El Niño Warning: NZ Farmers Urged to Plan Fert Early
Plan ahead and be patient. That’s the message to farmers and horticulturalists from the chairman of the NZ Agricultural Aviation Association, Kent Weir.
For the past decade, European fertiliser spreader manufacturer Sulky has been offering Fertitest, a service designed to assist with the configuration and effective use of the brand’s spreaders.
Currently, the system offers more than 1500 listed fertilizers with the indicative settings for Sulky fertilizer spreaders.
A new “My Fertitest” platform makes the most of current interactive technologies to enable farmers to create and administer an on-line user account, to personalise and record his machine settings.
Using the platform, a farmer can build a unique database, that can be re-used as a reference point for future fertiliser applications. As part of the package, a notepad makes it possible to add notes for each fertilizer and a preferred setting, while also creating a record to provide traceability of the operations.
My Fertitest avoids re-entries and makes it possible to simplify the procedure of searching for settings by ensuring individual or multiple machines are recorded in their real configurations. In practice, a user connects to My Fertitest using his account, to find previous settings used with an individual fertilizer, without the need to choose fertilizer and machine configuration.
From January 2020, Fertitest has evolved to offer a new mobile application version, available and usable in offline mode, either by downloading e-application via www.fertitest.sulky-burel.com or mobile app stores.
Pāmu has released its FY26 Integrated Annual Report, reporting a Net Operating Profit of $113 million, more than double the $49 million recorded in FY25.
Meat Industry Association data, released alongside the Red Meat Sector conference in Wellington, shows export value climbing across the US, China, UK and Canada.
Applications are set to open for the 2027 Zanda McDonald Award, a trans-Tasman award recognised for identifying and fast-tracking talented young leaders in agriculture and agribusiness.
The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (the College) and Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network are calling for investment in a proposed new training pathway for rural GPs, warning that many rural practices are struggling to recruit while a large share of the existing workforce nears retirement.
Federated Farmers has called on Central Otago District Council (CODC) to drop or vote down a plan to truck sludge from Alexandra and Cromwell to farmland near Lauder, warning it would compound an "outrageous" situation created by a separate council's decision weeks earlier.
Synlait has swung to second-half profit as operations stabilise, but the dairy processor still posted a $75.4m annual loss.
OPINION: It seems Canterbury processor Synlait is still in the doldrums.
OPINION: Get offside with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters at your own peril.