‘I saw it as an opportunity to tell people about how we produce milk’

Clydebank farmers Sandra Jefford and Wilco Droppert are getting the word out about dairy through the big screen. And they never expected to be entered into a film festival.

Gippsland organic dairy farmers have captured the eyes of a budding filmmaker to bring agriculture to a wider audience.

The Wilandra Farms owners Sandra Jefford and Wilco Droppert, from Clydebank, are the featured stars of an eight-minute documentary Greener Pastures.

“It was quite different, we’ve done a little bit of media in the past, but never involved in a documentary,” Sandra said.

“I saw it as an opportunity to tell people about how we produce milk, and why we do it the way we do, and never expected it to be entered into a film festival.”

Sandra Jefford and Wilco Droppert, Wilandra Farms. Picture: Supplied by Lachlan Sonnemann, Greener Pastures

The filmmaker Lachlan Sonnemann, 21, is in his third-year of film and television at Swinburne University of Technology. He entered the documentary into the Australia Youth Film Festival competition.

“I’m a city dweller, I’ve been to the farm and grown up around them, but not everyone has that experience or foundation,” he said.

“(Sandra and Wilco) have really interesting technologies and it’s great to get the word out about them. It has a real impact, especially with drought and the effects of climate change on agriculture.”

Sandra and Wilco manage 370 Friesian milking cows, alongside a small beef herd and agroforestry. They made a goal of planting 100,000 trees to increase on-farm shelter, while also providing agroforestry business and building biodiversity.

They are managing a hog and deer habitat on their 380ha farm by regular mowing between trees to keep pastures short.

“The trees are really changing the farm,” Sandra said.

“If enough people in the district plant trees, we can create biodiversity corridors and in the long run we can influence the water cycle and hopefully influence rainfall.”

Gippsland dairy farmer Sandra Jefford featured in a documentary about her organic operation. Picture: Supplied by Lachlan Sonnemann, Greener Pastures

She said they had a dry spell but were luckier than most regions, and received 18mm in the past week. The documentary was filmed in September.

“At the time I wasn’t that optimistic because we’d had a fairly dry spell, it was cold, the farm didn’t look its best,” Sandra said.

“I was very pleased with the result. I’m impressed that city-based students wanted to come out to a farm and talk to farmers and learn about what we do.”

She hoped to encourage more consumers to focus on purchasing Australian-made products.

“There’s a lot of cheap cheese and butter in our major supermarkets. If people would look at the labelling and see if they can afford to buy the Australian product this week, that would be good,” Sandra said.

City-based filmmaking students created Greener Pastures documentary at a Gippsland farm. Picture: Supplied