Twelve community projects across New Zealand will receive a share of $2 million to carry out wilding pine control, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor announced as part of Biosecurity Week. “Wilding pines are a serious problem that threaten many of the unique landscapes that New Zealanders value. Community groups and trusts on the ground can play […]
National
New drive for strong wool profitability gaining impetus, Feds says
New Zealand’s wool industry is entering an exciting new era of collaboration, innovation and consumer-focus to deliver game changing profitability to farmers, William Beetham says. “We’re really pleased to see industry players work together to end fragmentation and concentrate on driving extra value from the superior attributes we all know that strong wool entails,” the […]
Blockchain links us to value capture, less tedious data entry
Of all the presentations at the Primary Industries NZ Summit in Christchurch earlier this month it was a session on blockchain technology that lit up the eyes of Andrew Hoggard more than any other. The Federated Farmers President has made better data interoperability a mission. Like most farmers he detests having to enter the same […]
Cobber Challenge: It’s Aussie kelpies vs Kiwi heading dogs
Australia’s Cobber Challenge is for the first time expanding to include New Zealand farmers and their dogs. The annual challenge has been going since 2016 and involves working farm dogs being fitted with a GPS collar that tracks their distance travelled, work hours done and speed over a three-week period. Points are accorded, the dogs […]
Financers starting to ask tough sustainability questions
The government and consumers of food and fibre products aren’t the only ones asking farmers about environmental and social sustainability. Increasingly, bankers and financers want to know too. Dean Spicer, ANZ’s Head of Sustainable Finance, told farmers and growers at the Primary Industries NZ Summit that a paradigm shift is underway on the way business […]
Sustainability vision – it’s not just about protecting the environment
The word ‘sustainability’ seems to crop up in just about every second article on agriculture, usually referencing the environment. But as Federated Farmers Vice-President Karen Williams said at the Waikato Federated Farmer’s AGM, true sustainability must also encompass social and economic wellbeing. Karen enthusiastically described a future Ag-sector where happy farmers get out of bed […]
Are we barking at deaf sheep?
By Leigh Catley, GM Communications, Federated Farmers Groundswell’s tractor and tradie national protest on July 16 left many Federated Farmers members asking … what happens next? Did anyone actually hear the farmers’ messages, or are the folks in government circles in Wellington too much like deaf sheep to pick up on what a 50-town protest […]
Wedging open the door to additional wool sales
A group of Year 13 agribusiness students at a Dunedin College are working hard to put a bit of bounce back in wool demand, ‘one baale at a time’. Kavanagh College student company Under the Door Enterprises, competing in the national Young Enterprise Scheme, has devised a door wedge made of wool carpet off-cuts and […]
Strong Wool group goes out to market with ‘category disruptor’ opportunities
Finding entrepreneurs and companies here or offshore to spearhead branded product campaigns in the United States is the next strand of SWAG’s workplan. When the Strong Wool Action Group’s CEO Andy Caughey updated Federated Farmers Meat & Wool delegates in March, he described the in-depth US consumer research SWAG had commissioned from San Francisco-based design-led […]
Latest M. bovis TAG report released
The latest report from the independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for the Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis) response shows New Zealand is on track to eradicate the disease. “The TAG report acknowledges the improvements to our work, which aim to lessen the impact on affected farmers, their whanau, workers and rural communities,” says M. bovis […]