Conrad Smith: Farming and sport share similar demands
The challenges of high-performance sport and farming are not as dissimilar as they may first appear.
Aimed at children aged seven-twelve, but equally valid for the ‘mature’, the exhibition is sponsored by Fonterra and DairyNZ; the theme is milk, the technologies that turn it into a vast range of products such as whey proteins and supplements, and spreadable butter, developed by Fonterra in the late 1990s. (Kaipara Co-op Dairy marketed a spreadable butter in the early 1970s. ed.) Developed by the museum science curator Salina Ghazally, the display has taken 15 months to bring to fruition and will run until April 2018.
Beyond the many uses for raw milk the exhibition looks at why dairying is important to New Zealand, why Waikato is the heart of the industry, and explains land use in terms of topography and climate. Looking beyond the practical, the visitor gets a taste of the science, and audio-visual stories of local dairy farming families.
Youngsters are encouraged to crawl inside a mock-up of each of a cow’s four stomachs to see what goes on there, are offered a display about breed types, and may learn that modern dairy cows result from 10,000 years of evolution traceable back to the DNA strings of 80 animals first domesticated in the Middle East.
No modern exhibition in Waikato would be true to form if it didn’t consider issues such as nitrate leaching, soil erosion and global warming caused by cows’ creation of methane. Possible solutions are discussed simply, allowing audiences to easily understand.
Well worth a look if you’re in town.
