Farm Safety Improves Through 'Incremental Gain', Says Birkett
Improving health and safety is about incremental gain rather than a sudden decision, says Leeston farmer and Federated Farmers health and safety spokesman David Birkett.
The dairy sector has launched its new strategy ‘Dairy Tomorrow’, a joint sector-led initiative involving DairyNZ, Federated Farmers, DCANZ, and Dairy Women’s Network.
The new strategic vision for the dairy sector will lead to a longer term conversation about what New Zealand’s future farm and food systems could look like, says DairyNZ Chief Executive Tim Mackle.
“We are proud of our achievements over the last decade,” says Dr Mackle. “It’s set us up to address the challenges and opportunities we now face as a result of the growth we’ve experienced over recent years.”
“Our shared vision is to improve lives with every drop of New Zealand milk, whether those are the lives of our dairy people, our communities or our consumers.
“We believe sustainable dairy farming has a critical role to play in New Zealand's future prosperity and wellbeing- a future with a focus on farming within environmental limits while maintaining our profitability and success on the global market.”
The ‘Dairy Tomorrow’ strategy has six commitments and 22 corresponding goals. Mackle says some goals have firm time frames in place while others are more aspirational.
“We want to begin straight away collaborating on strategies and actions toward achieving swimmable waterways and finding new opportunities to reduce or offset our greenhouse gas emissions. These actions will be ongoing priorities,” says Mackle.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has admitted that a scheme bringing workers from Pacific nations to work on orchards has become too hard to navigate but says changes are coming.
A new app designed in New Zealand aims to help sheep, beef and deer farmers capture, analyse and use body condition score data more effectively.
Canterbury farmer Andy Macfarlane has been appointed to the board of AgriZeroNZ, the public-private partnership designed to accelerate the development and deployment of emissions reduction tools for New Zealand farmers.
For over 50 years Mel Ewers has been supporting the apple sector navigate through compliance and quality assurance issues.
The apple sector is enjoying a bumper harvest season.
Growers and farmers are being encouraged to have an important conversation before the coming season starts: how to prolong the effectiveness of the crop protection tools they rely on.