Environment Focused Deer Producers

Firstlight suppliers Tim Aitken and Lucy Robertshawe’s win of a prestigious international farming prize with Marks & Spencer is helping market NZ venison overseas.

In 2010 Tim and Lucy won the Silver Fern Farms Hawke’s Bay Farmer of the Year competition. That year they also won the NZ Deer Farmers Association environmental and sustainability award.

In spring 2012 Tim and Lucy won the Marks & Spencer’s Farming for the Future Award. First they won the international section of the competition, which promotes best practice in the supply chain and recognises farmers who are making their businesses more sustainable.

Then in a “champion of champions” supplier competition they went up against an English lamb producer, a Scottish carrot grower, an Irish free-range egg producer and a Welsh beef farmer. This part of the award was an on-line competition where they won the most votes and secured the top spot.

Tim and Lucy are Firstlight Venison farmers with 600 breeding hinds at Tikokino, Central Hawke’s Bay.

Marks & Spencer’s head of agriculture and fisheries sourcing Steve McLean said judges praised the couple’s work to enhance the natural environment and water quality on their farm, their involvement in research and development to improve the New Zealand venison industry, and their approach to animal welfare.

They have fenced off bush to protect it from stock, put in new plantings, and have good possum control. They have a large dam that acts as a wetland to trap sediment from a stream flowing out of their silage pit paddock. Other wetlands and shelter-belt plantings are in the pipeline.

For three years their farm was a deer industry focus farm, and they hosted numerous field days during this time. They also host schools on the farm, introducing them to the deer, the bush and Lucy’s horses.

The couple is at the centre of Firstlight’s research and breeding programme to breed high yielding stags for the other Firstlight breeders to use. Two years ago 1,000 deer from Firstlight suppliers were analysed, and a huge 15% variation in yields was found between animals of the same weight. That means there’s a tremendous opportunity to increase yields across the whole team of Firstlight suppliers. Tim says they are measuring eye muscle area, and correlating these measurements to the yield of the animal at slaughter.

All their deer have EID tags, so data is collected from each individual animal that gives information about its meat cuts and its co-products that make up a large part of their value.

Instead of being paid for the weight of the carcass, Firstlight suppliers are paid based on yield, and get a value sheet recording information on every animal processed. The farmers in the group also share the information and benchmark it against each, meeting every three months to compare progress at focus farms.

At The Steyning, 400 of Tim and Lucy’s hinds are AI’d each year out of their total of 600. They also DNA test, to match up the parentage of fawns with their mothers. The breeding programme has been developed with the help of Peter Fennessy. “We are measuring and weighing everything to build up the picture of the animals and find the best genetic lines we want to breed from,” Tim says.

Tim has also developed the “Aitken weaning technique” which minimises stress for fawns at weaning. It came about by chance when he was in a rush one day and put some newly weaned fawns into a paddock with an electric wire separating them from the paddock they had been in previously. When he came back to check on them, the fawns had all gone back to the paddock they had been in previously, and were sitting quietly in the middle.

“None of them had moved for two days, they were sitting quite happily. Usually weaning is a very stressful time for both hinds and fawns. A lightbulb flicked on. In the wild the mum always places the fawn, and the fawn stays there and waits for its mother.” So by weaning the fawns back into the paddock they were last in with their mothers, the fawns just wait for their mothers to come back, and have much less stress at weaning.

Meanwhile Tim said the competition was not only about making sure their business was environmentally sustainable but also financially sustainable. “If you are not financially sustainable you start taking short cuts.”

Tim and Lucy want to make the most of the win in being able to increase Firstlight Venison sales into Marks & Spencer, and to have their product recognized on the shelf. They are shareholders in Firstlight Venison and say that the business is from conception of the deer to the plate in front of the customer, and it’s traceable all the way. It’s a holistic way of doing business, Tim said. “We are still exploring the potential of deer through our Firstlight breeding programme.”

Firstlight Venison is a food business which has a completely different model to others in the industry. Shareholders own half the company together with the marketers and value chain managers. This gives the business the cement that makes it stick together. Farmers own their product into the market, and breeders and finishers share in the profits.

Farmers are committed to three year rolling contracts, and know the base price they will be paid for their product in advance. Above that base, the farmers share the returns depending on the value they add.

There’s a lot of communication and co-operation, right from the breeding programmes, traceability through all stages, interaction with customers in the market and out on the farms, benchmarking of on-farm performance and carcass value as well as market feedback.

Firstlight Venison targets high-end global retailers with long-term supply relationships, marketing differentiated products. Marks & Spencer is such a high-end retailer.

Firstlight’s Gerard Hickey says “We’re proud that Tim and Lucy won the competition. It’s great publicity for the company in the market, and it also helps us to counteract the “buy local/buy British” campaign which runs in the UK. Little red tractor logos are used to mark local foods in the UK.

This award shows that our food can offer customers the same benefits as British product – product provenance, quality standards and caring farmers. It vindicates the New Zealand story in the market and gives Marks & Spencer and our retail customers confidence in our products, where they come from and the supply chain.

We have been supplying Marks & Spencer for four years, with a small recognition on the back of the retail packs. Winning this award gives us the ability to promote our products much more widely, including a permanent presence on the Marks & Spencer website. This award will also help promote farmed venison as a superior product to wild shot venison, which is sold by some other UK supermarkets. This is also assisted by the growing presence of farmed venison on UK TV and Food channels. There’s a lot more potential to grow this business.”