Climate Smart Research at Dairy Trust Taranaki

Climate Smart Research (CSR) focuses on developing new knowledge, tools, and innovations for climate smart farming. The aim is to support agriculture in reducing emissions, improving climate resilience, and strengthening the role of research stations in delivering practical solutions for farmers, advisors, and industry stakeholders. New Zealand’s involvement is part of a Horizon EU-funded consortium of over 20 countries.

A key objective is to develop and test climate-smart farming approaches on selected pioneering experimental research stations (research farms), with the aim of achieving substantial greenhouse gas reductions and progressing towards climate-neutral agricultural systems.

CSR objectives

• Develop a shared framework for climate-smart agricultural research.
• Test cutting-edge climate smart farming approaches on selected research stations.
• Evaluate climate tools, services, and decision-support systems.
• Build research capability and support practical knowledge exchange.
• Maximise the project’s impact through stakeholder engagement, knowledge sharing, and supporting on-farm adoption.

Gibson Farm: NZ’s pioneer experimental research station

DairyNZ is partnering with Dairy Trust Taranaki Ltd (DTT) to bring Gibson Farm into the Climate Smart Research programme as New Zealand’s pioneer experimental research station. Gibson Farm is a 110-hectare working dairy farm in Taranaki and provides a real-world platform for testing mitigation strategies in pasture-based dairy systems.

Research focus at Gibson Farm

Gibson Farm applies a whole-farm systems approach to understand how different mitigation strategies affect emissions, production, profitability, and practical implementation. The farm provides a valuable demonstration site because it reflects a typical New Zealand pasture-based dairy system where cows graze outdoors and most of the feed is grown on farm.

The research explores:

• additives and technologies for reducing enteric methane emissions
• forage production and pasture management
• grassland and herd management
• integrated farm-system practices that reduce emissions while maintaining balanced outcomes.

Turning research into practical solutions

Reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions requires solutions that are technically effective, economically viable, and practical for farmers to adopt. Gibson Farm supports this by providing a real-world research and demonstration environment where mitigation strategies can be tested within the complexity of a working pasture-based dairy farm.

The programme also creates opportunities for farmer and stakeholder engagement, shared learning, and practical demonstration of how integrated farm-system practices and emerging technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while considering productivity, profitability, animal wellbeing, climate adaptation, and wider environmental risks.

Previous farmlet research

Previously, DairyNZ and Dairy Trust Taranaki have compared a typical “current” herd with a “future” herd that incorporated potential mitigation strategies under the Step Change project, co-funded by MPI. These strategies included reduced nitrogen fertiliser, diverse pastures, and strategic supplementary feeding.

The research showed that mitigation strategies can reduce total and intensity-based methane emissions and maintain profitability, although milk production was reduced. These findings provide an important platform for the next phase of research and development at Gibson Farm.

What’s next?

The next phase will focus on reducing methane emissions and nitrogen surplus while improving production and profit. The research will use DairyNZ’s wider greenhouse gas research and, where practical, integrate adoptable technologies that can demonstrate efficient, profitable, low-emissions dairy farming.