Fortuna Group’s Quiet Revolution

Fortuna Group is based in Southland, milking 15,500 dairy cows, spread across 5,366 hectares and split across 21 farms, from the Southern coast to further north and inland. Founders David & Kay Dodunski began with 125 hectares and 216 cows in 1992. Carried by a passion for innovation, along with an ability to efficiently produce milk solids, the business has grown. Fortuna Group is now one of the fastest growing dairy operations in the lower South Island. Their operations perform in the top quartile of farms in Southland and the business has a reputation for progressing farming techniques and implementing change. 

Trev sits down with Fortuna’s Sustainability Manager, Rosie Forbes, to hear a bit about what the team is doing in this space. 

Can you describe your role at Fortuna?

As Sustainability Manager, I’m tasked with making sure we live up to the ideals we’ve set for ourselves. We are, and continue to strive to be, good custodians of the land. Because it’s not ours. It belongs to the next generation and those who follow. Fortuna’s Founders, Dave & Kay Dodunski, have a real passion for sustainability and doing the right thing. This includes thousands of kilometres of riparian planting being undertaken, and innovating effluent solutions to make more effective use of nutrients. 

We’re currently planting about 10,000 plants each year as part of our commitment to making our farms more sustainable. Alongside our annual fencing and spraying programme, we’re also working on wetland and sediment catchment projects. This investment, which equates to 3 cents per kgMS, goes directly back into these farm sustainability efforts. It’s something we’re all really proud of here.

My role is very future focused. It’s not just about environmental compliance, it’s about sustainability. I love the variety of my job. You’re on farm, supporting Managers with effluent management, riparian planting, nitrogen use, winter grazing plans, and much more.  Then there’s the bigger picture strategy, making sure what we do is not just good for farming but good for the role of farming in the environment. I’m allowed to make the role my own and let people know if I need anything. I genuinely don’t think I’ve been more motivated to go to work. The people here really make it. 

How can we encourage our farm teams to act more sustainably?

Our people and natural assets are so important when farming, so if we can look after both really well and reap the rewards of that it becomes a bit of a no-brainer. I also like to think part of sustainability is ‘on farm efficiency’ - what’s good for the environment is also better for us as farmers. It drives good behaviours, whether that be from a productivity, profitability or environmental perspective.

Here at Fortuna, we use a bunch of different tools to drive efficiency. This includes the use of WhatsApp groups to share information with the wider farm teams, monthly on-farm meetings with our Farm Managers to share information and lead their own discussions on farm. We also use Trev on our farms and the weekly report summary goes to all our Farm Managers. This fosters a bit of competitiveness, and interest around how each of our Farm Managers is tracking against our farming KPIs. We are trying to integrate different technologies together such as Trev, MyBallance, MINDA and Fonterra to reduce doubling up on records.

We like to be open and transparent with our team. The more we can explain the rationale about the importance of why we’re doing things, the better the buy-in. We find that if our Farm Managers see value in things like reporting in their own day-to-day activities on farm it also drives the better outcomes.

How do you use Trev in your day to day role?

We’re into our third season of using Trev here at Fortuna and the data we’re capturing just gets better and better. The reporting process is well bedded down across our team, with our Managers starting to get some real value from it. We’re at a point now that we can trust the data going in, and the weekly reporting cadence helps us to identify areas of opportunity across our farming system to make changes throughout the season. The more accurate the data going in, the more value it is to your farm operation. Having a weekly report is such a good reminder to get your data in while it’s fresh. Building up that track record which keeps populating over the season has been helpful - whether it’s used for compliance, or to make decisions to improve on farm efficiency there is so much value to be derived.

In a multi-farm corporate like Fortuna, consistent data becomes hugely important and having a tool like Trev to help streamline the collection of data across the farms is key. The insights and trends we can gather from this data is a real game changer. We’re using this information to monitor and benchmark a number of key operational KPIs, as well as keep on top of compliance such as our nitrogen applications. 

I use our Trev data in a variety of ways. Some examples include maintaining accurate stock numbers, exporting stock movements to populate Overseer, understanding our feed usage, looking at fert records to ensure applications marry up, and looking at N use (which I look at a lot). I find Trev really helpful to get a holistic view of what’s happening across our farms. It’s a great tool in the sense that I can look at the big picture when I need to, for example our feed per annum, or on the flipside, drill into the detail, week by week to see what feed was consumed on the farm. 

For me, in my role, Trev’s FDR report has also been a real timesaver and I’m looking forward to seeing this automated in the near future, to physically reduce that double handling, and save us even more time from a compliance perspective. It also means I’m not having to bug Farm Managers when they’re busy on-farm to get information about what’s happening, because it’s all there on Trev, which has really helped. Our whole team in the office and on the farm are able to work off Trev to get access to the information which makes it a really efficient way of working.