Tuesday, 09 August 2022 09:55

What now?

Written by  Peter Burke
Malcolm Bailey Malcolm Bailey

Aged 64, Malcolm Bailey says farewell after a stellar career in the dairy industry but his knowledge, innovation and drive will not be lost to the wider primary sector.

He's got no plans for politics; his focus will be on the many innovative technology companies he's involved with. He says countries such as the US which have strong economic engines are at the leading edge in the technology space. He says NZ also has the potential to do that and says his economic background is helpful when it comes to crunching numbers and seeing whether a venture is profitable.

One of the companies he's involved with is Greentech Robotics, based in Palmerston North, which is in the final stages of having one of its products, WeedSpider, operating on farms in the US. It's set to be the world's first truly autonomous weeding robot capable of identifying and eliminating weeds in a variety of crops, without a human lifting a finger.

Bailey says the idea was developed to help commercial vegetable growers who worldwide are facing labour shortages. The robot drives up and down the rows of plants, identifying and removing the weeds. The company has other products in the pipeline. He says throughout his life he's been prepared to put some resource into developing new businesses and helping to create new jobs. The next phase of his life will be in the technology sector.

More like this

Editorial: O Canada

OPINION: The Canadian government's love affair with its lifestyle dairy farmers has got it into trouble once again.

Featured

Big return on a small investment

Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.

Editorial: Sensible move

OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Cuddling cows

OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its…

Bikinis in cowshed

OPINION: An animal activist organisation is calling for an investigation into the use of dairy cows in sexuallly explicit content…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter