One solution to a number of environmental issues farmers are facing could lie with a lot of little beetles that eat poop.

Waitaki Boys’ High School’s Fraser Farm will be the first active agricultural/horticultural school farm in the South Island to introduce dung beetles to its operations, thanks to North Otago Sustainable Land Management (Noslam) and partners.

Dr Shaun Forgie, of Dung Beetle Innovations, travelled from the Whenuapai-based business to Ōamaru this week, with funding sourced from the Otago Regional Council Eco Fund’s Soil Your Undies programme and the NZ Landcare Trust.

Shaun spoke to the Year 10 agriculture pupils at Waitaki Boys’ yesterday (May 11) and they will today release 1000 of the excrement-eating bugs onto the school’s farm paddocks.

He explained to the boys the benefits of establishing dung beetles on-farm, which include improved soil health and reduced run-off - due to beetles tunnelling into and aerating soil; increased pasture productivity; reduced infection of livestock by parasitic worms; reduced fly pests and human disease; and there is evidence of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Shaun is an entomologist, with PhD and MSc (Hons) degrees specialising in dung beetle reproduction, ecology and evolution. 

While working for Landcare Research he played a key role in the Dung Beetle Project, which ultimately led to him setting up the business with co-founder Andrew Barber in 2014.

Approval for the importation and release of 11 species of dung beetles was given in 2011, and the first farm release of 500 beetles took place in Gore in 2013.

By February 2014, Dung Beetle Innovations had released beetles onto 74 farms in seven regions across New Zealand.

The mass rearing facility has millions of beetles, which consume 6000 kg of dung per week, and the business continues to supply beetles for large-scale commercial releases country-wide.

It takes about nine years to get a sufficient build-up of beetles to eliminate a farm’s “poo problem”, so now is a “critical point” in realising the benefits for those initial farms, he said.

The beetles had the ability to to spread about 1 km per year, through tunnelling, so were not confined to the farms on which they were initially placed, Shaun said.

Noslam engagement officer Nicola Neal said the organisation wanted to introduce the dung beetles to Fraser Farm to not only educate the next generation of farmers, but “as an example for other people to see how it can be done”.