NZ farmers face rising urea prices amid global shortage and weak NZ dollar
New Zealand farmers will face higher urea prices this year, mainly on the back of tight global supply and a weak Kiwi dollar.
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.
Profitability issues facing arable farmers are the same across the world, says New Zealand's special agricultural trade envoy Hamish Marr.
Over 85% of Fonterra farmer suppliers will be eligible for customer funding up to $1,500 for solutions designed to drive on-farm efficiency gains and reduce emissions intensity.
Tighter beef and lamb production globally have worked to the advantage of NZ, according to the Meat Industry Association (MIA).
Groundswell is ramping up its 'Quit Paris' campaign with signs going up all over the country.
Some farmers in the Nelson region are facing up to five years of hard work to repair their damaged properties caused by the recent devastating floods.
Federated Farmers is joining major industry-good bodies in not advocating for the Government to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.