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 […]
Farm Stories
Hastings Council urged to push ‘paws’ on working dog fee hike
by Rhea Dasent Federated Farmers Regional Policy Advisor Federated Farmers opposes the Hastings working dog registration fee increasing from $48 to $56. While we are pleased that the cost of registering a working dog is heavily discounted compared to town dogs, $56 is still too expensive, especially when there is no discount for subsequent dogs […]
Kaiwaiwai’s why – an eye to the future
Covid-19 kicked to touch any face to face community celebration of Kaiwaiwai Dairies Ltd taking out the Greater Wellington ‘Supreme Winner’ Ballance Farm Environment Award last year. But last month more than 150 people gathered at the 642ha farm near Featherston in the Wairarapa to see for themselves why the award judges described the six shareholders as being industry leaders in adopting sustainable management practices. One of […]
A day in the life of an arable farmer…
New Zealand’s arable industry is worth $2.1 billion each year to the economy, and earns us $260 million in export sales. It also employs more than 11,300 Kiwis. It’s a diverse sector, and a world leader in both volume and quality producing the likes of radish seed, white clover seed and carrot seed. But while […]
Sharing a farm with the public
Kate Scott, a Federated Farmers member, is the co-owner of remote Rees Valley Station, near Glenorchy. Thousands of people visit her farm each year. Late last year she talked to the Walking Access Commission/Ara Hīkoi Aotearoa about why she and her family support public access and what it’s like to have a stream of tourists on […]
Harnessing the power of catchment groups
Policy aimed at changing practices on individual farms isn’t working, writes Jim Sinner from the Our Land and Water Collective Responsibility research team. Could collective management, through catchment groups, achieve better outcomes for our waterways? (This article was first published on the National Science Challenges website.) Over the past several years, I’ve had a growing […]
The underground army
New Zealand is recognised as the world’s leading pastoral agricultural producer. Pasture-based exports account for almost half of our total exports and given the state of the rest of the world, we are quickly becoming globally recognised as gold standard food producers. Unfortunately, all that productivity puts us in the shit…. tonnes of it. It’s […]
No ordinary day for this shearer
It was an ordinary Thursday for most of us this week, but not for Southland shearer Megan Whitehead. Yesterday Megan spent nine hours tackling the women’s world lamb shearing record near Gore. Former women’s world record holder Jills Angus Burney (and the only woman to have beaten David Fagan) was supporting Megan as her mentor. “Megan achieved the […]
Scholarship allows dream career in beekeeping to take flight
A Bay of Plenty teen has been given a boost to his dream career in beekeeping after receiving the 2020 Apiculture New Zealand Ron Mossop Youth Scholarship. Ohope-based Angus Brenton-Rule was thrilled to win the scholarship, which provides $2000 to support training and set up costs for new beekeepers, a one-year membership to industry body […]
Remarkable lambing performance in challenging year
Despite COVID-19 related processing restrictions and a widespread drought in the first half of 2020, sheep and beef farmers achieved a near record 130.3% lambing percentage. This is the finding of the Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) Lamb Crop Outlook report for 2020 that measures the lambing performance and forecasts lamb and sheep exports […]