Why Fonterra accepted defeat in the dairy aisle
OPINION: Fonterra's sale of its consumer dairy business to Lactalis is a clear sign of the co-operative’s failure to compete in the branded consumer market.
Fonterra is working with innovation partners whose technology offerings can help farmers manage their businesses better.
The co-op’s Activate 2.0 programme is designed to support this initiative. Run by Fonterra Farm Source, Activate 2.0 is a competition open to third party innovators designed to help Fonterra’s farmers lower input costs, save time and/or increase productivity.
Earlier this month, seven innovators were invited to Fonterra’s head office in Auckland to pitch to judges.
Three finalists were chosen: Regen Ltd, Agrismart and Wikldeye; the winning entrant will be announced later this week.
Regen’s offering is an automated, science based, daily scheduling of recommendations for water and effluent, and a nitrogen use calculator, available direct to the farmer via a mobile app.
The aim is to make it easy for farmers to accurately manage water, effluent and nitrogen use so as to minimise water waste and nutrient leaching and save power and fertiliser costs.
Regen says its system also captures the on-field data and activity in report form for farm environment plans and audits, without the farmer having to manually do it all themselves.
Agrismart has developed people management software designed especially for the dairy industry to reduce breaches in paying the minimum hourly rate to salaried workers.
The timesheet software records the number of hours worked in a pay period and then calculates and alerts the farmer if any top-up is required in that pay period, ensuring they pay the employees the correct amount.
Wildeye is offering a soil moisture monitoring device that optimises use of irrigation to support water-use obligations and ultimately reduce costs and raise efficiency.
The device measures soil moisture and displays it in the cloud with an intuitive interface. It allows farmers to make better use of their available water and know when the soils are too saturated for effluent management.
Wildeye says it is a simple, robust and affordable product for metering remote sensors that works ‘out of the box’.
Fonterra Farm Source chief operating officer Miles Hurrell says he is impressed with the new technology on offer.
“Farmers and those associated with farming businesses are demanding more,” he told Dairy News.
So Fonterra recently launched Agrigate to make the lives of farmers easier.
“We are keen to pool data from different sources and make our shareholders’ lives easy.”
He says Agrigate will work with the Activate 2.0 participants to help take the technology to the co-op’s farmer shareholders.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.
DairyNZ says its plantain programme continues to deliver promising results, with new data confirming that modest levels of plantain in pastures reduce nitrogen leaching, offering farmers a practical, science-backed tool to meet environmental goals.
'Common sense' cuts to government red tape will make it easier for New Zealand to deliver safe food to more markets.
OPINION: Should cows in NZ be microchipped?
OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…