Last year I delivered a paper to this conference on the theme of Crop Rotations for Supporting a Milking Platform (Scott, 2003). While that paper was generally well received there was a request for more scientific details to explain the responses of plants to environment. In addition I visited Southland in January this year and spoke to several advisers and farmers in the lactationary zone. The objective of this visit was to determine topical areas of interest for presentation at this conference and at that time the effects of drought were at the top of the list. This paper discusses a range of topics deemed to be of interest to dairy farmers. While the emphasis is on the Southland environment many of the principles apply equally to other parts of New Zealand.