan could take the consumer all the way back to the farm and the animal – using bar codes.

David Lucock, AgriBusiness Group, Field Research Manager
Dave says the Argos project is all about enhancing the Agricultural industry. He says that we are based around productivity – but some bigger questions need to be asked about where the industry as a whole is going. What is going to drive what we farm and how we farm in the future.

He says that Argos is about looking at the global view of a farm system. He says it is the first major full system study that is being done.
His own view is that we shouldn’t be looking at paddock to plate – but rather plate to paddock - ie start with what the consumer wants on her plate and move back from there.

So far – in the first four years of the project – they are trying to build a picture of what is current farm practice across a range of farm industry.
He says that they are using a system called redundancy modeling – trying to match a range of variables and see what the correlations are between them.
On the Reid farm we’ll be looking at where we are at largely with the environment sustainability of the property.

In future years, converting farms will be included to test whether the change in farm practice associated with IPM and organic certification actually caused the differences we may observe between already converted and control farms.
An immediate goal of ARGOS is to compare the sustainability of conventional, IPM and organic approaches. However, it is also committed to discovering determinants of sustainability in general, irrespective of farming sector and the particular type of farming being applied.

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