Chili farming & alpaca rasising – Weird & wonderful land use!

Land Use & Digital vs. Print – Northland Field Days Round-Up

The results are in and we’ve got some great insights from this year’s Northland Field Days.

One of the best things about Northland Field Days is being able to chat to the punters and carry out some market research. Over the 3 days we had nearly 300 surveys filled out and some of the results may surprise you. Homestays, chili farming, alpaca raising… We heard all about your weird and wonderful land use!

Land Use

As Northland’s economy is primarily based on agriculture, approximately 54% of the land is in pasture. We asked our participants what their current land use is on their farm/lifestyle block. As expected, drystock still makes up the largest proportion, increasing 2 percent over the last 2 years from 26% to 28%. What was more interesting was that of our survey participants, the percentage of land use for Dairy has dropped from 15% to 10% in the last 2 years. New Zealand has a unique emissions profile for a developed country, with 22.5 per cent of emissions from agriculture compared to 9.41 per cent average in other countries. With an intense spotlight being placed on the causes of climate change in recent years, is this affecting the dairy industry?

Interestingly there has been a divergence in sales trends for different types of farms over the last year. There were big increases in the number of finishing farms (+20.3%) and dairy farms (+19.0%) sold in the three months to February compared to a year earlier. There were big decreases in the number of grazing (-32.4%) and arable (-36.2) farms sold over the same period.

There was also a divergence in price trends, with the REINZ All Farm Price Index, which adjusts for differences in the sales mix of farm type, size and location, up 0.2% in the three months to February compared to a year earlier.

Have a look at our cow graph below for a breakdown of the survey results.

Digital vs. Print

Another interesting topic that we discussed with a lot of passersby was how people go about finding properties if they’re looking to buy (or even just looking out of interest).  In this day and age everything is online so does print still have its place?  Right now is a time where there are several different generations looking for homes. There is the generation that grew up with mostly digital and there is another that grew up with print. While the internet is without a doubt the primary source for most property seekers, newspapers and other print media are still holding their own. Of our participants, 23% still turn to newspapers to look for properties. What is more interesting is that this has increased from 16.5% in 2016. There may always be a back and forth on whether print or digital is better but it seems for the moment at least, print is fighting back!

The goodGround team spent a great 3 days at the event this year, with a total of 10 staff members making the most of a few days out of the office.

This year’s Field Days has provided us with a great opportunity to engage with the public, network, establish new relationships and add to our client database. It was also a great excuse to hand out our green dubdub carry bags – hopefully doing our bit to reduce plastic consumption!

The survey feedback is hugely valuable to us and will give us the opportunity to offer more targeted and informative news articles and blogs – especially around the most common land uses for lifestyle blocks. We had some very interesting responses that we can’t wait to investigate. Keep an eye out for more on the chilis and alpacas soon.

Thanks everyone, and we’ll see you next year!