Wairarapa Eco Farm

Wairarapa Eco Farm is an award winning market gardening and orcharding polyculture business based on ecological principles, with a strong community focus. It is owned and run by Frank and Josje van Steensel and their four children. 

Frank and Josje studied agriculture in the Netherlands before venturing to NZ.

They both have post graduate qualifications from Massey. Frank runs a sustainable agriculture consultancy service and assists producers making the change over towards food quality and environmental care with ecological integrity. 

Wairarapa Eco Farm runs two properties – one on the Tauherenikau Plains and a larger former conventional commercial orchard near Masterton. 

The couple has a history of marketing to organic wholesalers and for three years sold their produce via the Hill Street Farmers Market. 

Frank and Josje took on the challenge of growing full time in 2009 when they took over the lease on a large abandoned commercial orchard in Masterton. The orchard had pip and stone fruit and although it wasn’t organic, Frank says they could see the potential to grow good produce on the land. It also gave them the opportunity to grow a variety of crops. 

The couple grows organically although they prefer the term ecological. Frank says ecological growing is about everything being connected and nothing standing on its own. The system is based on agro-ecology and years of experience.   

The farm grows about 40 to 50 lines of product. He says they have that many because they need to have a system that works and is in balance. “This inherently means that we grow a diet for the soil thereby creating soil quality and hence diet for the members of the community.” 

Historically Frank says everything that makes things healthy or wholesome has been replaced or substituted by inputs and/or activities which destroy part of the food web’s complexity resulting in loss of function. Frank says the less they are doing in terms of adding inputs and/or activities to get an end product, the better they are doing. ” If you have a closed cycle all the ‘elements’ are floating around there and recycling them maintains the qualitative and quantitative aspects.”

 Frank says he dropped most of the inputs and then started looking for what is required for a natural balance in the farming system, creating the right set of conditions for ‘free ecosystem services’ to flourish. He says the only thing he actively does is to try and synchronise the co-operation between soil life, the insect population, plant and animal life. This makes the timing and planning of activities the most crucial aspect of management, as things need to happen in sync with climate and natural lifecycles.

He says the net effect of what they are doing is increased food quality and increased soil quality. Frank says as soon as the cycle starts leaching, then you know there’s something wrong. “It all comes down to microbes, insects, plants and animals all working together to close the cycle of energy, nutrients and water. The key ingredient is the microbes.” 

Frank and Josje run New Zealand’s first Community Supported Agricultural Scheme (CSA). CSA is agriculture that is supported directly by the people who eat the food, produced on a particular farm. Shares are bought for a season at the farm via a “membership” or a “subscription”. The dividend that you receive for this investment is a box (or bag, or basket) of food.  By joining the farm this way, Frank says the community gets a greater knowledge of where food comes from and how it is produced and they are able to plan better to create improved food quality and environmental care. WEF send out newsletters and open up the farm to visits. The concept is designed to unite famers and consumers and it allows the community to support small farms and prevent further alienation of communities from their food source.

 Wairarapa Eco Farm won three awards at the inaugural Green Agriculture Innovation Awards (GAIA). They won a Horticulture Award (gold), an AG Innovation Award (gold) and a Paddock to Plate award (silver). The GAIA awards are well established in Australia. They are designed to recognise those who are using soil-friendly practices that support ecological and economic benefits.