Scales declares strong first half performance
Scales Corporation has today reported its results for the first half of the 2025 financial year, revealing what it says are outstanding results from its horticulture and logistics divisions.
NZ’s special agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen says the latest tariff-rate quota (TRQ) proposal from Britain and the EU is puzzling.
The Meat Industry Association (MIA) says the proposal is absolute nonsense, is unnecessary and is premature.
Petersen, a sheep and beef farmer from Waipukurau, says for the UK and EU to claim that the 50:50 TRQ split is consistent with other deals done is nonsense and puzzling. Petersen says NZ worked hard in the 1970s and early 1980s to get a fair deal and especially the flexibility in the present deal.
“NZ’s argument has always been clear and considered: that we do not think there is a need to split these TRQs even if Brexit goes ahead as currently planned,” he told Rural News.
“The ability to have flexibility for NZ exporters to sell to the highest value market right across Europe is not just a benefit for NZ farmers, it is benefit a for UK and EU farmers as well. We are not looking for windfall gain out of this, but NZ will be worse off under the current proposal and we are saying under WTO rules that principle is absolutely rock solid in that no country should be worse off after notifying a change.”
Petersen says many issues on Brexit are unresolved and the filing of this latest schedule doesn’t make sense.
New Zealand's diverse cheesemaking talent shone brightly last night as the New Zealand Specialist Cheesemakers Association (NZSCA) crowned the champions of the 2026 New Zealand Cheese Awards.
Tracing has indicated that the source of the first velvetleaf find of the 2025-26 crop season, in Auckland, was likely maize purchased in the Waikato region.
Fish & Game New Zealand has announced its election priorities in its Manifesto 2026.
With the forage maize harvest started in Northland and the Waikato, the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) is telling growers of later crops, or those further south, to start checking their maize crop maturity about three weeks prior to when they think they will start silage harvesting.
Irrigation NZ is warning that the government's Resource Management Act (RMA) reform risks falling short of its objectives unless water use for food production and water storage infrastructure are clearly recognised in the goals at the top of the new system.
More than five million trays, or 18,000 tonnes, of Zespri’s RubyRed Kiwifruit will soon be available for consumers across 16 markets this season.

OPINION: Election years are usually regarded as the silly season, but a mate of the Hound reckons 2026 is shaping…
OPINION: If farmers poured just a few litres of some pollutant into a stream, the Green Party and the wider…